It’s gonna be just me and my little Takamine Jasmine acoustic/electric and my venue is gonna be the nursing home which is attached to the hospital I work at.
My repertoire:
A Boy Named Sue (Cash)
(Pour Me Another Tequila) Sheila (Bare)
The Cocaine Blues (Cash)
and for the finale…
He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands (which will close out the night. We’ll have little Kindergartners all the way up to high school kids joining in at that point.)
There will be other “acts” inbetween , so they have to stay!
Yeah, I know those songs up there in 1,2,3 are not in keeping with #4, but that’s who I am, and a leopard cannot easily change his spots. Plus, they’re easy to play, and before y’all decide to jump on the German boy, I decided against “Why Don’t We Get Drunk And Screw?” (Although that might be a very nice Nursing Home anthem!)
Good luck Quasi! Hope you go down a storm. If you’re playing a nursing home though, it’s probably best not to try the old trick of “imagining the audience naked” in order to deal with nerves. That just ain’t pretty…
Before you go on - days before - imagine what the worst things that could happen might be. Then, consider what you might do if they do happen. It’s a great way to make sure you are bringing the right stuff (e.g., extra strings, picks), making sure your gear works (e.g., mic’s, amps) and mentally developing a joke or speech or something to keep the audience engaged while you solve the problem. Shit happens, but if you’re ready for it, you can move past it quickly.
Imagine what it would be like to really have fun up there. Rehearse while fully embracing that feeling - while making sure you don’t get so lost in the moment that you forget chord changes, etc. Then, when you are actually performing, take a deep breath and go to that fun place - you will have a better time, and the audience will be able to tell you are having fun and feed off of it.
If you are brave, videotape yourself as part of a rehearsal - you can see if you have any glaring stage-presence issues.
Have a great time and best of luck! (er, “break a string”?)
I’ve played many nursing homes and the folks absolutely loved it. The ones that didn’t still had the option of turning off their hearing aids, so it all worked out in the end. Our group (The Tri-Tones) played a lot of Sinatra and other torch songs, so the crowds really lapped it up.
More than anything, be sure to have a good time yourself. If you’re enjoying things, chances are everyone else will too. Good on you for getting out and playing your music. There is no other way to acquire the experience of performing publically save by doing so. I know this sounds obvious, but no amount of practicing in front of a mirror can compensate for the real-life experience you get while treading the boards.
Have a great time, [q]Quasi**! If you can, tape it. It’s always fun to look back at those things, and VH-1 will love it in 10 years when you’re playing stadiums.
Break a leg! (Insert calcium-supplement joke here.)
Being on stage is a bit like getting a tattoo. You’re nervous and panicky ahead of time, and as soon as it’s over you think, “That was great! I wanna do it again right now!”
Thanks everyone! People here at the hospital have been asking me to do this for ages and this time I finally caved in. Like y’all said, how bad can it be? (Unless one of those senior citizens comes up to me later and says something like “Boy, you sucked like an Electrolux up there!”)
I had to change Cocaine Blues to Folsom Prison Blues but that was okay. The surprise was the evening “finale”. There must be something about He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands that gets people moving! I think it was the little ones getting up on stage with me that set everyone off. I finally relinquished the microphone to one nurse who musta got the “power”, because she kept making up new verses to the song. That one song lasted 15 minutes at least.
Ol’ Quasi and his little blue guitar. Who’da thunk it? I’m still high from the experience. It got video-taped, BTW. I appreciate all the good wishes from my Doper buds, and y’all were right: It’s a high. It really is!
And LabDad and Yujin: Where were you guys? I didn’t hear any calls for Free Bird, but I swear I heard some old guy yelling for In The Mood!
Good deal, Quasi! If I’d seen this thread earlier, I’d have volunteered to shout “Freebird” too!
There’s a lady on the Harplist who plays in nursing homes a lot. I think she does a lot of the old-time sing-along songs. You can’t go wrong with stuff that gets people singing!
