-1 for the Pizza Guy
I can’t remember if I’ve told this story here before or not, but in the late 2010s, I started playing bass outside of my house.
I was reminded of this because I was talking about how expensive my bass equipment was when I was bad and how cheap it is now that I’m good.
In fact, the amp I use on stage now, I think we bought for under $70 at Guitar Center. It’s a Fender Rumble 25, which sounds great. I have a direct box, and the XLR signal goes to the house while the quarter-inch signal goes to the amp. So I’ve got stage volume and feel for the drummer and the band.
Anyhoo, I had put a live-band karaoke band together with a bunch of professional musos I knew and was desperately vying for their attention and approval. Basically setting up paying gigs as a bit of an internship, I guess.
Always the worst one in the band, working the hardest, but getting there.
So I learned a lot and was feeling really good. Eventually, my friend from our favorite college band when I was in school, Soul Hat, asked me to join his solo band for about a year. Which was the dream.
In fact, after it ended, I really didn’t know what to do, because that was as far as I had gotten with gigs I wanted.
But anyway, I was feeling good about myself, and I’d always kind of felt that, whatever was happening internally, externally I seemed a bit too successful business-wise to be a good musician.
And this wasn’t only my imagination. It certainly lived there, but I got shit from people about being, you know, the pizza guy. I had some pizza restaurants.
Eventually, that faded out, and I got comfortable with actually being a bassist.
Until we had a gig with an Austin one-hit-wonder band. I’d become a little friendly with them, and that was super fun, and I was thinking, Ooh, man, maybe if they need a bassist for a gig, I could do it.
We were sharing a bill with them.
I walked into the club. The guitarist was at the bar. I went up and said hello, and he looked at me and said:
“Oh, wait, do you own this place too?”
I was crushed.
Shortly after that, the stint with my buddy ended, and I was again kind of left wondering what to do. Knocked me off the rails for a while. I let this sit on me for a year or two.
I doubt he even remembers he said it. But I do. Or I did.