I live in Florida, and have been gigging for seniors since the 1990s.

When DJs started invading the live music scene, and the clubs around here didn't want to pay bands anymore, me, and one of the members of a 5-piece band decided to form a duo and play music for seniors. The retirement market is very big here in South Florida.

I play sax, flute, wind synth, bass, guitar, drums, keyboards and vocals in various levels of competence/incompetence, so I made and still make my own backing tracks, originally on a 4 track reel-to-reel, and when it arrived, MIDI. She plays synth, guitar, and is an excellent vocalist. (BTW, I eventually married her.)

When we started playing for the seniors, it was music by Sinatra, Miller, Ellington, and all that wonderful swing era music. But as time went on, they went to the great gig in the sky and Elvis and Buddy Holly entered. Then Beatles, Disco, and we're still learning new wonderful songs that wouldn't go over a few years ago.

We play condominiums, yacht clubs, country clubs, private clubs, retirement developments, and a few restaurants/lounges that cater to the retirement audience. This year we added Assisted Living Facilities, and the Veteran's Administration nursing home. Nice gigs, with appreciative audiences.

The ALFs and VA are one-hour shows, and they don't pay as much, but it's mostly weekday work. We chose this because we lost a lot of gigs because our government IMO botched things and got the Canadian winter visitors angry with us, and many of them aren't coming down to Florida this year. I'll miss them (sorry Canadians, I don't agree with what they are doing). In fact, tourism is down 30% according to our newspaper.

We started this duo in 1985, gigged on cruise ships for a few years to build up our repertoire, and in 1990 got off the ships and targeted the senior market. Since then, the only time we've been out of work was during the COVID lock-down.

Times change, and like any business, to survive, we adapt to the changes. So we don't play Glenn Miller anymore, rarely play Elvis Presley, play a lot of 60s-80s, and just added some Ramones and Adele. Some 2000s songs that the Seniors adopted, some Country, some Caribbean, and whatever works for the audience we find in front of us today. We learn requests, watch how things go over, and make our decisions accordingly.

We don't do set lists, but watch the reactions of the audience and choose what we think will be best for them next, out of our 600+ song-list

I'm old enough to retire now, but have no plans to do so. Why? A musician is what I am, gigging is what I do, and gigging is the must fun I can have with my clothes on.

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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