Performing Like a Professional

You don’t have to be a big-time musician to understand how to show some class. Here’s Robbie Link writing about something that has to sting a bit:

It’s a running joke/sad truth amongst musicians about the shows where the band outnumbers the audience. I’ve been there. It doesn’t matter if it’s an eighty piece orchestra with fifty people in the audience or a quintet with an audience of three. It feels bad either way. But it can be good. I played in Dana Auditorium in Greensboro, NC, once. It’s a large concert hall. There were four of us. Well – the audience did outnumber the band but not by much – I think there were 15 of them. We put chairs on stage so they would be right up next to us and it was great – like a living room concert. I think they even had a sofa up there that was a prop for some theater piece. The audience loved the intimacy and we got to play acoustically just like playing at home.

I’ve been at a live show where the performer was whining about the small size of the audience, forgetting that we were the ones who showed up. I’ve gotta admire these guys for realizing their fans deserved the show they came to see. Bringing everybody on stage for a close-up show was a cool idea.