Atmosphere etiquette, part 2

I couldn't do this kind of gig, confessed Sweet Jane, a musician who had come to hear us play.

I wasn't sure what she meant. We were about halfway through a Cottage Bakery performance, taking a break, and as far as I could tell everything was going swimmingly.

She couldn't play in a coffeehouse or a bar, she explained. Anyplace where all the people were talking to each other instead of listening to the music. It felt so disrespectful.

Ah. Yes. I sympathize with that point of view. Personally, I try to keep the socializing to a minimum when I see other musicians. I know how disheartening it can be when we pour our hearts and souls into the music, and our audience barely notices we're there.

But I don't agree with the "disrespectful" part.

Context is everything. If all the chairs are pointed toward the band, no one is serving drinks or snacks, and the people around you are focusing intently on the music, then you're expected to uphold certain standards of behavior.

Clapping to the beat or singing along is fine. A spontaneous and heartfelt "WOO!" after a particularly good solo will contribute to the overall energy and make the band happy. But you shouldn't engage in extended conversation with the friend sitting next to you, and you need to make damn sure your cell phone is turned off.

An atmosphere gig is another animal.

People in coffeehouses or bars aren't there for the music. They go to have a coffee or beer while hanging out with buddies, doing homework, reading a book, whatever. They might not even have known there would be music until someone started playing. The live band is there to enhance the experience. That's all.

There are gradations of atmosphere-ness, of course. Sometimes people do go to these places to see the band. But not to the exclusion of everything else. Many of them want to spend time with their friends, maybe see if they can meet any attractive men/women, and they want to do that where the good music is.

If you're a musician and you don't want to work under those conditions, that's a perfectly reasonable choice. But if you're in, you're in. You understand that your job is to be part of the atmosphere, period. If any of the patrons or passersby listen or groove along—as they did at last night's Cottage Bakery gig—that's great. That's frosting.

But they're allowed to ignore you. They're allowed to do whatever they came to do. As long as they're not heckling you or throwing things in your direction, they're not being disrespectful.

Because they aren't there for you. You're there for them.

Opening acts rock

Ron and I haven't gone out of our way to find opening acts. Maybe it doesn't occur to us because our sets tend not to exceed two hours. Opening acts come in handy when the main act would otherwise have to play for a long time. For instance, in the Music on the Mountain concert series, performing artists are given five hours in which to do their thing. Those who don't want to collapse onstage opt to let other people play before them, which is how we scored a two-hour slot in next week's MOTM.

I thought of it as sort of a utilitarian thing. But now I'm reassessing.

Ron the Drummer happened to know a guitarist, Lucas Barber, from a vitamin store he frequents. Lucas was interested in playing with us. We liked what we heard on his Myspace page, and we said yes. He and buddy Brad Sconzert, another guitarist, played a half hour set at our Cottage Bakery gig last night.

Sharing the stage with another band made everything more fun. The cross-pollination was nice too. The people who came for Lucas and Brad had never heard of us, but they liked us.

So yeah, we've got to do this more often.

No one listens to the lyrics

It's an odd thing sometimes, being a songwriter. You work so hard at crafting lyrics that will move your listeners in some way, trying to get every word right ... and you forget that those listeners mostly don't pay attention to the words. Or they do, but only in a superficial way.

This is why you get people who play songs like James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" at their weddings. They hear "You're beautiful, it's true" in the choruses without ever catching the "I will never be with you" bit at the end.

I was reminded of this last night while playing at Cottage Bakery. A couple of people were actually listening to us (a beautiful thing at an atmosphere gig), so I tried to keep them engaged by occasionally telling them something about the songs we were about to play.

"This is 'Sky Palaces,'" I said. "It's about daydreaming."

"I thought it was about procrastination."

Casual listener? Loyal Cinder Bridge fan? Nope. That came from Ron. The drummer.

Maybe I should sing louder ...