Re: [Harp-L] stage fright

[fjm <mktspot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

And you go out and you fall on your face and guess what?  The next 
morning the sun still comes up, nobody dies and it doesn't cost anyone a 
million dollars.  For me that's the cure, you fail miserably and it 
isn't all that bad.  My band's first festival gig we opened for the 
Texas Tornadoes in front of a crowd of about 5,000 people.  My guitar 
player literally just froze up and forgot all the chords to all of the 
songs.  The bass player wasn't having a much better go of it.  We stood 
up there for our 40 minutes just being bad.  I personally wasnt having 
all that hard a time but it was tough to be playing lead in a band with 
no support whatsoever.  We got off stage and people were still nice to 
us.  I fled to the outside part of the festival and several people 
approached me to say how good we were.  Go figure.  12 years later we 
got to open for Freddy Fender's band, he was in the Texas Tornadoes when 
we opened for them.  We got two encores and actually sold CD's after the 
show which the promoter said was unheard of for an opening act in this 
particular venue.  Unforunately you have to play over your head 
sometimes and occasionally things don't go like you wanted them to but 
in the end it all works out.  I don't know that playing Amazing Grace in 
a church full of friends and neighbors would be all that easy especially 
the first time out.  fjm