Going it Alone (as a douchebag with a guitar).

As I will outline in a post later this weekend, I am much better at playing my songs on stage with a band backing me. There are musical concerns (a broader textural palate, an opportunity for me to due something other than provide basic harmony and rhythmic drive) to be sure, but the real difference maker for me comes down to confidence and comfort. I am still not 100% sure as to why I need people around me on stage when, truth be told, I don't interact with them all that much, but I know that I exude a little more swagger and come off as a little more relaxed when I have a backing band. I have been super lucky up to this point in my budding solo career to have had great friends willing to learn my songs and back me up for discount rates. The Fiendish Thingies (as I have taken to calling my backing band) are the greatest group of players I could ask for. Sensitive and flexible, they are able to render beautiful renditions of my tunes with the efficiency of a crack team of ice-cold musical assassins.

Last night, however, I opted to go it alone. No backing band. No safety net. I booked the gig early last month with just this in mind. I figured that any playing I do can only help me get better at interacting with the crowd, designing solid set lists, etc. Despite my good intentions, the gig kinda slipped my mind and I found myself rehearsing for it (specifically as opposed to just generally rehearsing my songs) with only a few days to spare. I kinda freaked out. I was tempted to, at the last minute, call up some of the Fiendish Thingies and see if they were available after all, but I thought better of it and decided to go ahead with the plan and brave the stage alone. Sound dramatic? Yup - but allow me to explain: I am terrified of being what a good friend of mine and I call "that douchebag with a guitar". You know the one: kinda schlubby, heart on his sleeve, strumming an acoustic guitar in that mid-90's acoustic rock sorta way. His songs aren't great. His voice is kinda "meh". His guitar playing is passable but he's no one would you would pay a cover charge to see again. Yeah. That guy. It's hard not to be that guy when it's just you and your guitar on stage. Like I said in yesterday's post: my songs are above average and I am pretty good singer and guitar player - I've even started to work in the harmonica in hopes that I could have another layer of sound on stage and maybe even evoke a little of that cool folk-singer vibe - but at the end of the day I might just be a douchebag with a guitar. It's situations like this in which I wish I was female. As maligned as the post-Ani, or, even worse, the post-Michelle Branch "girl with guitar" is (and I do some of said maligning from time to time), there is something quintessentially more attractive and interesting about a young woman playing a guitar and singing songs she's written. While I know that those ladies have the odds stacked against them in more ways than I can count, I also envy the seemingly endless amount of audience surprise and, dare I say it, immediate novelty of what they do. (girls in the room, I really hope you're not taking this the wrong way) But I am not a girl. I am not even what many consider cute. Why is that important? It's because over the years we have seen countless "cute guy with guitar" types achieve some modicum of success as a result of a combination of passable to great musical skill and, moreover, *ahem* marketability (read: attractiveness). See: Blunt, James. Mraz, Jason. Mayer, John. Johnson, Jack. Singer/songwriter types all (though Mayer has attempted - and succeeded to a certain degree - to remake himself as a serious guitar slinger), these gentlemen have become the poster-children for this generation's worth of what I do.

Why am I so friggin self-conscious about this? Well, the problem is three-fold. First, I have a severe contrarian/indie/anti-mainstream streak and the "douchebag with a guitar" reeks of what I see as that sort of mindless, artless mediocrity or is trying really hard to attain it. Second, in said land there are two types of guys: the famous ones and the annoying "douchebags with guitars". I am not famous. You do the math. Third, I hate watching the bad ones play. I can honestly count on one hand the number of singer-songwriters/solo performers I have actually been impressed by in my ten years of playing live music in NYC. I have seen what feels like thousands and almost all of them make me feel a little embarrassed for them. Is it snobby as hell of me to look down on what they conceive and perceive to be their art? Are my standards too high for lowly clubs in NYC? The answer to these questions very well might be yes, but in a world where mainstream media, and moreover, musical success is more often predicated on one's appearance as opposed to how they sing, write, or play, someone (that also doesn't work for a major media outlet) needs to be a standard bearer of sorts. I try hard not to be a critic, but I know what I like, and this whole fuckin entry seems to be about my fear of becoming something that I don't.

(this really wasn't supposed to be a rant, btw)

My friend Spiff, who is also working the singer/songwriter circuit has figured out a way to beat the system: he's a one-man band. Capitalizing not only on his good songwriting, he also takes advantage of his ability to play a ton of different instruments by cleverly arranging them in such a way that he can sing and play as many as five instruments (up to four at a time) in a single song. Sounds cool, yeah? It's great. Were his songs shitty (and they're quite the opposite), I would still wanna go see that live. Ernie Vega, who I know from the NYC CBGBOT (country, bluegrass, blues, old-time) scene gets away with escaping the aforementioned "douchebag..." moniker by mixing in his originals with some traditional blues numbers. It helps that he's a great guitar player and his own songs seem to fit into that feel - but either way, I like to go see Ernie play his songs because his abilities as a player and his interpretations of older tunes make his shows interesting as all get out. To call either of these endeavours a "gimmick" would be an insult to either/both of these great musicians, but both of these guys have found a way to separate themselves from the pack. I have yet to find a way to do the same. Shit, I am not even sure what genre of music I play. Without a solid marketing scheme (yup, even at this level) based on either a specific genre thumbprint or gimmick, it's damn-near impossible to be seen as anything other than just another "douchebag with a guitar". As original or as clever as I think my music and show might be, until I can make someone interested in hearing my music before actually hearing my music, I am essentially dead in the water.

So I need a backing band or a gimmick to make myself happy. Hmm...

Long in short (more long, really), the gig went as well as could be expected last night. It was a low profile gig at a low-pressure venue on a weeknight, so remembering the words and only making a few mistakes would have been considered doing ok; but I think I did a little better than that; yet I still hope that was my last truly solo gig ever.

Sincerely (and, possibly, inescapably),
A douchebag with a guitar