Last night was the gig. It was super fun and satisfying.

The band was supposed to rehearse at two; we didn’t actually start until ten of five. But we managed to get through the set for the first and only time as a band entire, and then we broke for dinner at seven.

I had a sandwich from Subway, then sat in the Broadway Building parking lot in the Jeep, listening to an audiobook off my iPod and working on my dad’s Fuzzyfeet. (Turns out he’s leaving on Tuesday now, so these gray wool slippers are suddenly a rush job. I thought I had another week or two to finish them!)

Since downbeat was at eight, I went back inside at 7:45 and loitered for a bit. The coffee shop was filling up nicely. Tahmi came, Christina came. Aimee was there. I sat on the stage step in front of the coffee roaster – which reeked of stale beans, but looked cool – and chatted with Tahmi and Christina. When I told them I was still suffering my three-day bitch of a never-ending panic attack, Tahmi gave me such a scowl of sympathy and understanding I nearly burst into tears on the very spot; Christina squeezed my hand. I love those women, damn it. Finally the place filled up and the musicians drifted to their places on the little stage.

Jonas – who does benefit concerts every year for the holidays – surprized me with his audience patter. I guess I should have known he was a comfortable performer but I’d never seen him in front of people before, having never worked with him nor seen his shows. He’s bright and funny and earnest. He’s really easy to be on stage with.

The stage was so tiny that Tim didn’t even fit on it, and stood instead on the floor with the audience. I was wedged between my mic stand, Jonas’ vocal monitor, and Greg’s music stand: I had literally one square foot of space to stand in. When I needed to sing out (and therefore back off the mic) I had to arch back very carefully to avoid toppling Greg’s music stand. (He and his keyboard were directly behind me; I doubt half the audience could even see him.)

Cafe Paradiso is an adorable little venue; they’d pushed all the tables and couches into the back and set up rows of seating. I think we probably had about 90 people in there. The audience was appreciative, polite, receptive, and responsive. It was a little weird; I hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the nicest audience of all time. They were actually more like a theatre audience than a music audience, as far as my experience goes. (I have rarely done ‘legit’ musical performances. I’m used to singing for drunk people, unless I’m doing musical theatre.) They all sang in tune on the bhajan responses, they laughed at every joke, they were silent at the end of each song until the band broke and moved, and I was madly in love with them. Half of them even gave me a standing O after the Amazing Grace song (in which I wailed a whole entire verse by myself!), which pretty much made me want to have their baby.

Musically, there was one rough area – I don’t remember which song – where Jonas, in his enthusiasm, turned the beat around with his guitar. And I sang a particularly crappy decending line during an ad lib section of another song – I actually glanced at Tim to see if he’d wince, but of course he wouldn’t wince on stage! LOL! George forgot what key we were in for a few bars on another song. I didn’t notice any mistakes made by Tim, Kevin, or Greg, so if they made any they were miniscule. Apart from those slight and forgetable issues, the gig went really well. Considering we’d literally NEVER reahearsed together before that very day, we were fucking brilliant. The band sounded great, and with Tim Britton doing sound you know you’re clear as a bell.

As I said, I was still suffering my three-day bitch of a never-ending panic attack, so I had two or three oh-shit-this-is-it-I’m-gonna-fucking-DIE-RIGHT-HERE waves while on stage, and I know it showed in the amount of fidgeting I did. (I spent most of the gig fucking with my clothes, rings, mic, hair, etc. I couldn’t help it.) My heart was roaring along probably at about 120 BPM for most of the evening. My palms were sweating.

And you wanna know what pissed me off the most about it? Besides being physically uncomfortable, I mean? What pissed me off the most about having a panic attack on stage was that people might have interpreted it as NERVOUSNESS. Good God, I am so comfortable in front of a crowd I can’t even EXPRESS how comfortable I am, but I was fidgeting like a gradeschooler at a talent show and it bugged me some of them might misinterpret it. (Oh, hi there, ego! Howzitgoin’?)

Half-way through the song before my favorite song of the set, I saw Brett and my dad come in. (They’d said they weren’t coming. “Too religious,” they’d said. They’d gone to Mt. Hamill to gorge on fried chicken and beer for Chuckie’s b-day party.) During the comedic break betwen songs (Jonas really is pretty funny), my dad actually hollered something at me. I told the audience, “That’s my pop!” and they actually applauded him. (I suspect he got a hell of a kick out of that!) The two stayed for one and a half songs, then slipped out and went to the Regina’s bar to get away from all the roos. (Roos in this sense actually meaning “non-Christian spiritual people,” not “TM-ers,” because the folks in the room were all Totally Off The Program in terms of current TM Movement policy. I mean, they sang the responses to bhajans! CHANTING! ACK!)

After the show was over, many people came up and told me I had a great voice. Aimee said I nearly made her cry. Other people asked where they could see me again. Another said I’d given her chills. Another remembered me from The Diamondbacks, another remembered me from The Iowa Theatre Company’s Once Upon A Mattress fifteen years ago. All in all, I was deeply gratified.

I told Tahmi in the bathroom I didn’t deserve the amazing response I get from people. She essentially smacked me upside the head. It went something like this:

Me: “…don’t deserve it. I mean, I did well, but NO ONE does as well as the kind of response I get from audiences.”

Tahmi: “You’re too hard on yourself. No one hears the kinds of mistakes you’re talking about. You’re the queen of vibe, that’s what they’re responding to.”

Me: “Let me put it this way. Remember when you went to your lesson, and your teacher congratulated you on practicing AND YOU HADN’T EVEN PICKED UP YOUR VIOLIN? You didn’t deserve that–”

Tahmi (pertly): “–yes I did! And so do you.”

Now. How in the hell do you argue with that kind of logic, yo? She was so commited to the idea that we both deserved undeserved praise for simply being fabulous, merit or no, that my brain totally flipped trying to figure out how she could possibly even MEAN that (“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”). And it worked: I popped into a whole new paradigm. I am too hard on myself, I do love the praise, I do deserve it, and yes, I am the queen of vibe – she’s definitely right when she accuses me of that. I made a pact with myself years ago not to look down on my audiences, and she’d whacked me back into that headspace. Thank God.

(Let me insert here that I don’t think I suck. I think I’m fucking awesome. It’s just that I’m a realistic person, and I know there are literally thousands and thousands and thousands of better singers than I. And every single solitary time I ever perform, regardless of how well I do, I get bizarre amounts of gushing praise. People hug me, kiss me, tell me how my voice gives them chills and/or tears and/or goosebumps. They touch me, hug me, beam at me, and love me all out of proportion. I belong to them after I sing to them. The response is always totally out of proportion with what I’ve done, and I’ve always suspected the universe is playing some strange trick on me. I mean, it’s not that I think I shouldn’t be performing, it’s just that people literally GUSH, every time I sing. Period. It’s downright weird. I used to think it meant singing/performing was my dharma, but now I don’t know. Like I said in a previous post: perhaps it’s just the one perk I’m always guaranteed in this life. Whatever the hell it is, it’s really, really, really nice.)

There was a cake. I had a piece (Tahmi, wench, took my fork right out of my hand and ate most of the frosting off if it WITHOUT EVEN ASKING) and then we escaped. I can escape, just like that, because I’m just a vocalist and I don’t have any gear to schlep!

{continued}