Viva La Rock

The band played a club gig this week-end. We haven't done that in a long time - we were content with occasional weddings, high school reunions, and parties. Recently, though, we bought a large trailer to haul all of our equipment around and to store it (we have amassed so much stuff over the years, we were using FOUR storage buildings), so we need more frequent gigs to make the trailer payments. Plus, there is ego involved - a lot of local bands are cropping up and we need to tell ourselves that we've still "got it."

I was looking forward to playing - any musician can tell you that every so often you get the "itch" and you HAVE to play - you don't care where, you don't care how much - you just want to play.

Friday night did not go well, really. We got to the club too late to set everything up perfectly, so our sound suffered; we couldn't hear each other. There weren't many people there, either. We were rusty, also - I've said it before, but we rarely ever practice or learn anything new.

It didn't take long for all of the memories to come flooding back as to why we don't do this much anymore. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, we played nearly every single weekend. We had really great nights, we had some very bad nights (generally involving alcohol and intra-band fistfights - my two nephews, who are brothers, can give the brothers from the Kinks, Oasis, and the Black Crowes a run for their money in sibling rivalry) and we have stories that we love to relive when we are traveling to a gig somewhere (like the time John accidentally picked up our guitarist's "spit cup" and drank from it - he threw up behind the stage without missing a single bass note). You get older, though, and you get married and you have kids and suddenly it's not a good idea to be gone every weekend. I went to bed at 5:00 a.m. after the Friday gig.

Saturday was MUCH better - suddenly all of that "I-don't-want-to-do-this-anymore" goes away. We got there early and fixed our sound problems. We had a bigger crowd and the crowd wanted to hear ROCK AND ROLL (although the club owner gently reminded us that in South Arkansas, you have to throw in a country tune here and there to ensure continued employment). I got to bed about 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning and every bone in my body ached.

But I'm looking forward to doing it again in May.