On our worst day we rock pretty hard. Heather and I are tight enough that even if I miss a lyric Heather fills it in and even if she misses a chord I can fill THAT in and we’re just so damned charming that we fill in just about anything else anyWHERE else anytime we need. Add in either Rowan or Sharif and, not to be too arrogant about it, but we’re pretty freakin’ awesome even on our off-days.
But that does NOT mean I feel good about it. More and more frequently I’ve had the feeling that I’m not giving my all, that I’ve been unprepared or that avoidable catastrophes have occurred. Whether it’s string-breaks caused by not having changed my strings in some inordinate length of time or whether it’s Heather and I arguing over what song to play next because we’ve decided that we don’t really need a set list for one show or another. We’ve gotten sloppy and casual.
That point was really brought home on Saturday afternoon as we played the Columbia Lake Front Arts Festival. I KNEW going up there that I should’ve changed my strings. These festival things are once in a year (if not actual once in a Lifetime) opportunities and we have those 30 minutes or this hour to make our absolute best impression and we waste it by not being prepared.
We got there early, but separate. Heather was running behind and so I make a rudimentary set-list, but it’s not completely thought out, and it’s written in Sharpie down my arm, and I know that that NEVER lasts. Within the first three songs, I know that this almost random assortment of songs is going to end up smeared all over my guitar.
And so we sound check, and so we take the stage, and so I’m moving back and forth across the stage whispering song names and yes, we play well and a sound-tech comes up and tells me how cool he thinks my playing is. And the sound is awesome, and yes we’re charming, and for some reason children really, really Love us. I don’t get that. But I end up breaking two strings, and though my Takamine is solid enough to lose a string and not lose it’s tuning, the Seagull is not, so that means two songs have a sudden loss of sound and a sudden blatant out-of-tuneness. We play it off, it’s what we do.
And the set-list? It does okay, but there’s a couple of “I don’t want to play THAT ” discussions and Heather does the rap in Hands but afterwards feels that it wasn’t a good idea. that’s just all stuff that should’ve been defined ahead of time, and a year ago, it would’ve been. Two years before that and I would’ve made a setlist for the day 24 hours before and it would’ve been nicely decorated even.
At the end of the show, gathering our parts and our far-flung string-ends, I’m talking about that and Rowan’s just fed-up. “It was a good show, shit happens” but he doesn’t know that this is part of a pattern and that I’m just not proud of how I’ve been performing recently – and so this is a problem and rather than explain how unhappy I am any further I fix it.
We arrive at Perk very early and I restring the guitar in its entirety and Rowan works the action a bit and I make a setlist and show it to Heather and we’re prepped with minimal effort, but we’re PREPARED.
And of course, the best-laid plans never survive first contact with the enemy, or in this case, first contact with anyone ELSE’s schedule.
Saturday night was amazing. The College Perk’s afternoon crowd was sparse, but as evening gathered so did the people, and it soon became clear we were the stars of the evening. I was in a good mood, wandering around and flirting and working (caused in no small part by the presence of a particular creature in the crowd – I’m highly susceptable to such things) and I met a lot of people that I’d never seen before who pointed to our name on the list and asked what I knew about THIS band because THIS is who they were here to see and THIS is who they’d heard great things about and when are THEY going on?! A lot of older people, too – I don’t know where they all came from, or where they’d been hearing of us, but it made me feel so very high.
TWO bands didn’t show up for the day and John Cook, faithful College Perk open mic host and harried in-charge-guy for the day is rearranging schedules to make everything work. He’s going to play till x and we’ll go on at x-thirty and do you MIND doubling the length of your set?
Hell no – but that means Heather’s doubling the set-list while I’m working out sound issues and people have found out that we’ve got the new CDs with us and we’ve sold half our stock before we hit the stage.
The show itself is one of our finest performances. We’re funny, we’re heavy. Amy comes up on stage and the version of Illinois is Overflowing is heartbreaking and beautiful and powerful. Gelfling is running merch for us and has sold another dozen CDs before we’re off the stage, and Heather empties the Saturn of the “the fifth circle” as we’re all scrambling for Sharpies, because not only does EVERYONE want a CD, but EVERYONE wants them signed, and I sort of feel bad for Karen Scuderi because a LOT of her set is spent with people asking other people “have you seen Sharif? I’ve got EVERYONE but SHARIF” or tracking this member or that member. it was a good night.
I hope it’s a sign of things to come, but I also almost wonder if they thought we were someone else somehow. One guy, Kevin (?) came up to me later in the evening and asked about the Frederick show and wanted to know if we’d be as “accesible” there. He explained that he was used to most performers making a run for it the moment they were off stage, and most certainly didn’t hang out in the crowd after their set. I feel like he had a greater impression of our stature than was true.
I explained to him that this was often the best part, that making new friends and encountering new people, though often exhausting, was what was at the root of everything we did. If I have anything to say about it, we’ll ALWAYS be this accessible. I feel bad though, because that means that people will probably ALWAYS know that I’ll NEVER remember their names.
*hangs head *
Le sigh.
Loaded for the road. Oh Hell yes.
