Oh, what a night. (“Late September back in” – oh, wait, you can hear that.) I could see the Big Dipper dipping overhead, as I lay there in the breeze. On stage, it was Richard Thompson, the man with more fingers than me, wowing the audience with his cheeky, self-effacing English humor, not to mention his guitar playing. The sound system was perfect, the temperature was perfect, the audience was perfectly attentive. And as I looked around at the beautiful setting, what I thought was: no, thank you. <\/p>\n
There must have been 1000 people or more, there on the lawn with me and my wife, She Who Must Be Fetched a Snack. And that’s too many for me. It’s not that I mind a crowd – it’s that I mind playing for one. “Wait a minute”, you say. “You were listening to Richard frigging Thompson, and what you were thinking about was playing the venue yourself?” Well, duh. Don’t we all do that? It doesn’t matter that it’ll never, ever happen in a million years – it’s the professional musician in me. <\/p>\n
I’ve encountered a lot of different situations in my performing life, with and without my band. We played rooms where we’ve outnumbered the audience (and so have I); we once played a gig for drunken college students where the club owner jumped on stage with us to exhort us to play faster. I’ve opened, I’ve headlined, I’ve featured, I’ve done house concerts, I’ve performed in big rooms and small. And each one of these experiences has helped me figure out what I do well, what I need to work on, and what I want and don’t want. But there are plenty of situations I haven’t been in – so I find myself learning from the experiences of the people I watch. How do they interact with the audience? How do they hold the stage? Why am I mesmerized? Why am I bored? What does this venue, at this moment, with this performer, tell me about my own act? <\/p>\n
And one of the things I’ve learned is: a room can be too big. And I haven’t learned this from playing Foxboro Stadium myself – I’ve learned it from watching folks like Richard Thompson and imagining what it would be like. I want to see the faces of the people in the back row. I want to chat with the audience in between songs – I want to see them laugh when I tell a funny story, and I want to see who<\/em> laughed. I want to feel like I’m in someone’s living room, with all the intimacy and interaction that implies. In other words, my favorite venue is a packed room of 30 or 40 people. <\/p>\n For all I know, that’s what RT prefers, too. But RT is a touring musician – playing to 30 or 40 people just doesn’t pay the bills. Me, on the other hand – well, it’s not like I need the money. If I never make a dime at this, it’s fine with me – as long as I get that packed room of 30 or 40 people. <\/p>\n Now, the cruel among you might point out to me that if I’m actually worried about ending up on the stage of the Lowell Summer Music Series playing for 1000 people, I can rest easy, because it ain’t gonna happen. And this is true – but it’s not the point. The point is: what do I want to shoot for? Where should I put my energy? What do I want the next ten years of my musical career (har!) to look like? If I were seduced by stadium-sized audiences – the roar of the giant crowd, the huge stage, the Jumbotrons, the bouncers – I might waste a lot of my time chasing it. But I’m not, and I’ve got good reasons for it. <\/p>\n So if you’ve got a living room, and you can put 20 or 30 or 40 people into it, drop me a line, because I’m your guy. But if you need someone to open for Richard Thompson at the last minute – well, I might not say no, but I’m not waiting for the call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh, what a night. (“Late September back in” – oh, wait, you can hear that.) I could see the Big Dipper dipping overhead, as I lay there in the breeze. On stage, it was Richard Thompson, the man with more fingers than me, wowing the audience with his cheeky, self-effacing English humor, not to mention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-low-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sambayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}