A Month to Write About

We’re starting an experiment here on the Tin Pan Blog. Starting today, we will be upping the ante a little bit and posting every day rain or shine. Now, necessity is the Mother of Invention so expect to see some random stuff. Ideally it will all relate to our world of music but I’m frankly not quite sure. Trust in our creativity. It will be worth your loyalty.

Last night at Googie’s
I made it up the stairs leading up from the Living Room, parted the curtain and entered Googie’s little lounge up there. I did an immediate 180 and went right back outside. The vibe in there made me want to laugh and cry at the same time and that would have startled and offended. I had seen an archetype: the quintessential rough gig. On stage: a folk-singer doing his own material and some covers from Kings of Leon. In the crowd: exactly four people. The dude’s mom and dad and the sound guy and the waitress. The two latter individuals were cowering in the corner heads buried in their iPhones and intermittently chortling.

Once I had composed myself I returned to the room and sat down with the hopes of, at the least, encouraging this poor kid a little bit and secondly constructing a set list. This was our opening act. Horrors.

The first thing you want to do in a situation like this is just wipe the suck out of the room. In this case it was really some infectious suck. Not that he was such a bad player or singer it was just such a desperate environment in there with this kid entertaining his mom and dad. When he was finishing about ten minutes later, Baby Hands, Hyde, and Zoo had shown up. Each of them had uncontrollably rolled their eyes when they came in the room. It was involuntary, like when you smell a furiously bad smell. That face you make when you might say, “Whoa . . . oh, man”

Just as he was finishing, two women showed up. A sweet, gentle, asian lady had brought her mom to see us. I didn’t recognize her but I could tell she could recognize me. I was hoping that it wasn’t one of our potential wedding clients that I had invited down. I knew two such interests had said they were coming. There was so much suck in the room that I was embarrassed to say hi. To make matters worse the waitress had given up on the night. She had probably made exactly $2 off of the last set and didn’t really feel like being to hospitable to us. I couldn’t blame her.

We set up and then contemplated doing a New Orleans parade thing up from the bar up the stairs but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Hell with it. Let’s just start. Again, 4 people in the room besides us: sound guy, waitress, asian woman, asian woman’s mom. I addressed the folks that had come to see us directly, “Hi… err . . . this show is just for you! How awesome is that! A private show.” The girl beamed at us. The mom clearly did not speak a word of English.

The dismount of this story is short and sweet. By the end of the first song there were 10 people in the room. By the end of the second song there were 30 and one song after that the room was at capacity with every chair filled and about 20 people standing in the back. I have no idea how this happened exactly but thank heavens. Both our wedding folks showed up and were pleased as punch, the waitress had to run up and down those stairs to keep up so I guess at least she made some money. After our first set, we took a break and no one left, and we finished strong around midnight to a full house.

We’re there every Friday this month and with crowds like that they’ll probably keep us on for a bit… just please come early.

See you tomorrow on the blog…