If I Had a Crinkled Penis Dollar for Every Critic, I'd Never Have to Sing Wonderwall Ever Again.

Dear Patrons of Bars and Restaurants Who Employ Musicians for Your Entertainment,

 

It’s me, the singer in the corner; thwarting your dagger-looks while you chomp on your nicoise salad. Can I level with you? It’s bad enough we’re expected to compete with other musicians for the coveted spot to perform with the price of promoting the shit out of a show and promising 30 of our people to hear us perform for 4 hours to make the same $100 that you end up spending at the bar…  But to look out into the crowd only to see the most deplorable criticisms cracked all over your face like a $4 mud mask is just rude.

This ain’t theater. There is NO fourth wall. We can see and hear you. When you say “I hate this friggen song.” We hear you when you say “why doesn’t HE sing more, she’s shit.” We hear you. If you think we love ALL of these songs after performing them 4 nights a week for 300 years, then maybe this IS better theater than we thought… And when you make the face of someone who just walked into a shit-stained stall at Britney concert that forces you to have to hold your Hermes while you hover over the havoc; it’s sort of uninspiring.

And then when you whisper into your friend’s ear to ensure that she is on board with your witless waterboarding and she makes the face of someone who just pulled half a roach out of her half-eaten hoagie; it’s discourteous.

 And after we’ve sung a lengthy lyric, extending the last note with a crafty coalescence of crescendo and decrescendo, reverberating into a delayed vibrato only to open our eyes and awake from the stage we dream we were on- only to see you make the face of someone who just inhaled a fart so pungent you could taste it over your lychee martini; it’s deflating.

 

…We see you. And when you make this face:

And this face:

And this face:

…We see you.

When you come up and hold a dollar over our tip jar like it’s the only thing keeping us from our next meal and dangle it while you rattle off your requests like Godsmack and Creed when we have just played Tom Petty and Joni Mitchell and you are SURPRISED that we don’t have that particular drek ‘in the bag’ and you begrudgingly throw your crinkled lunch money-black nail polished dollar into the guitar like you just saved a small child from the fly-swatting trenches of third-world living; it is insulting.

 We don’t know every song to mankind. If you are NICE, chances are, we may look it up AFTER break: not in the middle of a song while belting my heart out. And if you MUST interrupt my high E to ask if I sing that new Nickelback song- 30 seconds before finishing the current one I am signing, I may feel less compelled to just look it up and fake it for you after the next break.

 The guitar case is NOT your personal storage facility for your keys, phone, and purse so you can dance. It’s for the guitar, and sometimes for tips and business cards.

 No, you cannot sing. Not if you aren’t an actual singer who isn’t a drunken patron who can barely speak after your seventeenth White Claw. We are hired to entertain the whole bar, and unless the whole bar would enjoy it, please don’t ask. It isn’t karaoke, and the managers of these restaurant/bars want pleasant sounds pumping through the speakers while people eat, so please don’t be offended if the guitarist asks for a few bars as a quick audition before accompanying you. And if the guitarist just played for you while you burped into our mic for 4 minutes forcing us to feign Wagon Wheel or Chicken Fried, a tip would be a nice gesture… or perhaps a drink.

You do not have to tip, although it is welcomed. We usually use our tips to pay the wait staff, pay our bill, gas, and get taco bell afterwards. But you know what? Clapping is just as awesome. A smile of approval is also delightful.

Short on all those things? Just don’t make the face of someone who accidentally chugged the wrong beer from under the bleachers and found it to be filled with cat hair and Vaseline. 

Just don’t make THIS face:

This isn’t the Voice. We don’t need you to turn your chair around, to judge the act and determine if we are meant for stardom. You don’t have to buy our album or watch us compete against your precious Taylor Swift for ‘best album.’ Wait, lemme finish…

 

The ultimate compliment isn’t that we should be on American Idol. The best compliment is a smile, a word of approval, a kind note to the staff that you dig us and would want us back, or even a referral to play another venue/party.

 

Now… this is going to blow your mind: when you point at someone while you speak, they are going to assume you are talking about them. Say your mean shit with a smile and use your hands for clapping and we won’t know how cunty you are.

 

Musicians are people: Artists, parents, lovers, someone who also had a shit day and would love to sop it up with a tank of Tito’s, but we use music as our outlet (and to keep the power on)… So, please be kind. We aren’t piped in radio music... We are actually, really alive.

 

Ask yourself: why would you ask your facebook friends to sign a petition to adopt old dogs and be kind to orcas while you shit on the musicians? 

My point: Just fucking be kind.