Last week I drove out to watch my buddy play guitar at a casino. There’s a lot that you can learn by watching people who perform things that aren’t magic. Joe plays guitar, but he also does an act with comedy songs. In this venue he does a mix of the two. He plays cover songs, and throws in a comedy song here and there.
It was a slow night in the casino restaurant that he was playing in. He easily could have phoned it in and played some ambient cover songs and got his check and everyone would be happy. That’s not what he did. He played with energy, talked to the crowd, did bits and played a couple of comedy songs. And over the course of the hour I watched him play, I saw him win over the tables that weren’t initially watching.
The huge take away is to never phone it in. That doesn’t mean necessarily doing your show as planned, as sometimes that’s not what the audience needs. However no matter what you do, give them 100%!
-Louie