Pain Beyond The Pump

Like most people I know (and millions more I’ve never met), I’ve been feeling the pinch of rising fuel prices. At $4-plus a gallon, I can’t bear to look at the pump while filling the 26-gallon tank in my truck. The incidental increases are almost as painful. Costlier transportation affects our budgets in many ways, but probably the most tangible is the rising price of groceries. Until recently, the rising cost of gas or going places hadn’t affected my enjoyment of music. But in the past few weeks, I’ve had to pass up shows that I would have attended without question in years past.

John Hiatt recently settled in for a three-night run at noted Alexandria, Va., music hall The Birchmere. He’s done these multi-night runs in the past, and I’ve done my best to make sure he continued booking them. A few years back, Hiatt was in town for a five-night stand. Sharon and I bought tickets to the Monday show. Unbeknownst to me, Sharon also purchased tickets to the Friday performance as a surprise. But in a “Gift of the Magi”-like turn, we ended up giving the tickets to the second show to my sister because I secretly had purchased tickets to see Hiatt perform with Joe Ely, Lyle Lovett and Guy Clark at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Today, the gasoline alone would make that trip cost-prohibitive.

I enjoy seeing music performed, and I think attending shows is a sure-fire way to support artists. You can’t file-share the concert experience. But it’s getting harder to justify the expense. This week, tickets to see Hiatt at The Birchmere were going for $49.50 (plus the venue’s $3.50 service charge). Steve Earle recently announced two shows at The Birchmere. Again, in years past this would have been an automatic. (Particularly because the past few times I’ve seen Earle, it has been at the ultra-talky 9:30 Club.) For the most part, people come to The Birchmere to hear music. The club could do a better job of enforcing its no-talking rule, but rarely is chattiness a problem. I’m OK with paying a little more for courtesy. But $59.50 plus surcharge? No can do.

There are relative bargains still to be had. Alejandro Escovedo is playing at the 9:30 Club on Saturday night for $20. Old 97’s will be there in a few weeks, also for $20. Early next week, Crooked Still, The Infamous Stringdusters and Chatham County Line will appear on a triple bill at The Birchmere for $25 a ticket. It’s starting to look like my relatively small concert budget will have to be spent on the steals.

I don’t begrudge the bigger names a living. I’ve been doing my small part to help support them for the past 20 years or so. But it appears that I’ve been priced out of the market. John Hiatt and Steve Earle both are well-established and have fairly well-to-do fan bases. They probably won’t suffer much at the box office. It’s just a bummer to think that at 38 years old, I might well have enjoyed their performances in person for the last time.