Five years ago I was living in
Detroit.
That sounds like the start of a gripe
of some sort, but it’s not. Unlike a lot of people, I love the former Murder
Capital of the World. The Big D earned that moniker in the late ‘70s, back when
I was still attending high school there. Detroit residents have slacked off
considerably since then; these days the world’s most dangerous city is Caracas,
Venezuela (Thank you, Google).
Sure, Detroit’s still ranked
Number Five in America, but if you know which neighborhoods to avoid, your odds
of eluding a bullet increase dramatically. Still, while living there I would
occasionally venture onto “the wrong side of the tracks.” Why? Because that’s
where all the fun stuff happens.
I was looking for work with a
weekend bar band. The Craigslist classifieds offered a couple good leads. One
was an ‘80s tribute band, but I played all those tunes the first time around, back
in the ‘80s. And in my opinion, musically, that’s not a decade that cries out
to be revived. Also, I’m getting old and fat. I have no desire to ever again wear
a “big hair” wig and Spandex pants in public.
The other lead was more
promising; a “roots blues and classic rock” group. According to the ad, they
had recently lost their lead singer and had several upcoming gigs “more or
less” on the books. I called and scheduled an audition for the following
Friday.
The neighborhood was not good,
but I’ve lived in worse and the car I parked out front of the rundown duplex
was not worth stealing.
The five guys in the band seemed
OK; younger than me, but only by a handful of years. There seemed to be no buttheads,
egomaniacs, primadonnas, or serial killers among them. If you’ve ever played in
a working bar band, you know how unusual this is.
Also, no band wives were present,
thus reducing the chances we’d encounter the dreaded “Yoko Syndrome” somewhere
down the road. In short, they seemed a good bet.
We ran through a few of the
standards together; “Mustang Sally,” “Thrill is Gone,” some James Brown and
Springsteen. Both the guitar players were phenomenal, as was the keyboard
player. The drummer and bass player were rock solid and deep in the pocket.
I play all those instruments myself,
but not as well as any of them. So all I had to do was blow the harp and sing.
This has always been a dream of mine, since it means I’d have to carry less equipment
to gigs.
Our styles blended well. I liked
them. They liked me. Everybody was getting excited and talking about all the
money we were going to rake in once we put together the requisite 40 songs
needed to get through a club gig.
And then the smoke came out.
Now, I’m no Pollyanna and I don’t
give a dingo’s backside what anyone does when they’re off the clock, but I
don’t confuse work with partying. And getting 40 songs down tight in a short
amount of time is work, folks. Believe it.
Within a half hour, everyone in
the rehearsal space, myself excepted, was deep into Bob Marley-ville. Every
tune fluxed into a snooze-inducing, half-hour Phish jam. It was then I learned
these guys had been “rehearsing” in this same basement twice a week for years
and had played exactly zero money gigs.
I would be drawing Social
Security by the time they managed to put 40 tunes together. I’m not sure they
noticed when I booked.
It was almost two years later I
noticed a help wanted ad on the bulletin board at Junkyard Guitars. Blues,
originals, classic rock. And most important to those of us trying to keep Ramen
noodles on the table, the words “working band.”
I made the call. The guy who
answered the phone sounded nice enough. We talked for a bit and again, things seemed
promising. He asked what tunes I knew, my influences, etc., the usual stuff. I
asked about their booking schedule. Though they had nothing solid set up at the
moment, the guy had a bunch of leads he planned to follow up on just as soon as
the band firmed up.
“Well, that sounds good,” I said.
“The last band I auditioned with were great players, but all they wanted to do
was sit around the basement jamming and smoking, not necessarily in that
order.”
“Oh, yeah, been there, done that,”
the guy laughed.
And it turned out he indeed had
been there and had done that. Twice a week, for who knows how many years. I
recognized the address the moment he gave it to me. Same house, same guys, same
story.
He didn’t remember me, which did
not surprise me all that much. I didn’t keep our appointment and he never
called back. A few months later I moved back to this side of the state.
It’s kind of a shame, because
they all really were great players.
Is there a moral to this story?
Ya got me. Sometimes, there are too many conclusions to be drawn to settle on
just one.
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