THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

Okay, so I moved to New York City when I was eighteen having grown up and spent my real formative years in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I started my life in San Francisco, California and spent my first four years in the Los Angeles area. When I was seventeen I managed to graduate high school. I got out a year early and used the year between seventeen and eighteen to plan and fantasize and get the dream together that I could take with me to New York City. By the time I moved to New York I set up some jobs, internships, and some other opportunities. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, maybe I thought I would go to college. Within those few months all my plans and my sort of initial infrastructure I tried to lay out for myself fell through or I quit at basically.

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“I was singing that and the Bill Gates looking guy said, “and I think it’s going to be a long long time till you ever play in this venue… get the fuck out!” He was serious and that’s when the tears welled up in my eyes and I lost it.”

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Out of all the things I thought I was really going to enjoy I didn’t enjoy them as much as I hoped, which included working at an avant- garde fashion company, working at an art gallery and trying to get an internship at an art magazine. So in one hand I was a bit disillusioned and disappointed that when I was growing up back in Michigan all these opportunities of this sort that New York had to offer seemed so thrilling. I then realized that it wasn’t going to be my New York experience and my experience wasn’t necessarily going to come from these particular opportunities. It was going to come from my attitude and what I can do personally in the city, not what anyone else can do for me.

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So at that point I was still looking for some other job. One day I was reading the Village Voice newspaper and looked through the classified ads, this was before the Internet had really caught on so this was like ‘97 or ‘98, and there was always music jobs – drummers wanted, band members wanted and then occasionally something else that was more your day-to-day job that you could really rely on for the long term. I had grown up playing piano my whole life and felt pretty confident as a piano player. One day I saw an ad that said keyboard player needed for nightly performance at one of New York’s greatest clubs and it was like $1,500 a week and I was blown away. It might not actually have been $1,500, it might have been $500 a week but whatever it was it was more money than I ever even had. So I said I can play keyboard, I can learn any song they want me to learn, this will be great. I would get to play with the house band in a bar, it sounds amazing. For some reason I just seemed like a no brainer. I felt very relaxed about this whole idea and could really picture myself doing it, so I called up the club and there was a very nice woman that answered the phone and I told her I saw the ad and that I would like to come and see about the job. She said okay and that I could come down anytime and meet with the owner. He was going to be there that night if I would you like to come by. I said sure. This was good. This is momentum, this is the right kind of inertia and perhaps this is all meant to be.

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I kind of dressed up in what I imagined a session keyboard player in a nightclub would wear. I think I had a sports coat on with the sleeves rolled up a little bit I had jeans with dress shoes and whatever the cleanest T-shirt I had was underneath. That was back when my hair wasn’t very long. I kind of put it back and spiked it up a little bit. I had to look older then I was.

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I took the subway from my friend’s house in Brooklyn where I’ve been crashing on a cot in their living room and these people were kind enough to let me stay with them with what was supposed to be originally one weekend. It turned into about six months and I was living out of a suitcase. They had me sleeping on an army cot in their living room which I was fine with but turns out the whole time I was there it was very unpleasant for them. I don’t think I was very much aware how my presence was affecting them.

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Anyway, I went into the city around 8 p.m. to go this club and to meet with this owner and do what I imagined would be a brief job interview and it never really crossed my mind that I would even play for him but I was sort of prepared to play something on the piano if they asked me too. I really pictured in my head and had a very clear vision of what it was going to be. I imagined a back room almost like a little rehearsal room in the back offices of this club where they might have a piano and a desk or something and I can sit and talk with this guy and maybe play a little piano for him so he can see that I can actually play. I kept playing this over and over again in my mind of how it was going to go. When I got to the club I went inside and there was already a lot of intense energy, more then I had anticipated. The club was really thriving. In fact the whole area, Greenwich Village and the West Village of New York City, downtown, the streets were full of people. I think it was Saturday night. The club was completely packed and there was a lot of music coming from the inside of it. I went out to the coat check area where there was this hostess woman and I managed to find the lady I spoke with on the phone. She said, “Oh great, you’re here, come on in I’ll set you up at a table the owner will be with you in a little bit.” I thought this is amazing. I’m going to get to watch this band and hang out for a bit I was really feeling adult and very confident and very excited. I think I had a Coca- Cola or something like that. I didn’t drink alcohol at the time, I was too young anyway. I started watching this band and the band was really impressive. First of all, everyone in the band was at least twice my age if not three times my age and very accomplished musicians.

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He said, “Ya know Andrew, you shouldn’t have come here if you didn’t expect to be able to play. I said, “Well I didn’t expect to have some guy that looked like Bill Gates yelling at me the whole time.” And the people loved that, they clapped for me.

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The drummer had a very fancy drum set that even had one of those clear plastic plexiglass sound reducing enclosures around it. It looked like a TV show band, real professionals with really nice equipment. I never played with anyone like these guys before who were at this level professionally or musically. So I was really excited about that. I said, “Wow, I wonder if these are the guys I’m going to play with? I’m going to learn a lot from them.” I was checking out the keyboard player. He had an amazing keyboard set up and he was playing at a very high level. Different featured singers were coming out and doing cover songs primarily. In fact that whole area downtown Manhattan specializes in venues that have very high quality cover bands or tribute bands. This was sort of a mix of that and I was really enjoying it and getting into it. The crowd was getting more and more hyped up, more people continued to enter the venue until it was really completely at its capacity which was probably about 200 people but to me looking at it, it might as well been 2,000 people. There was so much energy.

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After I had been there for about fifteen minutes they brought up a Michael Jackson impersonator, who again, was operating at a very high level. He had all these moves down had an incredible likeness and spirit when it came to representing Michael Jackson himself and he went through a few numbers and finished with a huge bang where they even had synchronized lighting. The smoke machine was kicked on and I was really impressed and really inspired by it. It was amazing what they were able to do in the small space. This is what happens when you play music for 50 years. I was sort of looking at it as what a real adult can do when they commit to music.

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Anyway, I was wondering when I was going to go meet with the owner in the back. I was thinking about maybe getting up and looking for that lady again to ask her if I should keep waiting for the guy or should I just go back now but this guy on stage caught my attention. The main guitarist who was sort of the band leader who looked a lot like Bill Gates. He was playing a Fender Stratocaster worn very high up on a strap which I don’t feel as necessarily geeky in it self. I think this guy happened to look really geeky. He had on a blue oxford, khaki pants and gold wired glasses. He looked like he was about 48 and he just really stuck out as the odd ball kind of guy. The rest of these musicians looked much more like musicians. This guy looked like a weekend warrior who happened to get a kick out of playing guitar.

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So I was able to figure out by watching him play and listening to him as he hosted between songs that he was the owner of the club or at least the manager. It all made sense why everyone else was being so nice to him and letting him do what he did. I was wondering when I was going meet this guy. Then I heard this Bill Gates looking guy say on the microphone, “Alright ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for coming out tonight. Now I understand there’s a young man in the audience that’s going to come up here and audition for us. Somewhere there’s a young keyboard player out there who has come to play for you folks tonight and see if he can earn himself a spot in our house band.” I thought, oh that’s funny someone else came to audition too, that’s weird I wonder if this guy set it up to get on stage with them. I was looking around the room to see who this other keyboard player is. I felt a little lump in my throat just over the fact that there was maybe competition for this position. I said, boy I really wish I could go back and meet with this owner now. Then the man said again, “Hey if you’re out there, the board player, what’s his name?” The woman I had been speaking with earlier said “His name is Andrew he’s over there.”

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All of a sudden I realized he was talking about me. At that moment I had two choices. I could either not respond and sit quietly until they moved into their set and forgot about me, run out the door and never go back, or I could completely close my eyes and jump off a cliff so to speak. I came to audition I thought, I moved to New York City to have experiences, this is a New York City experience. No matter what happens this is going to be an amazing story. Nothing could have prepared me for what was happening. I went up on stage. The keyboard player that had been playing the whole night got up and gave me his spot. The Bill Gates guy said, “OK Andrew, what do you want to play?” I said, “Uh I don’t know.” I was already sweating bullets, my stomach felt like it was full of butterflies and going up and down rollercoaster hills. My palms and fingers were sweating, my face was beat red and burning hot. I said, “I didn’t expect to be coming up here on stage.” Before I could even get that out he said, “Come on now, what do you want to play, let’s just name a song we’ll do it.” Again, “I didn’t prepare a song.” I said, “What do you mean you didn’t prepare a song? Just call one out and we’ll play.” For whatever reason, at that moment when he said, “call out a song.” I said Rocket Man by Elton John, a song I never played. I have no idea how it goes and of all the songs it’s probably one of the more challenging songs to try to figure out on the fly because the chord changes are unusual, the melodies are advanced, let alone the fact that he’s singing at a relatively high range for any man. I think I might have been listening to it at home before I came out and that was the song that was in my head. He said, “OK, Rocket Man one, two, three.” I said, “Well I don’t know what key it is in,” and he said, “Folks, we got a comedian here tonight. Come on up here Andrew. Let’s do this OK?” And he started to get a little irritated like I was embarrassing him. And I said, “I’m serious I don’t know what key it is in.” He said, “OK, what key do you want to do it in?”

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At this point the audience is laughing but there was already this sort of tension going over the crowd of “What’s going on here, is this supposed to be funny? What’s happening? Who is this kid?” Then it happened again. The most joyous, rowdy crowd watching one of the most professional shows I’ve ever seen, and here comes this kid who’s making a fool of himself in the most intense way. He said, “let’s do it in C major.” That was the easiest key to play on the piano. There’s no black keys. “Okay, C major Rocket Man,” I said, “Well I don’t know the lyrics,” and he said, “Andrew, you’re a comedian right? Listen folks, we got a comedian here tonight. Andrew is pulling our leg. I hope you are all enjoying this.”

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The crowd was kind of nervously laughing and maybe they were trying to understand what was going on. This guy, this Bill Gates guy who was interacting with me, generally seemed to be getting pissed off. He was trying to look at me out of the corner of his eye and be like what the fuck are you doing kid, you’re making a fool of yourself up here. He said, “OK, I’ll feed you the lyrics. I’ll tell you the lyrics as we go.” So we proceeded to struggle our way. I proceeded to struggle my way through the worst performance of Rocket Man that probably anyone has ever done, the whole time with this Bill Gates look alike guy saying “packed my bags last night pre-flight, packed my bags last night pre-flight zero nine a.m. zero nine a.m.”

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We made it through the song somehow. The band of course sounded great. They nailed it as though it was the album playing. It practically sounded like karaoke and when it got to the part of the song where it goes “and I think it’s going to be a long long time,” I was singing that and the Bill Gates looking guy said, “and I think it’s going to be a long long time till you ever play in this venue… get the fuck out!” He was serious and that’s when the tears welled up in my eyes and I lost it. The audience actually did this miraculous shift, this was a very powerful experience for me as a performer where I realized how an audience can work. They went from booing me to suddenly booing him. Somebody yelled out “Hey give him another chance!” and someone else said “Yea give the kid a chance” and then people started clapping, cheering and clapping like “go, go, go, go.” Then we did a blues jam in C which was much easier for me and kind of what I planned on doing. Then I finished it on a somewhat positive note.

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I did actually get a little dig at the guy. He said, “Ya know Andrew, you shouldn’t have come here if you didn’t expect to be able to play. I said, “Well I didn’t expect to have some guy that looked like Bill Gates yelling at me the whole time.” And the people loved that, they clapped for me. The bass player and the band came over and said “Hey kid you did fine don’t let him get you down, you did good.” I got up and I went back over to my seat for the absolute minimum amount of time that I felt I could sit there before running out without making a further fool of myself. It was probably about five minutes, once the lights went back down again. People forgot about what had just happened.

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The blood in my face felt like all my vessels and my veins were about to explode. I never blushed so hard in my life. I walked back out into the city street into the cold air and sort of came down from the experience, still with tears in my eyes and still a lump in my throat. This almost self conscience understanding that I had done something really important. I didn’t know exactly what it was, what it meant or if it would have any kind of lasting impact. I guess it really didn’t other then it’s this great story. If nothing else, what I learned is that experience proved to me that I could do something I had never done before, make a complete and utter fool of myself and humiliate myself to the core in the completely ego destroying way, and live to talk about it and be fine, possibly a little bit stronger.

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I didn’t realize it, but the name of this venue I’m telling you about was Cafe Wha?, which is probably the most famous venue in New York because it’s where Bob Dylan first went to get his start, the first venue he ever walked into. It’s where Jimi Hendrix was first playing and it’s actually an extremely notorious place for similar experiences to have happened. The fact that I was drawn there as this young musician with no concept of it being this famous place and to have that kind of primary, really early musical rite of passage ended up becoming very meaningful. But it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to see sort of the miraculous quality of that. I didn’t realize at the time that the people who play in venues like that are session players that memorized 5,000 pop songs and can play them on command with all the cord changes and have all the lyrics memorized, have all the backup vocal parts memorized as they are on the album, that’s how they get the big bucks. That’s what they do and what made them valuable over someone like me, someone who could make up something on the spot but couldn’t play a song that someone could name off the top of their head. They spent 50 years doing that.

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I ended up having a lot of respect for those people and for that situation. I think that it set the tone for me trying to maximize all I could out of New York City – all the experience, all the raw interaction with the legacy of the city, with the people of the city, with the energy of the city and that’s what you pay for. That’s why people go to New York City, for the opportunity and for experience. That’s why it costs so much more but it’s worth every penny.