As our performance date approaches, some of our energy has converted itself into nervousness. The band members and I have been talking more about our worries and anxieties about playing onstage. Some of our anxieties are specific to the details that we have been working on for weeks—getting the tempos right on the songs, making last minute changes in vocal parts and instrumentals. Other worries are emerging to match these, as if from some surreal house of horrors: someone asks, “What if I drop my pick?” Another: “What if my hands begin to sweat the way they do when I am nervous?” And: “If I forget the lyrics to the verse that I am singing, do we all just hold a vamp until I think of them? Or do I make up some words and keep singing? Or let the band continue with the song and jump in when I remember the lyrics?” At first we ignore these demons, but with each rehearsal we start taking them more seriously and making suggestions to each other.
At practices, Dave has been having us arrange music stands as if they were microphones so that we can get used to moving around each other appropriately. The first time he did this, we were ignoring the music stands by the middle of the first number, after feeling baffled by the extra thing to think about. At the next practice session, we were able to cope a little better, partly because we took to practicing this way at Lew’s house in our mid-week rehearsals. At Lew’s we started arranging dining room chairs as microphones and playing and singing into those. At the mid-week practice session before the day of the stage rehearsal and microphone checks at the Freight & Salvage, Rusty brought microphones and stands from his home, and we practice in front of those, not plugging them in. No need to alarm the neighbors: we just want to get used to moving onstage.
At the stage rehearsal and microphone check at the Freight we soaked up Tesser Call’s coaching on microphone use, and were eager for our chance to work with something other than music stands and chairs. Overhearing conversations of members of the other bands, we realized that we were not alone with our anxieties, and we felt encouraged to discover that despite their particular worries, the other bands all sounded impressive onstage. A new thought occurred: I think we can actually do this. And for the first time, I got a sense of what the entire program is going to look and sound like from the audience. Three new amateur bands, with supplemental performances by instructors and by TTS alumni, and all of it starting to look interesting onstage. I began to think of more people that I would like to invite to the performance.
Once onstage, I had the same experience I was starting to have during rehearsals—too much going on to keep track of it all. How close is the mandolin supposed to be to this mike? How will I pick up cues, if we are not standing in circle? And the audience will be in the dark where we cannot see them? Will we hear ourselves on the monitors? It is best not to step away from the mike, or do any of the wandering that I characteristically do while playing? Oh, yeah, and I am trying to play the mandolin here. I almost forgot. Such was my internal drama as we ran through our songs. But despite this, the band sounded good, and I felt reassured by how much sound we were producing as an instrumental ensemble and chorus.
Gradually, the nervous energy transformed into something else, more familiar: fun. What a kick. Can we do the set twice?
After the stage rehearsal, we reconvened at Lew’s, where he and his wife had laid out food for us all. Trent brought some microbrewery beers. We sat in Lew’s kitchen, ate, had a beer, talked music. An hour later, we were standing before the chair-microphones in Lew’s dining room and virtually jumped into our set. The idea was, no stopping, no discussing our parts, no commenting on anything that goes wrong: just play the set, with Rusty’s emcee work. And something new happened. It was all playfully fun. All of it. Each band member seemed to have entered the “zone” at about the same time, within the first few bars of “Dark Hollow,” our opener. Some of us were smiling while singing. Can you do that with Bluegrass? Can one smile while singing about missing one’s home, or faithless love, or the impulse to stab someone at a river’s edge? I remember once at a Bluegrass festival seeing Vern Williams walk onto a make-shift stage on a Sunday morning and say something like: “I don’t know much about heaven but this is heaven to me, being here playing bluegrass like this.” Tonight, with the other Dubious Pilgrims, I discovered what he was talking about. Yes, the music sounded right; the tempos were stable and where we wanted them; the voices had an infectious energy; I felt as if my nerves had taken a sabbatical; but most of all, it was just fun. I could still imagine making errors. But I couldn’t imagine any errors having any effect on what we were doing, which was making music and feeling great. The zone.
After the set, we discovered that we had all had that experience. Clara and I surmised it must be the glass of beer. Trent, living up to his Italian heritage, had another idea: “Yeah, the beer was nice, but that’s not it. This is the first time we haven’t come together just to focus intensely on practice. We always walk in, open our cases, and start working the music. Tonight, we ate, we talked, we laughed, we sat together as friends. Then we got up and made music. There’s the difference.”
Difference, indeed. And gateway to the zone.
