You Are A Lovely Audience

Being a lovely audience is more vital to music than being a musician. There are always more musicians and songwriters than there are audiences. Rock-n-roll, which I believe changed the course of world history, would not have lasted three years if audiences would have paid any attention to critics. Instead, they got up in mass and started boppin' to the beat. Jazz is still around 100 years after it's birth because a small, dedicated bunch of listeners keep it alive. Folk, bluegrass, blues, and country-western looked at various times like they would be swept into the nostalgia bins, but audiences kept providing vitality to unknowns who could advance each style little by little so they all remain contemporary.

As a small time, local musician, there have been hundreds of times when I have shown up in a lounge or tavern where no one knew me and had the pleasure of an audience giving me their attention and appreciation. The mechanics of such a thing is that the musician tries to sense out where the room is and play to it. Good performers try to give expression to what is the inexpressed consensus of a particular time and place. There are thousands of ways to utterly miss the mark, but when a tune nails the mood you know it, and it feels equally good to the player and the listener.

Thanks for being a lovely audience. Support local music. Demand from them to be entertained and make them give you something new and original. They are the better for it and so is the music.