So, the other night, the 22nd to be exact, I committed Public Performance. I had help. Two brave musicians, both of whom are better at their respective instruments than I am at mine, joined me to play jazz-like music at the Mad Art Gallery where Left Bank Books and other St. Louis Independent bookstores celebrated World Book Night. I mentioned this in a previous post.
The main event of the evening was an on-stage interview conducted by author Curtis Sittenfeld of author J.R. Moehringer.
Here we see Left Bank’s Shane Mullen introducing them:
The interview was great. Lively, informative, and Moehringer is very entertaining. Afterward came author signings, aimless milling about, imbibing (cash bar) and…us.
This event was the brainchild of Left Bank’s co-owner, Jarek Steele, who approached me one day at work a few months back and said, “Hey, I have an idea…” I said yes. Then later, I thought I said yes! Am I out of my mind?
This entailed gathering other musicians, rehearsals, and then renting a keyboard. I had to learn a few new pieces, Rich and Bill had to figure out how to play along with the bizarre manner in which I play. I have to admit, our first rehearsal was not promising. My handicap is that I don’t usually perform with a group. 99% of what I do, I do solo. That is a very different discipline than ensemble. I had to overcome some bad habits (a couple of which I failed to overcome, but hey, nobody noticed), and get some chops down better than I’ve done in some time.
A word about the keyboard. This detail almost ended the project before it began, because my piano is not portable. Not really. After calling around, I found MidWest Music. These folks rent instruments. Yes, they had a digital piano available. They told me the model, I checked out a couple of demos, it seemed perfectly suitable. Donna and I went out to set it up and…
Well, they had a brand new instrument they wanted to showcase, so I got an upgrade to a Roland RD-700nx. Yes, I’m linking to the demo video so you can see why I had the musical equivalent of a one-night-stand with this. I likened using this piano for this gig to taking a Ferrari to the supermarket. It was far more instrument than I needed that night.
We showed up nameless. I was asked by our events coordinator if we had one. No. One night? A one-off? A couple of things passed through my head, but…no.
Shane named us. Suddenly we were “Mark Tiedemann and the Men of Tomorrow.” After a moment of “Aw, come on!” I started to think, “Hey, that’s not bad. “ By the time we went on, I decided to ask him if we could keep it. You know, just in case this ever happens again.
It has been a long time since I played at all seriously in front a room full of people I didn’t know. It kind of surprised me how nerve-wracking it was. But…
I always know when I’ve done okay because I come away from the performance with almost no memory of what I did. Mistakes and just plain bad performances I remember with a clarity that cuts, but if things go more or less well, there’s just a hazy wash of “Yeah, I was there” and not much else.
I want to thank Rich and Bill here for making me sound as good as we did. Bill is an exceptional drummer. I can say this because he took the weird and rather undisciplined rhythms I play, made them his own, and glued the performances together. Rich is an exceptional guitarist.
So that’s how my week started off. How’s yours going?
