Q. How do you get musicians to complain?
A. Give them a gig.

Bill Tomczak, Mary Lea and I (B.L.T., The Band That Wouldn't Die) had a job with Ted Sanella one Easter Sunday playing for Jewish kids at a synagogue in Wellesley. Their parents had come up with the idea of having a barn dance so the kids wouldn't feel so bad that they weren't getting marshmallow rabbits like their Christian friends. We're all dressed up, ties and dresses, driving along Route 2, when suddenly whoosh - the directions to the gig fly straight out the window. All three of us are momentarily stunned by disbelief, but I pull over as quickly as I can, and all three of us get out to look for the piece of paper. Alongside the highway there's, like, 40,000 pieces of paper that look like ours. We're scrambling up and down the embankment, turning over papers, sliding in the dirt, yelling at each other, and meanwhile the clock is turning. Being professionals, of course, we had waited until the last minute to leave.
We finally gave up, and reconvened at the car. It was far too late to call Ted, by then he'd be there already, setting up his antiquated yet strangely bad-sounding sound system. We knew the gig was in Wellesley, so we started driving there, I think with the intent of checking on every synagogue in the city until we found the right one. I could imagine us, three obvious goyim, wheeling through the streets of Wellesley flagging down passers-by and frantically asking for the nearest synagogue. But fortune favored us and we saw a synagogue right after we exited the highway - and it was the right one!
An after-note appropriate to the experience - there we were, playing for the kids to take their minds off of candy-induced insulin shock their Christian friends were experiencing at the moment. Ted lines up the kids with their Moms and Dads, and says "alright, everyone march in a circle. We'll have an Easter parade!" A collective wail went up from the kids, Mary, Bill and I all looked miserably at each other, and I realized that Ted's sound system, inadequate as it was for the actual reproduction of musical tones, was even worse as a possible hiding place.

"If they act too hip you know they can't play shit."   Miles Davis

 I recently had a gig out in Ann Arbor, Michigan at The Ark, with the fabulous singer Cathie Ryan and guitarist Jerry O'Beirne. Cathie's whole family had shown up (she comes from Detroit originally), and I got to meet them all - her mother drove me from the airport, and I talked with her sister for a bit. We played the concert, and went back to the hotel, planning to fly out the next morning.
I seem to have bad experiences in the Detroit airport - I've spent many hours there waiting for planes to show up, enduring cancelled flights, waiting for Logan Airport in Boston to become snow-free. This time, my flight to Boston was cancelled as I was waiting at the gate. The next flight was leaving a a couple of hours, and I was about to resign myself to the prospect of hanging out at the Taco Belle for a long wait when suddenly I noticed another flight to Boston that was leaving in fifteen minutes. I ran to find a clerk, and got myself a seat on it. The gate was way the heck down the other end of some interminable concourse. I got there just as they were about to shut the doors, and edged my way down the plane aisle to my assigned seat. There was someone sitting in it. "Man" I thought, "this is all I need".
The occupant of the seat looked up. "Peter!" she said. It was Angela, Cathie's sister. She was going to Boston to join her husband, there on a business trip.

I mean, what are the odds?

Something that was circulating among musicians a while back:

"Help wanted. Must be willing to travel 200+ days per year, by car or van (sharing vehicle space and sleeping accomodations with 3 to 5 coworkers, plus professional equipment), must share driving, must be willing to drive all night after working until past midnight. Must work weekends. Must provide own professional equipment ($2000 minimum), must provide own insurance for equipment (at high rates) or be prepared to replace at own expense. Must perform approximately the same professional tasks 3-7 evenings per week in front of a judgemental audience; must appear to be spontaneous and to be enjoying the experience each time; must display fully professional level of performance regardless of lack of sleep, ill health, or loud distractions from the audience. Must respond cheerfully to audience requests. Must be prepared to behave enthusiastically and courteously at at any times when encountering members of the public, under whatever circumstances. Must behave similarly when manning product sales tables, which must be done at all performance events. Must provide and launder own uniform. Must have minimum five years experience, must display high level of talent and creative ability, and must be prepared to either a) take strict direction willingly or b) participate in group consensus decisions amicably, depending on the particular position. No paid vacation, no benefits, no union. Must be prepared to hold down a second job during the daytime, if necessary, to make up the difference between pay from this job and a living wage; must not permit this second job to interfere with above-listed travel and performance requirements. Minimal chances for advancement."

Sound systems, and the people who operate them, are the blessing and the curse of performers. Musicians, from the lead performer to the lowliest rhythm player, all want to be heard, and they're all convinced that their part is the one that makes the band really hot (of course, I know that my part is really the essential one!). The sound system and its operators can, without question, make or break a performance, so musicians have quite strong feelings about the quality of their sound. So it's always a great relief to find a competent sound engineer. One such person I met is R.T.
R.T. was the engineer at the Kent State Folk Festival and the sound was awesome - clear, good and at great levels. When I play these kinds of jobs, it's usually with one band sandwiched in between many others. Often I'll have five minutes to carry on and set up an electric keyboard, MIDI piano module, synthesizer and a flute mic with their associated direct boxes, MIDI cables, AC cords, audio outputs, wall-wart power supplies and pedals. It's extremely nerve-wracking, it's a lot of equipment, and a lot of connections have to be made correctly and quickly. I walked up to the edge of the stage, waited a minute for the applause for the previous folks to die down, and sprinted up the stairs to start setting up. Madre de Dios! R.T. had not only moved my equipment from backstage to its proper location, but he had plugged in every one of the twenty-some-odd connecting wires in my rig, all in their correct place, all the levels set up, turned on and ready to go! Along with all of the other musicians performing that night he had my entire setup memorized. I think I'll write the Pope - this man definitely qualifies for sainthood.

Questions and comments I've heard over the years:

"Do you get better musicians if you pay more money?"

(Holding up one of my band's CD's): "Is this any good?"

(While I was standing next to two women looking at our recordings for sale): "Oh don't buy that - I have it and I'll tape it for you."

(About Bare Necessities): "Is their music closer to rennaissance or bluegrass?"

"Aren't all piano players the same?"

(When I first started using rhythm breaks): "Oh, I just love it when you stop playing!"

This sad tale is typical of the level of self-esteem of many of my performing buddies. My pal Bill Tomczak and I were playing a dance once, piano and clarinet. At one point I took a break from the piano, picked up my flute and played a few bars.
After the dance was over, a woman came rushing up. "Oh, I love it when you play the flute!" she said. Bill and I looked at each other as the woman walked away.
"She hates my clarinet playing", said Bill.
"No, she hates my piano playing", I replied.

Every musician has tales of their worst gigs. I've had jobs where I've been hired as a pianist but there's no piano, where there's one microphone for seven people, where key players haven't shown up, where the piano bench or the staging has collapsed under me (hey, I only weigh 145 pounds), where the noise was so bad that the only way I could track the tempo was by watching someone's foot, where sound men have been electrocuted by lightning, where an ancient Irish flute air was interrupted by freight trains passing 300 feet away on both sides, where all the listeners really wanted was rock 'n roll and weren't shy about sharing that information, where none of the band members are speaking to each other, threw their instruments on the floor, walked off stage or quit, where parking fees have exceeded my pay, where a recording engineer was literally deaf, where I've been fed peanut-butter and jelly in the back kitchen while the wedding guests are dining on roast beef - and all this is not to mention the car breakdowns, sound nightmares and the staggeringly wide range of piano-shaped objects I've been asked to use (this alone could fill a book).
I had a job once with my buddies from Bare Necessities Earl and Mary, playing vintage music (tangos, fox trots, and other pre swing-era stuff) for a wealthy enthusiast in upstate New York who had booked an entire resort hotel for the weekend for his dancing friends. My wife Jeanne and I set out for the four-hour journey from Boston in her aging Toyota Camry, the two of us wedged in between my sound system and our luggage. The skies were darkening, but the clouds looked like they'd hold off until we got to New York.
About halfway into the journey the oil light blinked on. Having learned the hard way that driving in this condition is not smart, we pulled over and I popped the hood. I know next to nothing about cars, but I did notice small drops of oil coming from the top of the engine. Jeanne had just had the oil gasket replaced. We poured some oil into the car, and got off at the next exit and starting looking for a repair shop. The clock was ticking. After a lengthy amount of searching, we found one. The guy was still, there, but he was closed for the weekend. "I could get to it Monday", he said. He did allow as to how the gasket may have been improperly installed.
We found a local auto parts store, but no oil gasket for an '86 Camry. A few miles further, Sears and Roebuck had the gasket, but no-one there would install it for me - company policy. My head filled with dark visions of springs, bolts and other microscopic pieces exploding out of the engine as soon as I undid the bolts of the whatever-its-called, I, blessedly, was able to install the damn thing myself.
We started on our way again, two hours late (I had phoned). We found our way to the hotel, and I started bringing in the sound system, half an hour after the dance was supposed to begin. Suddenly the skies opened up, and rain poured down as I struggled through the parking lot with the heavy speakers and electronic equipment in my tuxedo. Finally we got set up, and played the dance. The piano, of course, was an Acrosonic, a particularly detestable spinet with a tonal excellence easily matched by a kazoo.
As a favor to the guy who hired us, we played late into the night while he, a cherubic and plump-looking guy in a tux, danced waltzes in the parlor. It was a long day.
Sunday morning came, and Mary and Earl went our separate ways. Our host gave me a check, which I thought was well-earned indeed, and we drove home.
A week later, I got the check back - it had bounced. Mary and Earl hadn't been paid at all. I phoned the guy, who breezily said "oh, just redeposit it, I'll have it covered by the time it clears". Sure. Two more attempts, with their associated bank fees of $20 per check (what is it with banks these days?) plus many letters and phone calls later, I gave up.
It turned out that besides being $1100 in the hole to us (not to mention the teaching staff) our host also owed the hotel $15,000. Six months later, talking with people who knew him, I found out he'd been indicted and convicted for securities fraud. Seems like he's bilked a number of dance-scene aquaintances out of their money with stock schemes.
I hope he's getting on well with Bruno, his new roomate at Elmira Prison.

Bare Necessities had a job in my town once, at a ritzy estate called the Pierce House. I drove down with my sound system, followed by Earl in his own car. As I pulled in, a cop guarding the entrance came over and motioned for me to roll down my window. "I'm bringing sound in", I said, "I'm one of the musicians". He motioned for me to go ahead. As I pulled away up to the house I saw him do the same the to Earl, asking him who he was and whether he belonged there.
"I've always wanted to say this", Earl replied. "I'm with the band!"
"Well I've always wanted to say this", said the cop, pointing to me. "Follow that car!"

Bill "she hates my clarinet playing" Tomczak sent me this tale of a perennially disorganized caller we know (whose name has been changed to protect our future gigs!):

"I was hired to do a wedding with Peter and Norman, a caller, along with some other musicians. At the time I didn't have a car and was going to hitch a ride with Norman. I missed a bus and arrived at Norman's house, frantic over my lateness, only to find that he wasn't anywhere near ready to leave yet anyway. His wife invited me in for a cup of tea, which she started to brew. If it were my gig, I'd be in a panic over how late I was, but I figured, fine, Norman knows what he's doing, I'll relax."
"At some point, someone said, "Well, I guess we should get going." We arrived about an hour late, and the rest of the band was already playing. Except Peter, who would normally be playing piano, was not playing piano. I walked up to the stage and said "Where's the piano?" "Good question", said Peter, looking at Norman. Apparently Norman, who had brought the sound system, was also supposed to throw in his electric keyboard."
"So at that point we had three melody players, gamely struggling to sound like a full band, and no rhythm section. A search for a keyboard commenced. We phoned everything and anybody even remotely related to music we could find in the phone book. Being a Sunday, we had a hard time finding a place that could rent a keyboard to us. Finally, we managed to catch one guy just before he was about to close his shop. Norman made arrangements to rendezvous with him while we gathered up all the money in our collective pockets to pay for the rental. Sending Norman off to meet the keyboard guy, we continued to play background music until his return."
"Norman was gone a very long time, and we were getting pretty worried. The bridal party was starting to shoot quizzical glances in our direction. Suddenly, in the midst of an extended break, this guy shows up asking us if we were looking for a keyboard! It was the man from the keyboard rental shop. Turns out he waited for awhile at the appointed place but Norman had never showed up. The guy knew we were playing for a wedding party, and armed with that information alone had made a guess as to where we were. Smart guy!"
"Unfortunately, our caller had all our money so we had to borrow money from the bride and groom to pay him.We set up the keyboard and the gig started for real. Norman finally returned (he had gotten lost) and amazingly, everything seemed to turn out okay."

Last July I got a phone call from a member of some band in New York, a young guy in his twenties named Emmanuel, who asked me if I wanted to back up his lead singer in an "Irish-sounding" piece at Boston's Hatch Shell by the Charles River. The singer's name was Joey McIntyre, a name that didn't ring any bells with me, and even though the gig was at the Hatch Shell, one of Boston's grandest venues, I wasn't especially interested in going to the trouble for some guy I'd never heard of. What's more, it involved going in a day early for a rehearsal, making what Emmanuel said would be a five-minute spot more trouble than it was worth. Then the guy said Hanneke Cassel, great fiddle player and fellow member of Cathie Ryan's band, would be playing as well. Hanneke and I have fun together, so I said I'd do it. "All right!", the guy said. "What do you want to be paid?".
A lot of factors come into play when I hear this question. I've never heard of his band but the Hatch Shell's pretty cool. If I ask too little I'll feel put upon and strangely, they might not think too highly of my playing. How well off is the person hiring me? I don't want to price myself out of the gig. But the guy calling me is young - they're probably just starting out. Finally I said "well, since there's a rehearsal the day before, let's say two hundred dollars". I honestly thought he'd say no - after all, I really would be on for six minutes, tops.
"Two hundred dollars?" Emmanuel said, sounding pleased. "That would be great!". Doh! I hate that! We talked a few minutes more, discussing the rehearsal and show times, the he hung up. I called Hanneke. She had asked for - and gotten - four hundred dollars. Smart girl! But apparently our friend in New York had called someone before her, and that person has asked for a thousand. He laughed at her. So there you go.
I also found out who he was. Joey McIntyre was the former lead singer with the pop band "New Kids on the Block", which was huge in the eighties. My nieces had pictures of him and the band on their walls. They decorated my Coke cans and peered out at me from posters at MacDonald's. Bill Tomczak, Mary Lea and I went to Czechoslovakia (the last year it really was Czechoslovakia) and teenage girls over there worshipped those guys. He was probably richer than Croesus, had seen bigger crowds and larger venues than I'll ever see and generally lived the life of the rich and famous, which as a folk-musician I know I'm bound to arrive at someday, but hey, I'm still waitin'.
Emmanuel sent me a practice tape and a CD, I learned the whistle part, which was pretty straightforward, and went to the rehearsal. It was the whole schmear - two drummers, rhythm and lead guitars, a guy surrounded by keyboards, the black vocalists. Joey came in late, but was competent and not without charm. He is a handsome guy, I gotta say. The rest of the band were all about six-feet-six and in their twenties. We finished going over the piece and as I was walking out I noticed this cool-looking guy all dressed in black hanging out by the door. I told him I liked his outfit and he smiled and said "likewise".
By now I was definitely getting inklings that this was a bigger thing than I thought. The next day, I showed up at the Hatch Shell. It was crowded at the MGH subway stop near the venue, and I got closer to the river, the the crowds got thicker and thicker. I got to the entrance of the Hatch Shell and there were thousands of people - predominantly teenagers, mostly girls. They were waving signs that said things like "Welcome Home Joey Mac" and "Joey We Want To Sex You Up", and they crowded around the side entrance like bees, waiting for a glimpse of the star. I walked up to the gate with my penny-whistle in hand and said to one of the security guards and said "I'm with the band - I should be on your list". He called someone over, they checked with someone else who actually had a list, and let me in. In front of the Hatch Shell there were untold numbers of people, with security guards in yellow tee-shirts holding them back from the stage. It was hot out there in the sun, and there was a small stream of extremely red-faced people coming to the ambulance by the stage to be treated for heat stroke.
Joey and the band eventually arrived in their limos (I felt for my subway token in my pocket to be sure I still had it) and the crowd parted to let them through, screaming and waving their signs.
We waited around in the green room, sipping the water and eating the vegetables at the table. Joey's mom came in, who looked about my age but significantly better off. The band members chatted, the agents and their assistants talked on cell phones and talked with the TV crews, the managers, publicists, photographers, caterers, security chiefs all buzzed around doing their things. The cool guy walked in (still dressed in black) and we talked a bit - turns out he was Peter Wolf of the J. Geils band.
The band started at eight. Hanneke and I hung around back stage waiting for our piece to come up. Finally one of the many stage managers came and got us and we climbed up the steel ladder to the stage. I heard the piece I knew was before ours end, and we walked out onto the floor. The sound guy had forgotten to set up my mike! I grabbed one that seemed to be available and situated myself just behind Joey as I'd been told. I heard my musical cue and started playing.

It was grand. The crowd was huge and the band members all around me were rockin', the black singers moving and doing their harmonies, the guitarists surging back and forth, the drummers pounding away, and Joey up front dancing like a maniac. It was also funny - my little 150-pound, five-foot-ten self surrounded by all these huge guys with their electric instruments, me with my little pennywhistle, with the TV cameras ducking in and out among us and the crowd howling at Joey's every move. Like a flash it was over, the band moved on to the next number and off we went.
After the concert I walked out of the gate a little taller, feeling sure someone in the crowd had noticed me. No-one gave us a second glance as we pushed our way back to the subway station. Afterwards, I waited three months to get paid. There you go.
But it was immensely fun.

Also from my pal Bill:

Sometime in January, Scots all over the world celebrate the life and times of their favorite national bard, Robert Burns. I had the good fortune for several years running to play in a band for one such Burns' Night celebration in Connecticut. The band was organized by a Scottish fiddler and we were billed as a "real Scottish band." None of us were entirely sure what this actually meant. What we did was play a variety of traditional Scottish fiddle tunes, mixed in with an array of waltzes, polkas, novelty numbers and some big band jazz standards. You haven't lived until you've seen an older gentleman in full kilt regalia doing the chicken dance.

The moment I most treasure from those years was when, while playing "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön," I was suddenly hit by the bizarreness of the endeavor I was engaged in. I just couldn't help myself and started laughing uncontrollably, unable to play for several minutes.

I was a second generation Polish-American, wearing a kilt, playing a style of music inspired by descendants of African slaves, with Yiddish lyrics, in a Catholic Italian conference center, for a bunch of Protestant Scots --- only in America!

My friend Susan Songer's first gig:

My brand-new band felt lucky to be making its home-town debut at the New Year’s Eve dance in Portland (Oregon)—a high-energy affair in a large hall sure to be packed with a couple hundred dancers. We were given the first of 3 band slots. All four of us in the band had so much energy on things going just right. All of us were fairly new contra dance musicians; this was the first time I had ever played more than just one set at a dance. We had been practicing for months and met the the caller in advance to tailor our music and the dances to the typical New Year’s Eve crowd. As of December 30th, everything was in order, and we could barely contain our excitement. But we failed to take the weather gods into account.

We awoke December 31st to a blizzard, which had paralyzed our usually temperate city. Nearly every New Year’s Eve event across town had been cancelled. Would our dance be held? Yes. No. Yes. No. All day long. At 5:00 pm, the final decision was made. Yes. We would get to play, but would anyone be there to dance?

We set out for the hall in good time, but arrived a half hour late for set up. No matter—we were the first ones there. We were given our first task by the building supervisor: shovel the walks and as much of the parking lot as we had time for. There seemed to be plenty of time since no one was arriving to dance. After awhile, the next participant ventured in—on foot. A dancer? No, it was our sound man. His van was in the ditch, and he needed a tow. One of us gave up shoveling and went to haul him out. By the time they were back, it was 8:00, the appointed hour of the dance, but there still was not a dancer in sight. Ever hopeful, we abandoned the shoveling and turned our attention to setting up the hall. On our way in the door, our mandolin player slipped, fell, and sprained his wrist.

By 8:45, the first dancers were straggling in. When there were 10 or 12 dancers, the caller began the dance. But he didn’t want any of the material we had been rehearsing since the size and the mood was so different from what we had anticipated. We struggled through an unpracticed set or two. By the end of our time slot, there were enough dancers for one good line, and we were able to finally play one set as planned before turning the stage over to the next band.

Since then, I have gone on to play many dances with many bands. But none of them have been memorable in quite the same way as that very first gig.