[Dixielandjazz] Audiences

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/4/04 8:11:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu writes:

> Basically, are there any regional differences among audiences, 
> about what tunes and styles they respond best to?  I'm not talking 
> about particular regional song-favorites or festival audiences so 
> much as just audiences at street fairs, jazz clubs, state fairs, 
> outdoor festivals, etc.  Does (say) an audience in California respond 
> differently (e.g., more or less applause) from one in Massachusetts 
> or Iowa or England to the same song played the same way?
> 
>    Dan
> -- 
> HI Dan:

I can't speak for all the others on the list, but I have found that some 
songwriters have a unique ability to write songs that somehow touch the emotional 
buttons and sensitive brain waves of general audiences all over the world.  
For songs like WWW they do this sometimes with melodies and or chord 
arrangements that cause certain pleasurable responses from the average listener and if 
they have fluent and meaningful lyrics to go with it magic somehow seems to 
happen when musicians and or singers "SELL" the song to the audience by performing 
it like they really feel it and believe it.

WWW is a very powerful song all around the world if set up properly, with the 
audience via introduction and communication from the singer or spokesperson 
of the band.

It is a perfect song to turn on a distant or cold audience if used at the 
proper time, which the band leader must sense while attempting to read the 
audience and build that all important repoire with them in the first thirty-five 
minutes of a show.  The audience or the language they speak does not seem to 
matter with a song like WWW, they all relate to it immediately as it conjures up 
images of Louis singing it to many of them which may be one of the few Jazz 
artists that they have seen and heard in some parts of the world.

If this song is introduced to them and you tell them something along the 
lines of "This song is dedicated to all of our new found friends here today, and 
with more events like this where we can all put aside our differences for a day 
and just be friends and enjoy some great music and each others company for a 
few hours. What a Wonderful World it would Be Indeed."  Don't be afraid to 
Politicize it a bit to sell it, it is a powerful tune that can win you a cold 
audience very quickly and make your gig go much easier.  It is your stage and you 
are in charge for a while anyway, and you have people in front of you willing 
to hear what you have to say and how you say it.  Music is the International 
Language, the better we learn how to speak it the better the world becomes.

Then follow it with another audience participation song, "Take a Hand, Shake 
a hand, Make a Friend if you can."  Deliver those two songs genuinely to any 
audience and you can play Yankee Doodle for the next hour and they will love 
it, you have broken the ice and gotten the repoire established with the audience 
and they will respond accordingly.

WWW is also a song that works well at fairs, street festivals, etc., which 
have strolling audiences, it will usually stop the audience to listen to the 
band, and give you a chance to communicate with them and get them to stay a while 
and listen to your music.

Just playing notes and songs does not make a band especially good, no matter 
how good the musicians are, if they can't connect with the audience and SELL 
their music and their arrangement of it then they are just wasting their time 
and should go home and turn on the Muzak or worse yet lose their gig to a DJ 
who can talk and communicate with the audience.

As our good buddy Steve Barbone is always saying, just being good musicians 
is not enough to be successful in the business, you have to constantly find new 
audiences and SELL yourself over and over every performance to avoid getting 
stagnant and sounding like Muzak.  It is very selfish to think that we can 
just walk onto any stage anywhere we want and play whatever WE want without 
giving any thought to the audience, without whom we would have no place to perform 
except the garage.   

Being great technicians and going out and playing very difficult but boring 
obscure songs will turn off almost any audience made up of anything less than 
musicians who might understand and appreciate it or just be jealous of your 
performance.

The Entertainment business which includes Musicians is a very demanding 
business in a state of constant change given the nature of many musicians to be 
bored quickly and often possess very short attention spans.   

To test your personal understanding of this meaning, think about the Best Gig 
you ever played, the one where you could do no wrong :) now think about the 
worst gig you ever played and could not seem to play anything that turned on 
the audience.  Make a list of the tunes you played and in what order, how you 
communicated with the audience.

Compare the two and see if you can figure out a better way to arrange your 
shows for future performances to make certain your performance has something for 
everyone in the audience to go away feeling good about you and your music or 
at least not mumbling about what a shitty band you were.

Now bottom-line: How do you know your were really good?

You are approached by folks in the audience to book other gigs from this one, 
if you don't you can bet you simply did not impress anyone sufficiently to 
ask you to play again.  If you were really good you will be having a hard time 
getting all those CDs out of the box and collecting the money from your new 
fans and negotiating for future gigs at the same time while signing autographs 
for happy smiling faces of the new friends you just made.


Now I know there are some on the list who already have all the friends they 
want and are content to only travel in their designated circle of life, that's 
fine as well if that's what rings your chimes.  There is a worldwide 
organization that you can obtain lifetime memberships in,   "Curmudgeons International" 
have Fun or Don't. :))

I still have thoughts everyday of WWW it could be if we all just tried a 
little harder and maybe if we took the time to actually sit down and listen to the 
lyrics of the song it would make some sense.


Cheers,

Tom Wiggins