So, it wasn’t THAT bad – but there was the realization that we’ve covered a LOT of ground, going out to Kerrville and coming back to Eddie’s Attic all for very, very little return. I’m discouraged by how few CDs we’ve sold at both events, and how few people sign the mailing list… we get tonnes of people coming up and telling us how much they Loved us, even staff members telling us how much they would’ve like to see us win either (or both) events… but very few are willing to put that enthusiasm forth into any form of more material support.
It sounds awful, I know, but frankly – I’m bitching cause I ain’t getting paid. Not what I wanted to worry about as a musician… but for all the word of mouth and wide-eyed compliments we get, I don’t understand where the disconnect is – why it breaks down before these same individuals choose to put their money where their mouth is. I worry that it really IS just talk, and that I’ve fallen into the same trap that so many kids at open mics have fallen into, where just enough people have applauded to be kind, and have said “no, really – that was GREAT!” that they’ve come to believe it… where the encouragement has given them a belief in something that’s impossible.
But that can’t be the case here, can it? I have always prided myself on reading people well, on being able to get at least a ROUGH grasp on what’s going on behind their eyes… there just must be something I’m not GETTING.
I know that people like to respond to the Journal – but in this case, it’s pretty much a rhetorical question. I don’t know that there is a specific answer other than – yes – we’ve competed in a lot of high-profile STUFF this year, but frankly, other than the
Susquehannah Music and Arts Festival, we haven’t WON any of them. And for however enthusiastic the crowd is for us, are they just waiting for the judges to decide who’s REALLY worthy of their adulation.
No, I know audiences have more of a mind than that – I’m just griping.
In any case, it’s weird to discover that we do a whole lot better, CD sales-wise, playing to an open mic audience of 15 people than we do playing to a festival audience of 300. I could worry that the latter is a less-discerning customer… but I don’t think that that’s all that’s at work.
Enough of my whining.
In case it’s not obvious, we didn’t win Edie’s Attic. On the other hand, we were knocked out of the competition in the second round by the guy who DID go on to win the whole thing, so that made me feel a little bit better.
The competition itself was amazing. Like Kerrville, there were very few people that I didn’t feel DESERVED to be there. Unlike Kerrville, I wasn’t as universally impressed, but that may well have had more to do with the format than with the actual performers.
Because the event is invariably sold-out, the performers (all 24 of us, or whatever number it is) have to stand in the outlying bar portions of the venue, rather than in the room where the music’s being performed – and though we could hear OK – closed-circuit television being run by a camera mounted on a pillar can only do SO MUCH to capture a dynamic performance.
In any case, I spent most of the time in between our sets sitting and reading a Toyfare magazine brought to us by our surprise visitors – the Lloyds. Heather’s parents and her little brother, Justin, drove 13 hours from Baltimore to come watch us compete! We were stunned when they called and revealed that they were at a local hotel, and it was a real boost to our well-being having a couple of more friends in the audience.
And oh my GOD what an audience. Like Kerrville’s, but more enthusiastic – thundering. We started out with LooseN and they ROARED for us. My highest compliment comes when an audience cheers in the MIDDLE of the song, can’t even wait till the end, and LooseN really had them going. It was awesome, but I was so hyped up on the fact that we were competing against a local favourite, I didn’t register at first that they called our name as the winners.
(and back to my original point, if we’d been allowed to make our way through the audience and hand-sell CDs at THAT point, I feel like we would’ve sold a CD to every other person in the audience)
Unfortunately, thought crowd response was equal on our second song, the judges knocked us down, and we went back to reading Toyfares and watching the television for another 3 hours or so, hoping that our faces would remind passer-bys of our former glory and that they would come and talk to us.
Sigh.
We drove home in the dark, in the rain, back to Natalie’s place… where we couldn’t find a
parking space and had to walk with our instruments strapped to our backs in the dark, in the rain… and when we let ourselves in Maggie BARKED at us! It was all very sad. We were very dejected and very, very moist.
That mood (and something weird about the cheesesteak what I ate) kept us up all night, and our enthusiasm about GETTING UP and MOVING OUT yesterday morning was somewhat dampened. We actually ended up getting out late enough that I was afraid we wouldn’t make our next stop – we’d planned to do some sight-seeing at the Sequoyah Caverns in Valley Head, Alabama before heading on up to Nashville.
We’d forgotten that we were on the very edge of the Central Time Zone – we danced back and forth across that for a while, and ended up with an extra hour that served us well in the caves…
The Sequoyah Caverns were amazing. If there’s one thing that I’ve Loved about this segment of the Trip, it’s that we’ve done so much touristy SHIT! From the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Aquarium, to … well… Biker Week counts, I think… to wandering Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to the Museum of Natural History in Houston – we’ve spent a LOT of money on tourist attractions this time around, and it’s something that I think has been well worth it.
And so we bought two tickets to get a little tour of the Sequoyah Caverns.
They were stunning, and I’m very glad she didn’t start talking about the spiders and things till we were in view of the exit again.
I hate water, I hate the dark – these caves had both in abundance, and I’ve got to admit, I think I spent the first 10 minutes sort of shivering and trying not to glance behind me and holding tightly to Heather’s hand… but after that, my phobias were overwhelmed by the things around me, and I often found myself left far behind the main group as I was trying to get a photograph or crouching, still staring at the confusingly reflected imagery. Unwise in the extreme, as the tour guide turned off the lights as she moved along.
It was a little odd – mixed in liberally (hehe) with the science and trivia of our cave explorations were casual references to God and the Creation, random underground proofs available in the beauty around us that Creationism should win out against Evolution, et cetera. It added flavour to day, and perhaps in a classroom setting I might’ve been interested in rising to the debate bait, but in a cave, where the woman doing the low-key but insistent preaching is holding the flashlight and is the only person who knows the way OUT… well, I was less than enthusiastic about tempting her wrath.
I am curious if she does that for every tour (or if she reserves it for groups with such obvious heathens in it), and I wonder if she’s ever taken any flak for it. Heh – I wonder if I’ll be taking any flak from this entry. Let’s not get into my thoughts on intelligent design and the Great Flood, shall we?
I must admit, sometimes I question my own wisdom about what I talk about in my Journal. But then I go back and think about it – and what the fuck?!!? It’s MY Journal, and if I’m afraid of what I say in here, that’s bullshit. I get emails chastising me every once in a while – sometimes I agree… sometimes I really don’t. But usually people stay pretty intelligent in their complaints. I know it’s a public setting, since I’m posting this on the internet… but… GAH! I’m babbling! What I MEANT was…
We were briefly distracted in our departure from the caverns by the local not-so-wild-Life, and I have a fun little video of Heather feeding the cutest damned goat you ever DID see… but then we made our way to Nashville.
Now – I’m very down on “music towns”. I hated New York City, dread ever going to LA, we bypassed Austin (though we shouldn’t have) and I was really iffy about New Orleans.. We’ve completely avoided Nashville up until now. We’ve made steady squares all around it, but this was our first time crossing the box. Up until now, we also had no friends there, and so it was with the meeting of Tony Liaolo and Treva Blomquist in Kerrville, TX, we finally decided to try passing through one of the Music Capitals of the World. I think also that our success in New Orleans has given me a little more confidence about playing in the big leagues…
At Tony’s suggestion, we tried out an open mic at a place called the Sutler Saloon, and it was… it was everything Nashville should be. A bit strong on the country-Western flavour for my taste, but almost no-one bored me, almost no-one had a voice that I didn’t like. There were perhaps a good number of mind-numbingly overused cliches, but the writers who used them (and I’m guilty of it as well) had a song that followed that was usually just about as good as any I’d ever heard.
Great players, pure music. It really restored a lot of my faith in the world, or at least that part of it that plays acoustic guitar.
Not sure what we’re going to do with the day. Putter around, perhaps try and find an internet connection. We’re going to try and hit up the Bluebird tonight. We’ll see what happens with that – I don’t hear that it’s promising.
We shall see.
Bluebird or no Bluebird… this time next week we’ll be heading home. We have about 1200 miles left on this leg.
