Jeff Schroeck

Thank you for not coming

JEFF SCHROECK, THE MARSHMALLOWS, BEN FRANKLIN, JIM TESTA - Automata Chino, Jersey City - August 1, 2009.

This is a conversation I've avoided for a long time, but what happens when you put on a show and nobody comes?

There's an unwritten commandment among musicians that you can't ask why someone didn't come to your show; the reason being that, sooner or later (and probably sooner,) they're going to ask you the same thing when you don't show up at one of their shows.

But really, it seems like there should be some way to move this discussion beyond the self-pitying and the specific to the philosophical and the general; not so much, "why didn't you come to my show?" as "why didn't anyone come to the show at all?"


A venue, empty

Granted, All Points West probably siphoned away some of the walk-in downtown Jersey City hipster crowd that usually comes to Automata Chino on a Saturday. But let's be honest here: Who among the people who might come to a show that I book was going to be spending their day (at $90 a ticket) standing under the hot sun all day to see Tool? I wound up on the light rail with a few hundred sunburned, inebriated frat boys coming back from APW and, really, that isn't the crowd I hang with.


Ben Franklin

I'm not saying that I didn't have a good time; I did. Granted, you need an almost Vulcan-like implacability to get past the understandable human emotions of disappointment and resentment to move yourself into the moment and actually have fun at a show like this. But I'm with people I like and music I enjoy; what's not to like? So yeah, I did have fun. That doesn't change the fact that the venue lost money on the night, none of the bands got paid, and it didn't obviate the inevitable conversation I had with the booker on my way out (who couldn't understand how such good bands didn't draw.)


The Marshmallows


Did I promote the show? she asked. Well, yes, I did; I MySpace'd, I Facebook'd, I message-boarded, I even sent a few begging emails to friends. And none of it worked. As Jeff Schroeck said to me, you can book a great show, but you can't keep people from booking other shows on the same night. And, it goes without saying, you can't make people come. No one goes to shows out of a sense of obligation, or as a tit-for-tat for favors previously rendered; it that was the case, considering all the goodwill the Ergs engendered over the years, Jeff would sell out every venue he ever plays. (And quite frankly, I'd be calling in quite a few karmic markers myself.)

But it doesn't work like that. You put together a bill and you tell people about it, and then you wait and see if anybody comes. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they'll pay for the PATH train or the subway or whatever else it takes, and come to the show; and sometimes they'll stay home and play poker or Wii games.

And if you really love doing this, you move on to the next show, regardless.