The album release party I talked about last night wasn’t our first show.
We’d had a couple years experience playing already. But even after we released that first album we were very much in the business of saying yes to every live opportunity that we could get.
And it was great. We were on the road every weekend two or three shows. Lots in the southeast and midwest, some in the northeast and even a few out west. Learning how to play, to put on a show, understand our chemistry, craft a setlist, make mistakes, try new stuff.
It was quintessential new rock band on the road. Absolutely fantastic.
And truth be told, I was the head cheerleader of ‘lets book a million shows and say yes to everything’.
But after a couple more years of that I started to become less and less right. Only I didn’t know it.
We did a gig on a Sunday night somewhere in North Carolina. It was a dud. Everything about it was a dud. And we knew it when the gig got booked months earlier. But hey, we say yes to everything. To add injury to insult…during the last song of the set a girl crashed into our guitar players mic stand, hitting him right in the teeth and there was blood.
We should have never been there. His bloody teeth were the physical representation of a great idea that didn’t evolve.
Saying yes to everything was spot on when we started. But the longer we toured the less it was right.
The right ideas can become the wrong ideas. It happens so gradually, it’s easy to miss.
Don’t miss a post. Sign up for free.
Drop me an email: gabe@gabethebassplayer.com