Beryl Harrell

How many of you have heard of Beryl Harrell?

There is a great story about her in the fall issue of The Fretboard Journal.

She was born in 1918 in Washington but grew up in Los Angeles. She took steel guitar lessons from steel guitar legend and pioneer Sol Ho’opi'i. By all accounts she was gorgeous and a phenomenal steel guitar player. She played in several all-girl Hawaiian bands in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.

After the war, country music, and particularly western swing, became huge in Southern California and she became a sensation playing in all the famous LA clubs such as The Palomino Club. She hung out with Merle Travis, Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Paul Bigsby around the Los Angeles music scene in the early 1950’s.

When Las Vegas took off she started playing there as well.

In 1963 at the age of 45 she decided that she was too old for playing all the clubs and late hours, so she quit music and sold her steel guitar. She went to work as a telephone operator at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, but she missed playing music so much that she became very depressed.

In 1977, not yet 60 years old, she decided that life without music wasn’t worth living, and she took her own life.

To those of us past 60 and playing as good as ever, and nowhere near gorgeous, this is an amazing story.

B.B. King

B.B. King is going to be in town next week. I have seen B.B. a number of times over the years, but I will never forget the first time.

It was 1976 and my wife and I were celebrating out fifth wedding anniversary. We had decided to fly to Reno for the weekend. It was the first time I had ever rented a car. We got a Chevrolet Monte Carlo and drove around Lake Tahoe. We checked the local paper and saw where B.B. King was playing at the lounge at the Holiday Inn. I remember Louise said, “Who is B.B. King?” and I said, “You’ll see.”

I had heard that you needed to tip the maître de in Reno or Vegas if you wanted a good seat. So I gave the hostess a five dollar bill. In 1976, that was enough to get a front row seat in a hotel lounge. She escorted us to a table for two by the stage where we were enthralled by B.B.’s music and showmanship for the next 2 or 3 hours. My wife has been a B.B. King fan ever since.

The next night we went to see Roger Miller at the Golden Nugget where Glen Campbell made a surprise visit and they did a few songs together.

It was an amazing weekend.

One of the cool things about getting older is all the memories of great places we’ve been and people we’ve met.

And we’ve only begun.

Playing at Homer's

It was nine years ago this week that I opened Homer’s Coffee House. Homer’s was a culmination of a 30 year old dream to open a smoke-free and alcohol-free music venue. The place was designed from the ground up to be a music venue for singer-songwriters and small bands. I wanted to book Christian and family friendly artists. Specialty coffee and food became part of the mix to pay the bills.

At the beginning I thought that if I had 4 or 5 bands that would each play a couple of times a month, we would be in good shape. But I was soon overwhelmed with the number of groups that wanted to play. I quickly had to develop some “filters” to determine who I should talk to and who to ignore.

An obvious one was whether or not they were familiar with Homer’s. If someone brought me a CD and a nice picture while they were there to listen to another band, I usually booked them because I knew they “got” what we were trying to do. If they had never been there, it was easy to turn them down.

I also found that it was easy to ignore emails. If somebody called on the phone, I asked them to send a CD and a photo. This eliminated a bunch. When CDs arrived, which as almost daily, if they had a no jewel case or had a handwritten label, or if they just generally weren’t attractive, I tossed them in the trash. If they looked good, I would listen to about 10 seconds of the first cut. If it sounded good, I skipped to a couple of other cuts. If they all had the same sound, the same tempo, or the same key, I would pop out the CD pop it in the trash. If I could listen to the whole CD without being bored I would call the group and find them a date. This happened maybe 5% of the time.

I would also ask bands for their web address. I would then check the site over several weeks, if it was not updated regularly, I figured they weren’t serious. MySpace and Facebook aren’t web sites for this purpose. If all you have is a MySpace page, I would probably not have booked you.

I soon learned to ask about the band’s mailing list. I doubt if I would have booked a band that didn’t have a couple hundred people they could invite.

It has now been two and a half years since I have been involved with Homer’s but people are still asking me to help them get on the schedule to play. I have decided that when I see another musician at Homer’s, either when I am playing or when I am there to hear another band, that I would introduce them to the manager and put in a good word for them. I have never had to do that.Apparently bands want to play at Homer's but not enough to come hear who is playing.

Sky Blue has played at Homer’s more than any other band, over 65 times. It would seem reasonable that if a band wanted to play at Homer’s, they would come hear Sky Blue to see what is expected. If they would, they would probably be surprised with the variety of music, the humor, and the way Sky Blue interacts with the audience.

So there you have it. I don’t know about the current criteria at Homer’s, but if you have tried to get booked and were unable to do so, you might now have a clue as to why you are having trouble.

I presume others music presenters think roughly the same way.

"Put on a Good Show" Part 2

I thought I would do a follow up to my last post. Apparently not everybody is familair with the tune "Cherokee Fiddle" about a guy who plays the fiddle in a train station for tips. Apparently the song was written by Michael Martin Murphy, but Johnny Lee had a big hit with it, and it was in the movie "Urban Cowboy."

I have seen Murph several times and he does put on a great show. By that I mean that he connects with the audience, plays with a lot of energy, and never does the same thing twice. In fact he seems to delight in surprising his band with his antics. He is a real genius.

The story of the song is about a Cherokee fiddle player who is able to gather a crowd of miners in the train station and keep them enetertained enough to make a living by passing the hat. Apparently it is true story.

For a number of years I booked bands at a local venue. It was fairly easy to find great musicians who played wonderfully, but those who could connect with the audience and keep people coming back was much harder to find.

That was my point of the previous post. Any comments?

If you want to make a living, you’ve got to put on a good show.

The memorable line from Johnny Lee’s song “Cherokee Fiddle” about a busker is: “If you want to make a living, you’ve got to put on a good show.”

This is the most profound and true statement I have ever heard about the music business. In fact, it is quite possible all you need to know.

I recently heard a musician commenting about how many wonderful musicians and bands there are in Kansas City. He added that the problem is that there are not enough places to play. Since I have been on all three sides; as a fan, performer, and presenter, I know that if the existing venues were making any money, there would be a lot more venues. The issue is that not enough people are willing to come out and listen to one song after another.

The number of people who are willing to sit and listen to music for hours is actually very small. There are, however, a lot more people who will gladly pay to see a good show. And there lies the difference.

Playing music is relatively easy, putting on a good show is much more elusive. There is a pretty direct relationship between how good of show you can put on and how much money you make. The relationship between how good of musician you are and how much money you make is not near so clear.

Most bands spend hours working on playing well, but almost no time working on entertaining the audience. In my band, Sky Blue, we put a very high priority on “putting on a show” but we still find the time to actually work on the show elusive.

Performance coach, Tom Jackson, has built a good career of preaching this truth. His point is that people don’t come to hear songs, they come to experience “moments.” In other words, “If you want to make a living, you’ve got to put on a good show.” I wish all business was this easy to define.

Stage Monitors

A friend of mine confided in me recently that their worship leader at church had no idea, if or when, the congregation was singing. We soon figured out that because of his in-ear monitors, he couldn’t hear anything but himself. That got me thinking about stage monitors in general, and my experience with such things.

About forty-five years ago, I was playing about 200 dates a year with my rock band. Like just about every other band of that era, we had gotten so loud that we couldn’t hear each other, especially the vocals. Everybody was just playing louder than everybody else. I understand that the principle reason the Beatles quit touring was that they couldn’t hear themselves and it was becoming extremely frustrating.

We had bills to pay and didn’t have that luxury, so we began to try to find a solution. We tried various placements for the amps and PA and eventually came upon a solution that worked great. We took a “line out” from the mixer and fed it to guitar amps on the stage. I played hundreds of gigs with a Fender Princeton amp sitting on top of one of my bass cabinets with the house mix coming through the Princeton. Essentially that meant that we were hearing on stage, pretty much what it sounded like out front, which was the goal. The goal of a good monitor set up is for the musicians on stage to hear what the audience is hearing.

Over the years, stage monitors have gotten increasingly more sophisticated to the point where you can pretty much hear whatever you want. This has led to the “more me” syndrome where the vocalist wants to hear mainly the vocals, the guitar player is only interested in the guitar and so forth. Overall mix is left to the sound engineer who may or may not have any idea what the music is supposed to sound like. The only people who really know are the musicians, and they are now isolated in their own little world.

Playing in a band is a team sport. It should not be individual musicians all doing their own thing. Being able to hear, see, and know each other is essential to playing well as an ensemble. What I sound like is not near as important as what the band sounds like.

Art & Sports

It may appear that art and sports don’t have much in common, but in fact, there are so many areas where they overlap that a good definition of the difference is needed. My suggestion is if there is scoring, either by judges or by the participants, and if there are clear winners and losers, then it is a sport. Art is not competition.

When I was in high school, we had a lot of music competitions. There wasn’t much difference between the music department and the athletic department. We all practiced, scored points at events and came home either as winners or losers. Like athletics, there were events for teams (football & bands) and individuals (track & soloist.) Music was really just a sport at that point. At my school, the music department brought home more trophies than the athletic department.

There are many other areas where the activities are fuzzy. Figuring skating is a good example. Figure skating is most legitimately an art form, but it is now a recognized international sport, with judges scoring on predetermined criteria and clear winners and losers. The same is true for ballroom dancing. It is both an art form and a sport.

By my definition, tournament fishing is a sport, recreational fishing is something else. The only way hunting would be considered a sport is if the deer had guns and could shoot back.

At the professional level, both athletes and artist are in the entertainment business. Whether you are a quarterback, a pitcher, race car driver, actor, dancer, or musician, your job is to sell tickets. Your value is based on how many people want to come see you do whatever it is you do.

Sometimes art is sold as a competition solely to sell tickets. I am referring to popularity contests such as the Grammys, Oscars, Tonys, and the hundreds of similar events that are mainly political, where the winners are chosen by obscure methods with little or no preset criteria. Such contests should be taken with a large grain of salt. They have much more in common with political elections than actual indicators of talent.

Sky Blue will be in the Kansas City Blues Band Challenge in a few weeks. This is a judged event with clear criteria. These types of events are like the high school music contests and seem to have a lot in common with livestock shows. Livestock shows judge the entrants on how close they come to a predetermined standard. It is a good way to check to see how you compare to the rest of the breed. The “Best of Show” at the Westminster Kennel Club may not be the best pet you could have, but you know it is going be one good looking dog. It is the same kind of deal.

It will be interesting to see how we do. Win or lose, these kind of things need to be kept in perspective. We are artists first. The contest is to see how close we come to the standard idea of what a blues band should be. Do we even want to be a “standard” blues band? Who knows? We are artists.