Suck and Draw

It's a realistic question, and I don't pretend to not know why it's asked, but I feel there should be more conversation, more getting to know you, and maybe dinner or a movie before it's asked.  At least pretend you want something more from me before you ask the question.

"How big is it?|

"How big is what?"

"Your draw. How big is your draw. How many people do you think your band can bring out?"

I know why you're asking. You're asking because you want to make sure the house is packed and you can make money selling over-priced drinks to my friends and family.  But it's getting old when that's the only question that matters.

But there's another factor. How hard do you suck? Ask me that. Some people don't like our sound, some people love it. That's the nature of being a "local band," and being unsigned and without management. But we're not bad, and we do everything we do for the purpose of expressing ourselves, challenging ourselves, getting our rocks off, and connecting with the audience in a way that leaves them entertained and potentially recovering from permanent liver damage.

If you really want to see how big our draw can get, give us reasonable opportunities to expose ourselves to your audiences.

In my opinion, suck and draw are not mutually exclusive traits of a band. A band could have amazing draw but suck really hard. Other bands are really fantastic, don't suck at all and simply don't have much of a draw for whatever reason.

To battle the question of "how big is your draw," I'd really love to figure out a way to form a band that really sucks. A band that will make the bartenders hate life, the sound guy pull his hair out and the promote cringe in shame... but have a huge draw. The band would do no actual damage to anything, but simply be incredibly bad, distasteful and rude, but we'd find some way to back a venue with a fire-hazard sized crowd of well-tipping drinkers.

I was approached by the merch bitch of a local band at a recent show. The band is at least partly made up of kids who look like they might have just graduated high school or gotten out of juvenile detention; they have that wispy downy, three-day goatee action going on. They play absolutely horrible metal covers and have a huge draw. They have no reason to be insecure aside from their entire approach to music.

 He lamented "Man, I just heard someone talking shit about our band in the bathroom. They need to recognize. We're awesome. Look at how much merch we have. We have t-shirts and stickers."

He didn't elaborate further, and I wish he had, because what I just quoted sounds so shallow and beside the point that it almost sounds like I'm exaggerating. Statements like that prove nothing about the awesomeness of your band. It just proves that you have the money to buy t-shirts and stickers.

While this is an extreme example, too often, this mindset pervades the music scene. Many young start-up bands feel this way, and even established cover and "working" bands. It's just stupid.

Get over yourself.  Get over your draw. Go practice and get better at what actually matters. The music.

Scrambled Eggs and Champagne (An Update)

The JackKnife Barbers had a wonderful time at the final round of the Gorilla Music Battle of the Bands.  We would especially like to thank (Snuff)alufaFUNK and their fans for sticking around to cheer us on.  The energy was high and it was probably the best show we've played in Charlotte.

Despite our small crowd, we managed to tie for third place out of 12 bands.  Ultimately, however, we conceded defeat because I was more interested in heading home for scrambled eggs and champagne than sticking around for a tie breaker.

We're very much looking forward to working with Gorilla Music again with their future bookings in the Queen City.

What's on the horizon for The Barbers now?

We've got two upcoming shows at The Saloon at NC Music Factory as well as a show in the NoDa district of Charlotte at The ROUX! with some old friends from Florida. The first weekend in February is still set aside for recording our first album, so look out for that.

As always, don't forget to check the website www.mattstache.com for updates and find us on Facebook, Twitter and Reverbnation.

Epic Weekend Update

The JackKnife Barbers had an epic adventure this past weekend.  Playing two shows back to back isn't an experience that I'm unfamiliar with, but the excitement of having our first official gigs since moving to Charlotte was rather energizing.

Our first stop was Spindale, NC for a show at The Ultimate Basement with Red Band Mercenaries, Pinko and (Snuff)alufaFUNK.  The Ultimate Basement is sort of an all-ages club/game room with a huge stage and rather massive sound system.  We had a blast exploring Spindale and rocking out with the aforementioned bands.

We even had time to drop by Plaza Barber Shop in Forest City for a photo shoot.  Plaza Barber Shop is a nearly 100-year-old barber shop with vintage chairs and decor.  You can see the photos on our Facebook page.

Our second show for the weekend was the Gorilla Records Battle of the Bands. Facing some fierce competition, we still managed to come out on top and make it to the second round.  I'll keep everyone posted on when the second round will be.

So what's up next for The JackKnife Barbers?

We'll be playing the first round of Peterson Productions' Battle of the Bands on Saturday, January 5th at The Saloon at NC Music Factory.  Tickets are just $5 and can already be purchased via PayPal or your credit/debit card at www.mattstache.com

Beyond that, we'll be working on two brand new original songs for you at our next rehearsal, and even muddling through our first cover song as well.

We'd like to thank all of our fans and friends for making this weekend such a success. We're looking forward to a great new year and further opportunities to rock your ass for fun and profit.

The New JackKnife Barbers

If you've seen the website lately (www.mattstache.com), you know that something is afoot. What you might not be able to immediately tell, is that I've moved to Charlotte, NC. The Tallahassee-based JackKnife Barbers are no more, and I've re-formed the band in Charlotte with all new members, save myself -- I'm still the same Matt Stache.

Several things to note:

1. The band is no longer "Matt Stache and The JackKnife Barbers," but rather we are simply "The JackKnife Barbers."  This fits onto flyers and whatnot much easier, and is easier for consistent branding. I reassure once again that I am still Matt Stache.
2. We're back to being a power trio. Drums, keyboards and guitar.  I'm doing the old left-hand bass routine again and routing the bass out to my trusty 200-watt keyboard amp with the big boomy 15" speaker while the rest of the keyboards go through the rotary amp.
3. It's considered really bad form to make a numbered list and not have a third item. So, here's a third item. Suck it.

Charlotte is mostly a cover-band town, and it has been a sincere challenge to put together an original band. While Tallahassee was 90% original, in Charlotte, the mantra is "You'll never make it as an original band. Here, join my cover band instead."  Thankfully the new Barbers don't agree with that sentiment.

We've played a handful of open mic nights and open jams here, and the response has been incredible. It does seem like this town really needs a fresh sound and is actually hungry for something unusual.

We've got a number of shows coming up soon, but I'll post about those in a subsequent blog entry.

On Losing Gracefully

It may not seem to be common amongst the gentry to lose at anything, but I'm a firm believer that everyone either loses at something or fails to attempt to ever win at anything. Those who appear to be winning all the time are doing one of two things.

A) Not accepting any challenge that they are not confident they can succeed at

or

B) Losing gracefully.

I love billiards. I'm not good at it even remotely, but I bought a pool table last weekend because I enjoy it so much. My friends may even say I'm a decent player, or that I've won a game or two against them, but that would be a little bit more than somewhat innaccurate.

Everyone is well aware in the game of eight-ball that scratching on the eight ball or sinking the eight ball out of turn constitues loss. While I'm not at all unfamiliar with being on the perpetrating end of such losses, I've more often than not been on the receiving end of victories based on these rules.

That is to say, the only games of eight-ball I can really recall winning involved someone else fucking up.

I won my first legitimate game of eight-ball against my roommate last week. I believe I may or may not have won a second game, but there was alot of Canadian Club involved in the equation and my memory is fuzzy beyond the point that I recall crying out "That was the first game of eight ball that I've ever won legitimately!"

I much prefer nine-ball, or (when paying per rack) six-ball because you can always clean up and win after your opponent has done the rest of the work for you previously.

I say all this to say that losing gracefully involves more than just being a good sport and not a sore loser. We learn all of this in kindergarten, and it still astounds me to this day how many grown adults act like children when confronted with both victory and loss. It's not even about "getting back on that horse."

The most important thing about losing gracefully is learning how to lose. Learning how to "give it the old college try," and standing up to challenges that seem ridiculously difficult.

Another good example of this occurred during the purchase of my pool table. My roommate, Lance, and I went to Sports Authority (I usually don't name names, but the salespeople went above and beyond the call of duty delivering my pool table. That is another story entirely).

Whilst waiting for the sales associate to check if the pool table I wanted was in stock, Lance and I wandered over to the weights section of the store. Mind you, there's a bench press in my garage and I see no further need of weights beyond my 25lb. hand-weights; I can bust out 35 military-grade push-ups (albeit on my knuckles.. personal preference) in one set and can do crunches until I lose track of what number I was on, but I was curious about getting a pull-up bar.

It's good to balance any workout, and pull-ups (at least to me) seem to be the antithesis of push-ups. I grabbed a pull-up bar and found that, despite my proficiency at push-ups, I could only do one. Lamenting this, I exclaimed, "Well, I guess I should wait on buying that pull-up bar."

It was then that Lance said something profound. I've forgotten the exact wording, but the meaning was profound enough for me to absolutely butcher the syntax and still deliver a decent bit of advice:

To do pull-ups, you only need to be able to do one pull-up. After you can do one pull-up, you can do pull-ups. It may take weeks and weeks of trying, but eventually you'll do two or maybe three. There's no reason to not do pull-ups simply because you can only do one.

The advice could be taken further and more deeply into abstract warm-fuzzies to say that if you can only do one pull-up, you should make it the best pull-up you can do, but that goes without saying. Everything you do should ALWAYS be the best you can do, otherwise you're just half-assing it and wasting your own time and energy.

The second most important thing about losing is to not advertise it. I'm not telling you to deny that you've ever lost, but simply don't announce it to the world. This is somewhat analogous to the school-yard advice to not be a sore loser, but it takes it a step further. I was taught long ago, that when you miss a note while playing in a band, don't make a face or apologize. It may be that no one noticed in the first place; if you make a face, everyone will realize that you screwed up.

Competitive point-sparring is a good example of this. It is incredibly subjective and largely arbitrary in the three- and five-point style rounds, but when struck by an opponent, one should NOT stop fighting until the judges call "break" or "yame." If you continue fighting even after struck, there is a chance that you could land an even more visible point on your opponent; this gives some likelihood that the judges will not notice your opponent's point and award you the point instead. If you DO stop fighting immediately upon your opponent landing a point, it is incredibly likely that the judges will award your opponent the point, even if they didn't actually see the point land. You essentially admitted defeat when it may or may not have been necessary.

To bookend this with my billiard story. Most of my friends, (save the ones that have repeatedly seen me jump the cue ball off the table) don't realize how truly awful I am at the game. Simply because I never turn down a challenge, I enjoy the game whether I win or lose, and I make sure they drink heavily so they will have little memory the next day of my astounding defeat.

To summarize: lose, lose early, lose often and get used to losing. It will make winning occasionally that much more enjoyable.