Mold-Infested-School + Pie Auction + Nobody Showed Up = Just Another Gig!
A few years ago I played a gig that was really non glamorous. This also might be the strangest gig I’ve ever played, and it’s provided countless funny stories and inside jokes among those of us involved. Here’s what happened…
A friend and fellow musician in college called me one day and said “Hey, a friend of mine is playing a show of covers and a few originals at this charity event Saturday. Would you like to join us and play cajon?” I knew this gig wouldn’t pay (it was for charity), and I knew we’d be playing with someone I’d never met. But the event was happening in a nearby town I could get to within 20 minutes of where I was living at the time. So I said “sure,” not knowing at all what I was signing up for.
You know when you look up an address for somebody’s house and you have to keep zooming in and zooming in on Google Maps to see what the place actually is...and then sometimes you’re still lost when you get there? Upon receiving this event’s location, I checked and double checked the address on the GPS. Our location was an abandoned parking lot next to a dilapidated building at the center of a “town” with a population of maybe 83 people. This will be interesting.
I arrived at 10am along with my friend who was already there. The girl we were playing with (whose originals and country covers we’d yet to hear or rehearse) was supposed to arrive at 10:30. She’d get there, we’d run through everything, and we’d be good to go. I took a moment to look around this odd location I’d found myself in on this cool, sunny morning in May. This parking lot was actually the parking lot for an old abandoned school. The place looked like it had been deserted for at least a decade. I’m playing a gig in the parking lot of an abandoned school…in a town in which this is the downtown. What more could I wish for?
30 minutes went by. An hour went by. Two hours went by. No sign of this singer girl. My friend and I were just hanging out in the parking lot while a few people associated with the charity event were setting up for the gathering later. Finally, she arrived. Evidently there’d been a miscommunication about gig time, and the show was actually later than we’d thought. At this point, however, we still didn’t have much time to run the tunes, because the band before us was currently playing and would be be wrapping up soon. It was time for a quick rehearsal, and what better quiet place to rehearse than the abandoned, mold-filled, asbestos-infested school? We found our way into the dark, creepy building, which for some reason wasn’t locked. We set up in an empty class room and had rehearsal.
Musically, everything would be fine. Preparation was short, but we’d be able to play the songs and everything would be ok. As the band before us finished their collection of sloppily-played classic country complete with whiny, wheezy harmonica lead lines, we started setting up our modest collection of musical equipment. There was only a handful of people there at this event. Hopefully more will come later… In the meantime, the charity-related events began.
Our time came to play, so we kicked off the show with our set of country covers sprinkled with originals we’d barely learned. Thanks to the “stripped-down” simplicity of our setup, improvisation and “going with the flow” was not difficult. We hung in there, and everything was going just fine.
During a break between sets the charity events began. An auctioneer attempted to sell some items. A few guys arrived from a “ride-for-the-cause” motorcycle trip. These all seemed like fairly normal occurrences…except that nobody was here! It was really down to the folks running the event, the three guys from the motorcycle ride, an auctioneer, us musicians…and the family of the girl singing. I felt bad for the locals putting on the event. Nobody had showed up, and nobody was buying anything being auctioned off! The auctioneer was literally have to plea with people to buy two pies that he said only came in pairs. We continued our show with our second set, and our audience consisted of the singer’s mom, dad, and two siblings. It was literally just us and ten people there listening to the music and running the event. We played for an hour or so through a not-so-great sound system as the afternoon sun hit us directly in the face the whole time.
But we made it, and we lived to tell about it. That evening over dinner my friend and I recalled the events of the afternoon, realizing how strange most of it had been. In the following weeks, months, and years since that Saturday afternoon in May, something gradually occurred to me.
My perception of this whole gig was entirely different from the singer-guitar-player-girl’s perspective. For me, this whole ordeal was showing up to a dilapidated location in the middle of nowhere to play songs to no one in the blazing sun. But to this girl this was a real performance opportunity. She was fresh out of high school at the time, and being able to play a real show was a big deal (even if it was just to family and a few other onlookers). Putting that fresh perspective on the gig made me glad that I’d treated the whole thing with a positive attitude in the midst of the “inconvenience” and “discomfort” we'd faced. We were able to help this girl gain valuable experience in a safe environment. (Well…safe not including the mold-infested school we rehearsed in!) The show meant much more to her than it did to the rest of us, which is something important to consider in these kinds of scenarios.
I learned three things. Or at least these three things were reinforced in my mind:
- The gig’s not about me.
- Always maintain a good attitude, no matter what happens at the gig.
- Use discretion in choosing which gigs to accept. ;)
I say #3 in jest, but it did make me approach future charity gigs in random towns with more caution!
Take Care, Everyone, and God Bless,
Stephen
