Playing a difficult venue...

[pamlicojack]

So I heard from the band that we were invited to play a club owner's birthday party because he heard good things about our last gig there. (He has never heard us)  He offered a reasonable amount of money and put us on the bill.

The problem:

He is a big fan of rap and r&b (not the bluesy stuff) and the other two bands on the bill are a bit more...urban that our audience would be used to.  The guys don't necessarily have an issue with this, but we all know going in that the audience isn't going to care one whit for our stuff and we all agree this is a really bad mix of crowds.  There's one rapper and one soul/smooth jazz ensemble.  Our rockabilly / honky-tonk style is going to go over like a lead balloon.  We also know that we're not going to draw flies at this show.

Has anyone else had this happen?  How did you deal with a bad juxtaposition of bands?  We're going to do the gig but we know the audience is going to look at us with that "WTF?" look... 

[Highlander]

Whoah there Jack - don't git us wrong boah, we have all the kinds of music here: Country AND Western...    bros...

Sounds like the long, dark, dusty road to Hell, but at least you'll be able to take a few out with that big beautiful beast you tow around with you... 

and I guess we could always organise a nice send off... 

Present band in it's previous incarnation got booked to play a new years gig (87-88) in a pub/bar, to play 3 45 minutes sets - we were not a covers band, playing mostly originals, and we made that clear from the outset - the owner kept coming up and asking us to play this, that or the other (but mostly Blueberry Hill) - we just wanted to pull out and go over to another bar, anywhere but there, but at least it was not actively hostile... got through 2 sets when he called time, thank the Lord... still got full pay though... 

Good luck...

[Barklessdog]

Tailor your song list the best you can & but on the best show you can.

I remember reading about Frank Zappa opening for The Monkeys, only did one show.

[uwe]

Why don't you invite the rappers for one song you perform? Do a rockabilly / honky-tonk style version of Walk this Way and have the other guys rap over it. Don't do it at the end of your set, do it in the middle. And if people love it, encore with it again. The audience will appreciate the community aspect of it. Don't be so self-conscious. People can be a lot more flexible than you think and everybody likes to watch buddy movies.

 

Here's a little arrangement inspiration for you:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGZ6Kjk807Q&feature=related

[Freuds_Cat]

Actually Uwe is right. With these kinds of gigs the only way to get away with it is to act like its all a bit of a laugh and verge on parody. If you can make a link with the audience like doing Walk this way with one (or even better 2 or 3) of the rappers then the crowd will let you in a bit.

When we do gigs at some of the more um.... ROCK Redneck (Bogans is what Dexter and other Australians will know them as) venues and our guitarist Dave pulls out his Banjo, they look at us as if we are gonna need the chicken wire curtain. Until we start playing The Who's Squeeze box. Then they all lighten up, and while we have them, we take them into our version of Dueling banjo's / Foggy mountain breakdown. Seems to work. We use the same idea to graft our originals into the sets.

[dexter]

   BOGANS   ! , yeh there are plenty of them around at some gigs, for sure Freuds-cat.

 as for rap , it dosn't do it for me , sorry 

dexter

[gweimer]

At one of our Ohio FDP jams, we did an impromptu rap version of "Long Train Running" that was pretty funny.

[Chris P.]

I played in some very strange venues. One time we were at a punk hole and we asked ourselves if we should play our normal set or only our harder songs. Because we had to play like an hour we had to do the quitet ballads and so to... And the audience loved it... You never know what to expect, so just do what you normally do...

But collaborating with rappers is cool too!


I used to work at a youth center/ rock venue. There were really two groups: The Rockers (with me) and The Hiphoppers. And nice thing was all those hiphoppers knew and loved the old soul songs, cos eveything is sampled into their music. And we love soul too, so we all listened to eachothers music.

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

I can't stand rap crap & will never forgive Aerofokkensmith for tearing down that wall between good songs & music & that damned rap crap.
I know I probly sound like a crotchety old METALHEAD but what the hell.
I too suspect you've been hired for a laff, Jack.
Rather than try an' make the most of it I would make like Iron Maiden & Run To The Hills! haha

[uwe]

Walk this Way was a rap song long before Run DMC dusted it off (and gave, btw, Aerosmith's then sagging career a much needed MTV-kick in the butt, Tyler is thankful for that to this day). As was James Brown's Sex Machine, you think that is shite too Terry?

I'm generally no rap fan myself, but I like some stuff and I can understand why people find that rhythmic speech over a hypnotic groove appealing if there is a good lyric to it. Some of Eminem's stuff entertained me, I still like some stuff of the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and I can bear some of the crossover stuff like Linkin Park in small doses too.

[Freuds_Cat]

I pinched this off the Aussie guitar Gear Heads site from Jonno who is a guitarist here in Adelaide in a band called Hard Copy.  Made me laugh and seemed fitting for this thread.

"Sat night 31st Jan, 43 degrees we roll up for a gig booked for us by an agency we work thru, on the booking sheet it said it was a private function for a footy club do.....NO PROBS 
We roll up at 430 pm to load in and do a sound check and find out after walking past a room full of pokies that was full of the blue rinse set , we find out that we are actually booked to play a caberet show in the bistro............................ I started to wonder if the venue actually looked at our bio on the agencies website..................HARD COPY..Classic hard rock/oz pub rock 

We found the manager and I spoke to her about the type of crowd they had in and what sort of bands they had as per normal.
Her reply was that the bulk of patrons are retirees and the odd family mixed with some of the local footy players and the bands are usually playing elvis covers and jangly 50's rock...

Now after discussing the situation with the band and deciding not to do a blues brothers/spinal tap style toned down jazzy blues set, we decided f**k it we are getting paid regrdless we will play our hard rockin sets as we had planned.

After we were shown a little alcove type stage in the wall that looked like a fish bowl we, started wheeling in our 1200w foh PA and our Marshall half stacks and backdrop. The strange looks of the locals was hillarious. We set up and did a sound check with All right now by free and put our gear on the stage and went to a mates place to come back at 9pm to go on at 930.

We came back at 9 and walked in to find the pokies packed and ther bistro full of families kids & retirees.....

The manager asked us at 10pm to go on as the kitchen had closed and alot of the older crowd had gone home or to the pokies in the adjacent room.

We got up and strated out set with Dirty Deeds ....pretty much expecting the room to clear............To our surprise we had 15 or so oldies get up and start dancing and waltzing.......LOL

If you have ever seen someone trying to waltz to Acca Dacca it was the funniest thing I've ever seen and they were loving it!!!

We were pretty much expecting the plug to be pulled after the second song but they kept gettin in to it.

Most people went home after the first set and 30 or so people in the venue watched the rest of the show.
It was awesome  LOL we played out our 3 sets and an encore!!!

Had a great night."

[pamlicojack]

UPDATE: Last night at practice, one of the guys mentioned his wife had to go out of town and couldn't do the show due to child care issues.  We went to the club (one of my old bands was playing and we had planned on going anyway) and told the owner we would have to bow out.  He was quite understanding, offered us another show and told us to bring in whomever we wanted for support.  He even bought a round for the band and told us he was a bit worried about the reaction we'd get from the crowds. 

A strange night, but a happy ending for all involved.

[Rocker949]

I doubt if you could have a happier ending than that.  Very good. 

[Freuds_Cat]

and the spark for a fun thread