Tony,

You already have a taste of the gig thing.

Seniors are so appreciative of the time you spend with them.
My voice is passable, so about 1/2 of my gigs were vocals.

This was a life changing experience for myself and also my wife.

A lot of the centers, folks have very few visitors, and even less time
getting away from the place.

Your trivia idea is great, I also did some amount of this.
I had mentors on another forum that advised and supported me to try
this gig thing out.

One piece of advice given me was to NOT tell jokes. It is very easy to offend
someone.

I joked, but made fun of myself, getting lost, making a mistake etc.
almost always they never heard the mistakes.

There were "caregivers" or "people guides" from the places staff always on hand
a lot of times they would make some kind of humorous comment, this gives you the
perfect foil to bounce things off of.

Also getting to know the minders with a little more or less private chit-chat
will help you a great deal. Also your wife, can interact with different folks,
"fishing" for comments if you may.

The technical aspects of what you are doing regarding you audience, it might
not impact your gig as much as long as you down time between songs is short.
Pretend they are all Dancing. Down time is too long dancers go sit down.

Down thru the years with my career that kept us in house, grub and home warm was
highly recognized. BUT NEVER the focus of attention like when your gigging.
Your the only reason the folks are there, total focus in on you..
Sound like you handled it very nicely.
Took me about 6 months to get to a reasonable comfort level.

BTW, your an old timer.... I'm only 68 LOL

Hang in there, your life took a new turn down a different road.
One you will never forget.

Good Luck !

BTW, lot of professional folks with good advice in this link.
I made up to $100 a gig, but usually a bit less and time was 1 hour.
But usually played a bit longer. The $$$ you make will help you pay
for all the upgrades coming in the PG products and other cool audio
gigging gear.
http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/showflat.p...;gonew=1#UNREAD

Last edited by seeker; 01/25/12 11:38 AM.
FrankB

Down The Street vs2015 12-03-2014
Win7, AMD QuadA8-5500,16GB,2TeraHD, Komplete 10
PG Ultra Plus 2016,Alesis 12USB, Sonar Platinum