Last night I went out to see John Brodeur and the Suggestions. Well, actually, they’re just the Suggestions now. I stumbled on the show by accident… Sunday night I just happened to decide to flip through last week’s Creative Loafing and saw the listing for the show.
John was the guy who was organizing the Elvis Costello tribute show that I was supposed to do but in the end couldn’t afford to get myself up to New York to do it. He had found me online somehow and asked me to do it and then I met him at last year’s IPO in LA when he was, oddly enough, playing the same day and same club I was.
So, last night he was playing the New Faces night at Smith’s. I assume just because he was doing 10 or so dates and that was the night he was close to Atlanta and could book the show. But New Faces night at that club is basically where they consign local bands; the show costs a $1 and when you show up you tell them which band you’re there to see and they keep a count, ostensibly so they know which bands drew and can have them back. In practice, though, the count seems irrelevant; the numbers they claim they expect are unrealistically high for a show on a Monday. You get booked back based on the usual whims.
When I got there it was the middle of the second band. There was a decent sized crowd and they were clearly there to see that band, whose name I don’t recall and who sounded like a typical modern rock band; a little growling, lots of kick drum and bass, white boy up front alternating between rapping and singing. I could see the rest of the evening coming a mile away. The crowd already had started to empty out by the time the Suggestions went on, and the place was more or less empty by the time they were done. It was like watching my band on the road (well, sans-Indigo Girls tours) and it was frustrating to watch.
I went up to talk to John after the set, I started to re-introduce myself since we’ve only met once and I haven’t even emailed him since last year, but he beat me to it and recognized me. We talked a little about odds and ends, the upcoming IPO festivals, and their tour so far. I told him if he wanted to come back through I could get him a weekend show with a crowd that was expecting pop. We swapped CDs (the one glorious perk of being a struggling musician) and he asked if “Jeff Lynne” was on the one I gave him, that he really liked that song. That was pretty good. I also talked to Ian Webber (used to be in the Tender Idols, has a new CD out, if you like Ron Sexsmith or Neil Finn you should try to find it) who was working the bar. He’s thinking seriously about moving to Seattle in a month or so, looking for a music scene that has a little more life to it, as well as other major markets that are close by.
Ike, John Faye’s band, drew a crowd here the last time they played. They seem to have some sort of following in town. John B. knows John F. and Cliff Hillis (they were in the Costello tribute, too), and there doesn’t seem to me to be any reason why their fans wouldn’t have come out to see John, had they known the show existed. I play shows and I go to these shows and I begin to see familiar faces… I know the crowd exists, I know the record stores they frequent. But they tend to be people who go to see what they know, and the biggest trick is getting them to come out. I’m a broken record on this, I know. But when I said ‘organization’ before it may have been a poor word choice. I just think there could be some way, to use a vulgar term, to ‘brand’ this sort of thing. Something that, when the people who like pop see the name they can feel some sort of reassurance that the show is probably a safe bet. Plus someplace online they could find out about touring acts coming to town, too. I don’t have particularly grandiose plans for anything, but just some way to get the crowds who like it out to see it. I know I can get the show booked at a known club and on a weekend. If it doesn’t work it doesn’t work, but at least I can feel like I tried and was proven wrong, that they don’t come out because they don’t want to.
I’m just thinking out loud right now.