In the Audience

I spent Saturday evening watching my friends The Obscure Dignitaries. I always have so much fun at their shows, and 90% of the time I have no idea what language I'm listening to.  If I were a braver woman, I would get up to dance, chant lyrics, or clap the beat enthusiastically. But I'm a chicken, so I just sit in the back and enjoy everyone else doing all those things. 

Later that night I decided to bake some cookies since some people were going to be coming over the next day. I came home from the concert and made a list of supplies to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and scones. I dashed out to Tom Thumb, bought supplies, and dashed back home. Roy came out to the front yard to 'help' me bring the supplies. After attempting to corral the crazy cat back inside (he preferred to stay out and pick a fight with the neighbor's cat), Roy and I came back in. I threw on In Ear Park to pep me up for an hour of baking. (One of my all-time favorite albums. Hear it here: GROOVESHARK) 

The night began great. Shoved all my drinks in the fridge, unpacked my plastic baggies holding the baking supplies, and danced my booty around the house [thank goodness the new roommate hasn't moved in yet].

I turned the oven on and then walked over to the pile of baking supplies. Then it hits me: I forgot, like, four essential ingredients. 

BUMMER. I was looking so forward to being that great hostess that had homemade goodies ready for the gang. I majorly failed Saturday night. [sorry gang]

So, instead, I wrote down some thoughts about being in an audience since I was in one Saturday night.

1. We musicians have something to say through our music, and it means a lot when you show up to listen. 

That really weighed on me. It's kind of like that CS Lewis quote about not fully experiencing love until you're able to verbally express it to the one you love. I've played with groups that jammed at home for fun. It seemed to unfulfilling to me. What's the point of being musical if you're not being musical to anyone? I did my last show with The Bandettes (now called Velocette) back in July 2011. After setting up and sound checking, I remember thinking, "Yes. This is right." People were going to come here us play the things we had been playing for ourselves for a few weeks. That was good, and that was the way it should be. People needed to come hear the musical things we had to say.

Photo cred: Rich Hughes

2. These performances take so much more time to prepare for them than it does for you to sit and listen to them. 

That's something I really understand as a musician. I wonder if non-performers get that. Those of us in the arts spend so many hours on our craft. One of my favorite bands Eisley is getting ready to go on tour again. They posted online that they started rehearsing two weeks out before their tour begins. I was a little surprised to read that because somehow I thought they were robots and remembered all their songs. Why would they need to practice? Well, why the heck do I need to rehearse with any of the ensembles I ever play in? Sure, it's always with different people and different tunes, but if you want your concert to go well, you kind of need to practice and make sure you know what you're doing.

From Eisley's instagram

3. It's healthy to be an audience member. 

It's good for a little while to not be doing something for yourself or involves stuff in your life. For a little while, you can receive something that someone else has prepared for you. For an hour or two your attention can be on something other than your phone, facebook, or any other social media thing you may belong to. This is good. There's a lot out there telling us how important it is to put our needs first ("If you don't take care of you first, then how can you take care of others??"). I kind of find thinking and taking care of myself kind of exhausting, to be frank. For a little while on Saturday night I didn't have to think about me. I believe that's healthy.

We're all so terribly busy, especially those of us with spouses and children (or pets or plants or sofas or Netflixes). But for a couple hours tonight, I wasn't at home doing my own stuff. I was out hearing what my friends had to give me. It really didn't require me to do much other than show up. Well, I might've had to do more if Rachel's mic cord would've allowed her to make it all the way to the back row where I was sitting. You need to be ready to participate with these dudes...

4. Most of us aren't necessarily just doing this because it's fun or it's our job (though that's usually what we say). We do this because something in our souls calls us to stand in front of you and play. 

Seriously. Well, alright, it may just be me on this one. But go with me here... Why did any of the great composers write? Why do any of our beloved conductors conduct? Why has Paul McCartney been on a stage for over 50 years? I think all of them and others like them felt 'the call,' and weren't able to do anything else with their lives. Sure, you get those who really are just in it for the money, but I don't believe they last all that long. Great music comes from people who are inwardly stirred to be musical. Those are the people you should be listening to - and hear live even! How much richer will your life be if you do?

5. Being in the audience can be great inspiration for things you want to do performance-wise.

All these ideas flooded into my mind for places my quintet could play and stuff I could do on my own for open mic nights. My goodness, it was so effortless! Kind of like you get struck by a genius idea in the shower - you're not even looking for it. Perhaps the environment cleared my mind. Perhaps I was inspired by the people playing in front of me. Whatever it was, I was able to walk away with good ideas for my work (including this post right here). 

So that's it. I encourage you to attend more musical performances. It's good for you.

Sigh. Rest in Peace, would-be baking stuffs.
You will be eaten another day.

And now I bring you a tale from my youngest brother William, who is currently runs a blog on soccer called Everybody Soccer. I first heard this story through a phone call at 3am. It's a fantastic story, even though I wasn't in a state of mind to fully appreciate it the moment I heard it. I give a couple props to Will who thought it was so necessary to tell me about it that he needed to call me in the middle of the night.

"In the summer of 2012 I took a tour up the east coast for two weeks to follow the US men’s soccer team. Their third game of four was in Toronto, on June 3rd. I arrived in Toronto on the first of June, a couple days before the game so I could relax after the long train ride from DC. But when I got off the train I had the “I’ve been sitting for too long I need to do something” sort of feeling. It was around seven or eight so I knew the nightlife on a Friday night in a big city surely had something to offer.

After I got settled in my hotel (which was just a converted college dorm) I got online to see if any bands were playing nearby. The only band I knew that I could find was Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate), an American emo revival band, as described by Wikipedia. I wasn’t huge on the band but figured the show would be entertaining so I got my iPhone out and tracked down where they were, only a mile and a half away. Not too shabby and I was looking to walk anyway. I ended up in the area but couldn’t find the concert. The address I entered, which I triple checked, led me to an intersection but I could only hear a jazz band within earshot, which definitely was not the scream-based music I was expecting. After searching around for a bit, I settled on the jazz band, which had about six people watching when I walked in around 10 pm. 

IT WAS THE BEST BAND IN THE WORLD. 

I should state that I’m no musician or a music expert. I was going to see a screamo band after all. But trust me, this was the best band ever. It was a four-piece band with no name. The drummer and bassist had never played with the lead singer and guitarist. They had no song organization. The lead singer would simply call out some simple instructions when starting a song. Typically he would give a foundation to the drummer and yell what key it was to the guitarists. This man was insane. He walked around like Hank Hill’s father, without bending his knees. He would yell some incoherent words into the microphone and “dance” which was more like waddling. He buzzed around on the harmonica. He simultaneously scared me and amazed me. 

The drummer was a late twenties man whose appearance could best be described as “grungy” but he was a wizard with his relatively small kit. Snare, kick, tom, crash and hi-hat. Your standard garage band set up. I vividly remember him inverting his stick and with the head of the stick pressing hard on the cymbal, he spun the cymbal, giving off a loud noise like metal grinding on metal. I tried to recreate this with the next kit I saw and it sounded terrifying. Yet this drummer threw it in each song perfectly. He had a dozen different sounds for each piece. Probably more. It was like he continually got bored of drumming as was looking to play no two notes the same. 

The bass player would be what I would expect the coolest octopus playing a bass guitar would sound like. He was all over the place. The lead singer would occasionally yell “BASS SOLO!!!” which the bassist would obviously not agree with. With a grimace and sigh he would compose an unreal bass solo every time. He was dressed very neat. 

The guitarist had to be at least fifty if not pushing sixty. A dude with a ponytail that looked like he had just gotten off work and his buttoned up shirt was still tucked into his jeans. He stayed more to the back and just played the most fascinating combination of notes on a guitar ever written. He didn’t move a whole lot and you’d forget that he was there for a moment until you thought “Why did I just hear eight men playing one guitar?” 

This went on for two hours, took a small break, and then another two hour set. (A trumpet player showed up for the last two hours and just played whatever he wanted.) All original music with no boundaries. I was so amped I ordered a cup of coffee and I don’t even like coffee. The crowd hit a maximum of twelve people and I was the only one who realized it was the best band ever to play on Earth. 

Afterwards I hung around to talk to the bassist. I asked him about the band and that’s when I found out that he and the drummer had been called less than an hour beforehand to play. For as impressed as I was, the bassist was even more shocked about my story: a Texan in Toronto to see a soccer game who showed up at the wrong show. He was telling everyone. I ended up staying until around four in the morning, where we talked on the patio about jazz (I had nothing to contribute to the discussion) and where a man that was on some serious drugs came up and talked word salad to us for an hour. And then I never talked to any of them ever again."