I recently received an email from a long time musician friend, Mikey De Lara. Mikey is an outstanding singer/songwriter. When you hear him you scratch your head and wonder why he’s playing to a room with a mere 10 people. It doesn’t make any sense. The subject of his email read “2nd to last LA show…EVER!”. He stated that he’d had enough, that LA just wasn’t working and several other reasons that supported his decision. It all made sense, but I have to confess, I felt a little disappointed and got a little judgmental about it. I thought it was too severe, giving up and that, and (like many, many of us) Mikey should just enjoy playing for the love of it and play his music for himself. After all, at some of my shows with the lowest attendance, I’ve still met someone interesting, had someone become a life long fan or even met someone who wanted to collaborate on songs, make a music video and much more. Let’s not leave out that one can always play out of town and come back. Change your expectations, I thought.

Well, any sliver of judgment or thinking to counter his “I’m giving up” email, absolutely dissipated last night. Thank you Cinespace. After Cinespace last night, I was 100% with Mikey. I was done. Done like a dinner. Moving, leaving, giving up, WTF am I doing….D.O.N.E! It’s the first time I’ve ever stopped a gig and walked off stage in my entire life. Why? What happened? Well….this is a good one, brace yourself as you may need a crash helmet! I certainly did.

First let me say, (I’m free to say whatever I want right? It’s my blog and no-one is reading it yet!) I knew deep in my bones and my gut that it was going to be a badly managed situation. I have enough experience to judge by the correspondence leading up to the gig from the booking agent. But thought to myself, try a new venue, give it a shot, play to new people, be positive, don’t be pessimistic and so on. So I said yes to a small intimate acoustic show in what they were calling the V.I.P. lounge, early at 8pm, half an hour set. I’d been to the venue many times before, and even though it had been a little on the tragically hip, too-cool-for-school side for me, I’d had a good time and seen some wickedly good bands there. Figured playing in the acoustic lounge would be easy to warm people up for the bigger room and for me to “check it out”. So I do the stuff; read the contract, promote, rehearse, organize set lists, rehearse some more, invite special guests and friends, plan what to wear, coordinate with everyone else, car pool, get money together for musicians…grab my cds and my list and cards, read the contract again, arrive an hour before as stated.

We arrive and realize that the VIP acoustic lounge, is in fact the smoking lounge. NICE! Hey…be positive…set up, play for the nice smoking people and the people that have schlepped out to see you and paid $10 for the privileged. Set up done, sound check done. Just as we settled to wait until the curtain call (I say that to add to the comedy, as there was no curtain, or dressing room). We then noticed, right outside the glass doors separating us from the bar, a band was sound checking, probably 20 feet from us. That’s strange, we thought. Then said band starts, or should I say, THRASH METAL BAND starts!!!! Are you serious? Why oh why on god’s great earth would anyone book a thrash metal band to play in a small bar at 8pm? (Note: thrash metal should have a mandatory start time of any time after 11pm, and thrash metal should have an entirely different venue from any other genre that doesn’t have the word metal in it, but that goes without saying, right? Apparently not.) So I look at our designated engineer and he acknowledges my disdain. He leaves to try to get them to play a little softer (insert laughter here!). I say “Mate, this isn’t going to work, you know that right?” He begs me to try one song to see if we can “drown them out”, turn lemons into lemonade he says. We know it won’t work, I mean how can a 1950s Gibson acoustic guitar and an upright bass drown out a double kick drum and bass and guitar amplifiers and some guy screaming within an inch of his life? We give it a shot. But, halfway through “Cat Up A Tree” I apologize to the audience and tell them we will not be playing. I walk off stage. The sound man, in between spits and spats of frantic exclamations that “it’s not my fault!” tells me he will see what he can do. Kaveh (bass player) says “Fuck these guys! Let’s just go and get dinner with your guests and call it a night!” He was right. Engineer du jour returns and then the sound drastically died down from Thrash mania, so we decided to give it a second try. It wasn’t a great show, it was a decent show, but it wasn’t a great show. We were professional and did what we were there to do…albeit reluctantly, but did so for the friends, fans and smokers there who had paid to see us play.

In the light of day, I’m not ready to leave LA, but I am ready to be waaaay more trusting of my instinct and where I play in Los Angeles. you see I broke my own rules. There are rules to booking live shows, and definitely rules to booking new venues.

Rule #1 – Go to the venue! Go before you agree to the gig if you haven’t been in over 6 months. Go on the same night at the same time you are supposed to play. Venues change management regularly.

Rule #2 – Ask about the other rooms and ask what bands are scheduled at the same time before and after you. Their names, their style, their shoe size.

There are more rules…but these are the most important BEFORE you agree to a show in a new venue.

I have a dear friend, Jeff Dean who played bass in my band for about 5 years…the sponge brain era, he’s stupidly talented. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. We were backstage at a gig in Beverly Hills, we’d been barked at, moved, told not to touch the food (it was a private party), told not park in the valet area, to self park and the list goes on. Then finally they put us in the janitors area and told us to wait until we were called. I turned to Jeff and he said, deadpan, “Next they will lay us down and just piss in our mouths!” As hysterically funny as that was and still is when I think of it, I do feel like last night came close to that. At the end of it all, it’s not their fault, it’s my fault for assuming that they would take care or their artists and do their job well. Big mistake! It’s my fault for breaking my own rules. I guess it’s true, even in the worst situations, you do learn something. I apologize Mikey. You go and find that greener pasture. I support you 100%!