by Peter Berryman
Twitching and Plucking
Recently someone asked me if weird gigs made me nervous.
My musical partner Lou and I have played in many ever-so-slightly weird places and we hope to continue. We had a gig at a county fair here in Wisconsin, where we played in the center island of an unpaved oval racetrack which was to be used later in the day for a tractor polka or a heifer bee or something. Our audience huddled on bleachers far across the track from our stage. It was mid afternoon. Apparently the track was in some need of conditioning, because halfway through our first song, a tractor a-dragging some sort of dirt-combing apparatus rumbled and rattled across our field of view, between us and our fans. For our entire set, the tractor dragged back and forth, back and forth, lazily if a tractor can be said to drag lazily. And the focus of our audience was dragged right along with it, like the gaze of a slow motion tennis audience. It was so odd that it was fun. Had that Fellini-movie feel.
It reminded me of an earlier odd situation in a little town in Northern Wisconsin, where our stage was a hay wagon with bunting. This would have been fine except it was facing the main street, and no one had thought to stop the traffic for the festival. Pedestrians would linger now and then on the sidewalk across the street, but the thunder of traffic, which we could almost reach out and touch as it lurched by, must have drowned out our sound entirely. It was like we were playing in a tollbooth, though then at least the cars would have stopped long enough to ralph a coin.
We played in the mouth of the giant muskie in Hayward, Wisconsin. This crazy thing, the absolute epitome of weirdness, was the idea of a retired advertising exec from Chicago named Bob Kutz. It was built a few decades ago from funds provided by the Jim Beam distillery from the sale of whiskey in fish-shaped bottles. Part of the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame -- complete with ancient outboard motors, antique bait buckets, old mounted fish, preplastic bobbers and the like -- is housed inside this four and one half story surreality, and in its gaping maw is an observation deck. That's where we stood on trash cans for added height, trembling on a windy day to lip-synch the words to a song we had written about Wisconsin for the Department of Tourism, videotaped by Wisconsin Public Television's techs who stood safely below on solid Wisconsin asphalt.
Wisconsin Public TV is also responsible for having us play in a bookmobile, in a short video spot promoting library use in the state. We wrote a song for that, too (a short one) and sang it while leaning out of the teetering tome-wagon as it sped by cornfields.
We've played a boat dock in the afternoon, a Minnesota lakeshore at six in the morning, a hotel room in Portland OR at three A.M., a college cafeteria at high noon (standing just in front of the vending machines so that kids had to ask us to move whenever they needed a coke).
We've been booed off the stage by a thousand teenagers, as punishment for opening for a rock and roll band. We've played for coroner conventions, anesthesiologist conventions, science fiction conventions, bicycle races, bratwurst festivals, ice fishing festivals, chocolate festivals. We've played for wakes and weddings, and I don't know which of those is weirder. We've played in a blizzard in a strip mall parking lot and in 105 degree sun in a football stadium.
We've played in cow barns, sheep barns, pole barns, art museums, opera houses, a silo chopped in half vertically, converted garages, unconverted garages, hospital rooms, hospital cafeterias, hospital chapels, unfinished basements, haunted warehouses, biker bars, gay bars, fern bars.
Many strange gigs are only slightly off, as though in a parallel universe. Twenty years ago, at the reckless age of 35, we played for a young woman named Tammy who had moved into her parents' basement rec-room; we were not allowed to go upstairs by her folks, who stood at the mouth of their overheated living room like sentries as we trudged down the beshagged stairs and into one of those home tavern theme-parks with beer signs and an inch of polyurethane on the rough-hewn bartop.
We've never played on a boat or a train, though we were joined
by a trombonist for a gig many years ago in the back of a moving
pickup truck.
There are a number of weird venues I would love to try, like in
an observatory or an airplane. I'd like to have a drive-in concert,
set up like an old drive-in movie, where the audience members
stay in their cars and hook those clunky speakers on their windows.
We would play up by the screen, and instead of applause, we get
little horn-toots. I'd like to play in a laundromat, though I
know this has been done. I've always wanted to play in the middle
island of a baggage carousel in an airport, where maybe a salad
bar, or at least horse-doovers, have been set up on the belt.
I'd like to see a coffee house of couches, the admission charge
being calculated per couch. If you were broke, six of you could
go together and rent one couch. If you had money but were lazy,
you could go for one whole couch yourself, and stretch out. If
you were romantic, of course, a couch for two could be nice. I'd
like to try a teeny tiny restaurant concert, where there was room
for nothing but one table and the band. Maybe two people in the
audience. It would have to have a high cover charge, but would
make a nice anniversary blowout, unless the crowd didn't go for
the music and turned ugly.
But anyway, getting back to the original question: Yes, playing weird gigs does in fact make me nervous. And in its own way, every gig is a weird gig, which is why I consider myself the Don Knotts of folk music. I'm sometimes asked why I don't get used to it. Well, I DO get used to it.
By now I'm very comfortable being scared out of my mind.