We just finished a show in Okoboji, Iowa. A funny little resort town in the middle of cornfields. They loved us. Over 200 people in a 288 seat house (they must have been children of the corn. ’cause I didn’t really see many houses around here). They followed our rider to the last request for three white towels a person, and vegan organic food (I’m so craving a steak right now). After the show, they had a table set up with five chairs in the lobby, a stack of the promo postcards for the show, and silver sharpies for us to sign for all of the people waiting to talk to us. We even hooked up two buckets to a fog machine (don’t ask. But it was frickin’ sweet).
But right now, I don’t want to be in this absolutely amazing hotel room, right on the lake with a balcony and chair, free wireless internet access, and a mess of stars in the huge Iowa sky.
I want to be at a bar with my sister, because it’s her 21st birthday and I’m missing it.
I love being in a show that travels everywhere. I love that two weekends ago I was in Michigan for a friend’s wedding, last weekend we were playing in Manhattan, this weekend we’re in Iowa, and Tuesday we leave for Seattle. I am seeing so much. Not just the country, but slices of life that aren’t mine. I’ll never forget the kids at an elementary school in Grundy, Virginia begging us to play “Rocky Top” (which we didn’t know, but we sure as hell will learn it before we head back to that part of the country in March). Or the New River Gorge in West Virginia. Or the look of the sunrise over the red rocks in Sedona, Arizona. Or our appaled faces as we hear Brian rattle off the “History of Tap Dancing” in California. Or flying in a nine-seater plane through a blizzard over the Cascade Mountains between Portland, Oregon and Klamath Falls. The feeling of a sold-out show in front of 2800 people. Staying up all night in Brooklyn meandering from bar to bar because, really, there’s no point in going to sleep when you have to catch a cab before bar close.
But I will forget the look on my sister’s face when she ordered her first legal drink (and, trust me, this is a moment she’s been waiting for for a long time)–because I wasn’t there to see it in the first place. There are many days when I miss my friends, my routines. Nights are hard; I’ve never been one that sleeps well on my own.
I love what I do. Since I’ll never pass beyond the second stage of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, everything I do is to please people. And that’s what I do each time I go on stage (well, with Buckets. With I Hate Kenny G usually I just make ‘em cry). I have grown so much as a musician in the last year. A year ago I was a classically trained musician who could sight read the shit out of anything, play anything that happened to be in front of me. Now each day my ear gets better, I hear horn lines in my head, I don’t have to guess so much to find the right keys to play. I will stop short of calling myself a jazz musician, because I’m not quite there yet. Maybe I feel this way because, when I went to college, I purposefully didn’t study music because it was my stress reliever and I didn’t want it to be my job.
Oops.
There’s a fine balance between doing what you need to do in order to do what you love, and giving up what you don’t want to give up in order to do what you love. I’m treading that line right now. And I’m not quite sure what side of that line I’m falling on.
Happy Birthday, Boogster. I wish I was there with you.
1 Comment
October 25, 2007 at 9:22 am
Thanks Legra. I wish you could’ve been there too.