A couple of weeks ago my phone rang at about 6 PM on a Friday. "This is Bob - what're you doing tonight?" said the voice at the other end. It turns out Bob was hanging out with Cletus*, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of a band that was scheduled to play at a local bar that night - but without their usual keyboard player, who was out of town. Bob suggested me as a fill-in. As it happened, I was free, and so a gig was born!
Being an on-time person, I showed up at the time Cletus had said to arrive and found I was the first band member there. I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer and soon enough the rest of the band trickled in. I went up and introduced myself to Cletus (who I recognized because I had seen him play before). We chatted for a little bit but he kept calling me "Joey". I thought maybe he just has a weird sense of humor. Anyway, the band went about their business and a little while later I approached Cletus again about where he wanted me to set up. He seemed a little unclear as to who I was and so I mentioned my name again and that I was the keyboard player. He told me where on that stage their usual keyboard player set up. At that point they were still rigging the PA and drums and so I held off on setting up. A little while later my phone rang. It was Cletus, asking why I wasn't there yet. I walked the twenty or so feet from where I had been sitting to where he was and reminded him that I was there. He apologized. "I'm really wasted," he explained. Well, that worried me - I've played with a lot of people who think they play better high or drunk but in fact most of them, while they may perceive themselves as playing better, actually get sloppy and forgetful. Which reminds me that some day perhaps I should write about the time a band leader showed up for a gig in the midst of a multi-day bender in honor of his 50th birthday. He was responsible for bringing the PA and arrived with this very cool state of the art digital PA system he had borrowed from a friend - no mixing board, everything controlled form an iPad. The only problem was that in his state of intoxication/hangover he had no idea how to set the thing up. And of course he showed up very late. We used what time was available to (unsuccessfully) try to figure the thing out but wound up performing the first set without PA (not good!). In between sets I jury-rigged something to give us at least a modicum of amplification. Not a great show.
Anyway, a few weeks later Magnolia Blue had a chance to share a double bill with Cletus' band at Gypsy Sally's in DC. I don't know what gave the club the idea of combining these two bands - our New Orleans, horn-driven funk and Cletus' more John Hiatt-ish honkytonk Americana; however, while the styles may have been an odd mix, the bands have overlapping fan bases and so a good crowd of people turned out.
Being an on-time person, I showed up at the time Cornelius had said to arrive and found I was the first band member there (the other band was sound-checking). I sat down at the bar and read my book and soon enough the rest of the band trickled in. Playing at a venue like Gypsy Sally's is really nice; they get national acts there and so they treat their performers well (they don't pay well, but that's another story). There's a real green room (backstage lounge for performers), stocked with beer and ice water. No relying on unreliable band members for PA: they have a high end house system which supports separate onstage monitor mixes for the band members (say, for example, I like to hear lots of kick drum to help with timing but the drummer doesn't need to hear his own foot going "boom") and fills the house with nice, clear sound. They have a separate sound person for the house mix (what the audience hears) vs. the monitor mix (what we hear onstage) - that's a real big-time luxury that's rarely available in the kinds of places I play. Once we were finished sound-checking they even provided dinner of pizza and salad. Nice. I ration my pizza intake to once per month for cardiac reasons and had been saving my November pizza for an upcoming trip to New York, but decided to allow myself an extra pizza meal this month and ate heartily.
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| Sumptuous backstage dinner |
Backstage, I ran into the other band. Cletus was there draining quite a bit from a bottle of tequila he had brought along and was smoking something to boot. After he had imbibed a quantity well beyond what would have rendered me unconscious he said, "I better hold off - I don't like to be wasted onstage". I smiled.
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| Cletus and company do their thing |
*Not his real name
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