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So I got this spur of the moment gig last weekend at Off Broadway - and times being what they are, I grabbed it for whatever money was involved -
"It's my Job' he'd say, 'I do it for pay, and when it's all over I'd just as soon be on my way!"
Solo gigs are like a little terror for me - I mean, I been doing this shit for a long long time, three quarters of my life...and it can still freak me out - Why? I guess I must be a perfectionist of a weird sort - I'm very particular about how I sound and sometimes as the psycho acoustic blues man, Robert Pete Williams might say, sometimes the humidity or something in the air, can just wreck the tone of a performance - like maybe it rained on Wed and a plane happens to be passing over head and there's a way too many folks in the bar holding glasses of water or something and vibrations just..., I dont know, sometimes my guitar (and this aint no piece o'shit, this things a big Guild with an expensive pick-up in it) sounds...I dont know, like it's made out of sticks or plastic or something and it throws my whole performance sideways. Why? There are a host of reasons - maybe I was just dissed by some totally inappropriate and unobtainable object of my affection and I'm just woundedly sore rather than heartbroken - it gets reflected in what I'm pushing out into the atmosphere...and then there are things that just totally blind side you -things that can not be dealt with by a sane and honest man...This night in question was one of those.
I get to the club and there's like four people in the audience - I'm supposed to play at nine o'clock and it's like twenty till - I was supposed to play to play first and there's two young boys up there playing already. I ask what's going on and the guy who hired me tells me it's a band contest I'm taking part in, he gives me a ballot to vote - says the winner tonight gets to play at a big band contest at the Pageant at the end of the year or something and the whole reason I got this gig at the last minute is cause two of the bands fell through at the last minute cause he found out they weren't old enough to be in the bar or something - then at the last minute, these two kids who hadnt been old enough, begged him to let them play anyway before the contest actually starts and he let's'em.
So I go up to the bar and ask how much for a non alcoholic beer, I add that I'm playing and he says four bucks. I'm astounded. - he's already popped the cap and handed it to me, and I go, "How much is it if I aint playing'???" and he says five. I apologize and tell him I cant do it, he looks a little exasperated and pushes it back to me cause like, who the fucks gonna drink an opened non alcoholic beer, I mean who in their right mind other than me, so I tip the cat two bucks, turn around toward the stage and it hits me...These kids are playing Jam Band Crap!!! What's that mean??? It means, the one cat's wearing a blousey girl top, shorts and no shoes - his hair cascades in ringlets down to his shoulders - he's noodling the fuck out of , first electric guitar and then on a conga drum - and I mean noodling, the other kid's also wearing shorts but also sandals and a t-shirt of some kind and he's caterwauling some cosmic tunage of the dungeon and dragons variety and from the titles I am given of the other bands, and they ARE all bands playing the rest of the night, I am the only southside trash on the bill!!!
OK, everybody else playing's got a few of their own people there to see'em and I'm like the only person in the place that's there alone - I mean I got the gig the day before so nobody even knows I'm playing nor would they be likely to show up and pay a cover, regardless of how much it is (and this IS a benefit for starving people or something which means like ME!!) so who that I know's gonna pay a cover to get in and see me and three jam bands fill up an evening???!
So the cat that gave me the gig, goes up to introduce me, he's being really nice and all but he goes up there and says who I am and , these kids have no idea in hell who the fuck I am - I'm not within their universes, mine is not the kind of radio show they listen to or even know of - or worse, maybe they do, I cant tell so , fuck, I go right into a sort of anthematic sort of catchy ass folks song and I get a spattering of pity applause and I go on to the next song and the next and I'm suposed to play for forty-five minutes and I'm up there for like seven days. My shirt's sweat soaked and torn, I'm taking cuts and bruises all over my body, blood is literally squeezing out of my pours, I'm desperate!! I tell my best stage joke:
"I wrote this next song down in Nashville. I was staying at a place that was so bad...I called down to the office and I go, "Hey, I got a leak in the sink." and the guy inthe office goes, "Well, go ahead."
Dead silence. A few look blankly at me - most dont even hear me ,like I could have been dancing around twisting by nose, quacking like a duck and it would have been like I was in some other dimension...at one point I tried launching into my money finish, Son House's "Death Letter Blues" but half way through I just lost heart almost entirely. First I stopped singing in mid word, then I let the guitar part I was playing dwindle down to one note, and I'm kinda keeping the rythem but I'm jsut doin it on one note like "duh duh duh - duh duh duh - duh duh duh..." on this one mid neck "E" note and as I do it I'm kind of looking all around and as far as I can asertain, no one in the joint even notices. I let go entirely, just stopped and picked another three chord song to finish it up. As I walk off stage, the booker comes up and goes, "Bob Reuter!" Nothing. Then he tries, "Of Bob's Scratchy Records every Friday!" Still nothing. "Anybody heard of KDHX?" he says - a spattering of applause follows - I walk off stage grabbing my guitar case. I ask whoever's around, "You think I'm gonna win?
I kicker though is that the money, they divide up the door, take a cut, ostensibly for the starving poor, (what's the difference between a pizza and a local rock and roll musician? a Pizza can feed a family) and then The rest is divided up between the three bands and me - i get a whole band portion and right after my set the place began slowly filling up with hippies and other noodle geeks - hee hee! So I ask when they stop doing the door, they tell me just after midnight and I beat it on back to south Grand returning later to pick up my pay. My cut wound up being pretty good all things considered but would I voluntarliy play another jam band gig? Nah probably not.
9:19 PM
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