After a year of unemployment, Colorado musicians are fed up with low rates and poor treatment by venues, according to guitarist Aidan Pagnani. So he and sax player Sarah Mount have been recruiting musicians to join the recently formed Colorado Musicians Union, hoping that they can prevent the music industry from going back to business as usual — characterized by what they say is rock-bottom pay (when musicians are paid at all), rampant mistreatment and even assaults on musicians.
Although the Denver Musicians Association has been around for decades, they note that it largely represents musicians working for larger organizations, not gigging artists whose careers are more precarious and who are harder to organize.