Portland’s Homeless Hangout

Well, my first Portland gig experience was not a good one at all.  I arrived at Muddy Waters Coffeehouse at 7:00pm to check out the scene and figure out if I needed my own sound or not.  It is the most poorly run shop I have ever seen.  They had quadruple booked their stage.  Not double booked, or even triple.  After the person in charge of booking explained to me the mishap she said, “I am very sorry but if you stick around we would love to have you play from 9:30 to 10:00.”  So I bought another coffee and decided to wait it out, I was really looking forward to playing.  Well long story short, they ran out of time and told me, at 9:45pm, that they couldn’t fit me in, even after I waited around that entire time.  Extremely poor business.  The problem with it all is that I had invited quite a few people to come and watch  me play so it makes me look like the bad guy.  Not to mention the time and money I put into promo for the event.  So I left the dump as soon as I could.  My Brother Ryan, who was almost more upset about them not letting me play than I was, decided to call a friend of his named Stewart that owns a wine bar called Wine Down.  He asked if I could just set up and play for about an hour and Stewart said, “absolutely, we would love to have him.”  So all of us went over to Wine Down and I set up shop.  It was fun just to play.  The purpose of this entire trip is to play as much music in as many places as possible.  So in accordance with the plan, I played the set with full intensity.  I played for about seven people that sat around the bar.  Before I left Syracuse, a great friend of mine, Colin Aberdeen gave me some words of wisdom that I will take to the grave with me.  Colin is an unbelievable musician, songwriter, performer, etc…He’s got it all, the total package.  I look up to him very much. Colin has played his music all over the world and in all different kinds of places.  When I asked him what it is like to play in front of a thousand people one night and then 10 the next he said, “You can’t worry about who’s not there.  All you can do is play for who is.”  I have certainly played a good amount of shows for a very small amount of people, but I will always remember the advice that Colin gave me.

I sold one CD and made seven new friends.  Like the statement goes…when you get lemons, make lemonade.