Average Jane, Semi-Professional Musician

A dentist, an electrician, a lawyer and a copywriter walk into a bar…

That’s not the setup for a joke, that’s the actual makeup of my cover band. Obviously, we’re not in it solely for the money. At last night’s practice I discovered one of the perks of having a dentist in the band: free toothbrushes!

At this point, we’re as ready as we’re going to get for Saturday’s gig. We’re still short of songs, but I have a cheesy plan to burn up time and interact with the audience. I figured I’d go to U.S. Toy and pick up a bag of plastic leis (50 for $10.49) to give away to audience members throughout the evening. The leis serve several purposes:

1. Freebies, which people always love no matter how cheap they are.
2. They leave the door open for the ever-popular "get lei’d" joke, which is really only funny if you’re drunk.
3. Gives me something to talk about between songs, as I’m planning to award them to people who can answer various simple questions about the songs or artists we’re playing.

Between "Get Lei’d Trivia," asking people to sign up for our e-mail list, and taking pictures of people in the crowd for our MySpace page, I figure I’ll have plenty of stuff to talk about on stage without having to resort to "Wooo! Who’s ready to party!" ad nauseum. (Not that I won’t say that once or twice – you know I will!)

Of course, that’s the kind of thing that can completely backfire with an apathetic crowd, but I’m bargaining on our having enough friends and family members at the bar to mitigate that.

Now I just need to drag out all my PA equipment and make sure I have enough cables, power strips, etc. to get us set up. I can already see that I’ll need to make a run to the music store on Saturday afternoon for a new mic cable – mine’s all crackly for some reason.

Enough notes to self. I’ll write up a full report on Sunday morning (or afternoon) when I wake up. Wish me luck!