One down... not so up.

This is being written at the end of night 1 of 5 consecutive nights in which I have either a rehearsal or gig with any one of three different bands.

It's 12:19 AM, and, while it only took me fifteen minutes to find parking, I am faced with another of my common post-gig dilemmas: I am fucking starving. It happens all the time: I get home from gigs at midnight having just expended a ton of energy performing and focusing on driving home while very tired, am hungry as hell, eat a small meal, and then go to bed. That is why I am in the shape I am in. Ugh. Well... perhaps I can distract myself from eating with a small rundown of what happened tonight. It is against my better judgment as I have another long one tomorrow, but I should get doing while the memories (and feelings) are fresh.

I left early (as always), sat in BQE traffic (as always), and parked only a few feet from the entrance to Parkside Lounge (as always). The routine of these Whistling Rufus weeknight gigs at Parkside has been nice. I get into the city ridiculously early, hang with Spiff (he's the early type too), and then either watch the preceding band's set or grab a seat at the bar out front and read. Tonight I opted for the latter and enjoyed (sort of) a Harpoon IPA and a few pages in my book. The band option was promising as they were a (somewhat) Traditional duo with a great lead singer on tour and heade for a gig in Pittsburgh tomorrow night, but I was feeling a little of sorts having had a nap earlier in the evening. In terms of sanity and health, the surprise opportunity to see Melissa at home and take a nap will probably serve me well in the long run (and by long, I mean the distance between here and Friday), but I wasn't quite as focused on the music as a result of them. Ah, yet another conflict to reconcile. My skipping the prior band seemed to matter little however, as one of the guys (Sam) from the group was still nice enough to lend us his guitar when Spiff and I found out we needed to do an impromptu set of originals as a duo. It seemed Trip and Emily were stuck at a WNYC event and wouldn't be there until some 45 minutes after gig time. Eek! So Spiff and I, fueled by collective deperation to keep contained the decent-sized crowd (honestly, you guys need to start coming 'cos we usually play to the furniture at Parkside Lounge) and my new-found desire to perform my material solo, decided that we would do a few tunes on our own.

I will spare you some the details, but I will tell you this: I have a ways to go before I can do solo shows with just me and the guitar. While there were no trainwrecks and I didn't completely embarrass myself, I am far from proud of my performance this evening. There were a few things working against me here: my lack of preparation for this happenstance and my lack of experience doing shows on my own. I don't blame myself too much for my not being prepared to do this, but I froze. I couldn't think of what songs to play, and, as I do not play the tunes I chose all that often, flubbed some chords and lyrics which snowballed into rather sloppy and sheepish performaces of some decent tunes. Quite frankly, I think the songs I chose to play were, from a songwriting standpoint, as strong as those that Spiff chose to play, but, while not a competition by any means, Spiff, having been doing solo gigs for some time now, came off far more polished and confident. As far as a lack of experience goes, I feel like it is worth noting that despite my years of writing songs and playing them with bands, I have only ever had two solo gigs in my life. I have done little one-song performances and open mics (though not in years), but the number of full solo shows I have done is a mere two. I guess the only way to get better is to go out and do 'em, but first I should learn the words, chords, and break the horrible habit I discovered this evening. Apparently, when I am either nervous or not getting the audience repsonse I am looking for or am feeling a general lack of confidence about the acutal composition of the song, I fuck with the phrasing of the song and wind up doing this weird speak/singing thing. Were I to do this in front of a crowd that had heard these tunes a million times, it would appear to be an interesting anamoly or a creative choice, but tonight (and all the other times that the audience doesn't already know the songs - which is roughly all the times) it just came off sounding like I didn't know what I was doing. I was nervous as hell as the cats that played before us were in the audience, as was my good friend, and Panda Cam bassist, Chris Cummings. Chris is my musical foil of sorts and we have a strangely antagonistic artistic relationship, but it tends to make us both better and I hold his musical taste and skills in the highest regard. This all could have been solved if I were in a place where I have an aresenal of originals in every mood, key, genre, etc. at the ready at all time, but I am not there yet. Looks like I have another thing to practice...

Emily actually only showed up about fifteen minutes late. Once she settled in and got tuned, she, Spiff, and I picked out some tunes we could "pull off" without Trip and set forth entertaining the ever-dwindling crowd. I played like shit from the moment we started. I knew my voice was not 100%, but my playing was even worse. I guess my confidence was pretty well-shaken by my unsuccessful portion of our impromptu solo set, because it took me a good deal of time to even fully focus on making music. This sort of situation is especially sticky when it comes to my playing upright. While I did have some formal training back in the day (7th and 8th grade), I have only recently started playing upright and it is evident in my shoddy tuning and technique. The interesting quandary, however, is that my actual possession of an upright bass in addition to my overall solid skills as an all-around musician score me more gigs than I probably deserve on the thing. Now I know what to play, but I don't do such a great job of it. You'd think that this would inspire me to practice more... No. It doesn't. Because I am stupid.

Emily, Spiff, and I did an okay job up there. One of the tunes I lead seemed to finally click tonight, and we seemed to lock into a solid groove on one of Spiff's numbers. This second positive was bolstered by Trip's entrance into the room, and, within a verse and half into the song as well. Things got better with Trip up there. Despite our becoming slowly more of a collective, we are still Trip's band. In addition to his being a little older (this matters the least but is still worth noting), he also knows much much more about this repertoire than we do and has a lot more experience performig it and making connections on the scene. It was honestly as though the kids were up there playing cops and robbers, and then dad showed up whipped 'em into a team of crack Krav Maga assassins. But despite Trip's calming and centering effect on the whole thing, my playing was still embarrassingly bad. Wrong notes abounding and no sense of time, I, at some point, decided I would go into auto-pilot on the tunes and instead focus on technique. In addition to my recognizing that this is a wholly shitty, unprofessional, and insensitive thing to do, Chris (our final audience member) confirmed it by saying I that looked as though I was in pain up there. Emily seemed to think I played well, and I tried my best to take her compliment, but the damage was done. This is not to say there weren't some nice moments up there tonight, but I am a sad to say that I played like ass - a fact unforgivable for a band full of such great musicians, and larger issue for a band which rehearses as little as we do.

So, due to tonight's failures, I have learned that in addition to my already ridiculous schedule, I need find time to learn how to and then practice performing the songs I have written until I can call upon any of them (with confidence) at any time, AND I need to spend a lot of time practicing the upright bass.

Anyone have any spare hours in the day? 26 or 27 might be nice. Wish me luck tomorrow.

(sufficiently distracted - and tired as hell - I may actually go to bed without snacking)