Not as common as it used to be but I played a private house party during the busy Christmas season. I usually love these. First off there is always an assortment of amateur guitar players at any event. As I play at a very high level they are almost always deferential to me. Always willing to compliment and ask questions. They will tell others at the party how good I am, even better when they tell the host.
Now I was originally asked to play nothing but Christmas music and I said that might be a little tough. One, how many memorable Holiday tunes are there? Two, I’d have to come up with all that music (like I said these holiday gigs aren’t as common as they used to be so learning 50-60 holiday tunes for 2-3 gigs a year is not a great ROI. But I took up the challenge. I do not know how many tunes I put together but I played the whole 3 hours (with 2 short breaks) only playing Christmas/winter/holiday themed music.
I’ll admit to cheating a small bit. I did use music on this gig. While I did work my way through the binder in the weeks leading up to my Christmas gigs, I did not memorize anything. The time was spent developing skeletal arrangements, writing or deleting chords, removing tunes that were too convoluted (12 days of Christmas) or just didn’t sit well under my hands after a few readings.
On the gig I played through them with some familiarity but, for the most part, was sight reading and making up arrangements on the spot.
Since I do not have a lot of videos of me playing my Christmas/Holiday repertoire, I decided to record the evening. I played well on every piece except there would be random places where my playing sound like someone had punched me in the middle of the tune.
Well it was almost like someone punching me. You see at these events, which we musicians call ‘background gigs’ there is always people talking, laughing, glasses clinking, plates being dropped, etc. But on this occasion there was one person who laughed so loud and so often and stood in the same room as me the entire night. This was the aural equivalent of being punched. I tried turning up a bit, while still remaining at background levels and pointing the amp more at me to drown her out. Each time she just got louder.
Ironically. at the end of the night, she was the only person to come over and compliment me and ‘was sure to hire me if she ever had an event.
