I have no gigs scheduled.
That is, on Tuesday, I’m the feature at the Continental Cafe, with mfdaisy, as I mentioned above. But after that, nada. Zilch. Bupkus. The big bagel. Niente, as Kevin Kline so eloquently put it in “A Fish Called Wanda”.
It’s ironic, because the Continental Cafe feature is my sixth gig in seven weeks. In that time, as chaotic as the rest of my life has been (don’t ask), I’ve discovered that I really like playing that often. And now – muffled sob – it’s over.
So how did I get myself in this mess? By not following the first rule of booking: it’s like breathing – stop doing it and you’re dead. (Well, this may not be the first rule of booking – I’m pretty sure the first rule of booking is “Never take a folk gig where there’s broken glass in the parking lot” – but you get the idea.) Sure, I have nibbles – vague promises that “we’ll do something in the fall” – but I haven’t nailed those down, and I haven’t followed up on any number of opportunities which have suggested themselves.
Like many of you, I subscribe to lots of people’s mailing lists, and I discover new venues all the time, literally. Or, more to the point, other people discover new venues, and get gigs there, and then tell me about them. I should call these venues. I should visit these venues. I should impress them with my grace and humor and businesslike demeanor, and hand them a CD, and follow up with a phone call. The whole schmear. But instead, I’m at home, enjoying a freshly cooked meal and watching the Red Sox. Not very rock’n’roll, that’s for sure.
There are people out there who impress me a lot with their initiative. One of the most consistent is Patti DeRosa. Many of you know her, and, like me, enjoy her performances and her songs. But the thing that continues to hit me, time after time, is that when I get wind of a new venue, and I visit the venue’s events listings, there’s Patti. Sometimes she’s the very first act to perform there, sometimes the second or the third, but it’s uncanny how often it happens that she’s one of their first acts. Always breathing. I love that.
Part of the reason, I tell myself, is that work has been kind of crazy this year. But there’s always an excuse. Booking has to be a habit, especially if you want to be playing consistently. I still worry about my draw, of course; but I’m trying to be careful not to put myself in situations where my uber-cult status is a liability. If this level of care means that booking is that much more difficult, well, I need to be working that much more, not that much less.
Ideally, I’d like to find a regular gig somewhere, once a month or something, not a hosting gig (we’ve covered that), where I can stretch out, play an hour or more, drag out all those songs that I play once in a blue moon – to which someone inevitably says, “That’s a great song. Is that new?” It would help to compensate for my booking clumsiness, and give me an opportunity to connect with some folks on a regular basis.
So if anyone out there knows of such an opportunity – perhaps a coffeeshop that looks like it’s just dying to do live music – drop me a line. I’m also available for house concerts, christenings, boat launches, weddings, divorces, funerals, background music for those awkward moments when you have to tell someone they have spinach in their teeth – you get the idea. Just as long as there’s no broken glass in the parking lot.