Audience Interuptions

[Alastair]

What do you do when well-meaning audience members come up to you in the middle of a song and start talking to you?
A. Ignore them.
B. Stop playing and let the backing track take it.
C. Keep playing flawlessly while chatting with them for as long as they like.
D. Other?
-Alastair

[TH]

A. Maybe a smile and a glance to say "I'm playing here?"
D. Good looking girl? Ask for requests and get her number.

David

[Boston Joe]

I guess it would be "Other" since there's no option for "Try to pull off C, but blow a change, then get pissed off at the audience member, tell him to bug off, and give the leader a sheepish look when he glares at you."

[Boston Joe]

A. Maybe a smile and a glance to say "I'm playing here?"

"Kiiiiiiinda busy at the moment..."

D. Good looking girl? Ask for requests and get her number.

Best piece of advice ever posted on this forum.

[Nate Miller]

What do you do when well-meaning audience members come up to you in the middle of a song and start talking to you?
A. Ignore them.
B. Stop playing and let the backing track take it.
C. Keep playing flawlessly while chatting with them for as long as they like.
D. Other?
-Alastair

I talk to them. If they weren't patronizing the establishment that booked me, I'd have nowhere to play, so I am going to be gracious and talk to them. If I am playing solo, I nod, smile and try and acknowledge them as best I can and keep playing. I can't play and talk to you at the same time. I think I use the language centers in my brain to play, so do the best I can. I have actually just stopped playing to take the time to be nice to somebody. If I'm playing a dinner set and I see that people are eating and talking, what's the harm? Sure, I'll stop playing and take a minute to be nice to somebody.

When I'm playing a serious performance, decorum and the social graces of those in attendance will guard me from this sort of thing, but I like to play regular gigs, too, so it happens

I believe that we should be glad if a complete stranger was moved enough to come and try and talk to us. When they come up while you are playing it is because their party is leaving and they can't wait until you are on a break, but they still really want to tell you how much they enjoyed the music, so have a heart.

[Hep To The Jive]

What do you do when well-meaning audience members come up to you in the middle of a song and start talking to you?
A. Ignore them.
B. Stop playing and let the backing track take it.
C. Keep playing flawlessly while chatting with them for as long as they like.
D. Other?
-Alastair

Well meaning? Any well meaning person would understand it's a distraction and wouldn't do it. Could be well meaning and drunk? Then a simple nod and 'later' should do it. If they persist, then it's not well meaning, and they are lucky if i don't play a tele at the moment- Keef Richards rules apply lol!

[Thumpalumpacus]

Find an opportune moment to lift a finger -- "we can talk when the song's over" being the message -- accompanied by a friendly look. And refocus on my playing.

Flattering though it may be, such attention is a distraction. The thoughtful listener understands that.

[Nate Miller]

Find an opportune moment to lift a finger -- "we can talk when the song's over" being the message -- accompanied by a friendly look. And refocus on my playing.

Flattering though it may be, such attention is a distraction. The thoughtful listener understands that.

no, its definitely distracting.

and like I say, more serious performances this doesn't happen because everybody who got dressed up to come down to listen is going to be a thoughtful listener....but I play in a lot of barrooms, too, so like Anton said...I figure they are "well meaning and quite drunk"

...and the ones that don't fit that category are usually friends that I told to come out

but sometimes you get little old ladies and you played a tune that she danced to at her wedding or something crazy like that. Sometimes folks just don't realize that you aren't a juke box and that its hard to play and talk

[christianm77]

Hal Galper has an interesting anecdote regarding this in Forward Motion - distracted concentration.

According to Kenny Werner, if you can't talk freely while you are playing something, then it is not yet effortless.

[jaco]

I was in the middle of a solo gig and a guy walked in, came right up and yelled "hey man, can you play some Prince?" I guess it's different since it was a joke, but I think I said something like "I'M PLAYING HERE". I hadn't played solo in awhile and was put off a bit by after looking up, noticing that no one was paying any attention, or listening.(except my friends in the back, God Bless em.) Anyway later my wife told me "they were listening, you just didn't notice it". Probably being a little too sensitive on my part.

[jovialspoon]

I believe that we should be glad if a complete stranger was moved enough to come and try and talk to us. When they come up while you are playing it is because their party is leaving and they can't wait until you are on a break, but they still really want to tell you how much they enjoyed the music, so have a heart.

I can see your point and agree somewhat – especially if you’re being offered a (sober) complement. But we should keep in mind that there are (probably) other members of the audience still present, who may have paid to be there and are equally expecting you to give proper concentration to your job. That is, playing music to the best of your ability. Personally, I think someone who simply wanders over to speak to a musician mid-performance, even if they have a kind remark to make, is being very rude to the rest of the audience. If, as musicians, we have a responsibility to our audience – and I believe we do – it should be to the entire audience, not just one person.

Maintain your concentration as best you can. If all you can offer is a quick smile, then that’s all they get.

[TH]

Hal Galper has an interesting anecdote regarding this in Forward Motion - distracted concentration.

According to Kenny Werner, if you can't talk freely while you are playing something, then it is not yet effortless.

That's Kenny. And that's what he can do. Some people can talk while driving, have conversations while reading a newspaper, text while watching a movie in a movie theatre... that's them. Please don't let the metric of one person's "effortlessness" be the rule by which everyone lives.
I like Kenny. But he's Kenny. If someone gets in my face while I'm playing, it DOES come between what I'm feeling and what I'm doing. That's me.
It's not my goal to be an effortless master when I'm riding the bus, watching a movie or playing music. When you're Kenny, you can lay out, and say it's part of the music. Playing a solo gig and recovering from an insensitive comment someone made, not so cool.
If someone says something nice, it's nice to nod and smile. It's effortless and genuine. Someone who's been talking the whole time, makes people around them feel put out for wanting to listen, says something innane for their own need to "be cool", that may be a different situation. It's more of an effortless gesture for me to flip them off. Honestly. That's what the guitarist is effortlessly feeling.

David

[Thumpalumpacus]

no, its definitely distracting.

and like I say, more serious performances this doesn't happen because everybody who got dressed up to come down to listen is going to be a thoughtful listener....but I play in a lot of barrooms, too, so like Anton said...I figure they are "well meaning and quite drunk"

Yeah, my gigging experience is about 98+% barrooms and the balance being casuals ... so I don't have much experience with polite crowds.

[Boston Joe]

Yeah, my gigging experience is about 98+% barrooms and the balance being casuals ... so I don't have much experience with polite crowds.

Back in my rock days, my band had a regular gig at a place called The Cage. It was in the basement of another club, and it was all cellar that had been decorated with chicken wire. A real dive, but a lot of great music happened there. Anyway, it was a pretty hard drinking crowd that frequented the place, and in as much as the "stage" was just a corner of the room, we had people getting in our face all the time. We got pretty good at spotting them early and moving our positions such that they couldn't get past us. They'd still drunkenly yell stuff at us - usually requests for songs we didn't play. We played originals and maybe one or two covers in a set, and they were usually Beatles tunes. So when you get a guy coming up and yelling, "Play Warewolves of London!!!" it just kind of makes you scratch your head.

[Alastair]

Sounds like the country bar scene in The Blues Brothers. Now there was a tough crowd!
Back in my college rock-band frat party days, it was, "Can you play Midnight Hour?" This, after the balance-challenged bro spilt half his beer all over the keyboard.
I'm sorry, but I don't sound much like Wilson Pickett.
(We were also trying to play Beatles tunes at the time.)

[Nate Miller]

Sounds like the country bar scene in The Blues Brothers. Now there was a tough crowd!
Back in my college rock-band frat party days, it was, "Can you play Midnight Hour?" This, after the balance-challenged bro spilt half his beer all over the keyboard.
I'm sorry, but I don't sound much like Wilson Pickett.
(We were also trying to play Beatles tunes at the time.)

those bars actually exist up on the Texas/Oklahoma border. I played some of them when I was at North Texas, and so did Blue Lou Marini when we went there.

you see, in Oklahoma, they only sell 3.2 beer, so Oklahomans drive down to Texas to drink full strength beer, raise hell, and go back to Oklahoma. That is why you have to have chicken wire around the band stand to protect the band from the flying longnecks. No exaggeration at all.

Blue Lou would come back to Denton sometimes to visit his buddy Dan Hearle, who taught at NTSU. I heard him tell the story of how he told Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi stories about those bars and they had to use it in the movie. That's why Lou got his one speaking line in the Blues Brothers..."chicken wire?"

...it was his story, so they gave him the line to say

[christianm77]

those bars actually exist up on the Texas/Oklahoma border. I played some of them when I was at North Texas, and so did Blue Lou Marini when we went there.

you see, in Oklahoma, they only sell 3.2 beer, so Oklahomans drive down to Texas to drink full strength beer, raise hell, and go back to Oklahoma. That is why you have to have chicken wire around the band stand to protect the band from the flying longnecks. No exaggeration at all.

Blue Lou would come back to Denton sometimes to visit his buddy Dan Hearle, who taught at NTSU. I heard him tell the story of how he told Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi stories about those bars and they had to use it in the movie. That's why Lou got his one speaking line in the Blues Brothers..."chicken wire?"

...it was his story, so they gave him the line to say

Sounds like a good venue for your Bach recital. We play both kinds of music - Renaissance and Baroque...

Great story in any case ;-)

[Nate Miller]

when I was a kid in Houston we played at this joint called "Rock Island" in Houston. It was a punk bar and they threw stuff at the band there, but they didn't have any chicken wire!

I honestly learned how to play without looking at my neck playing that joint. You had to keep your head up the whole time. The stuff coming in high and fluttering...those were empty, you don't have to worry about those

its the ones coming in hard and flat that are still full that you need to dodge

no, there was never a dull moment when I was a young kid underage and playing the big city rock and roll clubs

[mr. beaumont]

I play a "cowboy" Gmaj7.

[Boston Joe]

At The Cage, the chicken wire was on the walls, not in front of the band. Fortunately, people didn't usually throw things.

One time, another band was playing - friends of ours - and the crowd was pretty stinking hammered. They launched into Jimi Hendrix's "Fire" and suddenly, all these guys were in the middle of the floor. They were, to be polite, cement heads. They looked it. Big guys with big, square skulls and dull expressions. When "Fire" started, they all went "F*** YEAH!" and poured onto the floor, and then they just started going up to random people and shoving them. Like... people who weren't bugging them in any way. Just standing there. A cement head would walk up and just put his hands square on their chest and shove them. And then move on to another one. They didn't seem to be trying to clear the floor or make room or anything. They were apparently doing this just for laughs. (For some value of "laughs" that includes things that aren't terribly funny.) I suppose this kind of dovetails with the discussion of bullying going on in the general forum. They were certainly trying to display their alpha-ness.

[339 in june]

I vote this thread funniest ever, "Please, Don't mess with me" rowing second !

[Danny W.]

When we were first married 48 years ago my new bride was sitting up front at a gig when some guy asked her to dance. She pointed to me and said "That's my husband," figuring he'd go away and not bother her again. He came onstage and asked me if it was okay for her to dance with him! And yes, it was in the middle of one of my solos. Luckily, he gave up when I said "NO!"

Danny W.

[Stevebol]

I liked playing urban clubs in the US in the old days and clubs overseas. Never liked playing rock clubs, etc..
I don't care about club owners, rude customers, meeting the love of my life at a gig and all that jive.
Hire a DJ.
This is what happens when you take music born in recording studios like rock and try to make it work in small venues it wasn't intended for.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Back in my rock days, my band had a regular gig at a place called The Cage. It was in the basement of another club, and it was all cellar that had been decorated with chicken wire. A real dive, but a lot of great music happened there. Anyway, it was a pretty hard drinking crowd that frequented the place, and in as much as the "stage" was just a corner of the room, we had people getting in our face all the time. We got pretty good at spotting them early and moving our positions such that they couldn't get past us. They'd still drunkenly yell stuff at us - usually requests for songs we didn't play. We played originals and maybe one or two covers in a set, and they were usually Beatles tunes. So when you get a guy coming up and yelling, "Play Warewolves of London!!!" it just kind of makes you scratch your head.

lol, place I gigged often enough in SoCal, called the San Souci -- nicknamed "The Sewer" by regs and the bands that gigged there -- had that same stage-shoved-in-a-corner thing, no riser, just where the carpet ended. To top it off, it had a huge support beam right there at the corner of the stage, which was stage center jutting out into the rest of the floorspace.

Not my band, but a good shot of the joint:



I always played stage left, where my gear would block most access, while the bassist and singer occupied stage right with its larger frontage. Blocking assignments were pre-planned. Notice the bathroom -- behind the "stage". Yes, that meant you had to lay cable wisely or suffer unplugging from some drunk galoot.

Calling the Sewer a dive would be doing a disservice to dives the world over. Homeless, drunks, and methheads vied for the right to crap on your gig ... but if you tore it up, you got good, honest applause.

Followed by being pestered for a spare cigarette by every man-jack while you're out on break between sets, lol.

[Boston Joe]

To top it off, it had a huge support beam right there at the corner of the stage, which was stage center jutting out into the rest of the floorspace.

Hah! The cage had a pillar in the middle of the "stage" too!