Just One of Those Crazy Gigs
After eighteen years of live performance gigs, there’s bound to be a few crazy stories to tell. I have been blessed to be able to make money as a professional singer, and this particular gig was no different. It just begs to be shared.
I was hired as half of a duo to perform for a “barn raising party”. That’s right, folks, a barn raising party for a member of the North Georgia Saddle Club who had just finished building horse stables on their property. They were going to start keeping horses for saddle club members as well as themselves, so they erected a fabulous stable and had a party, complete with catering and live entertainment.
The gig was very basic. Tom, the guitar player, and I would perform mainstream pop and rock cover tunes for their three-hour festivity. Our set up was two microphones, an acoustic guitar, amp and PA system (2 speakers on stands and a powered mixer amp). The layout of the barn was traditional: meaning it was a big, wooden, narrow rectangle with high ceilings and about twelve horse stalls. Is it obvious yet that I grew up in the burbs? They decided that we should set up at one end of the barn. They made room for dancing directly in front of us, and past that were the catering tables.
In true gig fashion, we were already playing music as people arrived. About halfway through the third song I was wondering how Tom could be playing guitar and pulling my hair at the same time. Yep! It was the horse in the stall to my left. Maybe he didn’t like the tune… No one noticed, I played cool and we continued. I had to step away from the horse and try not to get hit from the other side with Tom’s guitar. It’s okay folks, I’m a professional.
We made it through set one. Everything went well. Tom and I had carved out our safe playing zone. While we were on a break the client offered us dinner. There’s a lot of echo in the barn (high ceilings), but I kept hearing this funny noise above all the echoing voices. No one else seemed to notice so I figured it was the voices in my head. I heard it again. It sounded like a really, really loud heavy breather chewing celery. Did you guess yet? My friend in stall one was chewing and licking my microphone. Ew!
Was he trying to get in on the act or could he just be a critic?
Come back to my site and my blogs for more gig stories. This was fun.
I did some reunion gigs over 4th of July weekend with my old band from the 70s. We had set these gigs up back in January, and I had mailed out practice CDs in late February. We had 2 dozen songs, mostly old covers we had done a million times, plus a couple new covers, all very easy.
I started doing rehearsals with the bass player over the phone in May. We all live a good distance from each other, so we didn’t get together until right before the gigs.
I drove up to Michigan a week before the gigs. I was able to spend one day with family before rehearsals began. We set up the gear, BS’ed for a while and started rehearsing.
What the – was going on? Mistake after mistake on songs we’d done for YEARS. Turned out that the drummer and bass player had put their instruments back on the shelf after our last reunion 3 years ago, and were just now starting to play again. OUCH. 3 days later things were OK, and when the lead guitarist arrived we blazed thru both sets with hardly any issues. Alright!
We were playing outside, and on Friday we headlined. 30 minute change over and we were “ready”. The drummer clicks off the first song, and the bass player’s IEM is so loud it throws him off and he starts the song in the wrong key. Away we go!
We had worked on endings, transitions and segues… which all got thrown out the window by the drummer, who sat there looking like a deer in the headlights. Both he and the bass player both went blank as soon we started. So much for our crack rhythm section!
We slog thru the 1st set, and by the 2nd set it is cold outside, temps in the 40s. Condensation was on all our gear with water literally puddling on my keyboards. Our hands were getting stiff and we had all we could do to finish that set and get the gear offstage. Most of the audience had given up and gone inside the bar, which was packed. The club owner couldn’t have been any happier.
And that was just the first night…