A Night in Manhattan

Over the summer, I went on tour with my band around the northeast region of the United States. We started at home in Massachusetts and traveled to the western edge of Pennsylvania. It was the four of us in the band, as well as two of our friends who came along for support. One particular experience that sticks out was our show in Manhattan, New York. One of the stipulations of the show was that we needed at least ten people to tell the ticket people at the door that they were at the show to see us, or else we were not going to get paid. Seeing as we have never played in New York before, this was going to be much more difficult than just finding ten of our friends and getting them to the show like we would be able to do in Massachusetts.

The show didn’t start until 7 o’clock P.M. that night, and we were in Manhattan at noon. With a stack of fliers in hand we set out to get whomever we could to the show. We got quite the range of responses, from warm and welcoming to just plain cold. Around every corner I’d see a group of young adults with our fliers in their hands while at the same time seeing the same fliers crumpled up on the ground. It was time to step up the game so we split up to cover more ground.

After so many people saying they didn’t know what our music sounded like, my friend Jesse and I started playing clips of our songs for people on Jesse’s phone. While some people we genuinely into it, most people just didn’t want to be rude so we’d get told that it “sounded good” and they will “probably see us at the show.” We still were not satisfied with what we were doing, so we then started telling everyone we talked to that if they brought the flier we gave them to the show, we’d give them a free CD and t-shirt. Nothing catches people’s attention like free stuff!

The show was right around the corner and it was time to load our gear in. The same thoughts were going through all of our heads. Will any of the people show up? Are we going to have to scrounge up gas money to get to the next show? Are we going to get ticketed for littering? We had told the entire city of Manhattan about the show so we have to meet our ten person quota!

Not even close.

It was about fifteen minutes before we were on and we went to ask the girl at the front door how many people had come for us, and she tells us four. Four people! “There must be a mistake. They must have forgotten to mention they were here for us at the door” I say to myself over and over again. But sure enough there was no mistake because everyone was being asked at the door which band they were coming to see so nobody could forget. It was disappointing but there was nothing we could do about it. On the plus side, we each got three drink tickets for the bar.

With a few free beers in us we went up on stage, did our sound check and played what had to be one of the best sets we played all tour. The response from the crowd was
amazing, resembling one we would get at a home show with all our friends and family there. After we were done our table was surrounded and we sold a decent amount of merchandise. “Okay, so we didn’t get paid but this should get us by for now” I thought to myself. As that thought crept through my mind, the same girl at the door who told us only four people came to see us with a disgusted look on her face, walked up and told us that we sounded incredible, handed us one hundred dollars, and said we are more then welcome to come back again. And two of the four people who came for us, which were two girls my friend Joe met earlier in the day during our marketing campaign, said they wanted to bring us out to a few bars they work where we could get half price on everything.

“So I guess our efforts throughout the day were not a complete waste then!” I exclaim in my head.

Our tab between eight people didn’t even hit triple digits. Twelve pitches of Sam Adams, six rounds of Jameson, and a few other drinks I didn’t know the names of, as well as wings and fries. We really made the night count. Joe was sitting on the sidewalk playing acoustic guitar and singing as loud as he could, all of us joining in for a group sing-along outside a closed down flower shop near the bar we just left. I walked around the city by myself for a while, filming everything I could, talking to all the interesting people I could find. As we headed into the late hours of the night we decided it was time to head back where we were staying, which luckily was only a hop, skip and a jump away. We stopped by one more bar that caught our attention earlier, grabbed one more beer together, and then we headed out to end an unforgettable night in Manhattan.