The oddest moment of any gig is that moment when you load the car. The audience is gone, and all the compliments have been paid and the CDs sold, and you’re there in the parking lot, or the driveway, or wherever it is that you load out, and you’re all alone. And the silence is overwhelming, and you think, “Something happened here tonight, but I’ll be damned if I know what.”
Performance is magic. There’s no other word for it. The power and responsibility that a good performer has – and I’m a very good performer at the moment – is kind of humbling. The audience enters, expecting to be entertained. They’ve paid good money (nowadays, if you’re going to a mainstream event of any sort, a LOT of money), and they ought to get their money’s worth. And there you are, under a spotlight in a dark room, the center of attention, with the ability to either make or ruin these people’s evenings.
And it’s all on you. You’ve got to make it work. I remember, once, going to see my friend James O’Brien at the Middle East upstairs. And the sound system was completely on the fritz – whoever was running sound that night really didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground – and James said, “Shut it off”. And he got off the stage, which is a real stage, about three feet or so off the ground, and waded into the middle of the audience, and finished the show from there. It’s nights like that where you learn what a real performer looks like.
And then there’s the show itself. The tempos, the song selection, the interstitial patter – if you’re on, and it’s flowing, and the audience is laughing where you want them to laugh, and listening where you want them to listen (which is whenever they’re not laughing, frankly), you can construct a mood which people will remember forever. If you do it right.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be formal. It can happen around a campfire, or in someone’s living room. Once, I attended a songwriting workshop, and a woman who’s a singer and actor picked up a newspaper and read one of the articles out loud. And she was mesmerizing. Out of thin air, in an unexpected moment, she cast the same sort of spell.
But in a concert setting, the ending is so much more disorienting. The lights come up, and you shake the hands and accept the congratulations, and people get their coats and sail off into the night, and you’re alone, or maybe under the flourescent glare with the booker or the bartender or the guy who sweeps the floors. You’ve done your job, but it’s so much more than a job – it’s a duty, a handshake deal, the Golden Spike in the middle of the continent. And now it’s time to go home.
So I put my guitars in the car, and start the engine. And every single time – without fail – my very next thought after “What the hell just happened?” is “Let’s do that again.”
Thank you all.