The sites we serve keep paper or digital "comm books" where they notate any happenings with their residents and this information gets passed from shift to shift, with aides and med techs initialing the entries as they read them: Bessy fell and broke her hip this morning at 11:00am on the way out of the dining room. Is now admitted to which hospital. Clark is returning from his hip surgery and care at a skilled nursing at 03:00pm. Mable got into a fight with her table mate Josie at lunch over the cute new guy who just moved into apartment 311 and Mable now has a minor skin tear from Josie's fork. Josie is banned from the dining room for the rest of the week. (Okay, not sure how that works exactly. But these things DO happen.) As we progress as performers and business people, the demand for our services goes up, and keeping good communication records that make life easier and not harder for ourselves, AND our clients needs to be a priority. I brought this up in another thread, but here's a recap : Some LED's are notorious for replying to your latest invoice, or an unrelated thread, with a service request. I'd prefer they start a new service request email thread, with ALL details laid out from the start, but this would create more work for them, and we don't want to be "difficult to work with." So yes, we CAN in fact be there for your event on May 29th, but at what TIME do you need this? 03:30pm, great. But what's the budget? And is this indoors, or outdoors? Okay, it's at 05:00pm, and 90min@$200. Was this a themed event, or just general music, and is that "wallpaper" or "featured entertainment." We now have all the details, spread over five or six different emails, under a subject heading that has nothing to do with May 29th (and which year, but the way???). So my newly adopted "comms protocol" is to immediately reply with the following template (if you use Gmail, or probably most other email services, you can create templates to quickly reply to common inquiries without typing them all up every.single.time.) AND in every reply to that thread after this is inserted, I am copy/pasting the "event specs" so they are always in my latest reply for easy review.

Hi, Gang. I've seen videos on the topic, but was wondering if I might get a quick comparison from any of you already gigging with seniors... Among these four types of senior audiences: Independent Living, Assisted Living, Memory Care, Skilled Nursing—what are, simply, the biggest differences among these audiences with regard to 1) song selection, and 2) banter/stories/song setups/jokes, etc. 3) anything else? eg: chat pacing, music tempo, subject matter... Any experience and insight you might share is much appreciated. I don't need a whole book on the subject—just a few tips, as I am getting ever closer to reaching out to ADs—next few weeks.

Here comes the deluge of last minute requests for NOV 11th. Some LED's are more organized than others, thankfully. But here at Music We Remember, we seem to bail folks out quite frequently who are a little, shall we say "disorganized?" Or maybe new to the field? SURPRISE! Veteran's Day is happening NEXT month. And here come the emails... Now, a decade or so ago, demand was high for the female vocal trios with tracks, singing about Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys in Company B. But as The Greatest Generation fades away, and their children are populating the communities where we serve, we find a mix of Vietnam veterans, and also the flower children and hippies who may have very mixed feelings about seeing anyone honored for military service. It's getting to be an interesting blend... And some veterans were likely in both camps themselves. Who's got a Veteran's Day Program lined up that always goes over well? What do you include and what do you leave out? "Give war a chance!" - The Smothers Brothers (Perhaps this is mis-attributed to them...)

Does anyone have a web page to share? I tried to make one with Google Sites (which was free), but I'm curious what others have done. Actually, I'd like to completely redo my site. Please add yours so I can get ideas to improve what I have. Here is mine: https://sites.google.com/view/beecherbusiness/brian-beecher-music