Look on the bright side

“You need to pick it up! People want to dance!”

Frantically shaking my shoulder, the man who had just booked us for Haverstraw’s Hudson Water Club may not understand what “pick it up” means.

By my account, we just had. With our drummer kicking along a disco beat at 250 beats-per-minute as I sang Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up,” this was about as up tempo as we get.

But what the agent meant was that people wanted to hear songs they knew. Pick it up was codeword for “pour some sugar on me,” and people want to dance meant “play something they know!”

“Theme from the TV Show ‘Rawhide,’” I was left to joke with my band.

Later reflecting on our little Friday night gig, I found the experience to be a microcosm of the different issues bands may struggle with on any given night.

There is an undeniably rich market for cover bands in the New Jersey scene. But for musicians looking to make a name for themselves through their writing, striking the right balance between original and popular music, while trying to reach new audiences, can be a struggle. Audience expectations and tastes may vary greatly from clubs and locations. Managing your own expectations, after both success and failure, is important.

This clip from Sept. 4 on the banks of the Hudson River illustrates the night perfectly. At the same time we were tearing through a jam that’s usually a big-hitter, this club patron angrily confronts me for the second time, leaving me a little confused and embarrassed.

We had made a mess of the gig by arriving late to a packed house because two-thirds of our band got caught in the hodgepodge of commuters displaced by a fatality on NJ Transit. Shortly after the club owners pulled the plug on the show and cut our pay, favoring a DJ spinning dance tracks.

The lesson; while you may not always hit a home-run, music is supposed to be fun. View the angry woman’s behavior through the lenses of a fatality and it’s easy to be happy. There will always be a better gig and a better day.

Relived our duties with some drinks in our hands and some cash in our pockets, the tension of the scene was then replaced with the serenity of the Hudson River Valley and the promise of a new day.