The ‘Impossible’ Gig
You want to headline a festival this Saturday night with Nicky Bomba?” my drummer buddy Jason asked me.
“Hold on a second - Nicky Bomba? As in the guy who played for John Butler?”, I asked.
“That’s the one, brother!”
Holy crap…
I knew who Nicky Bomba was. He played on the very first album I bought with my own money:
14-year-old me was super into this album Nicky played drums on
As far as I was concerned, Nicky Bomba was heckin’ famous.
What I didn’t know was that he also played guitar and sang with his own reggae and ska band.
And now I had the opportunity to play a ton of that stuff with THE Nicky Bomba himself.
“Absolutely I’ll play the gig. What are we playing? Is he sending us charts or recordings or anything?” I asked.
“Nope - we’re just showing up and jamming on the night,” said Jason.
Woah.
No recordings to catch the vibe of the songs (not even a list of songs to check out), no charts, no rehearsal, plus I’ll be playing with a guy I’ll meet minutes before we go onstage.
This was an impossible gig.
My only thought was, “This is either going to end really well...or really badly…”
The Night Of The “Impossible” Gig
As far as festival stages go, this is among my favorites
30 minutes before we were scheduled to start playing, Nicky arrived backstage.
But before I even got the chance to fan-boy over him, he was giving me a big, warm smile and introducing himself to me and Jason.
But then Nicky did something unexpected.
He started introducing himself to all the other musicians who were hanging around backstage.
I thought he was just being polite, but after a while, it dawned on me; all these other musicians will be playing with us as well!
I had thought this was just going to be a trio thing - me playing bass, Jason playing drums and Nicky singing and playing guitar.
I was wrong...
Nicky gathered us all around in a band huddle and explained that he’d start off the show playing a 1-2- minute drum solo, and after he was done, he’d switch to playing guitar and singing, and that’s when we’d come onstage and start playing with him.
As far as what we’d actually be playing, Nicky was very vague… There were rumblings of phrases like, “Just follow me” and “Go out there and have a good time”
But before anyone had the chance to ask any questions, Nicky leapt from sidestage to face the crowd and start his drum solo, leaving the rest of us watching and waiting for his cue.
So put yourself in this position:
Imagine you’re:
Playing a headlining festival slot (high stakes as it is…)
For a ravenous crowd (who you don’t want to disappoint…)
With four musicians you’ve literally just met (who’ll need your support …)
Backing an artist you have tons of respect for (even higher stakes…)
Playing songs you’ve never played - or even heard before (tons of ‘unknowns’...)
Sure thing Gordon...
And to top it all off, my mum had made the trip down with me because she wanted to check out the gig. She was in the crowd filming the whole thing.
Any mistakes or trainwrecks would be immortalized for all time in high definition.
If you could only have ONE skill in your arsenal at that moment, what would it be?
Don’t worry if you don’t think it’s possible for you right now. That’s OK.
But imagine you could wave a magic wand and be given ONE skill to use for the next 60 minutes, what would you pick?
Reply to this email and let me know what you’d want to be able to do.
Cheers,
P.S. On Wednesday, I’ll tell you the skill I tried to rely on and I’ll let you be the judge of whether it worked or not. I’ll dig some of the old footage that my mum took from the actual gig so you can see for yourself.
P.P.S. This isn’t something I’d recommend you do unless you’re confident in your ability to hold your own and you trust the people you’re playing with can do the same. There’s something to be said for putting yourself in challenging positions in order to grow, but there’s a fine line between that and setting yourself up for failure.