INTRODUCTION

Pull Up a Stool

Whoever you are — a musician with a guitar in the back seat and a gig across the state tonight, or an owner with a room to fill and a payroll to make — this book was written for you, and for the relationship between you. That relationship is the quiet engine of every good night in every honky-tonk in Texas, and it is the whole subject of this third volume of Keep ’Em Coming Back.

The first volume of this series was a complete PR guide for Texas honky-tonks and dancehalls — how a room tells its story and fills its calendar. The second turned to the music nights themselves, every format from songwriter rounds to western swing. Here we go after something both simpler and deeper: the working relationship between the artist on the stage and the owner who booked them, told honestly from the stage and from behind the bar at once.

That phrase — both sides of the stage — is the whole method of this book. Most guides for musicians teach you how to get the most out of venues; most guides for owners teach you how to get the most out of bands. This one refuses to take a side, because the truth is that the musician and the owner are not opponents. They are partners in a shared enterprise, and the best nights, the best relationships, and the best careers happen when each one genuinely understands the other’s chair.

So every chapter here stands in both chairs. It shows the musician what the night looks like from behind the bar — the rent, the risk, the staff, the slow Tuesday, the drunk at last call. And it shows the owner what it looks like from the stage and the van and the merch table — the gas money, the missed dinner, the long drive, the gear that costs more than the gig pays. The aim is mutual understanding, because mutual understanding is the thing that builds trust, and trust is the thing that keeps everyone coming back.

And it’s meant for the whole range of both lives — the touring act and the local weekend band, the listening room and the dusty dance hall, the owner with one stage and the buyer with twelve, the player just learning to send a pitch and the veteran with thirty years of Friday nights behind them. The particulars change from one to the next, but the relationship is the same in every room, and so are the things that make it work.

I’ve tried to write it the way the world actually works, not the way we wish it did. I’ve spent my life in these rooms — as a chef and a bartender, as a patron who never really left, as someone who loves the music and the people who make it. The advice here is meant to be real: it names the hard conversations, the money flashpoints, the bad nights, the awkward settles, the moments when the two sides’ interests really do pull apart. It doesn’t pretend those away. It tries to help you handle them like a professional and a friend, so the relationship survives them — because the relationship is the point.

You’ll find the chapters laid out in the order a working relationship actually unfolds — the contents page across from this one shows the whole arc, from the first pitch to the long partnership. Read it straight through, or open it to the one chapter you need before tonight’s load-in. Either way, the same thread runs through all of it: treat the other side right, and the rest follows.

One word of fair warning that recurs throughout these pages: this is a guide to PR, relationships, and professionalism, not to law, taxes, or accounting. Wherever the book touches a contract, a tax, a license, or a liability, it speaks in plain generalities and points you toward the right professional — an attorney, a CPA, the relevant agency. Treat those parts as a map of what to ask about, not as advice for your own particular situation. The specifics are always worth a real professional’s time, and the book will tell you so every time it gets near them.

Mostly, though, this is a book about treating each other well — about the understanding, reliability, fairness, and generosity that turn a one-night booking into a years-long partnership, and a collection of strangers into a scene. The Texas honky-tonk has lasted because, in every generation, the people on both sides of the stage have mostly chosen to take care of each other and the thing they share. This book is my attempt to help you do that a little better, whichever chair you sit in. So pull up a stool. Let’s talk about both sides of the stage.