Gas, Ass or Grass...

When I was in college, I had a roommate at some point named Herman Gwinn. "Silver- throat" as we called him in those days had as you can imagine a great voice ( he could sing his butt off, and then some...).When he pledged to one of the many fraternites on campus, for the one he chose, he was a welcomed addition.
In those days (the 70's to be exact) fraternities and sororites had traditions of great singers and showmen. On days such as Homecoming , and when the pledge period was over and the pledgies crossed their respective "burning sands ( a fraternal ritual term meaning that they have been inducted into the organization)," the new members and the old guard would get together in the Student Union or the lobby of the dormitory and put on one amazing show after another.
All of the fraternities and sororities at my campus had at least one phenomenal singer, but in my opinion Herman topped them all...
I thought about Herman recently when The Carpenter Ants got caught in the quagmire of trying to negotiate prices for performances. It's the age old question; how much should we charge? How much are we worth (that's my particular question)?
I said in a recent blog that it's difficult to be in our position because while we genuinely love to play, but we've also got things to take care of like everyone else. It's a very uncomfortable stance for Michael to take because on the one hand you want the exposure, but on the other, you'd like to hope that the people who are paying see you as worth more than $400.00 dollars, especially when you know that they've made more on the deal than you can hope to.
I on the other hand don't have a problem with asking for what I believe we're worth. This is not to say that I think Mike is wrong, clearly he's not, because he in fact has gotten us far more gigs than I have, and that brings me to the point of utilizing Herman in this story.
One of the things that Herman did while we were in school was to drive people around, I mean he would take them to the airport, to the train station, or wherever, but he did this for a fee. The remarkable thing here though was that he made ungodly amounts of money doing so. People seemed to not have a problem with his asking price, and even more remarkable was that he never charged me, and I made plenty of offers to pay but he always told me to hold on to my money. It took me a long time to realize what was going on...I was the one who got the people to sequester his rides; he had a nice car, he had music (on an 8 track, but hey !), and there were always cool conversations going on in that "limo" service. Instead of people being outraged, because they were on a college budget, they not only paid but it also translated into other areas (are you starting to get the picture here?) Mr. Gwinn managed to garner a following, It's no wonder he was so well liked in the fraternity world, folks were also paying to go to his frat's parties, because he would always bring down the house with a song or two, which in turn made them rich by campus standards.
This is funny now, but Herman's philosophy was ALWAYS, that "gas, ass or grass nobody rides for free." He said that if you do things right, people will pay, and pay good money to have their needs met. I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out what that phrase really meant.
So I'm torn here, is this the way we should go? Or do we lower our sights and continue to play small venues and regional stages hoping for that break?
You be the judge...