Worst. Gig. Ever.

I never want to have an experience like Saturday night again. It's the kind of show that makes you quit performing music.

No crowd, middle of nowhere, wrong band for the venue, sequestered in the un-air-conditioned outside part of the venue where no one wanted to go because it was too fucking hot and humid, plus the owner wasn't pleased with us because of hearsay and ignorance (she didn't know that when we were sounding unrehearsed it was to make her customers who were outside with us happy by playing their requests).

Look - I know we suck sometimes. I have limits as a singer and I own them. My voice doesn't always do what I want it to do. When it's humid and moldy outside, I sometimes have no idea what my voice will do. But that's not most of the time...it's occasionally. For the most part, we didn't suck on Saturday, and we're not a band that ignores our crowd and just does "our show". We asked them what they wanted to hear, then tried to give it to them. I even learned a song between sets just for a couple of guys in the crowd who wanted to hear it. It just happens that some ignorant assholes inside didn't like that, and didn't understand what was going on, so they verbalized their frustration with us to the management who was then looking for any moment devoid of perfection which colored their opinion of us. And the tactless way the owner approached us with her concerns is one for the ages, flying off half-cocked with basically no understanding of what was happening. Sad.

We had a small, strong group of people who loved us and stayed the whole show, even though they hung out in the inside portion most of the time. On most nights, that would have made it worth it, but Saturday was not like most nights.

We are a PLEASER band. We do whatever we can to please the people we're playing to...and it went and bit us in the ass on Saturday night.

Might be time to reconsider that and start just doing whatever WE want to do...or time to give up and move on to something else in music.

The gig is probably tied with one I played in Slaphappy (South Street) for my worst gig ever. I'm glad it took seven years for it to happen again, and I hope it's at least another seven before I have to go through a night like Saturday, if ever.

Love to all,
TMS

Music in May for Le Schizo

So the past month has been hit-or-miss active for me, music-wise. But mostly really fun!

On May 5th the cover band (Roman Holiday) played a Cinco De Mayo show at Pappasito's and it was really good and fun. Definitely made up for how much we sucked ass last year when we played their event.

Then we didn't do much for a while, partially because I was in Jacksonville, FL, where on May 14th I played a little acoustic show with my good buddy Dennis and we reunited 3/4ths of our old cover band from there, Slaphappy (Brent joined us as well). It was weird only because I've conditioned myself to sing everything 1/2-step down, so a lot of the keys were trickier to find than usual. But overall, it was a BLAST and made me sad that we don't live closer, because we'd have a killer acoustic duo. Joy!

I came back to town to some drama, but we cleared it up and played a show at Johnny Fin's on the lake on May 22nd. It was a pretty good show - the sound on stage was great (helped by my resurrected Carvin PM15A speaker), and we played well as a result, even though my voice was all over the place due to an upper respiratory thing. The crowd was pretty typical for the venue - tepid and asking for music we don't play. One part of the show that was particularly awesome was when I got to play guitar on "Rebel Yell" and "Crazy Train" - I went completely apeshit on those two in the solos and amused myself. We got our biggest crowd reaction from that part of the show, which was weird - they were even cheering me along DURING the song. Another weird point - the song that brought people onto the dance floor was "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind. Seriously. Not "Super Freak", not "Brick House" or "Play That Funky Music". Fucking Semi-Charmed. Go figure.

Before that show, I was called to fill in for the missing bass player of a band at Latitude 30 on Thursday the 20th. It was an adventure learning the songs as I played them (well, only in a few cases - I knew most of the songs), and I had fun playing with the drummer. Working out some creative interplay is always sweet - and he's great because he's always listening.

I look forward to Roman Holiday's June shows and the fact that both our Marble Falls venue "The Sports Arena" and our Killeen venue "The Duckhorn Tavern" are coming back on our schedule. Now if we could only find someplace awesome in Austin where all our local friends could come see us play...

Oh, and I've decided that I am definitely going to be putting together a set/song list for my acoustic show. At least then I'll have an established repertoire that I can use when I play those shows (if I ever get around to booking them).

Peace to all!
TMS