Dueling at the Waldorf Astoria??!!

In October I was contacted by a large restaurant chain to put on a dueling show at their annual corporate conference that they were holding in NYC this year. It was to show appreciation to all of their managing partners, and there would be over 500 of them at this 3 day conference. We were scheduled the second night as one of three “nightlife opportunities” available to the conference particpants. (Aside from us there was also a “dance club” and a Swing Band.) It was a big deal and they were the kind of client that we all dream about. They pay great money, and you can almost make your entire month on one job like this. When I was told that the conference was being held in the Waldorf Astoria in NYC, I almost shit myself. A dueling piano show at the Waldorf??!! There couldn’t be a more inappropriate location for dueling pianos that the stuffy and venerated grand old dame that is the Waldorf. Imagine doing the Gang Bang song, or Bang Bang Lulu next to Cole Porter’s original piano (which is grandly displayed in the lobby)!! And yet there we were!

I subcontracted out two guys from out of state: Jason, a veteran that was driving up from Baltimore, and a very new player, Brian, who had access to all of the equipment and piano shells I needed to put this gig together.

The day before the gig I met with the client’s production manager who walked me through the hotel and showed me how to get to where we would be storing our equipment during the day and where we would then be performing at night. It was quite a trip to navigate from the service entrance to the place where we were to store our equipment, involving winding passageways, two elevator trips, one to the 3^rd floor, then carting everything through a large kitchen, only to take another elevator back to the lobby, and then another winding and narrow hallway that led us through yet another kitchen, and finally to the storage room.

Brian arrived in the city with his Toyota 4-runner packed to the gills with amps, stands, cables, keyboards and of course the two baby grand wooden piano shells in which the keyboards would hide, completing the illusion of dueling “pianos”. I met him out on the street as he was driving by and somehow managed to squeeze myself in his front seat between the gear shift and a casio keyboard. I directed him to the hotel, where we began the laborious process of unloading everything and carting it through the byzantine back passages of the Waldorf. It took us well over an hour but finally we finished and then went to my favorite Vietnamese place for lunch.

Brian and I spent the afternoon walking around midtown, where I showed him Rockefeller Center, St. Pauls, Bryant Park, Grand Central Terminal, and the shops on 5^th Avenue. Finally we retired back to my apartment and waited for our partner Jason to arrive. He arrived at 7:30, and at 8:10, the exact time I had planned for us all to walk over to the Waldorf, I get a call saying the gig has been moved up a half hour! So we rush over to the hotel, and as we are getting close Brian remembers that he may have left 2 pieces of the piano shell outside the elevator in one of the hotel’s kitchens. He goes flying off to try and find these while Jason and I move all the equipment out into the lobby where we set up for our show. 15 minutes later Brian calls me on my cell saying that the pieces are no where to be found. I tell him to get down and set up the sound and Jason and I will scour the hotel to see if we can locate them. These pieces were integral to the set up of the piano shells and had three basic functions: 1. To support the electric keyboard that sits in the wooden shell, 2. A place to install two of the three legs of the wooden shell, and 3. A ridge that would block anything that might be spilled on top of the shell from reaching the keyboard.

After walking through all the passages that we had had to move the equipment through earlier, I set Jason about the task of coming up with an alternative way to set up the piano shells so that we could still do the gig. I then contacted security, and tried to track down the missing parts. After 25 minutes of being escorted to the carpentry shop, the paint shop, every dumpster in the place, and all the many hallways they might have been put, we finally spoke with the kitchen manager who informed me that she had them thrown out as they were cluttering up her kitchen all day and no one knew what they were. She took me to the main trash compactor where she said they would have been thrown, but of course by this time there was no retrieving them.

I returned to my partners in the lobby, where with the assistance of the slick but very helpful hotel manager, they had enlisted the house carpenter to drill new holes to attatch the legs to the piano shell, and had stacked up milk crates to rest the keyboard on. A black table cloth was draped over the milk crates to hide them from view. The piano shells, now with all three legs were strategically placed in behind the keyboards, so that if you didn’t look too closely, and from exactly the right angle, you might think that we were playing baby grand pianos. Of course the illusion was destroyed the moment you walked towards either side of center, but at least we were able to go on with the gig.

Finally it’s time to start and Jason and I begin playing as the lobby fills up with conference participants. I found out later that Brian went into the bathroom and vomited, because he was so upset at having lost those parts. I on the other hand was so happy to just be playing and doing our show, having worried that we might not ever get it off the ground! About 2 hours into the show, a woman comes up to the piano that I’m playing and trips and spills an entire glass of white wine INTO the keyboard. Both my partners immediately come to my aid, and try and wipe off the keyboard while I continue spewing out the words to the Sir Mixalot hiphop song, Big Butts, while unwrapping my microphone from it’s stand and moving my act to the dry keyboard, never missing a lyric. Shortly thereafter, we take a break, where my partners inform me that the soaked keyboard is completely unplayable, as it would launch into demo mode, playing through it’s repertoire of demonstration songs, without any warning whatsoever! (I was wondering why my partner was playing Clair De Lune during my Great Balls of Fire solo!!)

We all agree that Jason, who is the most experienced of the lot of us, would play the working piano, and I would, with great fanfare and grand gesticulations, pretend to play the broken piano. When it was my turn to do a song (every 2^nd song), I would just tell Jason the song and key and hope that he knew it. It was pretty funny pretending to play in front of 100 or more people who never had a clue that my keyboard was completely silent. At one point Jason yells at me, “Get off the bass!!”, a common complaint among duelers when your partner hijacks the bassline of the song you are playing. This was funny since I wasn’t playing anything, of course!

Finally the show is over, the client happily hands over the check, none the wiser, and I make an executive decision to march all the equipment right out the front door onto Park Avenue rather than go back through the employee area and kitchens and elevators. As Brian tries to load up his 4-Runner at 3am, he can’t get everything to fit, because the lost pieces were integral to supporting some of the load in order for everything to fit just so. Jason and I are standing on the sidewalk, trying to be helpful, but not really able to be, waiting for Brian to figure out this puzzle. Finally, it’s all in, and Brian and I go back to my apartment, while Jason begins his long drive back to Baltimore, all of us a bit worse for the wear.