Looking Back. Looking Forward.
It’s been 10 years. Where do we go from here, and why?
I get reflective around the holidays, particularly as our shows, which are mostly weddings (170 + and counting), slow down a bit. I realize The Shakedown has been grinding for about ten years now. The things that have sustained me, (or drained me) through this year are thematic over the past ten years of leading this band around North Carolina (and a few other places, too.)
So why continue grinding? I find it’s important to examine my personal motivation for something that’s a big part of my life. So here goes...
There’s something to be said for pursuing excellence, despite the odds. Dustin, the co-founder of the band, makes the point that performing music is complicated. There are so many variables that go into putting on the show, let alone a good one. Some you can reasonably control night in, night out. Some you can’t. Thus, those are left to the night gods.
Is the crowd into it? How are the monitor mixes? Are we phoning it in for some reason tonight? Is my voice holding up? Have I forgotten how to play guitar again? This challenge is compounded given we’re usually playing in a non-music venue. I tell clients we’ve played in coat closets before, but some coat closets are better than others for putting on a dance party. At the end of the day, we’re just grateful for the gig.
When we have a magically great or simply good performance, I find myself chasing that afterglow. In our ideal world, we’re perpetually striving to ride the lightning with a new bunch of friends, night after night. A show lacking some critical element that the audience might not even recognize can haunt me for months. Do that enough times and I feel like I’m trying to uphold a standard for performance that is respected on some level, at least locally. Maybe it’s ego; maybe it’s just enjoyment from continually pursuing something that is hard to do and seemingly getting rarer. I’m also deeply fortunate that I get to chase after my musical aspirations with really good people.
We enjoy a sense of community amongst this band. Community is a fragile plant that needs constant watering to yield fruit. I discovered that playing in bands was a life-affirming and wonderful thing when I was 13. My life has been generally better with others onstage than when I am going it solo. My energy comes from playing with these people in The Shakedown. There’s a deep well of slowly compounding fellowship on display when we take the stage. On any given night, the 6 to 10 of us onstage come from different racial, socio-economic, political, and philosophical backgrounds. It’s reassuring that our love for timeless music is, on-balance, a binding force. Particularly as our world has leapfrogged into a more online, isolated experience over the past 2 years, I don’t take our community, or this squad, for granted.
This is us 9 years ago. Still clownin’ into 2022.
I find that there are benefits in that which makes me sweat. For me, music is a physical pursuit. If you’ve been to a Shakedown show, you know it takes half of a song for me to sweat. Sometimes I’m sweating before I take the stage. My Mom thinks something’s wrong with me. Maybe she’s right. I think it’s a special effect for the show, like a stage prop. Some bands have light shows. We have a sweat show. Come watch this bearded guy go berserk and sweat everywhere, and maybe join him in the sweating? Performing gives me a sense of flow. A place to get lost in doing something. Lost in the sweat of a dance party.
Sweatin’ my bones out. The black covers up the mess. Photo credit AJ Dunlap Photography.
I enjoy having a pursuit where I get to “land the plane.” My “day job” and primary source of income is in financial services. The nature of that work is very different from putting together dance parties in so many ways, though I learn lessons from each that benefit the other. That’s a topic for another post, though. Work in my profession is continuous, and, if it ends, it’s generally because something bad has happened. Landing the plane at the end of the night is one of my favorite aspects about performing. I relish the contained finality of executing a performance. The show is over. Job well done, hopefully. Those clients, or that room, had a positive experience tonight. I think that’s been part of the appeal of our tribute shows. Many in the crowd understand we’re walking this tightrope tonight. Getting to the other side is the allure of the show. If it’s a wedding, we nailed the first dances and brought people a dance party that we hope they’ll be raving about for years to come.
Being honest, I also worry if I put that guitar down, I won’t pick it back up. As a kid I realized quickly I’m not much of a bedroom guitarist. My personal motivation for playing guitar and singing is to take something out into the world and share it with people. I must be thinking “you’d better not let people down at the show coming up on X date” to make me practice.
Looking back on this decade of leading this band, I realize I’m in a different place. In addition to trying to be a good husband, I’m a new father, a gift that has fundamentally changed my life for the better. Leaving my daughter on Saturdays, or any day, is a gut check. She is adorable, and she changes from day to day. I don’t want to miss any of those changes. I catch myself thinking, if I’m leaving her today in my wife’s hands, it had better be for a good reason. Often, yes, the show really is that good and worth parting with my family on some balanced level. But I don’t walk out that door without pausing anymore. Maybe that’s just a part of growing up.
Real talk, I get self-conscious when I think about being in a band that easily falls into the “weekend warrior” category. We’re not serious enough to take to the road supporting the next Great American Album, and I’m desperately trying to keep us three steps ahead of the hacky cover band meme. Keenan’s description of what we’re doing is apt. “The Shakedown started as a wedding band but has turned into something much more.” I don’t exactly know what that “something much more is” but I know it’s important to me and some subset of people out there. If what we were doing were insignificant, I wouldn’t be trying to hash it all out here. I wouldn’t dedicate 10 years of my life, nor would I be thinking about how to make the next decade better. And it’ll be an interesting decade for live music…
2021 was no less weird than 2020, right? Awkward conversations around COVID, vaccines and the risks involved with stepping out into the world and doing the thing we love. How many times have you had to say “I’m not a public health expert, but I think _____________.” I’m a band leader dammit, not a doctor! I’ve had enough of all that, thanks, but something tells me we’re in it for the long-haul here. Checking CDC data like it’s a weather forecast. Rage hurled from one end of the political spectrum to the other, while we try to sort this all out on the way to the next show.
It was the best of times and the worst of times this year. The highs of rocking in Chicago to the lows of being fired by a client the next week (a first for the band!) because we wouldn’t learn Bruno Mars of The Wobble. Maybe we dodged a bullet on that one. No, we definitely dodged a bullet on that one. Yet the fact we were fired for not learning modern, more producer/DJ-centric music gives me pause. We’ve always played classic music and shied away from modern stuff because: 1) learning Top 40 is a losing game. You’re always having to learn and burn songs with a shorter shelf-life; 2) we’ve seen how our classic soul-based music appeals to a broader audience at a party, kids through grandparents and 3) I admit selfishly, I don’t want to play Bruno Mars or The Wobble. Someone else can do that.
Sweaty Nash, Darion, Alan and Sergio mid-groove. Photo credits to Pen Carlson Photography.
Sometimes I worry the classic music that has formed the bedrock of our set is losing its appeal. We’ve seen this enough times through our tribute shows. There just are not enough living Ray Charles fans in Raleigh that will buy a ticket for a Friday night show. Those people either aren’t leaving their house, or they’re dead. Maybe that’s saying the same thing. There’s a hopeful part of me that wonders if our collective attitude around that music will put it in a different place, akin to the Classical genre? My Dad likes to remind me that YoYo Ma isn’t known for his own music, but because he performs Classical music at the highest level. (YoYo, please don’t take this as dismissive if you do write your own music, but I hope you get the point.) Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Van Morrison and the many other artists that comprise our set have created timeless music. For me, the music must be experienced live to be kept alive.
All this to say our set probably needs to change moving into 2022, I’m just not sure what it’s going to look like. If there are artists or songs you think we should consider, let me know. If there’s a tribute show that you think is interesting, I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks for sticking around for my rant. If there’s something important in your life that you do, I hope this has been helpful as you reflect on and take inventory of what you want to do next year. Maybe you’ll do it for ten more years. Maybe you know the secret since you’ve been doing it for 70 years. Maybe you quit and it was the best decision you ever made because it led to something even better than the last. Please tell me about it. Write me a line, or 30 lines at theshakedowncontact@gmail.com.
I wish you and your family the best over the holidays. I hope to see y’all at a show next year. Cheers.