continued…

I eventually moved to back to Florida where I was able to gig regularly without waiting for someone on a union list to die.

There are many, many beer joints and liquor dives in the sunny tourist land.  All of them filled with people entertaining an endless buzz of one sort or another and waiting to be entertained by me and my minions (or the ones I would shortly gather about me in order to gig).  I went to all the local music stores and started my process of landing a teaching job.  I wound up meeting several guys that quickly invited me to jam with them and possibly join their band.  It was always amusing for me to let them think they were giving me an audition when in actuality it was the other way around.  At one point early on I was called by a ‘talent agent’.  This guy was literally oozing through the phone.  I thought this type was a kind of fictionalized stereotype.  Until that point I had no idea people with his slimy, “Gonna make you a star, kid” attitude actually existed.  He heard I was a “new hot guitarist in town” and he could “get me good paying gigs all over the place.”  For a fee, of course, yes for a small fee.  I started laughing while he was still going on about how much he could do for me.  He didn’t appreciate this and hung up on me.  I thought, “That was certainly amusing”.  5 seconds later he called again and started yelling at me, “How could you be such an idiot?!  Do you know what kind of chance you’re passing up?!”  And on and on.  Finally he told me he was going to give me one more chance to help me.  I declined.

I’ve heard too many other musicians tell me too many horror stories about shady ‘talent agents’ and such that ripped them off, got them contracted for years on end to some sleazy, roach-infested hotel lounge outside Duluth or Indianapolis or got them stranded in the middle of nowhere without a gig, money or way to get home.  If I was going to get screwed over I would prefer I had only myself to blame.  The only time you seriously need to consider an agent of any kind is when you have so many offers or things going on that you don’t have time to organize it all yourself.  Until then, keep it to yourself.  It’s hard enough to get a free-lance musical career going without actively seeking out, trying to work with and trying to trust people that are in the perfect position to screw you.

How about the time I got my blues trio a gig at a Harley biker bar?  We had just unloaded my amps, guitars and PA out of my pickup truck.  In order to unload easily the truck was parked right in front of the little beat up cinder block building practically overflowing with Hell’s Angels & Satan’s Servants et cetera all “flying their colors”.  I jumped back in the emptied truck to pull it out of the way and park it in back.  Now, there were huge, chrome Harleys in front of and behind the truck.  I was very nervous about hitting anyone of them because of course my life expectancy would drop dramatically as a result.  I carefully judged there to be more room to maneuver behind my little truck, so I carefully started backing up.  I had moved back about a foot when I heard a loud metallic BANG followed briefly by a louder CRASH.  My heart went up my throat and the top of my head damn near exploded.  I fell out of my truck in order to see if I had inadvertently hit a Harley behind the truck and if I had time to run in and grab my guitar before running for my life.  All the bikes were still in a neat row.  My spare tire had come loose of its mooring in the truck bed and caused the racket.

We played that night to a less than enthusiastic crowd of bikers (except for the part with the pool cue fight of which we were not the main focus).  I considered it a success though because we lived, got paid and this enormous, smelly biker came up to me after one set and told me he really liked my guitar playing and would I please just “keep on playing that one Hendrix tune (‘Purple Haze’) all night for the rest of the night?”