Most of my musical career has taken place behind closed doors. The obvious influences are The Beatles, who retreated from the stage for the safety of the studio, and The Residents, who had to wait a decade for technology to catch up. There's also a bit of Brian Wilson/Andy Partridge social anxiety mixed in as well. All in all, pretty good company to have.
For many musicians, the stage is the end goal... When my song is written, my job is finished.I personally don't understand live performance. I recorded the song, it's available. Do you really want to hear a stripped-down version of it? For many musicians, the stage is the end goal. I can acknowledge and respect that, but I still don't get it. I've determined that the real difference is that they are musicians first, and I am a composer first. When my song is written, my job is finished.
My first live performance was in San Francisco in October of 2001. The next two were open mics (Burlington, VT in July of 2002; New York City, May 2004). Obviously, I've not been too interested. In 2006 I made the resolution on the first of January to play out more. I make this promise every year. But this time, I did it. I've made a conscious decision to move away from my composing period and get into a performing era. (450+ songs should be enough, right?) As of this writing, I've performed three times this year.
The first was at the end of July. A lot of people had been asking me about playing live, and someone appeared in my email inviting me to an open mic. So I went, mostly as an "okay, I played live, now shut up" gesture. This open mic was on a Monday night, and began at 10pm. I was about halfway down the list, and played at 1:30am. Dude, you do NOT run an open mic for upwards of 7 hours on a Monday night! The only people who would knowingly attend such a thing are a) outrageously unemployable or b) living off of Daddy's trust fund. And those people probably are not capable of being entertaining. Well, that was my opinion before I was there. After that experience, it is what I know to be fact.
I had done the "yes I played out, sorry you missed it, watch the bootleg video" performance.I immediately thought "well, there's no chance for a return of the New York art scene" and I decided to give up. Which is fine. I had done the "yes I played out, sorry you missed it, watch the bootleg video" performance. But my friend Duncan hipped me to the Ukulele Cabaret, a monthly show that is held at a reasonable hour and would very likely be "up my alley." (Duncan certainly didn't use that phrasing; I just can't imagine writing "up my alley" without wrapping it in quotation marks.)
So I went to the Cabaret. And totally tanked. But I went back two months later. And totally rocked. It will be my new last Saturday of the month thing.
But how does this affect my stance on live performance? It hasn't, yet. I still feel no connection with the audience. I get up, do my little set, they politely applaud, I sit down. And I do the same for most of the other performers (though there are a handful of regulars that I really enjoy). Like all open invitation performances, most of the audience members are just waiting their turn to go on stage. It's hard to really appreciate a performance if you're mentally preparing for your own.
The anxiety is still with me. Actually, it's greater now.The anxiety is still with me. Actually, it's greater now. I used to totally freak out immediately before and after a performance, but kind of black out during it—go on autopilot, as it were. But I have memories of playing at the Cabaret (I never had such recollections from other performances). There's something different going on there. Perhaps a bit of reality I couldn't experience before. Maybe this will turn into the excitement that I've heard musicians talk about.
Or maybe I'm setting up the first ever ukulele-accompanied public panic attack.