Night Life

Old blues standard. B.B. King did it as a nice duet with Willie Nelson. The main line is "The night life ain't no good life but it's my life". Here's willie doing it in 1967. Here's Willie & Clapton doing the tune. & Lawd have mercy here's Aretha killin' it.

The music biz was never really good to me. For about 15 years (minus a 3 year hiatus due to furthering my education) I primarily made my living by playing music. The term "made my living" is to be taken in the loosest sense of the word. I've had some really cool gigs & some really lucrative ones (though seldom were the cool ones lucrative) & I've had a lot of time in between gigs.

Being in a houseband is the worst. It's steady while it lasts & you don't have to tear down your equipment every night but when it's over it's over. The circles I traveled in usually booked 4 to 6 weeks in advance. House gigs were lost with no notice. The club owner/manager/lizard would just walk up to you the last night of the week you played & tell you not to come back. So that meant that you were effectively out of work for a month to a month & a half. That did nothing to hurt the musical professions' reputation as the world's most effective diet.

I haven't gigged much since I've been in Colorado. A few circumstances beyond my control contributed to it but mainly it's been for my own reasons. The short version is that I've had some offers in the last year or so but the money has not been right, even for musicians. Still I could swallow my professional pride & take some low paying gigs here & there, I just haven't reached that point yet.

The odd part is that not playing bothers me greatly but I don't miss the business at all. A good 60% or more of my time was spent looking for gigs. Whatever field you're in imagine having to apply for your job or one like it once or twice a week. Sometimes it wasn't that difficult, other times it was like pulling teeth out of a disgruntled badger. In addition to the "looking for work" factor there are two other aspects of the biz that can be less than pleasant - club/bar owners/agents & musicians. Dealing with bar owners was always "interesting".

The way it's supposed to work is a band's job is to keep the crowd in the bar & keep them drinking. They do this through playing songs the majority of the crowd likes & preferably songs geared towards encouraging the guys to hit on the ladies, which usually involves the buying of several drinks - one for the lady & several for the guy to work up his courage.

Bar/club owners though sometimes get the idea that a band is supposed to bring a crowd in with them. & this sometimes happens if the band is popular enough. But it's the bar trying to leech free advertising off the band with no commiserate increase in pay. There have been many an argument over this topic & usually as the bar/club owner tries to cut down the cash that was promised. Once the negotiations got so lively that I threatened to have the band take part of the bar home with them - not the liquor bottles - I meant part of the bar itself. Things worked out for the bets that time. Besides I had no room in my place for a 3 foot section of oak bar.

Musicians are the other downside. I had this one gig that started off nice. It was a 3 piece - drummer, bass player that sang his ass off & me on guitar. The bass player/singer had a drinking problem. A serious one. He couldn't chill with just one or two. To make things worse he wasn't a nice drunk. he got through the gig alright but by the time I ended up at another bar where I used to hang out he had followed me & started raising hell. I'm still not sure what his issues were - he mentioned something about I didn't care about him & was just using him. I assumed he was having problems at home & just figured the same arguments were applicable. In any case he threatened not to show for the next gig which was about 14 hours away at that point. I forget exactly what i did - I know kissing his ass to some degree was involved, trying to placate him with little or no effect. He stormed out swearing he'd never work with me again. so I stayed around for a bit, had the bartender give me hell about the bass player/singer & I being married ( which kinda clued me in that I'd have struck out with her) then went home sweating who the hell I could find on short notice to sing & play bass. I woke up the next afternoon to the phone - it was the bass player/singer & he apologized for his behavior the night before as told me he'd be there & sober. He showed up & the gig went smooth but damn if I wasn't more stressed than a very stressed out person in an ironic situation. (hey - I do this for free - you come up with some colloquialisms).

That experience wasn't typical but it wasn't uncommon either. Showing up late or not showing at all were the usual problems & luckily in my circles that happened kinda rarely as you'd get a reputation for not being hirable if it occurred too much. But still it was often enough that it made running a band "interesting".

The last few years I was in the biz I was mainly a hired gun. A band would call me up on a Friday afternoon & hire me for that night & maybe the next cause their guitar player was sick/fired/stranded out of town/in the middle of a tantrum. A lot of the times I'd meet the band a few minutes before we started playing. & I learned a lot of songs while playing them for the first time. Hell sometimes I played them better before I learned them.

In any case to supplement the work for hire I was doing I put together a few bands. I'd run bands de facto on & off for years so it wasn't anything that new or exciting. Nerve racking yes, exciting - not so much.

A few of them were real nice. I was good friends with the lady who ran this on bar down in Surfside, SC & she'd always call me when she had a space in her calendar - usually the call would come a day before the space came up.

The two projects I remember fondly were centered around tow respective singers - one a very sweet little lady & the other a young guy. Both were over 21 but just barely. The guy had a warm friendly tone to his voice that made him easy to listen to. He also had a bit of soul which made things better all the way around. We actually pulled off some Isaac Hayes tune from Southpark with him - Spontaneous it was called.

The young girl - when I first met her it was during an open jam. she came up to the stage & I saw this kinda short petite girl who had long blonde hair & couldn't have been old enough to watch most movies in the theaters. But she was 22 & thus broke no laws. I started going through all the new-ish pop tunes at the time & figured she'd want to do some Cranberry's or something.. She asked if I knew "Bring it on home to me" & I responded "you mean the Sam Cooke song?" she said yes & we went into it. & she killed it. 5'2" with a voice like she was taller than me. She had range, power, control & most importantly taste. She actually reminded me of Etta James a bit when she got all bluesy. She sang her cute little as off & I was in love - not with the girl even though she was very pretty - but with her voice.

So I used her whenever I could. For gigs that is. As in playing music.

The rhythm section usually consisted of this incredible bass player & a really decent drummer that could sing Stevie Wonder tunes. With them behind either the girl or the guy it was too much fun to describe. with the guy we were doing everything form the Southpark tune to some Red Hot Chili Peppers to some of the newer pop stuff to interesting pseudo Dave Mathews style covers. With the girl - Aretha to Sheryl Crow to blues & jazz standards.

The bar was a biker type joint on the first block from the ocean. Rough crowd & they got out of control pretty quick. But the girl could floor them & handle them. I recall once we did this old jazz standard (I forget which one - maybe Autumn Leaves) but she had the crowd of bikers so captivated that they were all sitting quietly sipping their drinks & then they would politely clap at the end of each verse or solo by the bass player or myself just like they were in an actual jazz lounge.

So the biz had its moments to be sure but the downsides were never far away. Once at the same bar I had a nice little hour long chat with the club owner (not my friend who ran the place) about getting paid because the owner had double booked for one day that weekend & not told the lady who ran the place about it. It ended up with her paying what I owed the band & writing the night off as a loss for myself. It sucked but that's the price you pay for trying to be "Johnny B. Goode".

& I won't even go into the crowd. For the most part they were cool, but there's always be some drunk who irritated the hell out of you & all you could do was politely smile while hoping you weren't going to have to bounce him your damn self. Or the young affluent gent who started dancing with the girl you talked to all of last break & thought she really liked you. I've never caught a girlfriend of mine in the act of cheating but watching how one or two women I thought I was getting somewhere with dance with someone else I can fully understand the feeling. But those are other whin.. er I mean topics.

The point of all this rambling (like I ever have an actual point)? I miss the playing terribly but the biz itself isn't something I'm rushing to get back into. Eventually the desire to play will overcome my aversion to the bullshit that comes with it. I'm a guitar player - it's not something I can just let go. But for now I keep myself in check by sitting in with friends or at open jams.

So I'm not looking for work as hard as I could but that won't last much longer. The scene around here is pretty dismal (in no small part because of the smoking ban) but I might be able to eek something out of it. Or just look for a road band & travel a bit more before I get too old to enjoy it. (Actually I was never young enough to enjoy being on the road, but it's tolerable).

I'm waiting on a friend to get off her cute little ass & transfer some of my stuff from cassette tape (that's an archaic means of recording music, ya whippersnappers) to MP3. When she does that I'll try to post it on here.

But tonight I'm probably going to have a drink or twelve & reminisce about the good old days when the singers were talented & not throwing tantrums.