Booking is painful and sometimes embarrassing. Not from the point of view of asking women out – I mean – in that circumstance, being turned down sucks – and it’s embarrassing. With booking, being turned down is a massive part of the job and for every hundred emails you maybe only get ten gigs – which doesn’t mean you get 90 “no’s”… it generally means that you just get 90 or so question marks… did they get the email? Was the website down? Did they not like the music? Did they not like our look? Did we not have enough hits on our myspace? Did I word something in my booking letter that offended someone?
Ashraf and Nomad playing at the College Perk open mic in College Park, MD – demonstrating that though John sounds great with all his little gadgets and pedals, he completely holds his own with just an acoustic guitar. 
Heather and Hannah Spiro singing some Indigo Girls together. Their voices blend beautifully and they sort of look like sisters in kind of a creepy way. Michael Berkowitz has an adamantium skeleton and wooden claws sharpened to inhuman…er… sharpness. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
There are only a couple of times where I actually felt EMBARRASSED over booking.
Usually it’s when I’m sending too many letters all in one go and I screw up and send the wrong dates to somebody, or notice a typo or something. Sending a booking request to a music program at an African-American college made me feel kind of dumb… but the music series site seemed to cater to stuff like us… but the letter back (which carefully skirted the issue) indicated that though our music was right up their alley, perhaps we wouldn’t be strictly appropriate…
I just ended up double-booking a venue, though not in the usual sense. For part of our time in October, we’ll be traveling with West Mary – and they’ve been quite diligent about booking shows, but in a couple of cases haven’t passed all their information along to me. I just got a letter back from a confused venue that we were apparently already booked at.
Sigh – not a big deal, but it made me feel kind of dumb. It’s the nice thing about our nice big world. I can feel dumb a hundred times over and never meet the people that made me feel that way.
Le sigh.
Strange awkwardnesses… signs of the times: Monday night we played a singer/songwriter showcase at Brewer’s Alley in Frederick, MD. It was extremely folky, but a good time had. A couple of writers that pulled the adjective “Lovely” from my throat – because they were. They made you smile, or gently melancholy. An anomoly for the evening, however, was a pair of very young brothers – I think they were 11 – named Jeff and Brian Brown-Hill. Though singing the blues at that age is never truly believable (though their original tune, the Bunny Blues, was awesome and struck close to my own lepus heart) I was AMAZED how they played the blues. On electric guitar, these kids have amazing soul.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Michael Berkowitz playing at my open mic at the Java Mammas in Reisterstown, MD. He is my Lovely remnant of Jahva House and is responsible for a large number of warm fuzzy feelings tonight. Brian at Java Mammas’ open mic in Reisterstown, MD. He happened to drop in and grabbed his electric from his car and came in and displayed a really, really great voice. There were no disappointments for the night – and a lot of really excellent treats. By the end of the night we were doing one song rounds to give everyone a second chance on the mic before the place closed. It was a LOT of fun. I’m not quite sure what to make of how much I’ve Loved hosting these Wednesday night events – they’re slowly picking up some of the locals as audience members and performers, but most of the performers are still coming out at my request (like Hannah Spiro, above). They’re not going to do that EVERY week – but for the moment we have been getting a really beautiful collection of singer/songwriters, a wide range of talent that makes me realize how very, very amazing my friends are.
A guy named Brian showed up at my Java Mammas open mic last night and showed off a truly beautiful voice.
I’m no longer all that impressed with fast. I’m fast. I’ve seen a LOT of people that are fast, but these kids treated their guitars like extensions of themselves… I could go on for a long time… my POINT is that they weren’t your usual “oh look, they’re so young and ON STAGE they’re SO CUTE!!!” – they were genuinely awesome. So much so that I was SURE their parents must have been musicians…. I was talking to their mother and that’s when I ran into my problem:
I stumbled over how to phrase the question “are you and their father musicians?” The dad had been talking to me earlier, but had vanished and I wasn’t sure if he was still around or not, there was this awkward moment of not being sure if they were together or not and worrying about how to ask my question, so easy in hindsight, caused me much verbal confusion.
I think it’s sad that I no longer ASSUME a kid’s parents are a couple – similar to how I’m never sure whether or not to congratulate someone when they say their girlfriend’s pregnant… sometimes it’s a happy occassion, sometimes it’s not. There’s so much awkwardness around the chaos that is modern-day family Life.
On the same “sign-of-the-times” front, I remember when I felt comfortable calling my insurance company! Don’t gasp! It’s true – I’d call them and ask them about best approaches to unconventional problems, like shared ownerships of vehicles, how to deal with having a car sitting at home while one toured the majority of the year, how to deal with “touring” as a commute… etc.
After getting back from the open mic I found a TOAD!!! I Love him!
As one can see from the LOVELY photograph, someone felt the need to back into / side-swipe / randomly accost my poor Saturn as it was parked on our local quiet neighbourhood streets sometime between Sunday morning and Tuesday afternoon. Humans were never nice enough that i’d take it for granted that someone would leave a note… but a couple of years ago I’d have instantly picked up the phone and called my insurance company. They wouldn’t neccessarily be able to DO anything about it, I don’t remember if my current insurance actually covers such things – BUT I’d be willing to CALL. Now I’m afraid that they’d see that as an excuse to drop me (parking in an unsafe area?!!?) or as a random excuse to up my rates – both of which are things that insurance companies seem to have a burning desire to do.
Lovely, I’ve got something that I’m obligated to have, that costs an obscene amount of money, that’ll save my ass if I’m ever in a REAL accident but will probably be cancelled shortly after they pay me what ever aborted sum they feel they can get away with.
HATE.
