Soundsurfr - Live at Cool Beanz

Last night I summoned up the courage to take my acoustic guitar into the Cool Beanz cafe in a local town here in NY and sign up for the open mike. This is the first time I've played to a live audience in a few years, and more relevantly, one of very few times I've ever performed solo at a public venue.

I'm not shy at all about performing with a band. I'm all over that. If you find yourself in trouble (break a string, forget a verse, embark on a coughing fit, whatever) somebody next to you is always on hand to bail your ass out with a Hammond B3 set to "stun" or a Marshall stack cranked up to 11. Not so when you're solo. And as a solo artist, screw-ups cannot be blamed, as is customary, on the bass player (sorry Viscount) unless you happen to be playing the bass. There are no harmony singers to cover your pitchy falsetto, range-busting chorus notes or the fact that your larynx has been torn to rags from a coughing fit brought on by a slice of pepperoni that went down the wrong pipe earlier in the evening.

When it's just you and your acoustic guitar, all eyes and ears are trained directly at you. Focus your gaze on any single individual in the crowd and you will find them staring right back into your eyes. The eyes say... here we are now, entertain us. The feeling is palpable and disorienting.

In the back of my mind, I know I have the potential to dish out a pretty good performance. At times when I'm practicing, I fall into the zone, where every note is sung effortlessly and clever stylized voicings are at my fingertips and it feels O SO GOOD to be playing for y'all thangyouveramuch. Like when you suddenly find yourself in the pocket during a tennis match or golf round and every shot seems to go right where you aimed it. The problem is summoning that calm, cool headed comfort and confidence on demand. For me this capability behaves like a cat. It never comes when I call it - it just appears occasionally out of nowhere when it's good and ready, and I just have to be damn pleased that it's there. When I absolutely need it, I can be assured that it will be off sniggering in some hidey-hole, leaving me to muck my way through the songs with something way less than aplomb.

Of course, I've created that perfect in the pocket performance a million times in front of the IMAGINARY audience. The great thing about that imaginary audience is how they all delight in noticing the minute licks and flourishes you've worked so hard to perfect and how they completely disregard flubs as if they did not occur. You can even stop a song in the middle and start over again, and they won't even notice. Gotta love that.

In the front of my mind, however, is the unsettling understanding that REAL audiences tend to behave in exactly the opposite manner. Any and all performance glitches will be duly noted, written down for the upcoming press release, video taped through zoom lenses for looped replay on MySpace, and discussed among the audience members via megaphone as I step down from the stage.

The absolute worst fear for the solo musician is the brain freeze. This happens to you. It's when you walk into a room to do something and you have to go back into the room you came from to try and remember what it was you were supposed to do in the room you just walked out of.

For musicians, this takes the form of completely forgetting the chord progression of a chorus you've just played twice already in the past 90 seconds, or the lyrics of a verse you've sung at least 1900 times in your life. The likelihood of this happening on stage is directly proportional to how nervous you are. And when it happens, every human being in the entire universe, including childhood bullies, ex-wives, forgotten relatives, former high school teachers and the guy you inadvertantly cut off on the expressway last night materializes in the audience, leaning forward through the awkward silence. Their collective ears will be cocked forward, waiting in intent canine expectation to see whether you've got the chops to recover gracefully, or whether you will spontaneously devolve into a pitiful, sniveling rodent strapped to a guitar.

What makes these "open mike" venues even tougher is that you only get to play one song. That's it. One chance to be paraded, observed, judged and sentenced. No opportunity to warm up, feel out the audience, settle into a groove, find your space, get in the zone, yada, yada. It's like trying out for a baseball team where you get one at-bat and your entire athletic ability is going to be judged based on whether you hit or strike out. And you know you're capable of both.

Just trying to decide which song to play is a nerve wracking exercise. Do I dazzle them with some intricate guitar playing? Not today man, it's cold in here and my fingers have taken on the dexterity of Idaho baking potatoes. How about the easy one that I know backwards and forwards? Nah, too safe. Doesn't show 'em anything - I'll be consigned to oblivion among the throngs of perpetual wannabees - career open mikers who have been doing the "one song" thing for years, hoping against all hope to someday be asked to perform a full set as the featured artist on a Saturday night. How about that jazz piece - some technically slick chord progressions and an unusual choice for a folk venue, but damn, the vocal is ever so slightly out of my range in the verses.

Baby Jeebiz, why am I putting myself through all this pressure? You'd think I was gearing up to play a Carnegie Hall date packed with A&R executives, when in reality I'm about to strum a few chords in some hole-in-the-wall, suburban strip mall storefront bagel shop patronized by about 32 characters, each of whom appear to have stepped right out of "A Mighty Wind", many of whom are probably tone deaf, and a few of whom may actually be deaf. Hell, the guy who went on before me sang so out of tune the potted plants were drooping.





And they were plastic.






And everyone applauded.




At that point I realized I could get up there in a Dick Cheney mask and mumble the Star Spangled Banner and these people would applaud.

So what does that tell ya?

Nothing. But I got up and did my thing and it was fun. As I suspected, I was not a nervous wreck, but I didn't step into the zone either. My voice was a little shaky, and I missed a chord here and a lyric there, but people listened, and they smiled, and they nodded along to the rythm of my playing in solemn appreciation and THAT, people, is why we musicians suffer through the all the performance anxiety and get out and play when it would be so much easier to stay home and bask in the safe, comfortable revelry of the imaginary audience.

Maybe I'll go back next week. If I can drum up the nerve.