Worst Gig of My F&cking Life
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
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Welcome to my worst gig nightmare - a drunken singer, a pissed-off bar owner, and me, making all the wrong moves. Get your share of cringe and hard lessons from my music life.
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00:00 Intro
00:21 A Few Weeks Earlier
01:18 A Few Days Before the Show
01:41 The Night of the Gig
03:30 Lessons Learned 
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As anAudio Engineer, I had a bad gig a few weeks ago, I was playing A venue out of town, and so I had contacted the club owner the day I got assigned the gig 2 weeks out). We worked out all of the gear that he had, and I got a detail inventory of his Mike locker/gear and everything seemed good to go. I show up the night of the gig two hours before the set in order to go over Soundcheck and work with the band a little bit. I walk up to the mixer and turn the mixing board on, and nothing happens, there’s no power so I look over behind the mixing board and there’s not even A power cord to be found. I then go over to the stage to work with the stage box and front of house speakers. And nothing has a power cord. furthermore, there’s no XLR cables or any cables for that matter coming from the monitors or the front of the house speakers, or the stage box, etc. this club owner had no idea where any of the cables for any of the gear he owned was. So he called his usual Audio Engineer, who said that he takes down the entire set up after every single show, and brings all the cabling home with them so it doesn’t get stolen. Furthermore, the original Audio Engineer was not even in the same state at the time, so we couldn’t get any of the cabling. Luckily, the band had one Mackie 12 in the back and I was able to get some of my own XLR‘s and power cables for the mixing board, but we ended up doing a three piece set out of one Mackie, thump, and a mixing board on stage so everyone can plug-in directly to the mixing board. Needless to say, I learned that I need to ask a lot more questions of the venue, and I ended up adding 18 new questions to the list that I have been developing over the last 20 years of questions to ask places I’ve never worked before 😂😂😂.
oh man, that's rough. Questions list is a great idea.
Me and my buddies ones had a gig that was two hours away. My drummer got pulled over and charged a absorbent speeding ticket. He was livid and was considering turning back we told him we still wanna perform so he stuck with us when we got there. There was like two people there. It was in somebody’s house and the house kit was awful. It was like three drums. We started playing for the three other musicians in the room. We started playing songs that we wrote early on as a band. One of them was called I poop my pants. Although the turnout was horrible, the drum set was horrible and the car ride was horrible. I still had a lot of fun with my buddies, but nearly 5 hours for that kind of turned out was really disappointing.
Love the gig story. Love to hear more. It’s the teaching that helps work through the ups and down on gigging.
Subbed in as a bass player with a rock covers band, my good friend is the drummer, and he gives me a list of 50 or so songs they are going to play. No problem, I probably knew more than half already, and I had a few weeks to get the others up to speed. Pretty standard rock stuff, and I learn backup vox to "overdeliver.". This is one of those bands that had been playing for years and years together, and they knew what everyone else was going to do by a gesture or look. No rehearsal. I show up, greet everyone, seems ok, then we start. Play two of the songs I learned, then song #3 the singer just yells out a name and they start playing. Not on the list, don't know it, never heard it before. I'm looking at the guitar player's hand positions, and figuring out which chords he's playing on the fly, and just playing roots. It's not a Weather Report song, I figure out the structure and progression pretty quickly, but still have no idea if I'm playing anything close to what the song has in it.
Then the guitarist walks up to me on stage.
It's loud, so he leans over, and yells something at me. He doesn't seem happy. I'm not happy either, I just got blindsided by some random song I've never heard before. I lean in closer, and he hollers out, "ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!" I just grin a little, say, yeah or something, and he walks back to his place.
Haha that’s great! Sounds like you hung in there all right!
Every damn time
Great story Jeff, thanks for sharing!
We need more reminders like this. I came up in a very ego heavy scene but a few great folks, irreplaceable. One for that one of the popular bars in this college town, was asked if I can fill in an open asset I said sure. Brought my guitarist after we had a rehearsal, and we had a drummer as well, who remembered the show up to the gig with his own personal flash photographer, but forgot his kick pedal. That was over 6 years ago and I'm still not able to get a gig at that place but it's kind of a running gag now whenever I harass the guy about it. Good times lmao
Who needs a kick pedal when you have someone taking your gig photos for the gram!
I once played 1/2 a gig with my fly wide open. The girls on the second floor were waiving and yelling a whooping. I felt like John Lennon! Then I found out. Still got a lot of girl attention though which was nice!
hahah
TMfly
Definitely not as horrible from an audience perspective (or lack of), but…
My band was hired to play 90 min for a nonprofit fundraiser (music to be ignored by). Most of our originals are introspective and not party vibes, so we did 2 rehearsals to learn 20+ pop and R&B covers. Also added in-ear monitors for the 1st time in our final rehearsal. The singer was mixing our sound on a board that we hadn’t messed around with in 3 years and barely knew how to use. It was also 50 degrees outside and I could barely feel my fingers as the lead guitarist. It was fun although no one actually paid attention to us. IEMs felt good.
Next day, we get videos of our set and I can’t hear my guitar at all. I go back to a picture of the mixer I saved for future reference and discovered that the volume for my amp mic was at zero, so 1 month of learning the songs was never heard. 😂
Oh man that’s rough. On the bright side, sounds like it wasn’t the most attentive audience 🤪
"ALL musician need to take ownership of the performances "
Trust me, never a truer word spoken.
For some reason I found that others wouldn't want to put in the work and learn new songs but instead rely on the keyboardist (yours truly) to work it out and feed everyone at practice sessions.
Very frustrating 😢
I was doing this function gig a few years back. The band is usually fronted by a male singer but for this show had a female vocalist so before the gig we sat down as a band and went through a few songs that we were going to change the key of to accommodate her vocal range. I'm a horn player and the band leader just said for the horns to sit out the tunes that had their keys changed, because they didn't have charts in the new keys to hand, fair enough.
So anyway we get to the gig and it's going okay. We get to the first tune that we've changed the key of, it's Treasure by Bruno Mars. This is where it got dicey in a hurry... the band launches into the five hits '*bap bap bap bap bap* Gimme your gimme your... etc'
- the guitarist was playing the stabs in the newly agreed upon key
- the bassist in the key that the band usually plays it in
- the keys player in the key the recorded version of the song is in
The trumpet player and i look at eachother wide-eyed (and ultimately relieved that because of the lack of charts we were able to sit this car-crash out!) - the problem was, they all kept playing, convinced they were in the right key. The singer battled through trying to pitch to 3 different keys and I stared at the floor for the duration of the song. I don't remember much after that but that was one that stuck with me.
I always wonder how many people in the audience actually notice when stuff like this happens. 😂
Getting musicians to make a commitment is not an easy task. Live Theatre is not much different. I do a completely different gig once a month and I know who is going to be consistent, still redundancies are built in now over 7 years. If you put on any event musical or otherwise, you have to assume people may bail out, the more assets one has the better.
Call it orchestration
Indeed!
Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed :)
Did you move from Jersey City? I don’t think this is all on you. You are a great musician. If the bar owner knows anything about music he should have been grateful to have you play in his bar, with or without a singer.
Thanks! Yes, but this gig was way before I ever lived in JC.
You're a great storyteller.
Thanks!
Jeremy Daly??