Job Profile: Guitarist Matt Baldoni on Working in Las Vegas
From the blog: My JobBy Matt Baldoni
First of all, let me say what a wonderful idea this website it, and how pleased I am to be able to contribute. Congrats to the guys who created it, I’m glad we all have a place to share information with one another and also to hopefully pass along the artform and the tools to some younger players perhaps.
I am a guitar player, it is the love of my life and my life’s work, and I happen to make my living working in Sin City. To set the circumstances, let me first offer just a small bit of relevant information. National and international tours, live television as both an MD on a show and as a guest on others, endorsements, a lecturer position at GIT, broadway productions, and everything else discussed here by our friends and colleagues have all been part of my life for the last 10 years, and in the last two I have been spending personal and professional time in Las Vegas.
Let me just say this right of the bat, this is a strange place. Not in a bad way at all, but well…y’know … it’s, well, Vegas. I was in LA for several years before I came here, and I have friends in many major metropolitan areas making music, have visited a lot of these places many times, and talk often to musicians in other cities that I know, like all of us. Based on these experiences and indexing them, I can still say that Las Vegas, musically/professionally and otherwise, is certainly not a microcosm of the business in general, no more than living here is a microcosm of living in other areas of America. It’s just different, really different.
The kinds of work will sound familiar to many of you, because they are. The same requirements are needed as they would be in any other serious gig, but it’s just weirder. Ever show up at a hang with some buddies to see a band, have a drink or two, whatever else… and find yourself saying this: “Y’know… that guy’s actually a really good Elvis…” It’s hard for me to keep a straight face saying this, but it happens all the time.
So, let me describe a nice week of gigs for me as a freelance here in this town, this particular week was very recently. Off Monday, went out to see Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns at the Palms, hung with friends. Tuesday—played with the Platters, the Coasters, and the Marvellettes at the Sahara, drove down the street to a nightclub and did 10-1:30 with a blues horn band I play with. Wednesday—did a large corporate event with a 14 piece band at a museum, incidentally with those electronic music stands people are using now and then, which are weird, still getting used to them. At almost 1 am I went to sit in at a jam session and to hang. Thursday, Friday, Saturday—two shows a night at Legends in Concert at the Imperial Palace Hotel. Also Saturday, a 12-4pm wedding, solo classical/flamenco/brazilian guitar, at the 4 Seasons (incidentally there were nine weddings going on in there that day, and I was alternating with a string quartet). Sunday was a triple—rehearsal and two church services in the early a.m., jazz brunch at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in the afternoon, and a benefit concert for Child Haven at a nightclub that night, all gigs that day sightread with no charts ahead of time.
Now that’s a good week, other weeks I’ll do well on the weekends and not work most of the rest of the week, other runs of weeks on end I’ll be busting my ass. Other weeks I’ll be at one gig for days on end. It just all depends on the circumstances.
There are some circumstances that are specific to Vegas. Working in casinos is interesting. Bottom line, gaming is God and all other things are incidental, including the restaurants, show rooms, and lounges. If gaming is down, like it is currently in these trying times, casino bosses start thinking about changes in entertainment, like for example letting an orchestra go and putting on the show instead with pre recorded backing tracks. This has happened more than once lately. Also, casino “ED’s” as we call them, which are entertainment directors, for the most part have come into that position from somewhere else like the hotel, or food & beverage, or elsewhere. Consequently, a lot of them know next to nothing about actual entertainment. There are exceptions to every rule though, some of these guys are alright.
Also, recently I showed up to a corporate event at a casino, and it was classic Vegas weirdness. A four piece rhythm section, a sax player, and a female lead were in the band. It was for a HUGE group of horse racing enthusiasts, all men away from their wives in Vegas for the weekend, drinking like fish, and acting like idiots. So, when I arrived with my gear I found out that in the middle of the evening we would be playing to drum and bass-style pre-recorded tracks of “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” and a few other country faves, techno-style, accompanying a half-hour show of 8 strippers. Far out…
Another example of Vegas weirdness—I left a large televised awards show event for a pharmaceutical company at the Riviera at midnight. At 1:30 a.m. I was setting up my gear in a 6000 sq. ft. suite in the Venetian with a jazz quintet, backing up a famous Hollywood tv producer who wanted to hire a band for his private party so that he could sing some Sinatra tunes and do some impressions. I got home at 6:45 a.m. exhausted.
That’s the other thing we must all remember while we work in Vegas. It’s a nice place to work, but more than any other city on earth, people come to this one to act like idiots, huge idiots. So, during things like load in and load out, you have to jockey around these people. We refer to them as “meanderthals”. It’s like L.A. traffic, you can’t do anything about it, there’s no easier way out, you just have to deal with it.
And as to load ins and load outs, they can be brutal. Back in August I had a private event I was playing with a 20-piece band at the Bellagio. I parked in the garage, on the top level, got out of my car, wearing concert black with a jacket, and it was 112 degrees outside. I drug my cart, which contained two guitars, a pedalboard, a cable/accessory bag, music stand, guitar stand, my charts, and an acoustic direct rig on it—across the garage, down the elevator, through the lobby, across the entire casino floor, and all the way through the convention center to the LAST ballroom in the building. I clocked it, and it was nearly half a mile. This can happen all the time, and they get even farther sometimes
As to the heat, yes—it sucks. I’m used to it, I acclimated quickly, but you gotta watch yourself and stay hydrated. But 3 months of hell is a small price to pay for the rest of the year, it’s 72 and sunny outside today, and it’s been that way for weeks. It’s Thanksgiving!! So, the weather can be a big upside to living here, except in the summer. Also, the cost of living is less here than it is in other areas, not just L.A. and New York, but other cities like San Francisco or Chicago. I have a friend in NYC who always says to me, “Vegas…the one town in the USA where the professional musician can own a 4 bedroom home with a backyard and a pool.” And it’s true, I have a lot of friends who live in nice homes, and I live in one too.
Another plus to working in casinos, the EDR. This stands for Employee Dining Room. It’s down stairs in the belly of every hotel, and it’s a scaled down version of the upstairs buffet for all the employees. They cost nothing, and you’re guaranteed one meal per shift. Sometimes you can get away with two. I think we all can agree that getting fed on the job is a huge plus. Some are better than others, but hey, it’s free. It saves us a TON of bread.
So now let me talk about what skills I think are necessary, some specific to my instrument, the guitar, and some more general. First of all, casinos ALWAYS start and end things on time, so be punctual, don’t count on even five minutes of grace periods. Guitarists, I know we love our tubes, but in this town you maybe working with electronic drums, in ear monitors, and having to go direct, so find a good-sounding alternative to your amps. At least two complete rigs are necessary, one at your main gig, and one to use when you sub out to go do something else. A third will be necessary for travel perhaps. And, as to the in-ears, spend the money on good ones, it’s worth it. I even carry a tiny little mixer to sub-mix click (if it’s there), tracks (if they’re there) and rhythm section (kick/snare/hat, bass) to my own in ears if I don’t have an accurate wedge. One production show I was on, I had tracks, keyboards, and click in one ear, with the other ear out, and kick/snare/hat, guitar, and bass guitar coming through my wedge. And drummers, I know fishbowls suck, I feel ya, but here they are a necessary evil. Thankfully, most casinos have a house drumkit, so a lot of times you don’t have to haul much.
Two areas to touch on here that are the most important I think, first is the unavoidable track. Most pop acts are using tracks, most production shows as well, and a lot of working bands too. Playing to a click and/or tracks is one thing, making it FEEL like you’re NOT using tracks is another. No different than learning how to play certain parts on different parts of the beat stylistically, the track don’t lie, so if things feel wrong on your part, chances are you’re not playing properly with the track. Incorporate this into your practicing, be religious with your metronome and drum machine. I use the good Tama metronome (a little pricey, but great) that all the good drummers use, and when I’m MD’ing, I clock all the tempos from the rehearsal and program them in order so I can count things off properly, drummers do the same quite often. Like I said, digital don’t lie, so if some cat starts complaining about a tempo problem, chances are he’s wrong.
The second are, and probably most important, READING. And the three most important things about reading are: interpretation, interpretation, and interpretation. It’s not just nailing the sticks and balls, or the slash notation. It’s making it all feel right like you’ve been on the gig for a year when you’re subbing in for one night and you haven’t seen the book yet. Most of this can only be learned by experience, but there are plenty of books available to help you. I must admit, I myself am very book-dependent. The other night the rhythm section was giving me hell for having to open the book on “Misty” because I had to transpose down a minor third on the fly. I don’t know, I just gotta use the book for most stuff.
I know for a fact that I would be dead in the water if I couldn’t read at least semi-well. The other two areas that have saved me, are singing backgrounds and leads and having a list of the tunes I do well at a moment’s notice to hand to the MD or leader, and being able to have enough repertoire to do up to four or five hours of solo guitar. These can be very lucrative gigs, $100 or more per hour, and people out here, and I’m sure elsewhere, love the Nuevo flamenco and Brazilian stuff. On these jobs I take a looping device and practice standards for half the gig, it’s great. Without these two areas, along with strong reading of course, I would be working at Quizno’s.
Ok, some more guitar-specific things. Get your pedalboard together guys, a couple OD’s, chorus, delay, wah wah are the basic essentials. I include tremolo, univibe, compression, volume pedal, tuner, and a clean boost pedal, all in an ATA case that I can fly with. Get a good music stand, a good light for it, and I use a little drum trap table below my stand’s desk to keep other things, anything from my keys and my phone to slides, capos, picks, mixer or metronome. There are plenty of outdoor gigs in this town due to the friendly weather, so spend the bread on thos clear plastic clips that go across the stand for those gigs with wind involved. And lemme tell ya, in the Nevada desert the wind can HOWL! 40-50 mph gusts on some gigs. A direct rig both nylon string and steel string acoustics is necessary, and have the ability to plug that in to a powered monitor ready as well. Also guys, be ready to have the opportunities, like in New York, to play banjo, mandolin, dobro, I even got paid a double for two bars of ukulele on one show. For some reason everyone expects guitarists to play every other stringed instrument with frets on it. Check out Tommy Tedesco’s book “For Guitar Players Only”, it’s a great book for your reading, and in one section he outlines all the other instruments, including ethnic instruments like bouzouki, balalaika, guitarron, tres and requinto, what string gauges to buy, and how to tune them so that they’re as close to regular guitar as possible so you can read the parts and get paid for the double. That saved my life more than once.
Well, I know this was one hefty read, I hope you guys get something out of it. I love working in this town, but like everywhere else times are tough, and rooms are closing, shows are too. So we certainly don’t need any more competition coming into town fellas, however there is always work for good players I think, and in this town anyway, I believe it’s all part of the ebb and flow, and some people will ALWAYS want to see and hear a band. I know somebody’s got money out there, otherwise we wouldn’t be working, right guys? I am fortunately busy these days, but not only do I know it could go away any second, but that there are 20 other younger, hungrier guitarists out there who are just as good, cheaper, and more ambitious, and ready to steal any and all of my work. So in the meantime, I try to show up on time, have the stuff learned cold, and be a nice guy EVERY GIG. Hopefully that’s enough to stay busy. Hang in there fellas, from yours truly, Matt Baldoni. Ciao!
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Great article Matt. This is the sort of stuff that makes this site really relevant and useful to other musicians. Thanks a million.
I’d love to hear more about how you got endorsements and whether that’s a viable income stream for sidemen. Sounds very interesting.
12/1/2008
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