Gotta knock you right off your pedestal,so tired of having an idol..." -Julie Neumark, "Pedestal" 2002
Hump day is upon us once again. ha.
Tonight I have tickets to see Beth Hart at the Roxy. Yes, this is the first time since June that I haven't shared the stage with Ms. Hart at one of her LA performances. I am a ticket holder like everyone else....and I can't wait! Don't get me wrong, it has been slammin' opening for her but it will kind of be nice and...peaceful....to anonimously stand amongst a crowd of equally enthused fans and just lose myself in the music of one of my favorite musicians.
I first met Beth Hart not long after I had been introduced to her music. New Years Eve, 2005. It was at Jimmy's Nascar Bar and Grill down in Fullerton, CA. A tiny dive of a place that holds maybe 75 tops? The perfect venue to see her for the first time....intimate, laid-back, very REAL. During the opener, I was befriended by Shelly (one of my good pals today!), a seasoned Beth Hart fan (I was referred to as a virgin all evening.) ;) Beth was just sort of hanging out in the corner booth during the opener and Shelly offered to take me over and introduce me. I was flipping out. I could hardly breathe. I held it together, walked over and said hello and that I was a musician and she was a huge influence. She smiled, said thank you, and told me I had a cool jacket. Then Shelly (an amazing photographer, btw) took our picture. That's all I remember. Ha. You can actually see that photo in my myspace albums.
The show was amazing...life altering, for me at least. Beth continued to be an influence in my writing, my performance, and my life. Then in February of 2007, once again down at Jimmy's, I got another chance to say hello to Beth. As it happened, I had a show coming up at The Mint and I gave her a postcard. Scott, her husband walked over and they smiled thanked me and said they would be there. I really wasn't expecting them to come...until...they did...ha!
I couldn't believe it. I walked over to her and said hello and thanked her for coming. We shot the shit for a bit, trading stories about pre-show rituals, nerves, etc., and then she and Scott sat down and I took the stage. It was a blast, probably one of my strongest performances to date. When I finished, Beth called me a rockstar and told me what a great songwriter I was. "I mean, your the real deal, man!" she said, in true Beth Hart fashion. She told me that if she had a recording of the song I opened with (Bobbi) she would play it every morning.
I may have stepped down off the stage post-performance, but my feet still hadn't hit the ground. Before I said goodbye, we exchanged numbers and made plans to write together in the future.
We kept in touch and in June I opened for her at Knitting Factory and in July I opened for her at The Roxy. It was a blast. Someone who I had placed so high on a pedestal had not only made the transition to human for me, but was becoming a colleague and a friend.
Pedestals....the quote at the beginning is not just narcissistic...it does have a point. That point is about pedestals and the people who we put up on them. I've been doing this with one person or another my whole life. In 2002, I wrote a song about it called "Pedestal." Today, I was inspired to blog about Beth Hart, not only because I am going to see her tonight but because she is someone who, for a time, I placed on a pedestal.
Yesterday I read an online blog about that very subject and I would like to share some of it with you:
We put people on pedestals. We put them on these pedestals because as
mortals, we need someone to look up to. We develop an expectation that once
a person is on this pedestal that they will never come off that pedestal.
Once a person is there, we often create exceptionally unrealistic
expectations for that person. We often expect far more from that person
that we would ever expect of ourselves. When something happens and that
person does not meet our expectations we feel that they have somehow fallen
from grace............
If we take everyone off the pedestal and just become a detached observer
of human behavior where we can, we can be in a far more balanced place.
This isn't easy. It is very hard. The hardest ones are removing our
parents from their pedestals. This is especially poignant as they age and
make mistakes and stop being the person we always knew. We have to adjust
to their changes and just see them as a bit more needy, or forgetful or
cranky. We can still love them. We can still be OK.
Pedestals are artificial environments. No one really wants to be there.
Try removing people from their pedestals, ceasing judgment of them and
seeing them as ordinary mortals. Maybe then we won't feel so bad when they
make mistakes or have lapses in judgment or fail us. Maybe that is the same
level of compassion that we will ultimately want for ourselves. ~ Tina Erwin, The Light Times
Now, Beth Hart never "fell" from her pedestal...for me, that experience was unique and I was able to lift her up off the pedestal I had placed her on and bring her safely back down.
I've always been curious about the idea of idols and pedestals...I guess I figured it had to be pretty universal, even before I read Tina's latest edition of The Light Times.
I hope that this will touch some of you and if nothing else be comforting.
'Til next hump day,
tHE hUMP bLOG oF lITTLE dAME
Next,it was off to sound check. Wow. This was a big stage with a big sound board. We walked in while Beth's band was still sound checking and it was fun to catch up with Scott and the boys...it made me feel like I was at home. We had a nice, long, indulgent sound check (ah, now I knew we were not in the US of A....) and we went back upstairs to hang out in the dressing room before we went on.
