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Looper's Delight
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My philosophy is that any time I am being paid to play music it's a good thing. I always give my best to the gig, and take it on its own terms. If I'm playing at the Farmers' Market, I don't expect to get anyone's attention at all because I am incidental to the reason people are there. So every bit of response I get, every dollar in the tip jar, is gravy. I play that gig for the $75 and for an opportunity to spend four hours playing whatever the hell I want, from 20-minute improvs to old James Taylor songs to multiple iterations of a new song I'm working on. I can take my entire songbook out for a lap aroudn the track. When I play house concerts, everyone is in that room to hear me and I enjoy the hell out of their attention. I can tell stories, play nothing but original music, improvise, take requests or not, even answer questions and converse with the audience. In a bar, opening for an electric band, I have to keep it lively. I consider it a challenge to get people's attention when the majority of them don't give a shit that I'm even there. Convert a few of those and it's a big win; if the whole goddamn roomful keep yakking through my set because they're just holding their spots on the floor til the headliner takes the stage, that's show biz. Festivals, you can hear yourself think and if it's daytime to can look people in the eye and make contact from a hundred yards away. That's another worthwhile exercise. And so on. The other side of this equation is that nobody is being paid to listen. Once I figured that part out, I stopped feeling even slightly precious about this stuff. |