Fear or desire?

We were about to tank our Black Friday show at McCleary’s. Still finding our way back from pandemic toward feeling at home on stage as a band, our first three performances in 2022 were fun but not yet completely dialed in. Reclaiming our collective stage presence, I guess. We’d worked hard in the months prior to add a number of songs to our repertoire - among them Alchemy, which cites Led Zeplin’s “Kashmir” before transitioning into a white guy rap, and then finishing with an audience-joined sung meditation; Hold My Heart, written in the thick of the 2020 lockdown beginning with the words”In the middle of the prison there’s a vision in the wind from the world outside, though we’ve given into figures that have risen here again in the dark of night, how they hold our eyes”, only now surfacing as ready for performance; and a bent cover of “Waiting for the Sun”, requested by bassist Will, although he insists that it sounds like a foreign composition to him.

Four weeks from our McCleary’s date the band still had some spots to iron out, but we felt we were in decent shape considering the time we had left to prepare. How things change. Practice cancellations began when I tested positive for Covid. I was fortunate enough to go through it free from much physical suffering but when I was cleared enough for others to be safe in the same room, team percussionist Greg came down with the flu. How three weeks of bagged practice sessions tend to undercut confidence. One week out, we went back to the basics. All unfinished songs stripped from the setlist. The Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, while our families prepared for holiday gatherings without us, Featherburn rallied to run through all material we had prepared, start to finish, two nights in a row.

I think that compression can make us better. In my experience anyway, since I began playing music, the pressure to prepare for an upcoming performance may be stressful, but it always forces me to grow as a musician. The desire to do well, the fear of failing, whatever twisted hybrid of both it actually works out to be, pushes me to get my shit together. It did so for the band as well. We needed to be efficient with the limited practice time we had available. We needed to enter the studio individually prepared and find musical consensus quickly - or we would flounder on stage and render ourselves unable to give any real gift, any relaxed musical embodiment, joy or deep expression in our performance. It was challenging, but we worked hard under pressure.

We arrived early at McCleary’s on Black Friday, loaded in and set up unhurried. My brother had driven down from Buffalo. Denise and Rose made the trip from Baltimore. Rich and Sharon came from Harrisburg. Greg’s mom brought a whole table of friends and Beth brought another. Dodd plugged us in and checked our sound, the bar treated us to tasty drafts. Preparation is so important, but part of me believes that the confidence we gain from being prepared means as much as the actual parts we learn on accordion, guitar, fiddle, drums and bass. We ended up playing with more ease, confidence and expression than any show to date. So thankful for this current lineup of badasses. It hasn’t been without some compression and stress, but this new team is settling in and delivering music to be proud of.