On weird gigs

Having just played a weird gig, let’s talk about weird gigs. The kind gig where everything seems basically in place, but for whatever reason, nothing is happening. There’s nothing grossly wrong, but nothing feels right musically, and you don’t feel like you’re playing your best, to the point that you’re doubting your abilities. You don’t feel you have any ideas of what to play, or the time doesn’t feel great, or you’re not communicating well with the other players, or your hands aren’t working well. You’re not comfortable. 

Whatever the problem, contributing factors could be the sound, the material, another rhythm section player having a weird night. We blame ourselves, but we’re not always completely to blame— maybe we’re not handling these normal problems very well… both emotionally, and in our actual playing. We should be working on that, but everybody has limits to when they’re going to feel good and play well (or feel that they’re playing well).   

First, if you’re basically covering the gig, what you’re doing is probably fine. If you didn’t know what you were trying to do, you’d think you sounded fine. Nobody hears the notes you wanted to play but didn’t, as the pianist Jasnam Daya Singh told me. I’ve felt badly about a gig only to have listeners come up to me afterwards, excited about the music. This happened last night. I don’t play to get compliments, but you have to respect it when the audience enjoys what you did.  

The answer is always to play more— more sessions, more gigs. It helps you to play better, and also to understand and accept that you won’t be a genius every minute of your professional life. And that things are probably working better than you think they are. And it helps you recognize when some aspect of the gig is not working well for you. And you get better at dealing with those things, and correcting them, when possible.  

Recording more helps. You’ll play plenty of sessions where you hate the way you play, but listening to yourself later, after you’ve forgotten what you were trying to do, you sounded fine. Or good, or great. So you proceed more on faith, when necessary. 

Listening more is good. You have to have something in your ears— melodies, forms, musical energy, percussion sounds and ideas that are inspiring to you. Probably it should be in some way connected to the gig stylistically.

Practicing is good, but practicing hard right before a gig can be a detriment. If you’re doing something that puts you in a certain muscular zone, that may not be a useful physical state to be in on that gig. Often if you just walk in without having played, things move easily. Watch out for things that seem to help you play better, on a particular kind of gig, and practice that. What gets you ready for a rock or funk gig may put you in a funny place for a jazz gig. 

Remember what you tried to play that wasn’t working on the weird gig, and practice that specifically. Something you thought of to play, but couldn’t, is the most important thing to work on— if something comes to you as a musical impulse while playing, you want to be able to fulfill it.  

I write this in the form of advice, as if I have it completely worked it out, but this is really for myself. It’s one thing to know it, it’s another to be completely accepting and understanding of it. I’ve talked to people— like 70 years old, ultimate professionals— dealing with it in some capacity, in one circumstance or another. You’d be surprised. Some people are better at detachment than others, or are more naturally confident. Some are just simple people who don’t worry about anything. A lot of people will be feeling that way, but will put up a front. It’s better to do that, for the sake of their confidence in you— remembering that you probably sounded fine.     

The best thing you can do, possibly, when this is happening, is scale back your ambitions. Maybe you don’t have a lot of percussion to offer to the music tonight, but you can do the job. There are lots of great records out there like that, that are not loaded with big percussion statements. Play what you can, relax, probably some openings will present themselves and you can surprise people by being a genius then.