It’s been more than 30 years since I first picked up a guitar to play in a band. Mind you, it was never a goal in life. In fact, I didn’t even play the guitar at first. I actually learned banjo in college, part of the University of Washington’s Experimental College program, and before that, played French horn and trumpet.
When I finally joined a band, I didn’t play guitar or even banjo. I actually started out with a lot fewer strings, well actually, just one. For reasons that still escape me, I ended up playing a washtub. Yes, you read correctly. A washtub, or alternately, a gut bass.
I didn’t mind. In fact, I was damned good at it. Funny how I can keep rhythm on a washtub but can’t do it when I play the guitar.
I’ve spilled my guts about how this all started elsewhere. At some point my brothers and I split the sheets, or sheet the music. Something to that effect. Like a divorce between a wife and a husband, we parted ways, me going one way with my repertoire and my bros heading off in another direction with theirs.
Believe me, I didn’t fight over any of the songs we did together. Two hours of Tie Me Kangaroo Down, My Boomerang Won’t Come Back and Bald Headed Lena can cause anyone to call the Suicide Hotline, including me if I had to sing another one of those songs.
So off I went, discovering new songs along the way, creating an eclectic mix of sing-alongs, 50s tunes, country, parodies and yes, even some nautical stuff.
Now we all know my opinions about sea chanteys. They weren’t sung during pirate times so I don’t really know why any reputable pirate (if there is such a thing), would try to sell the public that “Rolling Down to Old Maui” is an appropriate pirate song. It’s not piratical at all; it’s a whaling song.
If I were to sing you a song that any pirate sang back in the Golden Age of Piracy, it would be filthy dirty. It would be about whores and wenches and what the men were going to do to their girlfriends, wives or wives of others when they reached shore. Not exactly something you would call family entertainment.
The places I play would find an hour of sea chanteys about as entertaining as an hour of someone running their fingernails across a chalkboard. Again, there’s nothing really wrong with these songs; they just aren’t historically correct and not particularly interesting to perform.
As long as there isn’t anything I can do that is historically correct, I have learned to do the next best thing. Play what the people like. Do they really care to hear me sing my favorite songs? No. In fact, some of my very favorite songs to sing have never been heard outside my house. I don’t want to foist them on others because they don’t really have mass entertainment value.
Over the years I have had band mates who wanted to do some foisting. I let them try. The audience would always be less than appreciative of their song choice, largely because they are songs people don’t want to hear. They are nothing more than musician masturbation.
To make this point, I will then choose one of my songs that I know the audience will dig. This is one of the reasons I don’t use a setlist; a set set of songs locks you into a pre-determined order that has nothing to do with entertaining an audience. It is meant only to give the band a heads up as to what comes next, so they can have the right instrument in hand.
Over the decades I have become very adept at reading an audience. I can mix and match the 100 or so songs I know on the fly, bringing them up, settling them back down and leave them wanting more.
This is important because the longer they are engaged in the show, the more likely they are to buy us a round of drinks, tip us or best of all, invite us to go somewhere with them, such as their fancy boat.
As Jimmy Buffett once said, “I’m not a great singer or a great musician, but I am one helluva entertainer.” Say what you want about the guy, but he’s made millions catering to the corporate slave who dreams of escaping to the tropics with a margarita in one hand and a vahine in the other.
Me? I’m not a great musician or singer either. I readily admit it. But I can charm the pants off an audience.
I was lucky that I had such great mentors – the Bobby Smyths, Weaver Dials, and Tommy Chases of the world. They knew how to charm an audience, learning the fine art of engaging them and keeping them entertained. They didn’t need such silliness as a set list. They made it up on the fly.
Our own band used to joke that we practiced once a year whether we needed it or not. People thought we were joking. More often than not, though, the performance they were watching was our practice. We didn’t need endless rehearsals. We jelled organically, getting to the point when we could read each other’s minds and the look on each other’s faces. Famously, we even stopped in the middle of a song once because I forgot the words. We all stopped at the same instant, waited a beat, started a second song unannounced, stopped it midstream, then went back to the original one once I remembered the words.
I’m kind of lucky to have found a new singing partner that has the same mindset. It’s a rarity for someone to actually “get it,” that it’s all about the performance and not the musicianship. This is especially cool because she totally outshines me in the musicianship arena and could easily steal the whole show.
In our first performance we ever did – a very impromptu on at that – the audience went nuts. They loved us and the music. Was it hoity-toity professional musicianship? Hardly. Some of it was a technical mess. But it was very entertaining. And that is the whole point of performing. Anyone can play a song and master a lick. But it’s a rare person who can perform a song, leaving the audience wanting more because you’ve touched them personally and deeply. And that is where all the magic happens.
In the Emerald City, living in complete harmony,
– Robb