Twenty-Three Dollars The Hard Way

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times*: For several months in 2010, I scaled back to one job. That job was playing music at the Potbelly sandwich shop a couple of miles from my house, two hours a day, three days a week. I didn’t put out a tip jar, because at the time I didn’t need the money. I did, however, accept a free lunch. Also, once some smoking-hot suburban mom put a fifty-dollar bill on the ground in front of me because I agreed to play the theme from Aladdin for her kids. In general, however, it was simply something I did because it got me out of the house and because I enjoyed it.

My fairy-tale days of being a folk musician came to a harsh close when I sold my Audi S5 and took a job at Honda that kept me far away from civilization from 5AM to 3PM. Talk about a comedown. Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that my Potbelly days are back**. And this time, I’m stacking dollars in addition to eating for free.

The Potbelly near my day job initially asked me to play the weekends, but my definition of a successful weekend is one where I don’t see my home zip code until early Monday morning. So I’m taking a single weekday until further notice.

For the last year or so, I’ve spent my lunches in that restaurant listening to the talented Eric Nassau play on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. There’s no way that I can “compete” with Eric as such — he’s very good at what he does, which is playing originals and top-40 tunes re-imagined in his unique voice and style. Instead, I’m doing the same thing I did back in 2010: mostly playing acoustic versions of R&B and rock music from the Seventies with the occasional country tune or pop standard included.. For my debut set on Monday, I took my Martin D-41 and went through these songs, among others:

• Philadephia Freedom
• Peg
• True
• If You’re Thinking You Want A Stranger
• The Nearness Of You
• Crocodile Rock
• I Got A Name
• Just The Two Of Us
• The Chair
• Harvest Moon
• Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)
• Give A Little Bit

…and, as they say on TV, many more! I earned $23 in tips plus a meal. If you think about the tax aspects of that, it’s like making $40 an hour on a W-2. Which is less than I make in my various other jobs, but I enjoy it more, so it all works out.

In future weeks, I’m going to expand my catalog a bit and play some stuff by Glen Hansard and Father John Misty. If the restaurant is totally empty, I might play a few originals as well. (Yeah, I have a few, like this one, mostly without merit.)

The response on Monday was so kind as to verge on disconcerting, with the only complaint being that I wasn’t very loud. I think that’s a feature, not a bug, but swapping a RainSong in for the Martin will help a bit. It will also help with the fact that spruce/rosewood acoustics despise being carried around in sub-freezing weather.

As my brother took some time to remind the listeners on his last Smoking Tire guest appearance, I’m not in any danger of being a great musician. It doesn’t matter. This is something that I enjoy doing, and if I have to deal with subpar drivers on racetracks all the time — which I do — and if I have to read, and occasionally work with, sub-literate morons in the autojourno game — which I do — and if I have to spend hours every week educating H1-Bs on how to do the jobs that they stole from more competent Americans — you guessed it! I have to do that as well! — then I will continue to feel no shame about imposing my incompetent playing on the American public. Come on out and listen, why dontcha?

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_elVGGgW8
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_UR201plc8