This is a eulogy. An ongoing one, to be sure, but a eulogy, nonetheless.
As many of you know, I’ve been enjoying myself heading up to Giuseppe’s in Gloucester this year, participating in their Thursday evening Songwriter Shuffle. I’ve met some wonderful musicians, and had an excellent time each visit. And in early October, I got a note from the owners, letting me know that they’ve chosen to close the restaurant. Burnout? Financial troubles? Who knows? Running a restaurant is an all-encompassing and risky endeavor; a very large percentage of them fail in the first few years. I doubt that I’ll miss them nearly as much as the regulars who leaned eagerly on the grand piano each Thursday night, but I was so, so grateful for the stage.
And so it goes, another one of my favorite rooms, gone. They seem to have the lifespan of gerbils.
Something’s Brewin’, in Lakeville. I used to play there on Friday nights, and the room was packed – not a lot of things to do in Lakeville, and the snacks were yummy and the room was cozy and, well, I was fabulous, as always. And then the BMI/SASCA/ASCAP police found them, and they decided they couldn’t afford to book live music because of the performance fees, and poof.
Licorice & Sloe, in Newburyport. Bil Silliker opened a little coffee and tea house right off the main drag in Newburyport, and he loved my stuff, and the room was cozy (sounds like a theme), and what he wanted was a sandwich board on the sidewalk to bring in customers, and the town of Newburyport was not prepared for sandwich boards on his sidewalk, and he decided he couldn’t afford to stay in bidness. Poof.
Java Jo’s in Milton – burned down. The Mozaic Room in Acton – hosts moved to New York. The Nameless Coffeehouse – apparently on fumes, after burning through several bookers, one of whom apparently scheduled people (including me) without actually consulting them. Poof, poof, poof.
Now, I suppose it’s a dead giveaway for me to describe these as “the rooms I’ve lost”. Lots of people lost these rooms – in many cases, their proprietors among them. But it does feel like something that I’ve lost, because I quest for stability in a performance world of endless change.
When I started performing – well, let’s say I still have the 24-track reel-to-reels from my first recording session. There was no Internet. CDs (!) were two years old. And if I recall correctly, at my first gig, I opened for an actual stegosaurus – yes, it was that long ago. The world worked in a comfortable, predictable way – cigar-chomping midgets roamed the earth, offering dewy-eyed youngsters a chance at fame in exchange for their immortal souls, or at least an outlandish share of their album sales. It was a model that had stood the test of – um, well, the previous thirty years.
I’m no fool (well, I may be a fool, but not in the particular way I’m about to describe). Stability is an illusion. Every year is slightly different from the last. Rooms open, rooms close. It’s a never-ending search for the next stage, because, well, life is a never-ending search. I miss the rooms that have closed, and the longer I perform, the more rooms I miss – but until you all retreat for that final time into your entertainment sensory deprivation chambers, never to venture outside again, I’ll keep looking for new rooms to eventually mourn the loss of.
Every moment of life is a victory over the weight of the past. Or, at least, it better be. It turns out that the host of the Songwriter Shuffle has found a new room to resurrect it in, and I’m looking forward to the first time I perform there. And, perhaps, to missing it when it’s gone.