There’s a lot a performer learns after a gig, mostly what to do and what NOT to do for the next gig and I certainly learned scads of information last night when I performed “Suite For Furby On Slide-Whistle In D-Minor,” at Scone-Fest, held at Pick-A-Cup in Evanston, Illinois, along with my now ex-partner Twitchy.One of the most important things to do is to NOT hold a weekend event when something major is happening in town like THE WORLD SERIES. Of course baseball like any other sport is unpredictable, but if you see it coming, then for god sakes postpone the event for the following weekend when nothing significant is happening.
If you can’t, then shorten the hours or invite/book the performers for a future date to make up for the lack of audience, which the owner did, rightfully so.
In our case, other than the owner and the man working behind the counter, there were maybe seven (nine if you added myself & Twitchy) people in the place, three at a table playing at a game of Scrabble, a fellow who came in briefly to listen to the folk singer who was onstage when I arrived “early,” according to the proprietor, the man who came to film our performance and someone who I called to come see us perform.
Publicity also helps. The venue did most of the publicity, but I didn’t see much mention of it, other than the venue’s website and a few other websites of some of the performers there.
On my own, I blogged about the act and mentioned the event on my blogpage and I must have sent over 40 emails out to friends and although I had three possible promises, not one of those individuals showed up. The best excuse I had for a cancellation were the people who told me their son was “coming of age” and they wanted to get him “smashed.” I wish my Dad had been so thoughtful and had taken me out to get me sauced on my 21st birthday!
One of the many things I do before a performance is take stock or a survey of every possible instrument/appliance I have, what I will be using and how many duffel bags I will be transporting them in. On occasion, I’ll buy a special toy or instrument and try to get the audience to participate with us.
Saturday night was not the case, however. Then there was the problem of my now ex-partner. He was aggravating and that was an understatement. Not even 10 minutes into the performance as I was blowing hard onto my slide-whistle, he leaned over to me and said, “I can’t do this for a whole hour.”
That made me angry and frustrated, but I kept playing and wondered inside if he was indeed a good fit for this art performance. I answered my own question a few minutes later when he came closer to the where the Furbies were situated and began violently shaking them, in an attempt to get them “talking.”
A few weeks ago I told him to specifically NOT SHAKE THE FURBIES and what did he do? He shook them. Over and over again, much to my dismay, still I played on, not letting onto my anger and frustration inside, with sweat claps pouring down in droves from the top of head, splashing into my eyes, dripping off my nose and over other parts of my face.
About a month between the interim of this performance and the first test run performance at series where we work called “The West Lawn Concerts,” Twitchy informed me that he didn't not like to be told what to do. At that time I felt, as I do now, that even though the idea of playing to Furbies is a good concept, there has to be some structure within the concept of the idea, i.e. performance.
It was some weeks earlier that he asked me how we’d manage to perform for an hour and I told him that we’d get by, which we did. I think my main concern is if he knew that the performance itself was to be for one hour, why didn’t he just speak up then as opposed to going onstage with me on Saturday night and then deciding he couldn’t hack it?
On Saturday afternoon when I phoned him up and told him I had specific instructions for last night’s performance, he agreed to the instructions, but when it came time to act on them, he blew the instructions off, thereby leading me to believe that not only does he not like being told what to do, but can’t follow simple instructions.
There seems to be a real bitterness boiling beneath him that if it’s not very obvious to him, it’s more than obvious to everyone that surrounds him, at least those who are up close and personal.
It gets a little annoying time after time when all of your faults are thrown into your face or you hear the same old cliché crap when I have moved on and he continues to heap it on top of me. The bitterness has to stop somewhere, so why does he keep it up? Perhaps it’s ennui.
Keeping that in mind, I've decided to go SOLO. I think that will work much better. I think Twitchy is a nice guy and all, but he doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of stage presence and might be better suited for managerial skills, but maybe if he could learn to figure out what he is exactly looking for, maybe I’d consider working with him again…in about 20 years.
After the performance, I spoke to a friend who came out to specifically see me. She told me it was “awesome.” I smiled, wiping my brow. There was even a man who had been watching us who asked us for our autographs, so that made me smile a little bit and of course, getting the tee shirt as part of the bargain for us to perform helped too.
Later that evening, after dropping off my friend Harry at the Howard El Station in Chicago, I turned around and headed over to Pete Miller’s in Evanston to catch the middle set of my old vocals teacher, Jackie Allen (Blue Note) and her trio. I had a burger plate in the “jazz listening” section of the club, as I ate a late dinner and watched Jackie. Listening to Jackie (sing live or studio) always calms me down if i'm in a bad mood.
Twitchy phoned me early Sunday at 12:57 a.m. and left me a message which was something to the effect of saying I sounded “a little agitated.” That was putting it mildly.
When I called him back on Sunday evening and told him of my decision regarding his future, we got into an argument, mostly finger-jabbing, but he crossed the line, when he called me a name. Anyone that calls me a name, I automatically tune out. That’s when he caved in and told me that his heart wasn’t into it as much as mine was.
Funny, that was about the only thing he got right this past weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment