Rawk, or things like it

Let it be known that I have survived my first-ever New Hampshire music gig! It was also, incidentally, my first-ever gig for an indifferent audience, unless you count some of the open mics I slogged through in college. Milestones galore!

The occasion was the weekly Acoustic Thursdays hoopty at Fritz, a panini-and-gourmet-fries joint on the main drag in Keene. It's basically a glorified semi-open-mic, I suppose you'd call it; anyone could play a 20-ish minute set, but you had to sign up for a slot a week or two in advance. Having made the necessary arrangements, I knew going in that this wouldn't be anything like the concert experiences I've had over the last year-ish: aside from not necessarily being geek-trending contemporary quasi-folk fans, the crowd would mostly be there for the food first and the music second, as opposed to, say, a house concert, which is generally the other way around. So I girded my loins, ice-packed my ego, and went in smiling.

And got roughly what I was expecting, or maybe a notch or two less. I got there early enough to catch the set before mine, an affable downsized Libertarian Sam Elliot sort who favored Levon Helm and Moody Blues covers with a gruff voice that suited the material. He was good, and he chose crowd-pleasing material, but with one or two exceptions the audience members greeted his songs with several minutes of overlapping conversation followed by a few seconds of polite applause. Right-o, I said to myself as I lowered my aspirations for the evening a tad, hoping that it would free me up from the stage fright that nibbled at my soul's extremities.

Then it was my turn, and once I'd gotten my sound checked (after discovering that my Goya's soundhole is too small for an external pickup) I was off and running. I started off with "Eclipse" which is audience- and nervous-guitarist-friendly, poured my usual amount of all into it, and was met with conversation and polite applause. Jawohl. Seeing that this was the baseline, I set the bar right there at knee height and plowed onward. I made one attempt to raise said bar with my second number, "Strowler's Song," but again with the mutter-mutter-golf-clap, and let's face it, if I can't shut 'em up with "Strowler's Song," I ain't gonna. So, freed from the responsibility of being noticed, I settled on being good: "Step It Out, Mary" followed, then "One By One," then "Frost" to close it out, which isn't the ideal choice for a loud restaurant but I wanted to prove that I could actually play the damn guitar in my hands.

The crowd interrupted their conversations long enough to clap. Thank you, Keene! Good night!

I did, however, stick around for the next guy up, and it's here that the story takes an interesting turn. The guy in question, whose name was Glenn, was heading up to the stage for his own sound check with an electric guitar in hand (Acoustic Thursdays, my heinie), and threw my a compliment on my set on the way past; I'm pretty sure he was the only one who was actually listening. I hung out a bit with the Sam Elliot guy, who chatted with me about music during Glenn's bit (I guess that's what you do at Fritz), but I really wanted to hear this other guy play—he was doing originals like me, and not only was his songwriting quite good, but his electric guitar work was outstanding. I tried to be the best audience member I could (to set an example, if nothing else), and went up to compliment him at the end as he had me. A mutual-admiration conversation ensued as he started packing up his gear.

There was supposed to be a duo up next. They hadn't showed.

Glenn, realizing that there were mics going to waste and an audience who wouldn't give a rat's ass, said, "Hey, you wanna get up there and jam? I'll gladly play backup on your stuff."

Well, hell to the yes, comrade.

The music we played was rough, to say the least. I broke out "The Way Things Go," which I thought would benefit most from the electric; he followed up with CSNY's "Ohio," which was convenient to the alternate tuning I was in and simple. This got him on a Neil Young run, and I had to sit out one because it was a song I didn't know and wonky in the chord structure, which turned out to be the last because the duo, a couple of teens into early Dylan and Woody Guthrie (!) had finally arrived. But dag rabbit, we had rapport up there, both verbal and musical (I sang a spontaneous unplanned harmony on "Ohio," which zomigod I have never ever ever done before in a performance setting), enough so that we exchanged cards with promises to hang out and jam again sometime soon.

So all in all, not a bad experience, and I'll hopefully be going back some Thursday down the line. In the meantime, cluegirl and I have been talking about music things. Watch this space for exciting goings-on!