Reviewing last night's gig

Photograph by Lavonne Bosman, 06/03/10

Last night's gig was once again a unique experience, despite the constants, which are basically the venue, its staff and our duo. The variables are what make each and every Saturday stand alone in my mind, the most significant being the diners.

Last night we had vocalist Vincent Nel as our guest artist, and he brought his own accompanist, guitarist Nigel Gabriel. Nice duo, nice music, Vince was in good voice and the repertoire choice was good. What they added to the evening, besides their lovely laid-back, jazzy music, was a whole crowd of diners, friends who'd come to watch them perform. Interestingly enough, there was an overlap of people I knew, as well: my sister, Wendy, and her husband, Theo, were part of this big group, as well as their good friends, Joy and Mervyn. So nice to have my sis at the gig - special kind of feeling. Also in the group were some seasoned musicians who perform regularly, and there's a certain kind of energy around under those circumstances - not quite sure how to categorise it, but let's just call it an "awareness".

As the band, we experience the night quite differently, I'd imagine, to what the diners do. There's so much behind-the-scenes work that gets done, the preparation for every gig, that by the time we're all set up and ready to play that first note, that's the fun, easy part. Performing new items in our repertoire excites me, as does performing my original songs. Working with Wayne has taught me so much, and after 14 months of regular gigging with him, I appreciate him even more. I've learnt to break out of that unfortunate mould of singing a cover version like some recording I've heard, and to do it any way I like, to play with it every time I sing it. Many singers are still stuck in that style, where each and every time they sing a song, they do it the same way. Yawn! In this case, my accompanist happens to be my guitar teacher, so there's that teacher-student element to our work, but also what you learn on the bandstand you can only learn on the bandstand. You can only become gig-fit by gigging. In the five weeks that we were not at Food Lover's Market (restaurant attendance affected by the Soccer World Cup), I felt so frustrated, because I carried on going for guitar lessons, but wasn't getting the benefit of the live performance in which to flex and explore what I'd learnt.

One of the most interesting parts of my music journey, in the past two years, is how the theory I've learnt in guitar lessons has influenced my singing. Long story, but what an interesting journey.

Last night we did two songs for the first time: Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" and Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love". What can I say? Looking forward to the second time we do them! Haha! Ended the night with Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put your Records On", the song we fluffed at the workshop last week, and lo and behold, we did so again last night! While restaurant audiences generally seem as though they're not listening, last night's crowd applauded after every one of Wayne's solos, so I guess the mistakes were duly noted!

But you know what? Despite the fact that I got soaking wet offloading the equipment before the gig and was freezing for the first two sets, despite the high chairs that swivel so much, we may as well call our band "The Rushin-Bosch Swing Duo", and despite the many, MANY "interesting" dynamics on the night, I had fun. And as long as it's fun, what the hell, I'll continue to do it! ;-)