Several nights ago, I was – I’m kind of ashamed to admit this – Googling myself on the Intertubes. There aren’t a whole lot of Samuel Bayers out there, and at this point, I’m intimately familiar with most of them. I must have been bored that particular evening, because I got about 25 pages in, and I found the oddest thing: a link to my name, on the bill for the May 2 show at the Nameless Coffeehouse.
Now, many of you who’ve been dying to see me somewhere that the subway can get to might be a little ticked off at this, because I didn’t tell you I was going to be at the Nameless Coffeehouse on May 2. But I have a great explanation: nobody told me, either.
The Nameless Coffeehouse, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, has been around for more than forty years. It’s held in the Unitarian church in Harvard Square, right next to the subway station. It’s a volunteer-run coffeehouse – neither the workers nor the musicians are paid, and all the money from the door goes to the church (or charity, or both, I’m not sure which). Many long-time local musicians have fond, fond memories of the Nameless. I remember when I first got to Boston, and tried to do a little solo performing before I gave up and joined a band (we’re talking ancient history at this point – 1985, smack in the middle of the Great Polyester Decade), I auditioned for the Nameless (because that’s the way they did it back then), and boy, was I intimidated. They had a show every weekend during the school year back then; for a while, if I recall correctly, they had two. I performed there a couple times, not that I’d want anyone to remember – I had a lot to learn, way back then.
Even as contemporary folk got more popular, and more venues emerged, and the Nameless cut back to one show a month, it could still be a great, great time. Two years ago, I hosted the January show, which featured Lloyd Thayer (just an electric performer) and a teenage bluegrass band called Hard Times, who gathered around a single microphone, just like in the old days, and boy, we had a blast – it was literally standing room only, the biggest crowd I’d ever seen there.
Which makes my recent experience with the Nameless that much more disappointing. The organization appears to be in disarray. Their long-time booking agent and all-around nice lady, Maureen LeBlanc, who’s responsible for my best memories of the Nameless, left more than a year ago, and Jeff Boudreau took over for her for a while, and then Jeff left, and frankly, at this point, I have no idea who’s booking the Nameless. There’s no booking person listed on their site; I’ve sent them repeated emails, and no one, absolutely no one, has written me back – which makes it even more mysterious why anyone would have expected me to show up on May 2.
I’ve heard from a couple people who tell me similar stories about radio silence and surprising gig listings at the Nameless, and it’s not like my gig listing was a typo – once I knew what to look for, I found a couple other sites with event listings for the Nameless for May 2, with my name on the bill. So somebody sent out a press release, at the very least. This is no way to run a railroad. I can’t even imagine how anyone could manage to convince themselves that it’s a way to run a railroad. It’s insulting to the musicians, to the audience, and to the grand tradition of the Nameless, not to mention unbelievably harmful to the Nameless itself; after all, they rely for talent on the goodwill of artists who provide their time for free.
I don’t ask for much here at headquarters. I don’t expect to be paid much for my effort, and I don’t expect venue owners to write me back; long experience has shown me that it’s just too much to expect those things. What I have, what I protect, is my reputation – I’m reliable and prompt and professional and a great performer. If someone, for some bizarre reason, decides to tell the world that I’m supposed to be somewhere, without even consulting me about it, there’s a chance that someone else will come along and wonder why I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. And I have no patience for that.
Obviously, I’ve written to the Nameless president to complain, and that’s really all I can afford to do about this, besides write this newsletter. If any of you know anyone on the Nameless board, please see if you can beat some sense into them. And if you’re a musician, please don’t bother soliciting the Nameless for a gig. It’s not clear that it matters, frankly – you may have a gig there anyway.