All-Purpose Excuse

These are confusing and exciting times for ORB. That's shorthand for The Original Recipe Band, btw. After the birthday party in Dallas, where we made more money than we ever had made in the past, I was strangely unsettled in my thinking about what constutes a fair pile of money for the evening.

I believe that we should be making lots more money. and I believe the way we might do that would be to go with a corporate show band. That would mean the specifications I got from DeWayne, the booker of the Temptations gig in Dallas last month. Parodoxically it means adding personnel and subtracting material.

First, you have to have multiple female singers. Second, a front man who is truly in front, instead of behind the drums all the time. You need to have multiple guitarists and/or keyboardists. And you might need a trumpet player added to our lineup so there is an opportunity to spread the load of the horn parts.

Now this is all well and good. We have potential, as they say in the Great American Pasttime, at every position. (Nothing more burdensome than potential.) But there are other matters too, like getting the band together for a photo shoot and video, which DeWayne said was crucial. I see the need for choreography (Rudy from HotWax perhaps?).

On the upside there is no need for more than 40 charts in separate books.

The bottom line is that, while a party gig in Dallas can land $3000-$5000, which is more than we made that night, a corporate gig with a semi-eleaborate dance show can land $10,000-$25,000. Big difference.

And there's no reason to jettison what we've done thus far. We can still play a wedding with 9 pieces, a club with 6—using the same charts.

Meanwhile Bobby Bellemans has offered to GIVE me his booking agency. I wasn't a firstborn for nothing and my initial reaction was that he was overvaluing the product, which may be the case. I've set up a database and I'm going to take it a gig at a time and see where it leads. So far I'm doing a solo piano gig for St. Patrick's day. Ten percent of not very much is even less.

We rehearse this evening at 6, with the singers and the rhythm section. We need to decide what to do down at the Greek Bros. in El Campo on the 9th of April. That's the other direction the gods of the gigs are leading us. I'd work there for a bowl of gumbo, but don't tell the Greek that. It's going to be quite an evening: bringing Valerie back before her home town crowd and all. I want to pick our numbers based on the widest range possible. They get enough cowboy music down there, and I know there's a Sinatra element in that house. And a rock crowd too.

Onward and upward with the musical arts.