For such a good weekend, it has NOT been a good week. Last Friday we played a beautiful vineyard in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain to a wonderful crowd. Saturday we played to a great audience on a magnificent evening at Monocacy Brewing in Frederick, MD. Sunday I had a great time playing with Rebecca Berlin and Juels Bland at rhe Takoma Park Street Festival – but by evening I guess THIS week had started to assert itself.
Sunday night’s open mic at Morsbergers was about as slow as it’s ever been. Mayhaps it was the weather. After all, after almost two solid weeks of rain and the first few days of absolutely stunning weather, maybe it makes sense no-one wanted to hang out in a dark bar in Catonsville. Unfortunately, I didn’t help my own cause via a screw up online and maybe it was all MY fault. Earlier in the week I’d screwed up ilyAIMY.com’s routing and when I restored it, it seemed to reset an error flag for the open mic announcing that “open mic at Morsbergers is canceled this week on the 16th” . Not that last Sunday was the 16th or anything, and I THOUGHT no-one ever bothered going to my website… but when I talked to Charlie, who’s been popping in and playing drums for the open mic, he said he’d made other plans because he’d heard the night was canceled. Apparently one person saw it on the site, told a bunch of other people – all of whom have my freakin’ number – none of which checked in with me – and voila, dead night. Because I screwed up my damned website.
Well, at least it mattered.
The feeling that no communication matters, no method of contact, no email, no message, no post, no mailing list gets through to ANYONE is pervasive this week.
We’ve been pushing this coming Friday’s show out in Hagerstown for months, shifting into high gear this past week as the date loomed and concern from the venue about ticket sales rose. I was mortified to be in the position of canceling the show over poor ticket sales, but Monday morning I got THAT news – and though the venue did it as kindly as possible, assuring us that it’ll be a postponement rather than cancelation, that we’ll build to a proper bill, even offering to pay us a kill fee not offered in our contract – it’s still pretty mortifying to cancel like this. I think it’s the second time we’ve ever had to do it, and it especially stings this close to home.
And of course, that meant that I got a series of emails shortly after “hey, wanted to come to Friday’s show but couldn’t find the ticket link anymore!” “was planning to invite a bunch of my friends but just got my ticket refunded” etc, etc, etc. Five messages in all, mayhaps translating to under a dozen additional people in the audience, but too little too late.
Part of me wants to be angry at our audience. Communication is harder and harder as social media becomes more decisive about what IT thinks we should see, and people continue to swallow it with a smile on their collective face – and the only posts about my band I ever see are people upset that they missed the shows.
Friday I’d gotten a message asking if we were playing anywhere Monday. I tried not to be grumpy in my response but, Hell, I was playing that night, was playing on Saturday, playing twice on Sunday and again on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday… Monday, as a matter of fact, is the ONE night I’m not playing. And it’s the only night you want to go out?
Sigh.
Tuesday night was dead too, but at least that one wasn’t my fault. A lot of competing events this Tuesday. A lot of chaos. And it was good that it was a little dead. The School of Musical Traditions had a concert over the weekend that left all the cables and gear in chaos. It looked like someone had just rolled all the cables together in a big pile and it took me almost an hour to get to the point where I could START setting up. I had the company of a Lovely Russian woman and I appreciated her conversation as I pulled this, untangled that, rerouted the other. We chatted about childhood and lilacs and about passions and accents.
The open mic kicked off and I was sad that we didn’t have more of a turnout for my featured artist. Dirk Hamilton’s deserving of a big audience… and actually people DID kind of fill in a bit. I guess it’s the good side of having a tiny room is that even a dozen people makes it look pretty full – but Dirk made a couple of comments and I knew he’d hoped for better. Another artist introduced a song “about a preacher, someone trying to keep us on a path and trying to get us to be the best we can be – I’m dedicating this song to rob tonight”. It was a GOOD night musically, but short – and we wrapped by 9.30pm or so. Of course, at that point I was GLAD for the short list as the School ALSO has an ongoing Wednesday program that requires the entire room to be cleared out. Additional set up. Additional breakdown. All while feeling kinda like a failure.
And today I figured maybe I’d let it all loose on the Lair and I was so excited to play but tech issues just added problem after problem, finally knocking us offline around 8.20. I feel like I’ve got this awesome skillset but damn when it comes off the rails it comes off the rails. Computer issues? Bandwidth issues? Trunk issues? I have theories but won’t get to sit and test it till Friday – and even then it’s just going to be about checking boxes and trying to prove negatives. I was so so so frustrated last night.
I know I’ve written about it before : Jay Keating talking about “career killer gigs” – ones that are so bad that they break your spirit and you just fucking QUIT. It’s stupid to get SO down about one bad webcast, but the inevitable feeling of being separated from your audience by social media and miscommunication, unforced errors and forced, the feeling that it’s all just crumbling. It doesn’t feel like it would take MUCH to break my spirit and just fucking QUIT. But… what else would there be to do? I don’t want that non-Life. I want THIS Life. I just want to Live it BETTER.
