Dear Musicians, One way in which gigs on cruise ships are different from gigs on land is that you’ll have to travel far with your gear. If you take lots of it, you will almost certainly be charged big bucks by the airlines and you’ll run the risk that they’ll damage it. Regardless of the [...]

Dear Musicians, This is one of the funkiest songs I know. Get ready to shake it. (Yes another song for Steve Gadd to shine). Artist: Al Jarreau Album: Roof Garden Song: Roof Garden [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

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Dear musicians, The CLIA or Cruise Lines International Association, has posted some more statistics and an overall positive outlook on the immediate future of cruising on their Web site. It’s a long read but don’t worry, I have picked out some of the more interesting tidbits for you.

Dear musicians, You might be on a ship during the christmas holidays and you might be asking yourself if there’s any specific repertoire you might need during those days. Well, the answer is yes, you should definitely be prepared to play some christmas songs and you should definitely have a version of Auld Lang Syne [...]

Dear Musicians, We get many demos from artists that have a bit of a false sense of entitlement when it comes to cruise ship jobs. Often, this entitlement comes from the fact that these entertainers have already worked on ships before and thus think that what was good enough once will always be good enough. [...]

Dear Musicians, This is an article I was hoping I would never have to write. But here I am, typing away, because common sense is, apparently, a lot less common than you’d think. Wikipedia says: “common sense” equates to the knowledge and experience which most people allegedly have, or which the person using the term [...]

Dear Musicians, Memorizing repertoire is an important part of your performance and can be the deciding factor for cruise lines to, or not to, hire you. This affects literally all lounge entertainers, whether you’re a classical ensemble, cover band, cocktail pianist, piano vocalist, guitar vocalist etc. Now, for some of the above-mentioned entertainers this has [...]

Dear Musicians, I have another real gem for you today. I’ve already posted a song by the unique Belgian band Aka Moon before but I had to post this one as well. I just came upon this live recording today and thought it was just too good to pass up. Band: Aka Moon Album: Aka [...]

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Dear Musicians, On June 2nd, we posted a quick note about Roz Savage, the courageous woman who’s rowing across the Pacific to raise awareness to the pollution of our oceans. She’s been at Sea for 97 days now and is getting ready to make landfall around September 9th. This is an exciting event and you [...]

This is making me wanna learn a new instrument…

Dear musicians, Roz Savage, the inspiring ocean rower is doing it again. The woman who rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in 2005 is now underway on the second leg of her row across the Pacific. She completed the first leg, from San Francisco to Hawaii in 2008 and is now on Day 9 of [...]

Don’t have a drummer for your gig? The solution is in your barn…