A Paying Gig

A few weeks ago at Ormond, my residential college, we had one of our college-wide events/parties.  For the first hour a jazz combo—half of which were Ormond students—played jazz standards for the slowly growing crowd.  A few drinks deep, I struck up a conversation with the clarinetist and told him I played the tenor sax back home.  He pointed to a case at the back of the stage and asked if I wanted to play a little.  “What the hell,” I said to myself and jumped onstage and grabbed the axe.

They were in the middle of a tune so I yelled back at the pianist “What key are we in?” and I think he said, “G.”  I wasn’t sure if I heard right or whether he was talking about concert pitch, so I just started playing.  For not touching the sax for about six months I think I sounded all right.  I played on a couple songs (don’t know what they were) and took a couple solos, and the next day I got a number of compliments, so it couldn’t been too bad.  And it was good enough for the clarinetist a couple days later to ask me to fill in on a gig for him.  He said there was $30 involved so I was in.

At least I look like I'm good, right?

The group was a full big band made up mostly of Uni students with some older players thrown in.  I made it to the last rehearsal before the concert/gig and sight-read through about half the charts and managed to keep up on most of them.  The show was last week, on Thursday, at the Penny Black, a bar with a small stage for live music that we all crammed onto.  My account of the performance after the jump...

We had a pretty decent crowd going in the middle of the concert.  Scanning between songs I counted somewhere between 50 and 100 people.  I think we put on a good performance for the crowd too, but I couldn’t really divert my attention away from my part to listen around the band.  I was struggling to keep up as it was.  As a band we managed to stay together with the exception of one song, a jazz version of The Beatle’s Norwegian Wood that was supposed to sound like this.  I can only speak for myself but I was completely lost three measures into the song.  I ended up playing the same three notes over and over again.  The song was a mess up we managed to end together, and that’s what really counts

I had a couple improvisation solos as well.  One came on a song called Cockatoo.  During the rehearsal I had ended my solo a chorus too early when the backgrounds came in, so I was determined not to let that happen again.  I got a little carried away.  The progression wasn’t in the standard blues form but just the same four chords over and over again, so I didn’t keep track of the choruses.  And I didn’t notice the backgrounds start or end.  And I didn’t notice everyone cutting out except for the drum and bass.  That is until I felt a tap on the side of my leg.  Then I realized that my solo had ended about five bars ago.  I opened my eyes, took a glance around, and then sheepishly sat down.  The tune started up again and the sax player next to me whispered, “I don’t think anyone noticed.”  I don’t think anyone did, but it was still embarrassing.

So other than a couple hiccups the show was a successful.  Unfortunately I didn’t get any free drinks for the concert, except when the waitress brought me a tofu burger instead of beef and she gave me a pint on the house.  Altogether a fun evening.