Shows & Touring

Gig Story: Bobby's Idle Hour Tavern


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Gig Story: Bobby's Idle Hour Tavern
California Fish Out Of Water In Nashville

Posted by Charlie Recksieck on 2024-07-02
One of the best values of this little blog here, in my opinion of course, is to give non-musicians a window into the world of what life is like for independent or unknown musicians. There are tons of terrific biographies and articles about all of your favorite artists. But the vast majority of BMI or ASCAP songwriters, performing singers, studio musicians, etc. are unknown folks either barely making a living or using their day jobs to support their art or passion.

Sometimes I like to write about a certain gig. This week we're talking about a solo show in Nashville in 2015 at Bobby's Idle Hour Tavern.


Musical Tourism

As mentioned before, I've got a day job as a software developer. Thank God I don't live off what I make from music. Most of my friends who pride themselves on being professional musicians are struggling to various degrees. In a certain way, when music is one's avocation it actually lets one be more of an adventurous musical artist instead of worrying about losing that $200 gig.

I genuinely love playing music; even for small audience (which, believe me, is a good thing). Whether traveling for work or for fun, being in another city and getting to try performing elsewhere is a blast. I like to call it "musical tourism."


How Do I Book These Shows?

Sometimes it's even hard to book shows in my own city at places where I've previously played. But club owners and managers in other cities are understandably leery of unknowns coming from another town. They are in the alcohol-selling business, so when you put an out-of-towner on the marquee with no name recognition or fans in that city, it often makes no sense to book them.

When I'm looking to do some musical tourism, I usually start by looking online for lists of clubs in that city and try to find a few places that A) Have solo artists, B) Feature generally my style of music, and C) Book musicians who are relatively on my level.

Now even though I'm not a well known quantity as a musician or songwriter, I've been doing it long enough and with enough small victories to approach bookers with a little bit of a track record: The electronic press kit and pitch I make can at least boast playing in known clubs in lots of cities, some good press clippings, great sounding recordings and some film and television song placements. When I highlight all of that, plus my dedication to doing my best with local press and online promotion.

To my delight, usually if I make that sensible pitch to 3-5 places in a city I'm going to visit in 2-3 months then more often than not I can come up with a booking.


This Nashville Show In Particular

For this show we're talking about in 2015, I was going to be attending a small trade show of electric utility companies and their electronic design, a professional specialty of mine (exciting!).

Bobby's Idle Hour Tavern was the place I really wanted to play on this trip. Yes, the Bluebird Café is sort of the most famous songwriter showcase in Nashville. Guess how many requests they get from every hot-shit singer all over the country. That said, Bobby's Idle Hour is just as charming almost as much of a local songwriter hangout.

It's location at the time (they sold and moved around the corner in 2021) is right on Music Row in Nashville. The owner Bobby Herald couldn't have been nicer and more accommodating in telling me to come play as featured artist that night (Sept 10, 2015).


Previous Visits To Nashville

I'd been to Nashville a few times before. Previously not as a musical pilgrimage and aspiring songwriter. One of my best friends, Kelly, has lived there more or less since the 1990s and I've gone out to visit. And one of my best friends in college got his PhD there at Vanderbilt.

It's my kind of town. Great food and all kinds of music. There's a big misconception that Nashville is all country music 24/7. It's not. That's a big part of it, but not all of it.

Previous visits have had me:

- Taking Kelly's mom to a steak dinner with all the fixins as a reward for her getting divorced

- Seeing Steve "Bye Bye" Balboni strikeout FOUR TIMES … looking in a AAA baseball game in 34 degree weather where the harmonica player couldn't finish the national anthem because his lips had frozen

- Attended Bonnaroo and avoid camping through a lightning storm because we were staying in a huge 19th century whorehouse three miles away

The other thing I can tell you is that the place is crawling with great singer/songwriters. It's the heart of country music but it's also mecca for songwriters. LA and NY are both homes to many of the world's greatest songwriters, but they're overshadowed there by music performers. In Nashville, songwriters are revered as the main attraction.

I know a few other songwriters who try to go to Nashville occasionally to ply their trade, and didn't break through. Just as every town in America has a pretty girl who wants to get into movies and she moves to Los Angeles to end up competing with the prettiest girl from 5000 different cities - every town has one of their top songwriters dreaming of making it and they all move to Nashville to be a little fish in a big talented pond. It's nuts.

The other thing for you to know if you've never been to Nashville that it's a smaller town than you would think. Not necessarily a small city, it's growing and decent sized. I'm saying as an "industry town", it's a small one. Everybody knows everybody. Music Row itself is pretty tiny; it's two different one way streets for about 4 small blocks with a residential feel and record labels and studios masquerading as modest homes.


Renting A Keyboard

In between duties for my day job that week, I did bird dog a few publishers for a meeting. I ended up getting a couple very low level people to take me in for a talk, it didn't go anywhere. I just had an album come out that year, but even in my wildest dreams I had zero expectations - my kind of songwriting is 100% more Randy Newman than something a label would want to buy for their budding star.

Anyway, when you're doing musical tourism the hardest part about it is having gear and instruments. It's one thing for an acoustic guitarist who can bring it with them on the plane. But I play piano. In this case I arranged a 24-hour keyboard rental from a music store. A little bit of a hassle, yet it's always do-able.

That said, I was unfamiliar with this particular keyboard and during my performance it did an octave shift up that I couldn't reset, which was momentarily tough to deal with.


The Show at Bobby's

It was a decent enough night there at Bobby's, maybe just 40-50 people there. I also got several friends in town to come by. A songwriter friend Troy Castellano and my music industry friend (whom I went to Bonnaroo with) Shannon Casey are pictured here.


This pic below is with my good friend through work, Kim Baird of Idaho, who was also there for the same conference.


It's a huge relief in a foreign city to at least have a couple of ringers.


Nashville Wants Originals

What's most unique about Nashville is that it's songwriter-centric, even for the non-songwriters in the audience.

In a lifetime of playing music in bands here in California and everywhere else, the deal is that when you play the Stones or Tom Petty, the energy goes up and the girls hit the dance floor. Then when you play an original song, you can see tumbleweeds blowing through the empty spaces in front of the stage.

Nashville it's completely backwards. It's kind of a songwriter's dream. When I started playing some cover song (Elvis Costello, I think) the crowd stopped me with a friendly "boo" and "no" before somebody flat out yelled, "We want to hear YOUR songs!" I've never seen that before or since. You didn't have to tell me twice. The setlist below was all originals. Gotta give the people what they want.

I miss you Nashville. Hopefully I'll be back soon.


Setlist

Dollar For Every Dime
Law Of The Jungle
Wish You Knew
I Wish That I Were Gay
She Gets Loud
California King


Video

Here’s "California King"



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