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| photo by Erica Vance Hartmann |
Out of all the shows that I have ever played with Henry and June I can’t remember playing any worse than when we finished our set in Milwaukee last Saturday. From the first notes of Asked Her For Water I could tell we were in for a shitstorm of sloppy blues. At one point we all sat there looking at each other trying to think of our next number (Set lists were never something we ever thought we’d need and it became very clear how important of a tool they are at that very moment). Someone in the crowd yelled something to the effect of “Are you kidding me??” and we all had to laugh until finally Erica handed me the CD so we could get an idea of what to play. Playing a bad show is a very helpless feeling. Sometimes it starts rough and you can steer it back on course, but on this night it just kept getting worse. No one was to blame really. We all had our moments. It was just one of those nights. We finally finished and I stayed onstage for a bit to pack up and try and get out without anyone noticing. After loading the amps I stepped outside with Dooley to have a smoke and see how he felt about the show. We were enjoying ourselves when a few people came out to join us. It didn’t take long for them to start talking to us about the set. These are always awkward moments for me as I never seem to get used to people telling me they like what I’m doing. Not really sure why, but it’s always weird to me and I apologize to anyone who thinks I am standoffish when in this situation. Anyways, on this particular night the 3 or 4 people outside with us were going on about how great they thought the show was. At first I just thought maybe they were too drunk or fucked up to notice how poorly we played until one of them actually mentioned that fact. Now you have to understand that in our entire existence we rarely played a set that would be considered tight, but this gig took the cake. It started to dawn on me that that might be one of our best qualities instead of a bad side effect. These dudes loved it as it was, for what it was. It took me a few minutes to really realize that, but once I did I started to see what people see in us. One of the guys I happened to be talking to was a local poster artist and after we talked about screen printing he mentioned how much we thought we sounded like Jack O’ Fire. For those of you not blessed enough to know who Jack O’ Fire were, you really need to do some research on them. Let’s just say between them and Doo Rag you’d have the 2 biggest influences on Henry and June. It would have been weird enough for someone to say that once, but the night before Bob Rueter told me the same thing. To have 2 people from 2 different cities tell me how much we sounded like Jack O’ Fire blew my mind. Back in the day it would have taken someone one listen to realize how much of a rip-off we really were. But this was back in the day, before the internet, when you had to find shit on your own and bands were a tad bit more mysterious. I sat there speechless for a bit with a huge smile on my face. We all stood around and shot the shit until it got too cold to do that anymore and we parted ways. That’s when it hit me about how a performer perceives his own performance. Sometimes you are way too hard on yourself and other times you aren’t hard enough, but sometimes and it’s kinda rare, you just have to accept what you are and let the crowd dig ya for it. What happened on that night in Milwaukee was rare for sure, but it restored my faith in what I do up there on the stage. It feels good to have those moments. To know you made someone truly happy by playing music. I have always played music how a fan would play music. Meaning I always rate it on how I would dig it if I were in the crowd watching it instead of playing it. But somewhere along the line I sorta lost some of that. I got a big chunk of it back that night. It certainly wasn’t the best gig I have ever played, but it might just have been the most important.
