When health problems kept guitarist Mike Thole from going on the road, the Sunday night workshops at Bo Diddley’s became his musical refuge.

Thole, now 60, suffered several complications from a childhood bout with polio, including arthritis in his back and leg and pain from a recent hip replacement. By this summer, the pain was so bad he could no longer tour with his band.

But Thole still had "The Acoustic Project," a weekly get-together at Bo Diddley’s that he’d started years earlier. It was something to look forward to: a place to teach some of St. Cloud’s less experienced musicians in the fires of live performance _ even if the artists frequently outnumbered their listeners.

"We were doing something with a high degree of artistry," Thole said. "We weren’t playing Free Bird’ for some drunk in the back of a bar."

So it cut Thole deeply when Bo Diddley suspended its live music _ a staple at the restaurant since 1982 _ because a national music licensing company was demanding several years worth of licensing fees from the eatery’s owners.

Thole said he might have covered a licensed songwriter’s work at some point during the weekly sessions, but he wasn’t trying to get rich off someone else’s work. Bo Diddley’s never charged entrance fees and he wasn’t getting paid, aside from the occasional free sub sandwich.

Bo Diddley’s isn’t the first small venue to cut live music under pressure from licensing companies. Dan Preston, of the band Preston and Paulzine, said half of the clubs in the St. Cloud area that had live music five years ago have dropped it.

The three major live music licensing companies are Broadcast Music Inc., the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and SESAC (formerly the Society of European Stage Actors and Composers). If a performer covers a song in a venue that has not purchased a license from that company, the venue owner could be subject to copyright infringement penalties.

For venues of 0-100 people, the fees are generally no more than $650 a year, but restaurant and bar owners may have to pay that to each of the three licensing companies, and that’s in addition to the "mechanical music" fees many already pay for jukebox or radio play. There also are extra fees for venues that have karaoke or a dance floor.

All three licensing companies have regional representatives who monitor local venues to find out where their company’s music is being played without a license. Then they contact the venue owner, let them know that they may be in violation of copyright law and encourage them to buy a live music license.

Barbara Grahn, an attorney who specializes in copyright and trademark law for the Minneapolis firm Oppenheimer, Wolff and Donnelly, said venue owners don’t have much legal recourse against the licensing companies. The licensing companies’ regional representatives generally come to court with the names of protected songs they heard played and the dates they heard them. Sometimes they make digital recordings.

Grahn said she’d never actually seen a case where the courts ruled in favor of a restaurant or bar and against the licensing company.

Brian Lee, the co-owner of The White Horse, said his place is considering ending live music. He said he was surprised when letters from SESAC started arriving.

"We don’t use cover bands," Lee said. "The guys that come in and play for us aren’t like at a lot of the other bars. We want original material from our artists."

How does SESAC know that its music has been played at The White Horse?

"Basically, we don’t know," said Dave Ascher, the SESAC music licensing consultant who sent the letters. "To make a long story short, there’s no way, logistically, for us to know whether on a day-to-day basis they’re playing SESAC music."

Ascher said that since SESAC licenses thousands of popular songs, the company sometimes starts from the assumption that any venue with live music needs its license. He said the first few calls and letters to those venues were just to inform the owners about copyright law and let them know how much it would cost to buy a license that would protect them from copyright infringement.

Lee said he has received about five letters from SESAC in recent months. The most recent, dated Oct. 19, reads in part: "Copyright infringement is expensive, and Federal Law requires that permission be obtained prior to the public performance of copyrighted music. We urge you to consult an attorney regarding this important matter."

Though not an explicit threat of legal action, Lee read it as such.

"Frankly, we’re afraid of getting sued," Lee said.

Jerry Bailey, director of media relations at BMI, said his company didn’t always pursue legal action against smaller venues, because it isn’t always worth the money or the effort of sending a representative to the venue and gathering evidence. But sometimes it was necessary.

"We have a responsibility to the 400,000 songwriters and publishers affiliated with us to collect all the income they’re entitled to under the law," Bailey said. "We take that very seriously."

But Preston said the licensing companies benefit only a small number of well-known artists. Because there’s no practical way to track how many times an artist’s songs are covered live, the live music royalties that ASCAP, SESAC and BMI dole out are based mostly on radio and TV play.

"They’re protecting Bruce Springsteen, who doesn’t really need a whole lot more money," Preston said.

Preston and Paulzine is a local music success story. About 10 years ago Preston, a guitar player, teamed up with Deanna Paulzine, a bass player and vocalist, in St. Cloud. They made their name by playing at church festivals, street dances and small restaurants and bars like Bo Diddley’s and The White Horse. Now they are booked all over central Minnesota, sometimes playing several gigs a week.

Though they now have a large catalog of original music, Preston and Paulzine’s ability to cover familiar songs in genres ranging from rock to country to jazz is part of what helped make them a local staple. Preston said he wasn’t sure that would be possible in St. Cloud now.

"The only reason our band is surviving is because we’re doing a lot of private parties, corporate gigs and stuff like that," Preston said. "But I know a lot of musicians who can’t do that. Everybody’s hurting big-time and it’s because of this."

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Information from: St. Cloud Times, http://www.sctimes.com