The other night, I was chatting with one of my favorite performers after a show, and this performer made a comment about how hard it is to keep a toehold in the Boston music market. “I’m huge in five other markets, but here, I can barely make a dent”, or something to that effect. It’s true, and a shame, but I’m not sure it’s avoidable, and I’m not sure we’d want to avoid it if we could.
There are precious few cities where you find the density of musical talent that you do in Boston, especially in folk, rock and pop music. And therein lies the problem. There are only so many ears, after all. And with two-income households, long commutes and expensive babysitting, not to mention the enormous variety of other entertainment possibilities, building a stable, decent-sized audience is exceptionally difficult. Now obviously, I’m not talking about any of you; what I need, what we all need, is ten times as many of you as there are.
So if the problem is competition, why don’t we all leave? In Souix Falls, Texakarna, Little Rock, Sacramento, any one of dozens and dozens of my circle of folk acquaintances could be stars, it seems. I can see it now: beseiged by groupies (blond, blue-eyed groupies, but groupies nonetheless); worshipped as a god in local coffeehouses, showered with free scones and Earl Grey tea; a replica of my guitar in bronze embedded in the local Walk of Fame. It’s a glorious dream for many of us. But I’m not quite ready to pack.
See, the same thing that makes it hard to build an audience makes it a marvelous place to learn and polish one’s trade. I’ve said it many times – some of the most talented songwriters I’ve ever heard are people I know personally. I admire these people; I want to be as good as they are; dammit, I want to be better. Coming out of Little Rock, there’s no way I could have learned what I’ve learned about songwriting and performing.
And if you think that I can go elsewhere now that I’ve learned all this, think again. I went to Tom Bianchi’s open mike challenge at the Lizard Lounge recently, and about half of the acts I heard were better than I am. Now, I’ve been doing this for ten years. I pride myself on my voice, my songwriting, my stage presence. And still, on a random Monday night, in a room where no one is getting paid except the host, half the acts leave me in the dust. And it’s always going to be that way. There’s always going to be somebody raising the bar.
This town keeps me humble (and with an album called I’m Not a Modest Man, humility is a quality in short supply here at heardquarters). There’s so much to learn, and there’s always someone else to learn it from. It might mean that I’m doomed forever to play to audiences of less than twenty, but dammit, those folks are going to get a hell of a show.