Selling Their Talents for a Song : Musicians Who Work in Restaurants, Lounges Put Up With Low Pay, Noisy Diners and Persistent Hecklers--But Find the Job Irresistible

At 3 a.m., after performing his last set, singer Jarrett Cannon loads 300 pounds of sound equipment into a dented mini-truck. Over the next few evenings, Cannon will drive his truck to restaurant lounges in the West Valley, Newhall and Manhattan Beach. Accompanying himself on a digital synthesizer, he answers requests from the audience by calling on a repertoire of more than 400 songs, including the obligatory “Feelings.”

Cannon got his last raise about a decade ago. He is not, however, discouraged.

“I never want to retire,” he said. “I’ve never even thought about retiring. When you begin to think that way ... well, it’s time to find yourself a permanent day job.

“Nobody forced you to do this.”

The San Fernando Valley is home to a small army of entertainers like Cannon, those who make up the single acts and duets, who sing and accompany themselves on guitar or piano in restaurant and bar lounges from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills.

With tips, the pay for a night’s work can approach $200. Drinks and food are often on the house. But there are intangible benefits. Even on the jury-rigged stage of the grungiest dive, the person up on that stage seems a little special--not quite a star, but not entirely ordinary, either.

It is late Saturday night in a lounge attached to a Mexican restaurant. The audience consists of four couples and two guys at the bar discussing sports. Loudly.

The small audience is consuming enough margaritas to float a cruise ship to Cabo San Lucas while Jarrett Cannon performs “Send in the Clowns.” The crash and rattle of a blender from the bar provide unexpected accompaniment.

Cannon waits for the blender solo to end. He goes into one of his showpiece numbers.

It works. “How does he do that?” the customers ask each other.

They see Cannon, alone, with guitar. They hear his voice and guitar . . . plus bass, drums and four-part harmony.

The bass backup comes from a set of pedals, played with his shoeless right foot. The drummer is a black box--a digital synthesizer programmed with the rhythm patterns of Cannon’s songs. Four-part harmony is provided by another black box, a tape-delay unit. But the tape-delay machine has about as much rhythm as George Bush.

“Some musicians criticize me for using the electronics,” Cannon acknowledges. “They say I’m putting musicians out of work. But using these things is like learning an instrument. It took a year for me to work the bass pedals into my act.”

The son of a Methodist missionary, Cannon grew up in Brazil. His family relocated to Florida in the 1960s. Cannon’s parents wouldn’t let him join a rock band, so he waited until he left home to learn to play the guitar.

Audience of Bikers

A full-time entertainer since 1972, he lists among his most memorable gigs the night a gang of bikers dropped by for a few drinks and some persistent criticism of the entertainment. “The bar manager took one look at these guys and went home. Leaving the waitress and me. I was absolutely convinced we were both going to die.

“With that kind of audience,” he notes, “you’d better know all the songs they request.”

Cannon uses a home computer to keep a song list. Each title is cross-indexed by artist, date of release and highest position on the Billboard charts. Although he spends considerable time writing original songs, Cannon tries to learn one new tune a week off the pop or country charts.

Like most entertainers, Cannon can name a few songs he’d rather forget.

“There are songs I’m ashamed to admit I know. They’re in a special-request category: ‘Songs I Only Perform When They Are Written on a $20 Bill.’ For me, the No. 1 song in that category is ‘Feelings.”’

Usually voluble, Cannon becomes close-mouthed on a few subjects. They include his age (he admits to the mid-30s) and his income.

“I’m doing a lot better than I ever thought I would,” he said. “And I will tell you I’m making the same money I made 8 to 10 years ago. It’s a fact of life that there’s always somebody willing to play cheaper than you.”

He’s more forthcoming on his separation last year from his wife of 10 years. “My wife was very, very supportive . . . but she really couldn’t participate in my life style. I work nights, she works days. We just didn’t have much time together.”

“In this business, you can never forget the bottom line,” said Sue Johnson of Agoura. She has been performing with her husband, Tim, since 1969. “You’re here to entertain the audience and sell drinks. Forget that once, and you’re out.”

On paper the comment might sound bitter. But a bitter person wouldn’t call her job “a continuous private party.”

“We never entertain at home. All our friends come here to see us.”

They have a lot of friends. In the audience this night are people who remember when Tim Johnson was a solo act, playing piano and singing in West L.A. nightclubs in the late ‘50s.

On Friday and Saturday nights, some of those old fans drive from Westwood and Culver City to see the Johnsons perform at Todd’s Rip-Roarin’ Ribs in Woodland Hills.

The restaurant lounge is large enough to be comfortable, small enough to be cozy. Bar and stage face each other across a cluster of small tables. A group of regular customers has pulled four of the tables together. One of them calls out a request for “All of Me.”

Tim starts to play. As Sue sings the first verse, Tim glances into the audience. The woman who requested the song is yakking with another customer.

Tim stops playing. Sue’s voice trails off in mid-chorus.

“DORIS!” Tim yells.

He leaps off the stage. Into the audience. Almost into Doris’ lap.

“DORIS, WE’RE PLAYING YOUR DAMN SONG! WILL YOU PAY ATTENTION!”

Regulars Applaud

The regulars, including Doris, laugh and applaud. Tim marches back on stage and resumes “All of Me” as though nothing had happened.

Tim Johnson is the son of a musician and an actress who both worked the vaudeville circuit. When Sue and a date came into a club where Tim played, he asked her to join him on stage for a song. He suggested she come back the next night--without a date.

She did, and the two were married in 1969. They worked as full-time entertainers for the next three years, frequently playing on the road.

In 1972 they became the parents of a girl, Tiffany, and decided to be part-time entertainers, full-time parents.

He got a full-time job selling insurance. But they kept working on their act at home. They still do, practicing at least a half an hour a night and learning a new song every week.

For a typical club gig, they make $200 a night. For casual jobs--such as small private parties--the rate is $400 for 3 hours. The ante goes up for large, corporate-type affairs: $600 for the first three hours and $300 for each additional hour. Unlike most entertainers, the Johnsons do not put out a tip jar.

No Request Refused

“And we never refuse a request,” Sue says. They specialize in old standards like “Over the Rainbow,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Swingin’ on a Star.” But their favorite request is “Andante,” a ballad by Swedish pop group ABBA. They discovered “Andante” in their 15-year-old daughter’s record collection.

Doris and the other regulars leave. For the next hour, the lounge is not quite dead, but it’s in critical condition. The Johnsons play for six drinkers at the bar and two couples, one of whom appears to be auditioning for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Then a large, boisterous party enters for after-dinner drinks.

“Slow nights are bad,” Sue says. “But this is worse. Your emotions go up and down like a roller coaster. A big crowd is great. A slow night is bearable. But don’t give me both in the same night.”

“Here’s a song I wrote that Johnny Cash recorded in 1981,” says Jerry Landsdowne. “That’s when I should have gone to Nashville--but I was too busy fallin’ in love.”

He sings his song, called “The Hard Way.” Not counting the waitress and bartender or the two men talking in rapid-fire Spanish at the bar, Landsdowne performs for an audience of four people in one booth.

With his down-home drawl, the 37-year-old singer sounds like he just came from Nashville. But he’s a native of Fullerton and now lives in Sherman Oaks. He’s been a professional entertainer since 1971.

Johnny Cash has recorded two of his songs. In 1986 and ‘87, Landsdowne co-wrote five songs that made the country charts. They all peaked about halfway up the charts, trapping Landsdowne in a wicked predicament.

“If a song barely makes the charts,” he says, “then a lot of times a well-known singer will cut a version of it. Somebody like George Jones or Randy Travis. But if a song goes halfway up the charts, they figure it’s too well-known. It’s been overexposed.”

Income Reinvested

Last year, Landsdowne’s income from songwriting was about $4,000. His total income was about $22,000, and, like most entertainers, he put a big chunk of that right back into his business. Studio time for recording demos can easily run several hundred dollars an hour. Then there are day-to-day expenses. Guitar strings cost about $70 for a box of 10 sets. A full-time entertainer like Landsdowne will wear out an average of two sets a week.

“Looking at this as a business, you’d have to be out of your mind to go into it. Right now, I make about $200 a week less than I made last year.”

Landsdowne recently took his first day job in 17 years, laying brick for a masonry contractor.

Two of the four people in his audience get up and leave.

“These slow nights can kill you.” He shakes his head. “They can turn any professional into an amateur.

“The small clubs used to be a bridge for an entertainer. A bridge between playing in your room . . . just for yourself . . . and playing professionally. Things like disco and video screens have blown up that bridge.

“I believe the single entertainer with a guitar is a dinosaur. Except for the piano-bar types, where it’s strictly background music, I believe we’re on the way out.”

Then what keeps him in the business?

“I don’t want this to sound like . . . a religion or anything. But I believe I was put on earth to write songs and play music. There’s a spiritual side to it, and that’s what keeps me going.”

He smiles. “I named my publishing company Medicine Music. Because I believe music is medicine. It can mend broken hearts. I like the effect it has on people. When I play the right song, and a couple moves closer together. . . . that’s the payoff for me.”

“Mick Jagger’s dropping by later tonight.”

Kim Saunders delivers the line deadpan into the mike at the lounge of Bob Burns’ Restaurant in Woodland Hills. It’s a cozy room, with high-backed booths and a roaring fireplace. And very few people.

Saunders introduces an original song: “I was only sad once in my life, and I wrote a song about it.”

The song is called “Note on the Door.”

“I was living in a coed dorm at UC Santa Cruz. Fell in love with this guy down the hall and left a note on his door. I later found out his roommate was also his girlfriend. That’s the sad part . . . .

“But he turned out to be a missionary. From Bob Jones University. So everything worked out OK.”

Degree in Linguistics

Saunders was graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in linguistics. While playing the coffee houses around the university, she discovered she preferred entertaining to linguistics.

From her home in Encino, she plays weddings and parties, fronting a band as lead singer. She also does radio jingles, teaches music and works as a night manager at Bob Burns.

Of the 200 songs she knows by heart, Saunders’ least favorite is “Memory” from the musical “Cats” because, she says, “it is a very difficult song to sing well.”

Saunders averages $100 to $150 a night in salary and another $10 to $50 in tips. “That’s the same as I made seven years ago.”

In 14 years, Saunders says, she’s never felt personally threatened by a member of her audience.

‘Keep it Light’

“I get hecklers,” she says. “All entertainers get hecklers. You have to keep it light and not take yourself too seriously. As an entertainer, you should never take yourself too seriously anyway.”

Saunders recently separated from her husband. “I think this job is very threatening to a marriage. You spend long periods of time on the road. You’re out late at night by yourself, and you come home late. And when your husband works during the day and you work at night, it does create a lot of problems.”

Shaky relationships. Low pay. Late hours in strange places. Hecklers and lounge lizards. And the two things Kim Saunders likes least about her job: “Smoke. And blenders.”

Considering all the possibilities, what’s her worst nightmare about performing?

“That someday I won’t be able to do it anymore.”