When we were ready to enter the venue at 2:30pm, as agreed on your contract, we were denied access to the venue and we were made to stand outside with all of the luggage on the pavement for half an hour. CB, venue organiser, who we were advised was there to answer all of our questions for the band, said we couldn’t enter even to leave our equipment in a safe place, until our entry was ‘signed off’ by the restaurant manager, T. When she referred me to T, he deferred entry back to 3pm. When I politely acknowledged that the arrangement had changed, he rudely retorted that I was the one to blame for changing things by turning up at midday. I didn’t appreciate his attitude but it didn’t bother me in slightest and I just said thank you and got on with it - you and I both know what restaurant managers can be like!

Even at 3pm, we were not allowed access to the performance area, and we were relegated to the mezzanine. So we couldn’t setup/soundcheck. CB then advised me that even if we would setup /soundcheck, we would have to then breakdown and re-setup /re-sound check at 8:30pm for a 9pm performance! Not only does this defeat the object of having a setup/soundcheck in the first place in erasing the preparation work, but in reality only gives us half an hour /an hour maximum to complete an operation that takes minimum 2 hours. I politely explained to CB that this wouldn’t be possible, but she seemed to think that this was the only alternative because the wedding party were adamant that no band equipment should be seen during the wedding breakfast.

What was the point of calling us at 2:30pm if we couldn’t setup /soundcheck? Many of the band had other jobs for which they had to leave early or decline outright.

By this point, there was an atmosphere of discontent and I felt a bit uncomfortable about how to handle the situation so I asked CB to address us collectively. At the time she was more focused on laying tables. So we were left to languish for another 15-20 minutes not knowing what was happening, not knowing whether we would even be allowed to access the performance area in the time that we were allocated to do this (2:30-5:30). Eventually, when CB did speak to us, she advised us to go and spend 4 hours in the pub (really?) … Like we didn’t have better things to do on our afternoons. It made us feel like people don’t take musicians seriously, like we simply play for fun -which it is as well- but for all of us it’s a professional thing. (That bit is not so relevant to you as you go about business v professionally which we appreciate, but would be worth making people aware) We must be aware of who we are dealing with, clients/venues often don’t have a clue about anything.