An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors: Every gig is its own disaster

If I tell you that every gig is its own disaster you may accuse me of plagiarizing the sentiments of Tolstoy, or perhaps of being pessimistic and cynical (but who would ever accuse me of such?). But the truth is, each gig presents its own set of challenges. Each venue has its quirks. Yeah, I really enjoy playing music, but sometimes I wonder why.

Cut to a dingy hallway behind the swanky Carlyle Club in Alexandria, VA. Magnolia Blue has been booked to play at the club. Unusually, the opening act (a duo called Free Floating Musical Experience) booked the gig and brought us in as headliners. That left us at a disadvantage, as FFME had done all the communicating with the venue. All we knew was that there was supposedly a nice green room and we were going to be fed dinner.

Well, the green room turned out to be a tiny space, maybe big enough for two people if it hadn't also been put into service as a storeroom. The dozen of us (between the two bands) weren't going to fit there.

Another thing about having an opening band is that the headliner generally has to set and sound check first, then the opening act sets up in front of you. That's fine, except it means that you have to get there really early. The bottom line is that we had lots and lots of time to kill before we went on, and the only space available to us was the service hallway leading to the kitchen - rat traps and all. It was while sitting on the hallway floor with the rest of the band that I came up with the "every gig is its own disaster" line.

Oh yeah, that promised dinner. At first they said they were going to bring plates of appetizers out to us in our hallway hangout. The Carlyle has a pretty fancy menu: filet mignon, swordfish, lobster bisque, and so we figured the spread was going to be pretty good. Here's what we got: Domino's pizza. In all my years of performing I've never had a restaurant order food in for the band rather than serving out of its own kitchen.

One funny thing is that they brought out real plates, silverware, and cloth napkins for us. So at least we were able to site on the floor and eat our cheap pizza in a classy way. The glamour of show business! Actually, pizza notwithstanding, once we finally got up to play it was a fun set :)

Magnolia Blue at the Carlyle Club

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Around the same time I did a set with Shawn Cody at Mariachi's in Manassas. The summertime weekend evening scene in downtown Old Town Manassas is far more lively than one might expect. There was a band playing at a band shell in a park, and another in a closed off section of Battle Street. We were playing outside at Mariachi's, which pretty much means they shoved a bunch of tables aside to make room for us. In that spot we had little natural audience, since the inside patrons couldn't see us and the remaining outside patrons were around the corner on the other side of the restaurant.

Mariachi's is a very forgiving venue. While other places get on your case if you don't stick to a schedule, at Mariachi's no one seems to care what the band does. Perhaps it's because Shawn has a good relationship with the management (he co-hosts a weekly jam session there), but the management attitude there is always very mellow, which came in handy this time. Shawn's PA was malfunctioning and we spent a heck of a lot of time (unsuccessfully) diagnosing it and then jury-rigging something that would get us through the evening. That, along with a substitute drummer and the unexpected (to me) participation of singer/guitarist Zac Quintana made for a pretty slapdash kind of evening.

And while Mariachi's is hands off about managing the entertainment, they are very much in the money-making business and try and cram in as much as possible. While we were playing outside, the back half of the restaurant was reserved for a quinceanera celebration - complete with a mariachi band. So that's two live bands in one space. Oh, and they had rented out their upstairs room for a different party, which had a DJ. So that was a lot of competing sound in a small space. Every time the mariachi band would take a break and come outside we would gesture for them to come jam with us, but they never did :( Oh, and in addition to all the music and party mayhem there was a table outside the restaurant with people fundraising for some sort of prostate cancer organization. Fortunately they were just handing out information and were not offering actual prostate exams on the spot.

I have written elsewhere (on Facebook) that the highlight of the evening (since I couldn't get a prostate exam) was my realization that we were playing just across the tracks from the very same Manassas train station pictured on the cover of the Steven Stills album of the same name. Back in the 70's when the album came out Manassas, Virginia seemed very, very far away. Certainly not someplace in which a Brooklyn boy would ever set foot. Boy, did I turn out to be wrong.

Since we started late we wound up playing late. Our set finally came to an end when an interesting auto incident diverted the attention of the remaining patrons. Mariachi's sits adjacent to the railroad tracks, and where Battle Street crosses the railroad tracks it's possible to get confused and think the tracks are a street. I say this having gotten a little confused myself the first time I drove it, and if it's 1 AM and perhaps you've had a little to drink, ... I could see someone making that mistake. Well, someone did make that mistake and made a left turn onto the tracks. Where the street crosses the pavement is built up so you can drive smoothly over the tracks, but once you get off the street, driving your car on railroad tracks just doesn't work. They got stuck and had to be extracted by a large wrecker truck, which was apparently much more interesting than the band.

I always enjoy playing with Shawn's group - but this gig was a little high on the chaos list.

Car stuck on the tracks

Apparently our mothers never told us not to play in the street

Mariachis at Mariachis

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Then there have been my recent gigs subbing with the 70's disco band Groovalicious. The first gig I played with them was at a country club in Crofton, MD. Again, under-delivering on the promised food, as well as being a party where it's not clear why they wanted a live band, but the hosts and venue were very nice, and we had the rare non-grumpy sound engineer. It almost goes without saying - since it happens so often - that this was another instance of the keyboard amplification paradox. Everyone assumes guitarists will use their own amplifiers, since the amplifier's coloring is part of the total sound of the guitar. Keyboards, on the other hand, don't rely on the amplifier as part of the sound and so it's perfectly reasonable for the keyboard player to plug directly into the PA system, given that a monitor speaker is provided that allows the keyboardist to hear what he or she is playing. All too often, the sound engineer wants you to do Part 1 (plug into the PA) but fails to do Part 2 (provide a monitor speaker) That leaves you playing without any ability to hear yourself - or the rest of the band since on all but the smallest stages you relay on monitors to hear the other instruments as well. I will say that in this case, once I asked the sound engineer did provide a monitor, though he was nervous that the extra power draw would increase the chances of the circuits blowing, which kept happening anyway, causing half the PA to go out at various times during the performance.

Sound-checking with Groovalicious

Same thing happened again with Groovalicious at Union Jack's in Annapolis, where we played to a largely empty house on a Friday night. Except in this case, the sound guy was unable to provide me with a monitor speaker (have I mentioned that there were two monitors for the singers, one for the bass player, one for the guitarist, two for the horns and one for the drummer?). As usual, I had brought along my own little amp and so was able to hear myself, and the stage was small enough that I was able to hear the rest of the band through the horn section's monitor.

Hey, guess what happened at Cecilfest with Magnolia Blue last night? Cecilfest is a great weekend-long party, and we played a great set. Except that I couldn't hear the horns or bass player at all because .... (have you guessed where this is going?) ... there was no monitor speaker for the keyboard player. It was a pretty big stage and I was pretty far from any of the monitors, so I only vaguely heard the horn section and the bass player. But I listened to recording this morning and you know what? We sounded pretty good.