Hello class, welcome to another Life Lesson with Evan! Today's lesson is about how being embarrassed and humiliated on stage in front of apporximately 150 people can be fun, educational, and utterly terrifying!
Please, maintain your composure. I promise it will be as worthwhile as the dream you're having about showing up to school pants-less.
But moving ahead: I have a tale that basically makes me look like an idiot. I don't have any more "gather round, children" pre-story cliches, so let's just jump into it.
Approximately one month ago, maybe more, I was working my usual gig with Music Industry Workshop at Guitar Center. One guy I talked to was playing bass, and I then discovered that he played drums in a blues band. As a matter of fact, the band would be playing just a few short hours later at a club one block away. And what's more, the band would play and then open up the stage for a jam night!
When I hear 'jam night', I instantly got excited. I hadn't experienced the bliss of playing live music in months. I was jonesing. Plus, I hadn't had a chance to play music with a single Chicago musician since I'd started working. And to make it all better, the guy I was talking to said he was "curious to see what" I "got behind the kit". In my mind, I was totally going to get up on stage and command attention like a drummer should, rocking the masses with John Bonham-inspired playing style (Led Zeppelin's first album is very heavy blues-rock, and I know it front to back, so piece-a-cake, right?), and generally win over the keys to the city.
Microsoft Paint representation of my thought process.
So, fast forward a few hours, and I got to the blues club. Kingston Mines was the name of the place, which seemed cool enough to me. Little did I know I misjudged the place (more on this later). I got in by dropping the name of the guy I met, because I own no fake ID and am still 20 years old. The guy said "Ah, alright. Well just keep it down will ya?" Sure thing, Mr. Bouncer. Sure thing.
I shook hands with the cat I met at Guitar Center (I don't know much about hip musicians, but I know that they call guys 'cats') and met his band leader, a blues archetypical old black guy with a sexy Gibson guitar and gravelly voice. I was directed to the sign-up sheet for jam night, so I slapped my name on the clipboard, "Evan - Drums", and found my seat. The band played and they rocked my brain into tapioca. Check them out here. I looked around though, and began to get a bit nervous.
The guy I met at Guitar Center made it sound like a chill, low-key event. Like a couple dozen people MAYBE, that's what I was thinking. By the time the jam started, the place was packed! Women wearing fur shawls and party dresses and just weirdly spiffy attire-clad men filled the room, and I began to wonder how small of a blues club this place actually was. And now that I think of it...one of the girls I met there said she saw tourist girls asking someone to take a picture with the in front of the sign. I asked a friend from work (who happened to come down to check out thejam night, too) and he said "Aw yeah, Kingston Mines is like one the best blues bars in the city."
A quick Google search for 'best blues bar chicago' turned up this TravelChannel.com list of the top 5 Blues bars in Chicago. Selections from the entry for Kingston Mines include "Kingston Mines is the club that brought the blues to Chicago's North Side." and "The main stage and north stage are continuously graced with some of the best in the business..."
At the moment, I didn't need the hindsight I now have to realize I was screwed. I could hold down a blues beat (a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4-ee and a 1...) but hadn't realized before how many stops and starts there were in the music, all of which hinge upon the drummer being familiar with the standard upon which most all blues songs rest. There was one drummer before me, whose energy was...diminished, to say the least, so I thought that I could make up for my lack of blues knowledge by being spirited.
One song later, I was nudged off-stage by the drummer who invited me there. I jokingly said, "What, firing me after one song?", to which he replied, "Nah man, it was good, you did real good." I think I have now adopted a personal motto:
If you're being hurried off-stage while being told you did "good", you probably didn't do "good".
Old women, clear your schedule. Someone's gotta needlepoint that right there. I think it's got a chance to become an American living room needlepoint mainstay, up there with the likes of "Home Sweet Home".
"Is that from that idiot grandson of ours' blog?" "Why, yes it is!"
By the time I was getting off stage, I hardly felt embarrassed at all because the rush of playing live music is still up there even if you play live music badly. But after I sat back down, I thought of the several times I missed the stops, the slowing up and speeding down of a rusty amateur, and the overall unfamiliarity with the style of music I was playing...I realized that I played like crap. And I was embarrassed as hell.
With some distance from the situation, I can laugh and see the lesson, which is that it's good to be humbled sometimes. Another lesson is that it's stupid to assume you can impress people when the guy before you is unimpressive. Another lesson is that I need to practice drums a helluva lot more.
However, I have slipped one gem into my pocket out of this whole ordeal: I can tell people that I had the guts to get on stage and play the blues and Kingston Mines. And that's worth something in some Chicago circles.
This is really one of the only noteworthy adventures I've had while in Chicago, but I do so love this one because it's a story I'm going to tell children and grandchildren some day. It has every aspect necessary: A problem and a lesson. And I may change it up just a bit to make myself out to be less of an idiot.
No comments:
Post a Comment