theclubsinger

One of the guys in the band had a buddy who was a marketing whiz.  And a whiz he was: he took pictures (we all looked hip, mean and cool at the same time), he created our demo tape, and he printed flyers.  He put those flyers everywhere – electrical poles, shopping centers, car windshields: ‘PREMIERE AREA APPEARANCE” – the cool picture really generated some buzz. The ’25 Cent Beer Night’ caption didn’t hurt, either. The whiz had put the word out: ‘The Edge’ was appearing – and anyone and everyone in the area soon knew about it.  And just like that, the whiz landed us a couple of gigs.

This first appearance was at a little bar in the middle of almost nowhere called the Gravel Pit. The parking lot was really crowded when we arrived; there were lots of people milling around and motorcycles everywhere. Were they all here for US?  How exciting! I thought.

Once inside, I saw a lot of big, mean dudes with long, scraggly beards everywhere-sitting, standing, walking around … holding pool sticks. This didn’t look like our kind of crowd.  I was wondering how on earth our marketing whiz found this place. Was this a joke he was playing on us? Not cool.

After we set our gear up and had a few minutes to spare, I wanted to freshen up and searched for the Ladies’ Room.  When I found it, I quickly made an about face and retreated to the stage. There was such an overpowering smell of pine-scented deodorizer emanating from there I was sure it was covering up something far, far worse. There were hardly any female patrons in attendance, and that made the bathroom seem even creepier.  There was no way I was going in there by myself, so I just didn’t go… all night long.

We were getting ready to go on stage as the outside crowd started moseying in – they had just wrapped up a Turkey Shoot. ‘A WHAT?!’  I had never heard that expression before.  So… this was a whole lot of folk that had just shot a bunch of turkeys, and now they were coming in for some alcohol? I started to sweat.  I observed several guys coming in holding double barreled shot guns.  Great… pool sticks and double barrels.  Seemed like everywhere I looked, someone was holding something that could kill you – and they were drinking.

On any other occasion, one might wonder why the hell anyone would put a pool table directly in front of the stage in a nightclub.   On this particular night, however, I didn’t question the logic: I found the sight of it quite comforting.  It was a great, tournament-size beauty, and it could give me a good head start to get the hell out of there in case I needed to make a run for it.  And it was tall enough for me to duck – just in case.

We all went on stage, plugging in and getting ready to rock. Our guitar player turned on his amp and began tuning his guitar, when all of sudden one old grizzly bear of a guy staggers up from his seat, looks me in the eye and yells, “TURN IT THE HELL DOWN!!” This was not a good sign: we didn’t even have our PA system on yet.  We were concerned we weren’t going to have a very good night here; based on the clientele we didn’t think our repertoire was going to work. Then there was our ass-kicking sound system – it just LOOKED loud. Plus, I don’t think they liked the way we looked, either – all the guys in the band had long hair, were thin and kind of pretty – the audience was the opposite. Things were getting scarier by the minute. We were all quite mad at the whiz for getting us in this predicament…

So, there we were… the five of us would-be rockers in a dilemma. On the one hand, we finally had a paying gig. On the other hand, we couldn’t use our sound system because it was too loud. How were we going to even play if our speakers were off?  We all just stood on stage, dumbfounded by our predicament and all of a sudden, in walks the Whiz!  Willie White, aka ‘The Whiz’, was the band’s marketing wizard that landed us this job. He was easy to spot; he had a baby blue suit on-so he stuck out like a sore thumb here. We all noticed the luminous blue suit snaking its way over to us through the crowd. Willie always wore a suit – “you gotta look the part, people!” he would say.

We all blurted out the following to our fearless manager:

“Willie!  What the hell?”

“They’re yelling at us we’re too loud and we don’t even have the speakers on yet!”

“Half the people in here look like murderers, dude!  This ain’t cool…”

“What are we gonna do??”

In the smoothest salesman speak, Willie utters: “People! Come on …relaaaaax already … I tried to tell you, but guess ya didn’t hear me…  I know I said ya don’t even need the full PA for this gig. The ceilings here are too low. Just turn on your instrument amps and leave off the mains!  I’ll go to the back of the room and help you tweak the volume for the first set. And for christ sakes – smile, people!  Look like you’re having fun!”

All of us seemed astonished by ‘The Whiz’ stroke of genius in that moment. We were impressed by such quick decision-making and decided the Whiz really could be a whiz.  Just like that, Willie left the stage and the blue suit snaked back into the crowd. We plugged in microphones, turned on amps and crossed our fingers…

What happened then was something we never expected; maybe the crowd was basking in the afterglow of a good ol’ turkey shootin’, or maybe it was the 25 cent beers, but these Pit Patrons were having a good time!   We weren’t ‘rocking the house’ – we were barely audible.  After old grizzly had yelled at us, we feared for our lives-his shotgun remained propped up next to him at the bar. 

The strategy for the evening had worked: avoid volume and smile as much as possible.  We had the stage lights going so we looked like a rock band, just without the sound. The PA system was officially on, the lights were green, but I tell you there was no sound coming out.  No one could hear me sing … including me.  My face started to hurt from smiling so much.  I think the clientele found the smiling mime rock band amusing:  they’d periodically glance over and chortle as they watched the pantomime act, the strumming guitars and oh yeah – the drummer using brushes.   No real sticks for him in here.  The crowd didn’t dance and they never requested a tune. At one point, a couple of old bearded guys came up to play pool for a while… that was enjoyable for us, since the band had such a good view of it from the stage…  

It was surreal and hilarious at the same time. But at least we got a gig under our belts. The best part was I didn’t have to duck under the pool table, but boy-did I ever have to take a whiz!

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