You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had

That's what Muddy Waters said, and I must obey. Or at least believe what he said. People want to know what I lost in Charlottesville. No, it wasn't my lunch, or my duck. To put it mildly, I lost my composure. I can't say I lost my cool because I never possessed that in the first place.

About 10 years ago, Paul and I were slated to play at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas. This is a great festival, and even though some creeps made them change the name recently, it's still a wonderful event staffed by wonderful people. Go there soon before some greedy asshole finds a way to shut it down. What did I say about losing my cool?
At any rate, we were looking around for a few gigs to play after the festival, so Paul called his old friend Dick Waterman in Oxford, Mississippi. Dick put us in touch with a club in Oxford called Proud Larry's. I called up the club and we booked the date about two weeks out. I had, and still have, a lot to learn about publicity, not to mention deadlines. Two weeks is not enough time to be an overnight sensation. By the way, if you are experiencing an overnight sensation, talk to your doctor.
We played King Biscuit and headed south and east to historic downtown Oxford. I say "historic," not just because the city is home to Ole Miss, but because one of the town's landmarks is a statue of a Confederate soldier, with a plaque stating he died for a noble and chivalrous cause. It didn't say what that cause was, but it must have been something other than trafficking in human misery. Who would go out and risk their lives for that? Oh, yeah.
Well, we had problems of our own. There was not a shred, nay, not a scrap of evidence that we were playing at this club on this particular night. No posters, no pictures, no mentions in the paper, not even a cocktail napkin taped to the bar window with "rochel + rains" scrawled on it. We called Dick, who assured us that we still had a gig even if nobody else knew about it.
I naively took it upon myself to spread the word about our show. How hard could it be to drum up an audience in a college town? It was only 4:30, and the show didn't start until 8. I went to the drugstore, bought some scotch tape, pushpins, and a marker, and started annotating our publicity photos and affixing them to telephone poles in the neighborhood. If you're thinking, "how sad," you are correct! You may already be a winner. Or you may be like me. But I don't fault myself. It was a Tuesday, and even 10 years ago, college towns were not like they used to be. We did have a few people at the show, which is to say, at least three, which is to say, three.
I had learned my lesson, or so I thought. This episode was to repeat itself a few years later in Athens, Ohio, another so-called college town. I made up a rule: never book gigs with less than three weeks' notice. I held fast to that rule for several years, then broke it last month to break new ground in Charlottesville, VA.
We got to Charlottesville a day ahead just so we could stop driving for a while. We were about 3000 miles into our tour with another 1000 to go. We checked into the hotel, went out for dinner and decided to stop by the club just to check it out. This brings up another rule: don't stop by the club a day early. It will only make you mad. There were tons of posters on the inside and the outside of the doors, but nothing about our show the next night. I knew I had booked the gig on short notice, hours before we left on our tour, but I had made up flyers and emailed them to the club to print out. I had also made up press releases and sent them with our CDs to the local papers. I'm just pointing out how much I had matured and evolved professionally in the 10 years since the Proud Larry's debacle.

People ask me what it's like to be a musician and I often wonder.

The next day we learned that they were renovating part of the hotel, nothing major, just installing flooring and nailing in carpet overhead. It was kind of annoying after 5 or 6 hours. I called the club and listened to a message plugging the past weekends' shows and the open mic we had seen the night before. Again, no mention of our upcoming appearance. I struck up an interior monologue in which I alternately lectured and berated the club's manager. I do this more than I let on. We threw our stuff in the car and headed to the gig, fighting back frustration. We parked and headed for the door. It was locked. I tried an adjacent door. Also locked. Maybe they're way back in the kitchen, I thought, so I did what anyone would do and kicked the door several times as loudly as I could so someone in the back could hear. I didn't hear anything so I shouted a couple of times and started kicking harder until I realized that a soft-spoken young man was already opening the first door for Paul. Apparently the office was right next to the door, just a few feet away from where I was kicking and hollering and carrying on. I felt like an ass but I couldn't turn back.* I started fuming about the lack of publicity, the flyers I had made up for no good reason, and so on. The manager didn't flinch, but quietly informed me that if we wanted to cancel, it was OK with him, and in fact we could cancel a future date we had scheduled as well.
That brought me up short. I had forgotten about that second date, that tonight's show was just supposed to generate some publicity for the next one. I had thought before that my labor had been in vain, but now I saw it really swirling down the drain. What followed was an episode of sniveling and apologizing so shameful I actually left my body at times. However, ruffled feathers were smoothed over, and we put on a good show for the small but appreciative crowd, with hopes that we'll be able to get the word out to more people when we return in May. It really is a nice club when you get to know it.
I learned the same lesson about short-notice booking that I had learned in the past, only harder. Maybe it will last me a little longer this time. I also learned that you don't gain anything from losing your cool. But of course you can't lose what you ain't never had.

*In his brilliant movie, It's a Gift, W.C. Fields declares, "Even a worm will turn." I would like to amend that to say: even a worm will turn, but an ass will stick it out to the end.