The Road from Charisma to Compassion

I've been through an interesting and productive sequence of books lately.  Leading up to the first Jefferson Wheelchair show, I was looking for books that might help our showmanship, which led me to one called "Win the Crowd" by Steve Cohen, a professional magician.  There were a number of useful techniques in there, but the better ones are going to require some practice.  I've put enough of the more straightforward ideas into practice to know that those work.  Might have more on that later, after I get to experiment with the more advanced ideas.  Useful stuff here for people who present themselves in front of a group in any way.  One of the more interesting things I learned was how a stage magician prepares in advance and pays an extraordinary level of attention to audience reactions in order to constantly stay one step ahead of them.

That book led me to "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane.  Her premise is that charisma is not something people just have or don't have; charisma is a skill set that can be developed.  She also theorizes that there are actually four distinct types of charisma, each involving a different balance of that skill set.  Again, the more basic techniques have shown some promise, and I have some experimenting to do with the more advanced ones.  In particular, I've tried slowing my speech and dropping the pitch of my voice at work to convey greater authority, with some success.  I've tended to speak rapidly in my work out of necessity, because I have a lot of information to convey and very tight time frames, but I thought it might actually save me time if I came across as someone you didn't argue with.  The experiment worked, for the most part.  I have some refining to do.  A key idea again in this book is mindfulness.  A charismatic person is not distracted, and she presents several specific techniques to help you reduce or eliminate distractions from your mind.

From there I moved on to "Self-Compassion" by Kristin Neff.  The link here is far less obvious.  Losing my temper at work has been an ongoing problem for me, though I've gotten better over the last few years because I've been working so hard on it.  It's hard for people who know me elsewhere to imagine me showing anger, never mind having a constant problem with it.  All I can say is that there are things in my work environment that really push my buttons, and I'm coping with that as best I can.

The common link with the other books is an emphasis on mindfulness, on observing what is going on in your own head before it becomes a problem.  Without getting too far into the psychology behind it, when I start feeling overwhelmed in the workplace, there's a lot of vicious self-talk in my head that sends me into a fight-or-flight response.  Not good, because it actually restricts blood flow in the brain and makes it harder to think, just when you really need presence of mind.  One possible solution is to use mindfulness to become aware of it before it gets out of control, and ease up on myself internally before I actually lose my temper at an external target.  I haven't had enough pressure at work in the last week or so to test this any more than superficially, but it shows promise.  It also dovetails nicely with my meditation and spiritual practice, as well as some of the charisma techniques from the first two books.  I may be learning these techniques with different goals in mind, but why not put it all to work across the board to make my life better?

JW - 8/11/2012

No Bill again this time, but the other four of us got together.  The focus was on continuing to bring together "The Boys are Back in Town" and the two Bryan Adams songs.  We played a few other odds and ends, but that was the main focus.

Keith and I did substitute lead vocal duty again.  I was smarter this time in one respect and had at least thought to print out the words for all three, since I was fairly sure Bill didn't have any of them on paper.  However, I wasn't so smart in that I didn't practice singing and playing at the same time for any of them, even though I knew Bill wasn't going to be there.  The result was very much what you would expect, very hit or miss, mostly miss because I'm simply not that familiar with singing any of them, and splitting my concentration tended to cause both the singing and the bass playing to suffer to varying degrees.

I thought about this a lot on the way home.  I considered going so far as to learn how to sing and play all of the JW song list in case it was ever necessary, but that's a lot of work for something I'll probably never need to do, and Keith's voice suits a lot of the material better than mine in any case, if it comes to that.  A more sensible approach is to learn to sing whatever we're likely to work on when I know Bill isn't going to be there, and that's far more viable.

"Boys" is coming together, if slowly, and it's a good addition to the list in that I can see it going over and it's a song not every band can pull off.

Looks as though we're not going to have as much new material for the next show as I'd hoped, but I think we'll have enough.  Andy observed that if we play the material from the original last two sets during the first two sets and vice versa, most of the audience will hear songs they didn't hear the first time.  Quite correct, I think.

I'm beginning to see why a band that has been together this long doesn't have more established material.  All concerned learn quickly enough; it's just that some of the songs get lost, in a way.  Dale wants to make sure we have four strong sets, down solid, but inevitably we seem to have bits of songs that go awry because one person or another forgets something.  So we keep practicing songs that we have down for the most part, going back to nail down bits and pieces individuals have forgotten, trying to reach that 100% confidence level.  I don't have any better suggestion than to keep playing them until they stick.  And so the sidelined songs stay on the sideline.  Still, we're going to need to shake things up more if we start playing out more often.  I think we can do that by working some of the sidelined material back into the practice regimen, and we should need to play the basic four sets less often at practice as we play those sets more in public.  I'll have to think about a method of approaching this and suggest it to Dale.

Andy will not be making it to the next practice, and the plan is to have another vocally oriented session.  Keith agreed with me that it would probably be more constructive to just focus on vocals for one or two songs each time, but a full vocal session is still a good idea.  I plan to take notes this time.  The first session sounded great, but then we didn't retain everything we'd worked out.

I won't be guesting with Splunge this weekend, as I'd thought I might.  JW got together to practice (meaning my wife was less willing to lose me for an additional music session), and Splunge drummer Jason wasn't able to make it this weekend anyway.  I'll do it at some point anyway; there's no rush.

JW - 8/4/2012

Everybody on board again.  Played through the fourth and first sets (most of 'em, anyway), plus the two Bryan Adams' songs, "The Boys are Back in Town", brought back ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man", and tried Journey's "Lights" for the first time.  We're now officially on to return to the Horseshoe Pub 9/29.

We weren't as "on" as the last time, but we did get through a lot.  The harmonies on some established songs still need some work that we're not doing because the idea is that we'll do a vocally focused session later.  I'd rather address this as we get to those songs, with everything else, but that's not the consensus of the group.

"Boys" continues to improve, though it's not truly ready yet.  I'll be surprised if it's not ready for the next show, though.  I'm sure the Bryan Adams songs will be in.  "Lights" is simple enough.  We had to drop the key quite a bit, and need to work out the harmonies, but we made a decent start on it.

We're planning on adding Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", after we played around with it at practice.  Doesn't sound that difficult, apart from working on the harmonies.

We haven't been playing "I'm a Man" the last couple of practices, but I think it's because Dale wants to work more on the percussion parts.  Should be easy once he gets that down.

I've learned the bass parts for Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" (a song the band used to do) and Ozzy Osborne's "Crazy Train" on my own.  "Fire" was just for myself, and I'm not sure I should suggest bringing back a song so heavily associated with the band's original bassist, but I do like it.  "Crazy Train" is primarily because Keith was playing around with it at the previous practice, and I like it.  I'll also teach myself to sing lead on both of them, just for practice purposes.

Sounds as though we'll have plenty of new material for that next show.  Very happy about that!  I'd like to start working some of the other sidelined songs back into the mix, but I don't think Dale is comfortable enough yet that we have the core list down as well as we should.  There are several songs where I agree with him, though I'd focus more on some of the harmony issues if it were up to me.  We'll be okay with the harmonies; it's just more important to me than to most of the others.

We're almost certainly going to not have practice next week due to scheduling issues with multiple band members on vacation.  I'd like to sit it with the Splunge guys next weekend if that's the case, just for a bit of practice (especially singing lead) and to enjoy their company again.  They still haven't replaced me, and have made clear that I'm welcome to drop in, though they know there is no way I'm coming back permanently.

JW Practice - 7/29/12

Bill was back on board this time, resulting in a much more satisfying practice.  We also gained some benefit from the practice he missed, in that "The Boys Are Back in Town" is starting to come together nicely.

We worked on the usual third set, plus the two Bryan Adams songs we haven't played out yet and "Boys".  Between the songs we didn't use at the first show and a few we've added since, we'll have at least a few songs that'll be fresh for any returning audience members at the next show, and it's not as though they've heard the existing list that many times yet.

We're still focused on the same core set list, at least partially because we lost some momentum after the show, and all agree that we want to get those songs down solidly before expanding the list too far.

JW - 7/15/2012 and 7/20/2012

It took us a while to get back up and running again after our first show.  Andy insisted that we take a week off afterward (which is a band tradition I hadn't been aware of), then we ran into scheduling problems the following week and couldn't get together.  We might have been okay taking one week off, but that second week really cost us our momentum.  You could feel that we'd lost something by the time we played together again.  We didn't sound bad; we'd just lost some precision and some energy.

Then we ran into scheduling problems and didn't have Bill for the 7/20 session.  That always costs us some cohesiveness because Keith and I have to sing lead on songs we usually don't, and musicianship suffers as a result.  We ran through a few of the existing list and started a couple of new ones (I'm a Man and The Boys are Back in Town).  It was okay, but that zip was still missing.

I like the opportunity to step up and sing lead from time to time; it's just very difficult to do it if I don't know the song well enough on both bass and vocally to split my concentration, especially if I don't have the words to the song available to me.  I think I'm going to have to put some practice time into playing and singing some of the JW songs, if only so I'll be able to help keep us together if we have to practice without Bill and to give myself a little practice singing lead again.  It'll also keep me practicing songs that I feel I know fairly well by this point.

Dale is bothered by the lack of momentum as well, since he's looking for work for us more seriously.  It's not a good time for us to be taking a step back.  Some of us would like to get some of the shelved songs back into play and add some new ones; Dale is more inclined to focus on keeping the existing set list as sharp as possible.  Having thought about it, I think the way to go is to do both.  We can focus hard on the existing list while also working on just one or two songs we'd sidelined or new ones.

I've gotten the Rickenbacker back out since the show, since it sounds good with the new amplifier.  Unfortunately, one of the songs it sounds best on is "Hash Pipe", which is the main one where I use the "baby bass".  As much as I like the visual value of that one, it's hard to justify carrying a third bass and going to the trouble of switching that many times a night, not only because of the physical switch but also because it takes a couple of seconds to change the amp settings as well.  It doesn't sound like much, but those few seconds make a difference on stage.  It makes more sense just to carry the five string Ibanez and the Rick if I'm going to use two because I could play almost everything on the Rick if I had to, while the "baby bass" would sound bad on some songs if I had to use it as a backup.  Still, it's lightweight and small, so I might just bring it and watch for opportunities to use it.

Ego and the Pillar

At the first JW performance, I found myself receiving a reminder of where I stand in the group.  Most musicians don't pay much attention to bass players, and even fewer audience members do, but try listening to a band without one.  It's an old argument I won't rehash here.  I haven't historically stayed long in bands that just wanted a bass player to fill a certain sonic space and not do much else.  The way I see it, any bassist could fill that role in one of those bands, and I'm not interested in playing with musicians who aren't capable of understanding what the bass player really brings to the table.  I've usually contributed additionally in some way as well, whether it was vocally, in terms of additional equipment, or in terms of band leadership.

JW has most of that territory well covered, which is a Good Thing as a general rule, and they do recognize the value of the bassist.  Andy has spent most of his time in bands as one, and everybody has made it known from time to time that they're glad to have me in the group.  Even though I don't sing any lead with this band, I saw myself as one of the vocal contributors as well as an instrumentalist who contributes as much as anyone else.  It might not seem like much to sing backing parts, but there's a huge difference between a band with one good lead singer and a couple of decent back-ups and a band that simply has one good lead singer.  I've also traditionally been one of the more visual performers in any band I've been with.

So the layout of the stage happened to include a pillar at an inconvenient spot.  Not the first time I've run into that.  Long story short, I found myself placed mostly behind the pillar, virtually invisible to half the audience.  Yes, it just happened to be where I usually am in the standard set-up, but if it had happened to be the lead singer or lead guitarist in that position, I'm sure we would have shifted the set-up somehow.

I was amused at my own mildly-annoyed gut reaction to this.  My ego was bruised, even though I didn't put up much of an argument, because there was no better way to position ourselves on that stage.  My wireless rig allowed me to make myself more visible if I really wanted to be.  It was more about seeing clearly how the others in the band see me, which is as a secondary, supporting performer.  True enough, that's what I am, but being stuck behind a pillar didn't make me feel any better about that.  I'll have to deal with it, because we hope to play there in the future.

So once again, I consider my role in this band, and decide that this is where I want to be.  We sound good collectively, and if my role appears small to the public, so be it.  It matters a good deal less now that it would have when I was twenty, or even thirty.  And yet the fact that it bothered me at all tells me that I still have some ego to deal with, and that that is part of what I'm doing playing in public again.

The visual presentation is another aspect of this band that we'll have to work out over time.  Everybody likes to move around on stage, which is fantastic!  We just need to find a way to make all of those moving parts into one coherent whole.

JW - First Show - 6/23/12

First show ever with this line-up, at the Horseshoe Pub in Honeybrook.  Overall results were encouraging.  We went over well, though the band members themselves agreed across the board that we made far too many mistakes.  Fortunately, most of those mistakes were minor enough that most of the audience probably didn't notice unless they were musicians and paying relatively close attention.  At this writing, I've listened to a recording of the first set, and few of the mistakes are noticable, which matches with the audience reaction.  I would attribute the mistakes to a combination of first show excitement and being thrown a bit by the different sound of playing somewhere other than our rehearsal space.  The good news is, the feel of most of that first set was incredible; the audience response makes sense.  I talked to some audience members who didn't know anyone in the band, and they were not only impressed, but particularly impressed to find out this was the first show for this particular group of people.

We did get into some trouble with management for being too loud.  It's a problem that can be fixed, but a matter of some concern because it's not new.  We practice relatively loudly and we know it.  Some of that is because we practice in a confined space, so no surprise there.

Hearing everybody else was also a problem for all of us, and may have contributed, if not flat out caused, some of our mistakes.  Some of that is that almost all that comes through the PA is the vocals and some minor drum miking.  Andy and I are on opposite sides of the stage and each of us couldn't hear the other at all, but we managed via visual cues and the other musicians as reference.  Each of us is hearing a completely different mix.  Lead vocals sounded fine; backing vocals were too quiet in general.

Some things about audiences are a lot different since the last time I played anywhere in public.  When audience members become bored, the cell phones come out and the texting begins.  If it happens with enough people, it's actually a very striking image from the stage.  It only happened a few times, but it was enough to observe the phenomenon.  And it happens on the opposite side of the audience enjoyment spectrum, too.  When things sound good, the camera phones come out.

Audiences are also generally less reactive than they were in the '80's.  It's not that this band wasn't going over; I've witnessed this same thing while going to see other bands, most of which are very successful.  I have no idea why this has changed, but it definitely has.

Same thing with how late people stay.  In the '80's, the bulk of your audience didn't even show up until at least half an hour into your show, and usually it was more like an hour.  You lost a certain percentage after the third set of four, and while people would often drift out over the course of the last set, you still had a fair audience by the end.  Most current bands seem to lose most of their audience after the third set, and play to a largely empty house by the end.  Again, seeing other bands, this isn't just us.  My theory is that most of the audience for live music is getting older and simply doesn't want to stay up that late.  One of the local venues has bands starting at 7 or 8 PM and playing until midnight, which I think is a great adaptation.  I've got to go there some time to see how that plays out.

Overall, a good start.  Hopefully we'll be booked to return and improve on it.

JW - 6/17/2012

This session was essentially a dress rehearsal for the show next week, going through all four planned sets.  The result?  Not perfect by a long shot, but satisfactory.  Consensus seemed to be that, while we could do better, we would be okay if we play as well as this the day of the show.

One of the things we learned is that we have far more material than we need.  Good problem to have.  And we feel good enough about everything on the list that we were having a hard time deciding what to cut.  Again, good problem to have.

The vocals slipped from last session.  Not surprising in light of vocals not being the focus of this session, and we really didn't want to spend a lot of time on it just then.  I was having a very hard time hearing Keith's voice again, which makes it difficult to hear what I can do to blend well.  We'll sound good enough for the show, but I'd like to shore up this area afterward.

That first performance is a significant threshold, and we know we have more than enough material to play out now.  The next step, from my point of view, would be to get the vocal mix up to the quality level of everything else, and bump the amount of material up to six sets.  Why six?  So we can play our 20 or so best songs each performance and still be able to shake up the remaining list.  That should keep the audience (not to mention us) more interested than if we were beating the same 40 songs to death.  Those things are both easily accomplished with a little practice time.  The vocals are just a matter of reinforcing what we did in the vocal practice.  And we have quite a bit of material we sidelined to focus on the four sets we were going to need for our first show, so we wouldn't have to add much to reach six sets total.

The thing I really want to see is where we go from there.  How large of a list are we going to maintain?  What, if anything, will we choose to drop?  Will we add songs that are more current (or significantly different in some way) than what we're already playing?

We've got a good band here.  We won't know just how good until we get it in front of an audience, and that's about to happen.

JW - 6/10/12 - The Vocal Session

The vocal-focused session was exactly what I'd hoped for.  We covered the whole list (quickly, but it was the whole list), going over parts that needed vocal work along the way.  Singer Bill took the lead in figuring out the required notes, and we quickly figured out who needed to sing which parts, rather than winging it as we have in the past.  Bottom line was a huge improvement in the quality of the group vocals.  The hard part is going to be remembering all those parts for the upcoming show.

I don't think anyone was happier about it than bandleader Dale, the one guy who wasn't singing, but I suppose he was in the best position to objectively hear what we were all doing.

JW - 6/3/2012

Blew through modified versions of the planned third and fourth sets without too many problems, so not much to say on that front.

In preparation for our first show with this line-up, we had the full PA set up.  It was nice, easier to hear everything than usual, and didn't sound any louder than usual to me.

It was also my first practice with my new, significantly more powerful, Gallien Krueger amplifier, as well as bringing my wireless set up.  Left the pedal board at home, as I'm getting everything I need from the amp or the compression effect that the wireless tends to have.

For next week's session, we'll be focusing hard on vocals, which is a more-than-welcome development from my perspective.  Andy will be out of town next weekend, so a full band practice is out, and everybody still wanted to fit as much working time in as we can before our first show.  One of my old bands (Mirage) was much more vocally oriented than this group, and we did two or three pure vocal sessions in the year-and-a-half or so that I was with them, with substantial benefits.  Considering that JW isn't vocally oriented in the first place, it shouldn't take too much doing to step up our game in that regard by putting some focus on the subject.

Andy made reference at one point to the six years they'd been together, and Dale had once said he and Keith had been working together for about ten years.  Now I've got some idea as to how long this group has actually been around.

We talked a bit about the place we're going to play and the set up needed for it.  Sounds as though we're going to be bringing a lot of lighting for a such a small place.  While the stage is small, it's also high enough off the ground that you don't want to fall off, and with the lighting, it's hard enough to see that Andy actually did fall off at a previous performance there.  Keith also referred to changing shirts at least every set because it gets so damn hot with the lights, so I'll want to make sure I have clothes in reserve as well.

I've been reading up on stage presentation due to my excitement about getting out in front of an audience again, and have learned some useful things in the course of it, but I still don't feel as though it's likely that any suggestions I have will be given a lot of consideration by the group, so I'll have to bring what I can to the table and make the best of it, hoping to influence by example.