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I'd say that even for bar and club gigs, my ratio of cash to checks for pay is about 50/50. I've done lots of casuals as an independent contractor where I had to fill out a 1099 form prior to being allowed to even cart my gear in, much less play a note or get fed. The check usually arrived in my mailbox within a week, but I've also occasionally been paid by check immediately before or after the job. Paying a musician in full before they've played any notes is perhaps not the wisest of business decisions, but I'll take it.
Small town or big town, much depends on the teller in question, as to discrepencies with funky looking checks. I once tried to cash a gig check in Rome, Georgia (small-medium town where I did a fair amount of growing up), and the teller complained that the numerical figure had weird looking zeros (it was fine), subsequently brought her manager in for backup, and access was denied. What's the point of having a cross reference between written and numerical nomenclature if common sense doesn't prevail? Let's go with one or the other.
On the other hand, I recently screwed up royally in offering my monthly teaching studio rent check to the proprietor of the business, as I'd just went to the bank and had mistakenly signed the back of this check and written my acount number on it, momentarily thinking that it was one of several personal checks written to me. He took an ink pen and scratched out my writing, slapped his rubber business ink stamp below the chicken scratching, and cashed it at an Atlanta branch of Wachovia with no issues.
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