One More Go

The other day I was in the music store where friend Roger works and he said I ought to come out to Crush again. He would be doing his host thing there Saturday night as well as Thursday this week. I had pretty well decided not to go there again (scroll to 4th paragraph), but he told me the Saturday night crowd was a lot more subdued than Thursday. This sounded counterintuitive but he explained that there are other rowdier things going on in St. Cloud on Saturday nights so the more raucous folks tend to go to those places. On Thursdays there is nothing else going on in town so they show up at Crush. So, I doubled back on my earlier decision and decided to give it another go. I was in no hurry and took the bare minimum of gear. I got there about 10:30 last night and left my guitar in the car. I really wasn't going to bother unless it seemed right. Well, the patrons were older and indeed quieter than the other times. Most seemed to actually be listening to the music. The pick-up band playing with Roger was still pretty loud and I still didn't think my stuff would fit in very well. But Roger had a slot for me and set it up and I was on.

Well, it actually kinda worked this time. A big difference for me was that I used a headset mic. That gave me the ability to play much better because I could look at my hands when I needed to and it let me look at my lyrics cheat sheet at useful times. I hadn't really realized how restricting singing into a microphone on a stand can be. Roger has a JamMan pedal identical to mine and I was playing through his rig. With the headset I could look down and make sure I was working the device correctly. I used it on several songs to loop the chorus or whatever and play solos in the middle or at the end of a few songs. It worked exactly as I hoped it would when I dreamed of owning one of those things. The headset allows all that extra-curricular activity to go on while playing and singing whilst maintaining perfectly consistent mouth to mic distance and thus even vocal volume. And there was even a bit of time left over to actually do some expressive emoting. I'm sold. You do have to be careful about breathing onto the thing, especially through the nose, but that's a small price to pay. I figured out that I can even play the harmonica in the around-the-neck holder using it. Along with my glasses it makes for a lot of hardware hanging on my head, but it does work.

After the loud band stopped and people could hear each other speak, folks started to avail themselves of that opportunity and a number of conversations broke out all over the room. I started into my stuff and they mostly kept talking but some actually seemed to be listening. Even a few engaged in conversation would pause at the end of a song, look over, and clap a little. The first two times I tried at that place I left with my head and heart pretty much hanging low and my tail between my legs. Last night was no triumph, but I didn't make a fool of myself, I was basically pleased with my performance, and I came away feeling very encouraged. I really can do this.

Set list (chosen on the fly):

Longing (instrumental looping with JamMan)
Memories (more instrumental looping)
Make Love Stay (Fogelberg)
Memories (w/lyrics and a solo over a loop and the whole deal - even got all the words right)
Prodigal (first time ever performed anywhere by anybody - I need to record this one)
Glimmer (Shackley)
Guitar Man (Bread - used the looper and did the solos pretty much like the original recording - cool!)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
Still Can't Say Goodbye (one Chet Atkins used to do)