Broad Street Cafe

Broad Street Cafe hosts quite a bit of live music. It’s a pretty nice place to listen to music: Nice roomy stage area with a PA and someone to run it. The place may be packed with listeners who have come specifically for the music or it may be semi-full of folks who just came out to eat or drink and don’t really care about whether or not there is music so performing there can be a mixed experience. 

The thing to know about this place from a performer perspective (and, yes, audience members should know this, too) is that they don’t really pay the musicians.

Sometimes in the past I have seen them charge a cover charge although it is not really clear to me what percentage of that the musicians get and it mostly seemed to be on nights when there was more than one band playing so it would also be interesting to know how they divide that up.

My experience there has been that they give the musicians “a percentage of the take” for the evening – i.e. – you get a certain percentage of their sales of food and drink. Again – it’s not really clear how that works. If 50 people come in to hear a band and order dinner before the band starts playing does the band get a percentage of those meals or is it only for food ordered once they’ve started playing. Since I’ve never been the person responsible for booking a date there I’ve never been able to get the exact specifics. They also give musicians a discount on their own food and drink. Other Triangle venues that don’t pay give free food and sometimes drink to performers. And there are tips buckets in front of the stage. Last time I played there a sympathetic audience member picked up a bucket and solicited tips from other audience members which was nice since many folks might not notice the buckets or might not feel comfortable walking right up to the stage to put money in. Other places in the Triangle that encourage tipping musicians usually have a staff person go around once or twice during the evening soliciting tips.

The bottom line is that while Broad Street provides a fairly nice venue for performers and can be especially useful for unknown artists to get a start in a good room, they don’t exactly roll out the red carpet for the artists that cost them nothing to host and who do bring a sizable amount of folks to the business. Tip your musicians well.