It's about fun, dammit!

I'm in the mid-west this weekend, working once again with 2 partners that I've never met before. I always look forward to this aspect of my work, as I have met some really cool people this way. The three of us are staying in a small band apartment with only 2 bedrooms, so the last one to arrive is stuck with the futon in the common area. It sucks, and it's an inadequate arrangement, but what can you do.

My one partner who arrived last is 30-something, and has been playing the gig for a long time. I think he was irritated about having to sleep on the futon, while my other partner and I got private bedrooms with proper beds. He was standoffish to me from the first introduction, and it only got worse.

On stage he demonstrated technically solid piano skills. I also found him to be just as standoffish to me on stage as he was offstage. When I would finish a song, he never once, made any reference to what I had just done, and he never once introduced me to the crowd as is standard stagecraft. He was only slightly more animated with my other partner. He appeared as though he had been in the gig much too long and was utterly dissatisfied. He rarely got up off his piano bench to support either of his partners with hand-clapping or riling up the crowd, preferring to do these things from the comfort of his seat, with an decidedly unenthusiasic bent. At one point after I missed a rather simple chord change, he shook his head back and forth in disgust sitting opposite me on-stage. I have yet to see a genuine smile or for that matter an authentic connection with his on-stage partner of the moment. It was almost as though there were two shows happening on stage, his and that of his partner and rarely did the two intersect.

I found out from my other partner, who has a strange history with this guy, that he was a serious cokehead (I didn't witness this), and that he's always been a miserable human being. I certainly sensed his unhappiness. I know that he was unhappy about the sleeping arrangements, but it ran deeper than that. He has not put together 5 complete sentences for me since we met 2 days ago. Had he not been so cold to me before we ever got onstage, I might have thought it a case an inflated sense of self. Certainly he has much more experience than me, and his piano skills reflect this. I know that there are guys in this gig that feel put-upon when they have to play with lesser experienced players, and perhaps that's part of it. But his bitterness seems to run deep, and for this, I am not taking his coldness personally. I think that what he completely misses is that equally as important (or as many would argue, more important) as keyboarding skills, is an on-stage presence that involves charisma, positive energy, a sense of humor, a skillful reparté with your partner and...FUN!! Ya have to be able to have fun!!! If you are so wrapped up in how much better you are then both your partners...um...you're not having much fun, and the audience picks up on it. You can throw out all the stock jokes and funny one-liners, but if you look bored or put-upon when you say them, you're second rate, and worse than that you are wasting the time of everyone in the club.

It miserable people like this that can't summon up an ounce of visible human kindness, that are the cold-prickly thorns in the side of this gig. The flip side of this is that my other partner is a really cool person and we've made a nice connection that will last well beyond this gig. So, all in all, this weekend was a wash.