A funny old gig story

Recently there was a thread on one of the music forums I follow, talkbass.com, about quitting in the middle of a gig, and it reminded me of a gig I played back last spring. I don't know if it really counts as "quitting in the middle of a gig", but here's the story:

It all started when I answered an ad by a drummer (let's call him Frisco Tom) who was trying to put together an oldies rock band, with an eye towards playing car cruise nights and things like that. There was a cattle call audition and while these people (Frisco Tom and a woman I assume was his girlfriend, although she introduced herself as his "producer"---let's call her Trixie) were not the most professional, it looked like it might be fun. And, one of the guitarists who had tried out was pretty good, and I thought it would be fun to play with him. I was invited to be in the band, and I said I'd do it if the guitarist I liked would, and apparently he had said something to the same effect, so we were good to go.

Frisco Tom worked near me, and occasionally we would meet in the lobby of the building, or meet for lunch. We had several conversations in which he talked a very good game about what he wanted to do, and expressed strong agreement with my desire to try to really capture the feel and arrangements of the original songs. Structurally, most 50s rock songs are not very complicated---it's easy to play just about every 50s hit ever written as one 12-bar-in-A medley. But if you listen closely, there are subtle distinctions between songs that put each performer's individual stamp on them, and I wanted to focus on those things and really try to nail them. Yes, absolutely, right there with me, he says.

After a couple weeks a band was more or less assembled. In what should have been a distressing turn of events, both guitar players in the band quit---the guy I had looked forward to playing with apparently had not told his wife he was auditioning for the band, and when she found out about it she shut it down. But, I decided to stick it out for a while. Tom and Trixie came up with a couple other guitar players, although they didn't seem to be as meticulous about the music as I was hoping for.

Now, from early on, Tom had mentioned an open stage at the local VFW hall, which he thought we should play. He seemed to think gigs might be forthcoming if we did well, and he swore that we could go there and blow everybody away. (Based on some open mics I've been to, that was at least potentially credible.)

Well, we had our first rehearsal with the full band, and it went okay---and Frisco Tom says that we should play the VFW open stage THAT WEEKEND. I thought that was a little precipitous, but he was very excited, and the other people seemed up for it, so I figured, okay.

We went there, and played, and a couple things became apparent:

1) I figured out that this, in fact, was the whole goal of the band: for Frisco Tom to get up in front of his buddies at the VFW hall and play. Any other gigs would be purely coincidental.

2) Frisco Tom's bar for what was an acceptable public performance was so low as to be nonexistent.

3) There was never any prospect of us blowing away everybody at the open stage---while some of the other performers were, indeed, awful, the main core group of guys were pretty decent musicians who had been playing together at this thing every Friday for years if not decades, and included at least one guy who had been an actual professional rock singer back in the 70s. (You've heard him on the radio.) They had a pretty high overall talent level and they were accustomed to playing together, in stark contrast to our group in both regards.

Mulling all this over subsequently, I concluded that Frisco Tom was simply delusional and decided I would not continue with his vanity project. But before I told him, he announced a new opportunity, which forestalled my actual quitting:

Ever since the first time I met him I had heard constantly about his son, who was apparently hot stuff out in L.A. doing nouveau rockabilly or something. Well, it turns out the son was going to be in town and would perform with us at the VFW the following week! I was sufficiently intrigued that I decided to stick around for one more show. The practice schedule got screwed up or something---I don't remember exactly what happened, but basically, they sent me some mp3s but we did not get together in person prior to the show.

So I showed up, and the first sign of trouble was, Frisco Tom informed me that he had cleverly (he thought) signed up twice, once under his son's name and once under Trixie's name. This is, as anyone who frequents open stage events will know, a gross breach of open stage etiquette---stage hogging. Now, Trixie was very nice but could not sing to save her life; the phrase "bovine bellowing" is particularly apt. And she was going to do a whole set of tunes. And she ended up going first. And the arrangements (if you can call them that) that they did were different from the recordings they had sent me. Worst of all, the practice at that open stage was, you got to do three songs; people who did really well were sometimes invited to do another song or two. Well, after three songs, she just launched into a fourth song, despite the fact that the performance up till then had been pretty much a train wreck. And after that, she launched into a fifth song. At that point the host basically kicked her off stage---she was preparing to do a sixth song.

Naturally, they were in no hurry to let us back up on stage again. So after almost two hours of sitting around, mortified, I decided that I was not that interested in seeing what Frisco Tom's kid would do. I had never rehearsed with them, the songs were simple 50s standards, and I knew that the regular bass player who came every week could hang with them easily, as well as I could. So I packed up and went home.

I didn't hear anything from them for a while, but I did notice that almost immediately all references to me were deleted from the band's MySpace page. Coincidentally, last week I got an e-mail from the band announcing (14 months later) that they were playing some car show. Good luck to them; I've had better things to do with the last 14 months than embarrass myself on a regular basis at the VFW hall.

Hectic over-scheduling continues...

So much for getting back on the wagon of posting regularly. On the chance that some of you are reading this occasionally looking for updates on what's going on in my life, I'll try to post some less-lengthy entries of what's going on.

For the past week-plus, Kris' cousin and goddaughter, Lauma, was visiting us; she left yesterday. We were a little trepidatious when we heard she was coming because she's 21 and from Latvia and we didn't really know what kind of person she would be or whether we would be able to show a 21-year-old from Latvia a good time, but fears were unfounded---she turned out to be a very pleasant young woman and we really enjoyed having her visit. Which was good because last weekend was very hectic. As I may have mentioned, we intended to play a Mothers' Day show with the Xylenes, so when that plan was hatched, I invited my mother up for that weekend. Well, the show got cancelled but I never called my mom about it, and when I remembered, I called and my dad said how much mom was looking forward to coming up, so they came to visit. Meanwhile, my friend Peter, who used to live around here and was my co-conspirator and boon companion in my car hobby, was in town and wanted to get together. And, somehow through a mechanism that I never understood, we ended up hosting a Mother's Day dinner for Kris' extended family. So it was a pretty busy weekend, but Lauma was a big help and made things easier rather than more difficult.

Me and Lauma at the art museum in Milwaukee.

This past weekend was pretty hectic too, with a meeting of our book club in Milwaukee and a Bill Tucker & Friends house party on Saturday, and getting Lauma to the airport and then going to my friend's daughter's graduation concert for the School of Rock Beatles class on Sunday, followed by some work on the club history article for the program of the Alfa Romeo Owners' Club national convention.

Rocking with Bill Tucker at the Castaway Collective, 5/17/08.