It sometimes seems there's a coffee house every other block and at least three songwriters in every one. That tallies up to a lot of original songs, some more original than others. It also means that opinions are being formed in split seconds all over town about the performers, their songs, their personalities, in a word, them. Those members of an audience who don't already know you are deciding very quickly whether they like you or not. They're trying to find a window to look in to see who you are. If your songs are well crafted, honest and have emotional impact, they will speak well for you. But how well do you speak for yourself? Between songs, that is.
I used to play gay bars in the seventies, because they were about only places you could do original material other than a full-out showcase like the Troubadour. I made some lasting friendships and discovered some of my most loyal fans by playing the Bitter End West. Eventually people would come to hear me, rather than considering me a distraction. But in the beginning, I had to work like mad to get the attention of guys whose primary reason for being there was to meet someone, certainly not a singer, and least of all a female one. But we had a lot in common, this audience and I. I wrote the title song of my first album for them, "Hollywood Town." They were a great inspiration to me. When I first started playing there, I used them as a survey to see which songs communicated and which ones didn't. My songs were just beginning to be pretty good. For the most part, though, I was an unknown performer at the piano, singing unknown material to an audience who had another agenda. They'd never heard the intros, the melodies, the lyrics. Everything was unfamiliar. So the best way I found to get their attention was to draw them into the experience of the song by talking about the subject of the song and making it their issue as well, making it part of their lives.
Obviously, I couldn't just talk about myself and how I came to write the songs, as I hear many songwriters do. That can work when you're playing to a group of people who know your material and want to know the story behind the writing. But in the beginning, they weren't fans yet. They weren't even interested in hearing songs, much less why somebody wrote them. After all, I wasn't being interviewed by Rolling Stone; I was trying to convince someone to listen who had alcohol in his veins and partying on his mind. My only chance was to make the song his story. By the time I sang the song, the patter had given him his own pictures from his own life to look at and the song had to be clear and impactful enough to carry that off till the end. Then for the next song, I had to keep him involved by giving him more common ground, more home movies from his own experience. This was actually the perfect audience for a new songwriter/singer. They didn't patronize me. If I didn't get them, they ignored me. When I did affect them, they let me know it. This trial by fire trained me so well that now the patter is an integral part of my show.
People used to ask me who wrote the between songs words, as if that were a whole different skill from writing songs, and that just because I was a songwriter didn't mean I could put words together well enough to speak. Granted, it's different from the structured, rehearsed words of a song lyric, but it can accomplish so much if it's done easily, naturally and with some forethought. You probably would want to have a general idea of what you'll talk about before the night of the show, but you wouldn't want it memorized. If it sounds like written material, it'll put the audience to sleep, or they'll feel like the window is not open through which to see you. They like to think they're getting a candid picture of who you are. And if you do it right, they are.
Think about your favorite performing songwriters. Do you feel you know them, even if you don't personally know them? And isn't part of that because of the way they are on stage? Not just the songs they sing, but their manner, their personalities, the way they interact with the audience and other band members...the way they handle unexpected things that might occur. All of these give us clues to who the person is. Are they funny? Are they down to earth and human? Are they wise and insightful? Are they, at times, profound? Are they charismatic? Are they vulnerable? Are they dynamic? A great performer will be all these things in one evening. With a well-paced show, you will see all these sides to the same person. And I've yet to see a performer who is not these things as a person actually fool an entire audience into feeling he/she is these things as a performer. So you might as well be real. And that goes for the between songs patter, as well. The audience is going to see who you are one way or another; you might as well reveal it with honest communication in and between the songs.
You don't have to talk a lot, and certainly not before every song, but those times you do speak, make sure you let them see the real person. It can make them feel comfortable and confident that you will take them on a journey and you will bring them back safely. If you stand up and mumble something about your guitar not staying in tune, or turn to a band member and share some inside joke or take on some made-up personality that resembles bad televised karaoke, you will have lost them. Why watch you? You're not real. You're not in charge. It might not even be safe. And it's certainly not interesting. But if you talk to them, as you would a friend you're having a real conversation with about life, love, politics, the battle of the sexes, what inspires you, what pisses you off, what you observed that changed your life in some way--that will probably draw them in. And they'll be glad they came in, because they'll have met someone new that night. And it won't be the person at the table next to them. It'll be you.
© 1994 Harriet Schock
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