Recently, my gig schedule has taken almost just as much time as my class schedule. This is mostly a good thing, but occasionally it can make for REALLY long weeks. This past week I had the good fortune of playing 7 paying gigs in 7 days. I had a good time playing all of them, and I made a good chunk of change. I'm too modest to disclose numbers, but let's just say that I made enough to more than match what I paid to buy a new clarinet at the end of the summer!
The range of gigs I've played recently has been pretty wide, and it's made for an entertaining week for me and a lot of new stories. I did several straight-ahead jazz combo gigs for university events recently, and the band was treated really well at all of them. Plus we got to eat! (Side note: the catered gig food diet is not recommended for weight loss or even general health, but it is delicious.) Since I didn't do a ton of small combo playing and improvisation all summer, it's been really nice to work on that again.
Last Friday was pretty interesting in particular simply because of the juxtaposition of playing I did that evening. I played a jazz quartet gig for the UA Arts and Sciences Leadership Board earlier that evening. It was mostly populated by professors, and it was a classy, controlled, and laid back event. Just a few hours later, I carried my saxophone into a dive bar in Tuscaloosa called The Booth to play with a local cover band called the Druid City Band. Talk about a 180. The Booth is mostly populated by fraternity and sorority members and is typically crowded, wild, loud enough to induce vomiting, and just downright terrifying sometimes. I went from tastefully improvising over "Have You Met Miss Jones" to wailing pentatonic licks over Widespread Panic tunes and high-fiving my new fratty fans in the same evening. Both gigs were certainly fun in very different ways, and they required me to use very different aspects of my playing. The important thing to remember is that no matter who your audience is, you're being paid to entertain them. (Even if your audience is a group of several drunk girls who insist on sitting on the stage and spill beer all over your shoes...) You must leave your ego at the door and do what the gig calls for. And in most cases, if you do that in a humble way and respect the music you're performing, you can have a blast playing anything.
I played another interesting gig on Saturday night at the Kappa Alpha fraternity house. Just so you have a mental picture of where I was, this is what the basement/party garage at the house looked like:
Looks pretty family friendly, right? Yeah...
The name of the band is Cosmic Charlie, and they do Grateful Dead covers plus cover the entire Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album. I was the designated sax soloist, so I got to play those famous solos off of the album on "Money" and "Us and Them." The other perk of this gig (other than playing fun music) was that I got to reunite with several of my musician friends from the band. They're based out of Athens, GA, and I've only played a couple gigs with them when they've come through Alabama before, but we all really hit it off the first time we met. Every time I've performed with them, they have brought an incredible amount of energy, clarity, creativity, and professionalism to the gig, and they are very knowledgeable about a variety of styles of music. It just goes to show you that there are talented musicians everywhere, and you should never dismiss anyone simply because they're playing cover tunes at a frat party.
After my marathon gig weekend, I had a break for a couple days, and then I returned to my weekly gig at the Alcove International Tavern on Tuesday. Out of all the venues I've played since I've been in Tuscaloosa, the Alcove has felt the most like home. This month marks 2 years that I've been playing a weekly jazz gig there on Tuesdays, which is quite a miracle in a town that isn't really known for being hip to the jazz scene. (I have musician friend who was seriously asked one time "Oh, so you play jazz- like Rush and Neil Peart and stuff?") However, the Alcove has the exact combination of ingredients that allow jazz to not only survive but thrive there.
So what makes this bar so special and different from the droves of other bars in town? Part of it is the management. Chad Smith, the owner, opened the Alcove in 2009 with the idea of creating a space that was unique. He built much of the bar on his own and by hand, and he made it into a hip space that's sophisticated enough for the elite business people of Tuscaloosa, but relaxed enough for the average college student to feel comfortable as well. He also wanted to take a risk with music: instead of always hiring the typical rock/pop cover bands, he wanted to start a jazz night from the very beginning. Thanks to good fortune and a little bit of dumb luck, I sort of fell into the gig from the start, and I've been playing there every Tuesday ever since. I'm thankful for an owner and friend like Chad who had a strong enough creative vision to try something new and trust that it would be successful.
The other factor that makes the Alcove so special to me is the audience. For the past two years, every Tuesday I've had the pleasure (and sometimes shock) of meeting an array of strange and wonderful people. Some are regulars and strangers who I've nicknamed over time: Clark Kent, Golden Dollar, Hawaiian shirt guy (whose real name is Doug), Prom Hair Lady, etc. Others are people who have become friends and loyal fans, and I love chatting with them every week and often times discovering new music through them. The bar is also filled with businessmen drinking bourbon, professors who come to escape the college party bars, visitors from other countries who are passing through town, hipsters in plaid and thick rimmed glasses, country boys who didn't even know they could enjoy jazz, music students, moms on ladies night out, and the occasional creepy older gentleman. I've always been a people watcher, and this job lets me observe the behavior and interaction of all sorts of fascinating people.
The last (but certainly not least) factor that makes the Alcove feel like home is my band. I've worked with several arrangements of musicians there over the years that have all had a special place in my heart. However, I feel like I've particularly hit my stride with my current group. I play with Jonathan Harms on guitar, Josh Kavanaugh on bass, and Michael Battito on drums. They are all great musicians and terrific people, and they make my job pretty easy every week. After playing together for quite a while, I feel like the group has really started to gel and develop our own vibe. For the first time in possibly my whole musical experience, I really feel like I'm starting to find my personal voice, and I owe it to these guys for opening up avenues that let me explore that. It's a rare and beautiful thing to play with musicians that truly allow you to be yourself, and week after week I never take that for granted.
This past Tuesday felt particularly magical to me. Maybe it's because fall weather is starting to blow in, or maybe it's because of the nap I took that afternoon, or maybe it's just that the crowd was exceptionally enthusiastic. For whatever reason, I felt more comfortable and satisfied with my playing than I have in a long time. I closed my eyes for a long time while digging into a solo on a particular tune. When I finally opened them back up, what I saw amazed me: people were dancing. To a jazz quartet. To my band. And they were students who were my age.
All of the sudden I realized that jazz isn't dead, and it's not even irrelevant. It doesn't need to be confined to museums and academic institutions, to stuffy concert halls or historical presentations. It isn't simply the music of an older generation that bears no relation to me. It's a living, breathing, EVOLVING art form, and I'm actually a part of it. And despite the preconceived notions we have as musicians, people WILL actually listen if you just give them a chance.
I left the bar that night in good spirits. I laughed to myself as I noticed Doug discussing the merits of Tom Petty with a student less than half his age, and I saw the table of Mechanical Information Systems students still partying their Tuesday night away. The Alcove will always be a home for me. There isn't another place in Tuscaloosa like it, and I'm starting to think there aren't that many places in the world quite like it either.
Maybe there's something more to this town than football after all.
