We had two more gigs over the weekend at a local bar with the drummer Flintpunk hooked me up with. Friday night went off nicely no issues and we rocked out decently. Saturday night was a whole different beast all together. It started out with someone getting shot within walking distance from where we where playing (Sarcasm: I Love downtown Flint). If that wasn’t enough to mess with my mind a little bit, my bass players amp died before we started our first set. Luckily he had his backup in the van but it was probably a good 15-20 min before we had it all sorted out. Now we get started and I’m so worked up I’m shaking while playing, fumbling around the fret board and getting more worked up as we go on and BAM!!! a few songs into it a string breaks on my #1. No biggy finish the song by improving some leads etc… Next song I plug in my Strat and it starts screeching. At this point I’m so worked up I barley make it through the rest of the set.
Now we have ½ an hour between sets as the bar wants to make money off the jukebox so I decide to use the time to meditate, change some strings and a strange thing happened to me. Instead of calming down I started to get angry. This anger just keeps building until all thought was gone and it was time to play again. We get up there and I just pore all this built up anger and emotion into my playing and performance, doing things I have never done on stage or practice. Moving without hesitation, playing without my conscious mind interfering and the rest of the band started feeding off what was happening. We ended up having one of the best sets I can remember ever!
Here is where it gets even better. It just so happened that the sound guy at this bar unknown by me owns and runs the biggest sound and lighting company in Mi and there was a Shriner in the audience visiting him who does booking for a big benefit they put on every year. This guy approaches me as I’m packing my gear up and introduces himself, stating that he wanted to talk specifically with me. He then compliments me for about 15 min about my performance and playing and books us to play a benefit the Shriners are putting on in June to an audience of about 1500 people on a stage the size of the bar we just played at. How cool is that!!!
This definitely is one of the gigs I’m going to remember for the rest of my life! :dude
