the idea: invite musicians up on stage in order to look at what it takes to put on a good performance

the ideator: Vance Gilbert

Every couple of years Vance Gilbert does a performance skills critique workshop at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.  I’ve seen it happen a few times, always with the notion that I would be too terrified to ever step up there.  But this year I finally decided to try.

During the workshop, Vance broke apart a performance from entrance, through music, to exit.  He described ways to thank the audience, to set up the mics, and to tweak a song.  A lot of this tweaking comes down to what he calls choreographing the song.  This could involve focusing on the vocal, speaking lines, and taking the guitar away on certain points.

While I listened to Vance work with the first three people, I was planning on playing one of the songs that usually go well.  Either Try, about my book, or Fairytales, about my father.  Instead, Vance asked that we play a song that has been giving us trouble.  With this instruction in mind I chose my newest song, the Pretty Girl Game.  I had played it at the Front Porch’s song circle the first night at the festival and because I sang it in the wrong key, it didn’t go as well as I had planned.

Once I was let off the stage, having amazingly not completely embarrassed myself, a few people came up and asked me to play the song through the whole way.  One was a woman who had heard me at the Front Porch and told me that there was no way I bombed it.

All in all, though mildly terrifying, volunteering to go up on stage was one of the most exciting things I’ve done at Falcon Ridge yet.  Also, I made both Vance and the ASL signer grab various body parts multiple times, but to get that you’ll have to watch the video: