Musicians: Getting Into Character

I am not a professional musician. I'm just an amateur. I played in a band with my brother my senior year in high school, a grunge band called "Oversoul." We played a few parties and a couple of talent shows. Pretty normal garage band stuff.

Then skip forward a few years, and now I'm in a Bluegrass band, the Right Turn Clydes. We've played quite a few gigs, lots for free, more than a few for pay... lots of coffee shops and private parties, a few bars, and some local festivals. I'm used to singing and playing fiddle in front of crowds of fifty or sixty people.

All this is to say I'm not shy on stage, and I'm not unfamiliar with being in front of people. Usually, in fact, I'm quite the ham.

However, this Christmas temporarily shook my stage resolve down a notch. I think I understand what it takes to get up there better now.

What happened? Well, every Christmas I wander home back to the hills of Tennessee to visit my kith and kin and drink some Christmas cheer. The past few years this has included going to see my brother, a professional musician, play at some gig somewhere with one of his (often many) bands. (He's a pretty in-demand drummer over there. Makes sense, he's very damn good!)

This year his band, Cheating Spoon (some talented musicians!), was playing a gig at a small bar in west Knoxville. I trekked out there to listen and give em some holiday support. They sounded great! (Their keyboard player was having a really, really on-night that night.) Being that Doug, the lead singer and guitar player, is an all-around swell guy, he invited me to come and play on stage with them. "Bring your fiddle," he said, "or sing something!"

Well, my fiddle was in the back of the truck, but it had just made the six and a half hour trip from Raleigh to Knoxville, and I wasn't sure how it would sound. More to the point, though, I felt awkward playing it.

And here's the rub -- here's what this blog post is all about... I felt uncomfortable on stage with them. So much, in fact, that I didn't even bring my fiddle up on stage, and when I sang Folsom Prison Blues... a song I know backwards and forwards... I forgot most of the words!

Well, I've been on stage enough to know not to freak out, and I did eventually get all the words in, although with the verses very out of order. Oh well. It was very nerve-wracking.

I tried to think aftwards, "What was the matter with me?" Why couldn't I just jam with these guys on stage?

Well, there were several things going on. For one, Cheating Spoon are all crazy-good professional musicians, and I'm just this amateur dude. That was very intimidating. Plus, it was an unfamiliar venue. (Okay, the venue argument is just a cop-out.) But I finally realized what it really was -- I couldn't get into character.

Evidently, and I wasn't aware of it before, I have a character I play when I'm performing in public. It takes me a little bit to get into this character, and there are things that go along with it. I need to wear my "gig clothes," and I definitely wasn't that night. (I think, actually, I was wearing my glasses that night, and not my "cool" glasses, my tinted-for-10-hours-of-computer-work geek glasses.) I didn't take my fiddle up with me, and that was a mistake. It wasn't my band. I didn't know the banter. I didn't have any banter. I wasn't even sure where these guys were going to take their breaks in the song. I wasn't even sure if they were going to take breaks. It was all off-the-cuff and different.

In short -- I didn't feel like the "me" I am when I'm on stage. And that made me very nervous. Suddenly I was just, well, "me" on stage, not the "on-stage me." It was awkward.

So, the point of all this is, I think I understand a bit better what it takes to get on stage now. I also now appreciate more than ever what it takes for a musician to be a guest on someone else's show. I understand a bit better what it is to be a musician.

Next time? (If there is one!) I'll go through the words a bit more before I step on stage. I'll bring my fiddle. I'll be bold and confident. I'll take that time it takes to get back into my character.

(Thanks to Doug and Tony for getting me up there! Y'all rock! The jager shots are on me next time!)