uTopianTurtleTop

THE GIG

I played 3 songs. Jake London came over Monday night to rehearse playing some lead guitar and singing some harmonies on 2 numbers, one of which we used to play a lot together 10 years ago, and one of which I wrote last fall and he’d only heard once before. I found out when I got to the club that each act was getting 3 songs. Last minute decision, I played a song I wrote more than 18 years ago and was in the one full-length play I wrote, a song called “I’m Going Across,” which I hadn’t played publicly in 10 years, at least.

I felt connected to the songs -- and it feels good to feel connected to a song that’s that old -- but felt no connection to the audience. The other acts, everybody had at least one nice song, but it felt to me that few people were connecting to the audience either (of which I was a member, most of the night). The performers -- *we* -- were all climbing the tough mountain face of audience indifference, playing songs for which we all felt deep connection, mostly songs that we had written and were performing on our own, without ensemble members with whom to share solidarity, just us poor little lambs baring our bleating souls. The one song that seemed to top Indifference Mountain was a gorgeous lilting original country blues in a light 6/8 swing, mostly falsetto-sung by Darren Loucas, in something of a Skip James vein, but with a richer harmonic palette. It was a song I'd heard him play before, a song of forlorn romantic abandonment, a forlorn-ness I felt particularly tonight, feeling a longing for audience connection that would not be forthcoming.


I’ll be glad to be performing with a band again. Hopefully in the fall, with a *band name* and a finished CD.