That Time I Played a Gig But Didn’t Know ANY of the Songs

A few years ago I played a gig that reminded me of the importance of listening.

This scenario really solidified for me the fact that you CAN survive a night of songs you’ve never heard…as long as you use your ears. Even if you haven’t had the chance to practice, rehearse, or even meet the guys you’re playing with, you CAN hang in there and nail the songs when you focus all your attention on listening.

I’d had this gig on my calendar for a month or so, and I knew ahead of time I was subbing for a drummer in a local blues band. The band leader attempted to schedule several rehearsals leading up to the gig, but nothing ever worked out with everyone’s schedule. I knew we’d be playing for 4 hours late Friday night, so there’d have to be at least 50 songs on the setlist. Most of them would probably be pretty typical 12-bar blues, but who knew if there might be breaks or key spots in the songs I’d have no idea about.

I wasn’t able to get a setlist ahead of time (not that it would have mattered since this band was playing many of their own arrangements), and I was instead reassured that the tunes wouldn’t be too hard. I heard that these guys were pretty chill and laid back, and I was good friends with the harmonica player. This actually helped put me at ease despite the fact I’m a very organized preparer when it comes to learning songs.

So I loaded up my drums and drove to the venue, keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

This venue was the definition of “smoky bar.” I immediately knew my clothes would smell bad, my drum bags would smell bad for weeks, and I’d be suffocating most of the night. As soon as I walked in there I knew it would be a rough night! But hey - this was a true blues club. I found the rickety stage, set my kit up, and the bandleader counted off the first song. So it began.

Surprisingly, the gig went pretty well. By the end of the night, the singer had labelled me a mind reader. From his perspective, I knew the songs just as well as he did, but he knew I had never heard most of them. As far as he was concerned, I was reading his mind since we were on the same page musically most of the time, and I was always following whatever he was doing.

So what did I do to pull this off? This is a simple story of listening. Here are a few things I realized right off the bat:

1. The singer/guitar player isn’t the greatest guitar player, but his voice is full of inflections and dynamic changes that signal what’s about to happen.
2. The bass player knows the songs really well, and he’s signaling to me important key parts (breaks, builds, drop-outs, etc.).
3. A lot of the songs are full of instrumental jams, led by the harmonica player (who was a great musician).
4. Most song forms are fairly simple. If it wasn’t a standard 12-bar blues, it was at least a predictable form with 4, 8, or 16 bar sections. (We weren’t playing crazy fusion stuff.)

Considering those observations, this became my strategy:

1. Listen to and watch the bass player (he knows all the answers).
2. BUT…spend just as much time listening to and trying to watch the lead singer / guitar player. After all, he’s the one everyone’s really following. His voice could tell me a lot about where we were going.
3. Always be thinking a few measures ahead. I was constantly asking myself: “What do I feel should happen next based on what we’re playing this very moment?” I could make a few guesses, know how I’d handle each, then hope that the band would happen to choose one of those directions.
4. BE FLEXIBLE. I had to always be ready to adapt to whatever was going on around me. If the band suddenly started to drop down, I had to instantly follow so that know one would notice that the drummer “missed a cue.” There’s a certain “buffer window” where if you can react fast enough, the audience won’t notice a mistake.
5. Focus every bit of my attention and brain space on watching and listening to everything going on around me. I was listening less to myself and more to the bass and vocals. I was confident enough that my playing would sound fine. It was more important to be locked in with the others so that I could help the band sound great.

I can sum all of those points up with one thing: LISTENING. If you have your drumming together from a mechanical standpoint, you can focus on listening well. This is a sort of “cheat” that allows you to survive most musical situations, even if you don’t know the songs well. If you can listen well and lock in with your surroundings, you’ll learn to react quickly and even predict what a band is about to do. The more you play with any particular musicians, the more you’ll learn their tendencies (audible and visual), which will help you groove and make music with them even without knowing the material.

In a way, music is a language that is independent of the song being played. If you’re a musician, you know how to communicate musically to other musicians…even if you both don’t know the same songs. That’s how players of varying backgrounds can get on stage and jam together and make something incredible. You don’t have to know material ahead of time…you just have to show up with your ears ready to go.

This all isn’t to say that playing a gig with no preparation is ideal. I’ll always take the option of writing some charts and rehearsing with the band beforehand! But when those situations arise (they certainly will every so often!), be ready to be a good musician and make the most of it.

Keep rocking, and be sure to never stop listening.

Stephen

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