In Praise of the Noisy Pub Gig

IN PRAISE OF THE NOISY PUB GIG

It’s funny, I write this aboard a noisy train from London to Rotterdam, and it is hard to concentrate, but since this is about performing in noisy environments, it is appropriate, I suppose.

For readers who have followed my various journeys over the years, you know that this is the first solo-tour I’ve done since 2020, and that reconnecting with my pre-pandemic troubadour self, not to mention old friends and fans, has been incredibly moving and meaningful.

I had doubted whether I still had the energy and stamina to pull off what I used to pull off, forgetting, I suppose, just how much it also energizes me to be out there, and since re-embarking on my road life, I have found myself more energetic than I have felt in five years.   I guess I had forgotten, staring out a Winnipeg window watching the seasons change, just how much mojo-recharging and serotonin-hit-inducing it is for me to be in motion seeing different things, meeting different people.  That’s not even taking performing into account!

As each segment of the tour has progressed, I have found myself not only enjoying, but remembering detailed aspects that were so commonplace for me before.  Even the ones which had been intensely challenging, (like barely-manageable-luggage and broken escalators), I am finding myself gleefully welcoming them back into my life, if only for the fact that I thought I would never encounter them again.

Which brings us to:  The pub gig.

When I first set off to be a solo performer on the road full-time, I played my share of them and came to appreciate them despite the fact that they were in many ways, the hardest type of gig and the least rewarding.  As my career progressed (thankfully) into performing for more and more listening-rooms, I always made a point of saying “but I appreciate the noisy rooms too for how they made me a better performer.”  They most definitely did make me a far better performer.

Had I gone straight from writing songs in my apartment living room to house concerts and other listening venues, I would have never really learned to use my full voice, to be commanding, to be funny on stage, to become a dynamic and dramatic guitar player, to build varied set-lists.   And that learning has served me well in the quietest of rooms too.

And then for four years, I didn’t perform at all.

When I finally decided, not only that I was ready to go back out into the world again with my songs, but that it was necessary on every level of my being to do so, I did not exactly rush to book noisy pub gigs.  I wanted to start back easy, a fairly lax schedule, make time for rest, for contingency plans in case of sickness, to set up something that felt as safe as possible given the myriad of risks I saw before me.  I wanted some control, or some sense of control over who came to my shows.  I booked a tour of almost exclusively house concerts.  I was glad to string together enough to make the excursion financially viable.  A flight to Europe isn’t free, after all.

But just before heading to the U.K for the final stretch of a three-month European tour, a friend of a friend’s, a local London musician named Glenn, asked me if I wanted an afternoon pub gig that he could set up for me if I did.   I said yes with zero hesitation.  Income is income, and it was only one, and he’d be there.  It was almost funny how quickly I said yes considering all of the precautions I had told myself I was going to try to take.   But in the world of touring, accepting an unsolicited gig is as much as a reflex as one of those little hammers to the knee.  “Yes please,” my leg kicked up!  I wanted to do it.  We booked it.   It was booked.

A day or two before the gig, Glenn wrote to ask if it were alright if I started at 3 o’clock instead of whatever time we’d agreed on which I’d forgotten anyway.  Football’s on at 5pm, so we had to be done before then. I smiled remembering all those bar gigs I played during the hockey playoffs.  The game going into overtime meant the show might not start until who knows when.  I don’t follow sports but I grew to love the energy in a small bar or pub glued in to every move on the ice.   Of course.  I didn’t mind at all. 

I planned to get to the pub at 2pm to set up, which in my case meant meet the staff and owner, plug in my guitar and get a decent line and sound check on my vocal microphone, and pray for a touch of reverb, (some pubs, I recalled, didn’t always have the option), get a drink, set up a few CDs I would be unlikely to sell in that environment but you never know.

 I had taken a series of convoluted transit systems from east Croydon where I was being billeted, and found my way without too much difficulty out of London Charing Cross station.  I was still bleary-eyed from being up late the night before, chatting with the hangers-on after the house concert I’d played, so I found a place to get an oat milk latte at the station, (a rare road indulgence unless someone else is buying, but I needed another hit of caffeine!) I sipped at is as I meandered the streets looking at my map.   I found the place by 2pm on the nose, pleased with myself.   There were blokes drinking pints outside leaning against the window, and when I opened the door, I opened it to witness a full and buzzing pub, not a place to sit in sight, and four men at the table right in front of the door addressing the fact that I was there with what seemed like a bit of drunken mockery.  Zero acknowledgment from any of the bar staff.  Ugh – went some part of me.  Why am I doing this?

That one moment alone brought back so many memories.  The hundreds of times I’d walked into a bar or pub with a guitar case in hand or on my back, the eyes of the men there falling upon me with curiosity that felt disdainful or menacing and part of it was paranoia and part of it was a learned response based on experience.  I mean how good could a woman with a guitar be?  (I would read their thoughts), And how easy a target!  The first few times I’d had to do these kinds of gigs, way back when, in my early days, there was always an internal part of me that said “RUN!”  - urging me to bail on the engagement, but ultimately, I always stayed because I had committed myself to this fate, needed to earn my living even it was only 50 or 100 bucks at a time, but mostly because I didn’t want to accept defeat, even if I couldn’t picture victory.

A mix of thoughts would flood me.  “There’s no way the people here will like me,” was probably the loudest.  “I don’t want to be here,” was another.  “I should be playing better places than this” – another.  But a quieter one also persisted.  “I’m going to be way better than whatever it is they’re expecting.”

In the old days, the feeling of not belonging there was a far bigger one to overcome, and I did so with a combination of quiet defiance (defiant simply by being there and singing), and also a very conscious turning-inward, relying on my own love for my own songs and for my own enjoyment of the very act of singing.   I would stand there and tell myself that I’d never sing this loudly and freely if I were standing in someone’s apartment, so at the very least I could sing the way I love to sing. 

On some level I almost felt sorry for the audience, wondering if it made them feel awkward, not knowing if they should pretend to want to listen when they really came there to hang out with their pals. I didn’t want to make them feel obligated.   So I found a way to engage very differently than in listening rooms which made me feel like I was putting on a theatre show about my life, with songs to help tell the stories.  No. In barrooms and noisy pubs, I tried to give off an energy that said “I’m fine whether you listen or not. Please, just do your thing. I’m good.” 

Now, this time?  After all the years gone by?  After all the shows I’ve played, the stages I’ve been on, the company of “up-there” musicians that I’ve kept? This time it was a simple equation:  Anyone who looks at me and hears me doing my thing will see I’m really good. And anyone who doesn’t pay attention doesn’t matter, cause they’re not paying attention anyway.  So, of course it was fine.   Whatever awkwardness I’d worried about in the past, wasn’t on my shoulders. The bar hired me to be there, after all.  It’s on them!

Even in my early days, I had some commons sense, thankfully, some basic intelligence about what had to happen musically in such an environment.  Singing tender, thoughtful, finger-picking songs was going to get totally lost on these environments, and would also feed into a somewhat misogynistic stereotype that a woman holding an acoustic guitar was going to be soft.   I had a few “harder” songs up my sleeves even in the early days, and as my repertoire grew, the variety of what I wrote continued to stay balanced.  It was also obvious to me that standing there strumming rock songs the whole night was just as lethal.   Variety of tempo was going to be key, playing with dynamics was going to be key, and being heard, being heard, (singing loudly enough to be heard, that is), was key.     It was imperative to command some attention, but at the same time, it was also imperative to be respectful of the audience’s intention, which to a large extent meant accepting that most of them were not, in fact, an audience. They were patrons of a bar or pub come out to drink and hang out with friends and they in no way whatsoever owed me their listenership.  But remembering that some people WERE listening meant I still had to be good.   And I also had to find ways to be real quick and witty and concise in banter, and pick my moments, cause telling long stories was not really appropriate for the setting. I think finding a way to hold all that together was real good training.

There is another bonus in playing in a noisy environment that is definitively NOT giving you their undivided attention, which is: You can play whatever you want.  You can go from song to song without thinking of what to say in between, anything that comes to mind. No need for a set list. No need for a narrative arc.  It’s a chance to sing the ones I haven’t sung in a while, the ones I don’t necessarily even remember all the lyrics to. 

And then looking up and finding that, of course, some people ARE looking at me and listening, and most ARE hearing me, if only subconsciously, there will be moments where people are actively acknowledging and appreciating what I am doing, I can see it on their faces, and if I can catch them and exchange a nod or smile, it carries me through the night.  In a room full of people, one or two glances of listenership are enough!

And then - if you’re lucky enough to have a moment where you can make an entire noisy bar full  people hush – that’s more gratifying than a listening room will ever be.  Listening rooms have to be hushed and are the whole time.   A barroom going silent because of a note you just sang – there is nothing like it.

I don’t know if I consciously remembered all of this before stepping into the tiny spot reserved for me to stand in and play that day in London, but I know that by the time I plugged in I was actually jonesing to play.  I had already been inside the pub now for a good half hour and there were posters of the Beatles all over the place and they were playing Dylan on the system, and the buzz of chatter was energizing rather than intimidating, and it helped that Dickens himself used to drink in this bar, and it helped that Glenn and his girlfriend were now there and were telling me what a legendary local spot this actually was, and a couple of other friends had shown up, and one had to admit the place was just kinda cool.

It helped that I was a veteran now, and had no question in my mind that I knew what I was doing when it came to singing and playing with energy.   I might not “fit in” with the people drinking, but I certainly belong wherever there’s a sound system and a microphone.

I played for 90 minutes straight.  I started with my song “Winnipeg’ which was strategic in the fact that it starts with a harmonica solo and was a great way to cut through the din right away.   And since Dylan was on the system, some deeper instinct took over me and for the second song I quipped that “Dylan just opened for me” and I broke into “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.”  

Maybe the 50 train gigs across Canada had taught me a thing or two about the power of familiar songs, but it was definitely the right decision because four men and two women perked their heads up and meandered over to stand in front of me as a kind of “actual” audience, mouthing the words.  I had them after that.

And as I belted out my songs in an ecstasy that singing for the sake of singing allows, I looked up and around and saw that those who were listening were listening with great approval, and those who weren’t didn’t matter.  It was as simple of that.  As simple of that.

I sang for 90 minutes straight and watched people look at each other with a kind of surprised expression saying “she’s really good,” and me, internally smiling, cause I bloody well oughta be after all these years.

And I remembered everything there was to remember about noisy pub gigs.

I remembered that there’s a story I tell to my listening-room audiences about the importance of rhythm in enhancing human empathy, and the story ends with “and that’s why even all those noisy pub gigs I did were always worthwhile!” -    I know for a scientific fact that people hearing good music is good for them. And singing and playing is good for me.  Period.

So it was impossible not to smile. Impossible not to enjoy it.  Impossible not to be thrilled beyond thrilled that here I was again, doing my thing, after too many years of not getting to, and this time it was in little legendary pub in London, and everything was alright.