MY EPIC WARDROBE MALFUNCTION

Every serious musician has to move through the years where you are willing to play anywhere, anytime. Those days are over for me, not because I got famous and wealthy enough to not need them, but because the trauma outweighs the benefit, in some scenarios. This story is one of those scenarios. I am surprised I ever played in public again after this. As they say, “the show must go on”, and in this case, as the show went on, it got more risqué and more desperate with every song.

In the early 2000’s, Barry and I put out a general market record under the name, Juniper Loop. We toured it in bars, coffee shops and college campuses and it remains one of my favorite projects of ours to date. We were living in Montgomery, Alabama at the time and my brother was our booking agent. He rounded up a gig for us at a local bar and we were thrilled to have the chance to try out our new music on some folks. The venue was called “The Keys” and we pictured ceiling-to-floor red velvet curtains and a grand piano. My brother also reached out to the local paper and got in touch with an entertainment-ish reporter who said he would come cover the show. We were stoked! We were going to play our new stuff at a piano bar and it was going to be in the paper! We practiced our sets, printed up posters and secured some childcare from Gramma.

On the day of the show, about an hour before it was time to leave, I googled up the venue for an address and a map. As the palm trees materialized on the computer screen, I immediately knew that we had drastically misunderstood the nature of the venue’s name. “The Keys” meant the Florida Keys, no jazz piano in sight. As I scrolled through the home page in a mild panic, I saw that this very night, the Jimmy Buffett Fan Club was having their meeting there at the same time that we were playing. Ok, we needed a strategy. I opened another page, searched up a chart for Margaritaville and marched out to find Barry. We could do this. We had a built-in crowd coming; we just needed to speak their language for a bit to reel them in. We rehearsed the song, made a floor chart for it and headed out to set up.

When we arrived, the “Parrot Heads”, as they are lovingly known, were already lined up at their nacho bar in their Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. Jimmy Buffett was crooning through the bar’s speakers as we set up our gear. We tuned up and sound checked real quick so the Parrot Heads wouldn’t run out of nachos before we had even started. We gave each other a nervous nod and headed on into Margaritaville. Things were going well all through the first verse. They were happy to hear our tribute and clinked their glasses together in Jimmy’s honor. What we were unprepared for was the Parrot Head tradition they were saving for the chorus. Apparently, when hardcore Jimmy Buffet fans hear “searching for my lost shaker of salt” it is a tradition for them to stand to their feet, raise their fists in the air and yell “salt, salt, salt!” They scared us to death. When we saw them rising to their feet, our first thought was that we must have butchered their beloved anthem and that they were now coming to destroy us. Once we figured out this was just a part of their ritual, we calmed ourselves and tried to prepare for the next chorus. When it came, we raised our fists and salted right along with them like pros.

A few songs into our set, I saw an unfamiliar young guy come in and sit down. I assumed this must be the newspaper reporter and I thought to myself “Game. On.” I pointed myself at that guy and sold the whole rest of the set to him. I sang it at him with passion and poise and made sure he knew I was a solid performer who could communicate with an audience. He seemed a tad uncomfortable but I didn’t care, I just went for it. I’m not known for subtlety and when a media review hangs in the balance, I’m like a bulldog. Well, close to the end of the first set, my fist-pumping “salt” routine and media-presence-intensity-of-delivery caught up with me. In the middle of a song, my faithful, favorite bra, which fastened in the front, sprang loose like a can of exploding prank snakes. What the bra used to hold up dropped several stories immediately and I spent the rest of the song with my arms folded in front of me, like I was copping some sort of weird attitude. When the song was over, I whispered to Barry that the set was now also over and I stepped off of the stage to find shelter from the mammary storm.

I hustled to the bathroom, which I had not yet experienced. The stall I squeezed myself into was not for women of average builds. My hips don’t lie and I could feel the stall walls caressing them while I checked out my faulty wardrobe and tried to repair it. Alas, this bra had given up the ghost and I actually had to remove it and put it in the tiny trash (who knows what scandal the cleaning crew imagined later that night).

I marched out with my arms crossed over my chest and explained to Barry my predicament. We had to finish the show and we did. I was unable to sell the second set to the newspaper guy quite as effectively as I had the first set. It’s just straight up hard to express yourself while simultaneously trying to keep a vulgar side show under wraps. I was relieved when it was over, but I knew I had to go meet the newspaper guy to lock things down. How was I going to shake his hand without releasing the Kraken? I got Barry to go with me and told him he had to be the hand shaker. I walked straight up to the guy and thanked him so much for coming. Barry reached out to shake his hand and I asked him if he had any questions for us or if I could give him a demo cd. He seemed confused but up for conversation. Then my sister-in-law leaned in and explained that this guy was John, their friend, but that the newspaper guy was a no-show (any Christopher Guest fans should go ahead and harken quickly to “Waiting for Guffman” after the last show). What? I had just sung my bra off for a guy named John who wasn’t even going to write about it? I was humiliated and exhausted, all in the same moment. We packed up, collected our $150 and headed home.
You can’t make this stuff up, folks. This is the stuff you sign yourself up for if you want to take a shot at being an entertainer. I would like to take this opportunity to raise a glass to every musician who has ever played their own version of “The Keys”, performed cover songs they hate, not been in the newspaper or experienced a tragic wardrobe malfunction. Here’s to us. Here’s to the ridiculous, the awkward, the embarrassing moments we endure to take our chance. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes it’s not. In this case, I am going to reconsider my earlier stance and say that it was probably worth it in the end. 1) We added a new song to our repertoire. 2) We received a Parrot Head education and would never be caught off guard by Jimmy’s disciples again. 3)We made enough money to buy a more durable, lock-em down kind of bra. Here’s to us!
P.S. I would love to hear your horrid performance debacle stories, comment them to me!

P.P.S. John, the not-newspaper guy became a friend of ours who has been to enough of our shows for a punchcard by now.