Gigs in General

I LOVE Gigs. Playing and singing for kids is the absolute best. I've been performing since I was 12 years old, and I'm used to the typical scene: you break out the guitar, sing your heart out, and people can basically ignore you while they talk, eat, or go about their business -- maybe drop a dollar in your guitar box, no matter how good you sound.

But children? They are interested in everything you do. Because they are so grateful that you care enough about them to come sing for them.

So it makes you try harder to find songs for them that will teach them something, like the one I found for this gig: Follow the Drinking Gourd.

Follow the Drinking Gourd is the last remaining "coded song" sung by slaves seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Although seemingly simple, and to unknowing plantation owners, mistaken for -- perhaps -- a hymn, it was written by an itinerant carpenter named Peg Leg Joe. As he traveled from plantation to plantation, ostensibly working for the slave owners, he would secretly teach this song to the slaves, who would then use the "map" in song to run for freedom in the north.

The song gives explicit instructions for a route from Alabama and Mississippi to Ohio, via the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. Because the song makes use of Polaris, the North Star, even NASA gives an explanation of the song on their web site.

I bring an easel with me to gigs, with huge poster boards for sing-a-longs. For Follow The Drinking Gourd, on one side of the board, I created a map for the kids to view the route. (For my own little joke, I colored the southern state Confederate grey and the northern states Yankee blue.)

Then, as I taught the kids the song -- to Peg Leg Joe's everlasting credit, it's an easy song to pick up, even for kids -- I flipped the board, and along with the words, I had photographs of the actual route -- the double hills and valleys of the rivers, pictures of dead trees referenced in the song, etc.

Everything I do, I try to sneak in some learning -- while the kids have fun.

I have the best job in the world. I really do. Not only do I get to learn, but we have SO much fun together.

Gig at the YMCA

Children enjoying themselves is probably one of the finest things to participate in there can be.

When I tell people what I do: give poetry and writing workshops for children, sometimes they give me that weird smile -- that "really, but you're so talented, why don't you work for grownups?" smile.

It gets worse when I tell them I give concerts for children. Especially when they hear my music.

"But you're so GOOD," they say. "This is like, real music. Why don't you play for adults?"

Well, I try to explain, we all have our niche. Mine's kids. Sometimes that satisfies them. Sometimes they simply walk away, shaking their heads, thinking I'm somehow "wasting" my talent.

Hardly.

Ever hear a five-year-old call for an encore? There's absolutely nothing like it. I don't mean it from the perspective of an ego-thing, either. I just mean watching the pure delight in their faces.

The venues I play and work in are small enough where I can see their faces still, where I can roll out my jet-black Ibanez electric guitar, and see their eyes widen: a rock star!

To be able to bring that kind of uncynical, unmitigated pleasure to ANYONE -- kid or adult -- well, I just feel like the luckiest person in the world.

-elizabeth