Moe Cooley, one of Cortez’s most respected musicians, told me years ago to always charge a cover. I smiled and nodded and didn’t really listen. It took me a while to understand what he already knew: that a cover charge isn’t just about the money. It’s about what the money says.
I’ve been running the ZU for nearly five years. We’ve hosted over 700 events. We have paid every single artist who has ever performed on our stage. Not some of them. Not the ones who asked. All of them. Live music is the antidote to a world that has decided music should be free. It’s the one place where the economics can still work, but only if we show up for it. And showing up means paying for it.
Free music doesn’t mean nobody paid. It means the musician did.
Most people don’t know that the ZU pays our musicians even when there’s no cover charge. We made that commitment and we stand by it. But sometimes that looks like this: a quiet night, a small crowd, and at the end I’ve worked six hours and lost money. The musician got paid. I made sure of that. But the cost didn’t disappear. It just moved from your wallet to mine.
Someone is always paying. When there’s no cover, it’s either the artist or the venue absorbing that cost. In unpaid hours, in losses we don’t talk about, in the slow math of wondering how long we can keep doing this. We’ve been trained to expect music for nothing, and the people who love music most have been quietly paying for that expectation for years. That’s not okay. And it’s not sustainable.
I’m not telling you that to complain. I’m telling you because I want you to understand what “free” live music actually means. Free has a cost. It just gets paid somewhere else.
How We Think About It
The cover charge isn’t a blanket rule for us. It’s a decision I think through every time. For a single performer on a quieter night, I don’t always charge one. But the moment more than one artist is on that stage, the cover isn’t optional anymore. It’s how I make sure everyone gets paid fairly. That includes the musician, but it also includes sound and the person at the door, because a real show has real costs. Without a cover, you’re just dividing not enough money between more people. That’s not fair pay. That’s just shared poverty.
The cover charge also rewards musicians who work for it. An artist who promotes their show, builds their following, and brings a bigger crowd earns more than a flat rate would ever give them. Door plus tips. That’s real incentive. That’s the music industry actually working the way it should.
Every once in a while the math gets more complicated than that, and we figure it out together. Recently we had a musician recording a live album and music video at the ZU. Production costs are real, and we weren’t sure at first whether or how to charge a cover. We worked through it with the artist and landed on this: charge the cover, she keeps the whole door, and I still paid her a flat rate so every dollar at the door could go straight to production. People showed up knowing the score, and they were glad to be part of it. That’s the kind of community we’re trying to build here.
Here’s what I didn’t expect. Over the years, a handful of our musicians have chosen to donate their fee back to the ZU after being paid. Not because we asked. Not because they had to. Because they wanted to. You cannot manufacture that. You can only earn it, and it starts with paying people what they’re worth.
The Exception I’ll Admit To
Recently someone I respect told me she’d left a local venue because there was a cover charge and she hadn’t known there was going to be music. She just wanted to use a gift card and enjoy a drink. A surprise cover charge felt like a trap, and she was right to feel that way.
That’s not a cover charge problem. That’s a communication problem, and it’s on the venue.
We post our calendar. We announce shows on social media. We put it on the door. When there’s a cover, we want you to know before you ever step inside. Because that’s the only way a cover charge is fair: when you see it coming and choose to walk in anyway.
So if you’ve ever been surprised by a cover charge somewhere, I hear you. That frustration is valid. But a surprise cover and a clearly communicated cover are two completely different things. Mixing them up is how we end up deciding covers are the enemy, when the real problem was just a lack of transparency.
Know before you go. And if a venue isn’t telling you? Ask them to do better.
And if the cover charge is genuinely out of reach on a given night, please know that we see that too. Our doorman Robert Gonzales has been with us long enough to know this community. He has the latitude to use his judgment, and he does. We would rather have you in the room than not. Just talk to him and he’ll run it by me.
What Happens When the Covers Go Away
I’ve watched this story play out in towns across the country, and it always goes the same way.
Venues stop charging covers because they’re afraid of turning people away. Artists start accepting less, then nothing. The musicians who can’t afford to play for free stop playing publicly. The ones who stay are exhausted, subsidizing their art with day jobs. The venue absorbs the losses quietly until it can’t anymore. The doors close. Main Street gets quieter.
And then people say, I didn’t even know it was struggling.
Because they never paid the cover.
Moe was right.
ZU Gallery is at 48 W Main Street in Cortez, Colorado, a wine bar, art gallery, photography studio, and live music venue. We believe in paying artists fairly, every single time.
We’re building something bigger through ZU Arts Initiative and the Fair Pay Pledge. If you’re a venue owner or musician who wants to be part of it, we’d love to hear from you. Learn more at cortezarts.org.
