One of My Worst Gig Stories as a Working Musician
There are gigs you remember because they were magical.
And then there are the others. My worst gig ever happened when I was hired to sing jazz in an old strip club and told to bring a full band. It did not go well.
If you’d rather watch, here’s the full video.
A long time ago, I was hired to sing jazz in what I was told was a new venue with a built-in audience. A friend of mine encouraged me to do it. She told me it would be great. She told me to bring the band. Not a duo. Not a trio. A full band.
So I did.
I remember driving there and realizing pretty quickly that I was not heading into the sort of neighborhood that usually says “lovely jazz evening.” There was a point where I thought maybe I should turn around and go home. I didn’t.
I parked, walked in, and immediately knew something was off.
Red velvet. Dark. A little sticky.
Then I saw the pole.
That was the moment.
By then the band was arriving, and they were looking at me like, “Cayla, where have you brought us?” Fair question. I was wondering the same thing.
The deal was that I was getting paid based on attendance, which already wasn’t my favorite arrangement. Still, I had invited some friends, and bless them, they showed up. They walked in, took one look around, and started laughing. I was mortified.
But when you’ve got a band standing there and people sitting in the room, even if they are your own friends and even if the room looks like it needs a pressure wash, the show must go on.
So I sang.
Here’s the really glamorous part. My friends were the only people there.
That was the audience.
At the end of the night, the owner paid me one hundred dollars. Total. For two solid hours of music with a four-piece band and me standing there trying to act like this was all perfectly normal.
It was not perfectly normal.
The friend who had encouraged me to do the gig seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing. She had disappeared by the time the money came around, which felt about right. I haven’t spoken to her since.
I drove home feeling angry, embarrassed, and like I needed a shower. Not in a poetic way. In a literal one.
And then I paid the band out of my own pocket, because that’s what you do. You take care of your band. They showed up. They played. They did not complain nearly as much as they had every right to.
One of the guys did say something funny on the way out. He told me it’s not a bad gig unless there’s a dead person on the other side of the door. Apparently that had happened to him once, so in his books, this didn’t even make the top spot.
I’m still not sure I agree.
There’s a certain kind of story that only comes from being a working musician. It’s never the polished promo-shot version. It’s the strange rooms. The odd deals. The gigs that sound one way on the phone and turn out to be something else entirely once you arrive.
Nobody puts that part on the poster.
But it’s part of the life. You say yes. You haul the gear. You do your best. Sometimes you come home with a great story. Sometimes you come home with forty dollars less than you started with and a stronger appreciation for honest venues.
This one gave me a story, at least.
