"It is better to look good than to feel good." -- Fernando Lamas (and Billy Crystal)
I won't say it's better to look good than to play good, but looking good still matters.
I used to show up at gigs wearing whatever I'd worn during the day. Ray Chatfield confessed to me that he'd played a lot of gigs with me before he learned that I had a day job and wasn't a street person.
I remember a dance I played for a national, hi-tech, sales organization. At the break, I was talking to one high-powered salesman, when he began laughing. He stopped, apologized, then said, "It's just funny to hear someone like you use a word like "microprocessor." I looked at his suit, at the holes in my jeans and left elbow, and shrugged. He was making a rational judgement.
Then, one gig, Nancy Thorwardson went up to the mike at the beginning of a dance, announced she'd been shopping, held up a brown, grocery bag, and began pulling out Hawaiian shirts and handing them to the band.
We had a band uniform. The dancers loved it.
Now, before dances I always try to ask, "What are we wearing? What's the dress?"
It doesn't have to be fancy, just mildly coordinated. You can all wear plaid or, if you're in Colorado, cowboy hats. In a band called Knockin' Boots we wore boots to the gigs.
It just takes a little collaboration. If half of you are wearing tuxes and cummerbunds and the other half are wearing Seattle-grunge-band, Salvation Army outfits, it looks like you don't know what you're doing. Some people paying you won't notice anything besides whether you show up on time and how you're dressed.
Weddings up the ante, because you must coordinate with the person hiring you on what folks are wearing. Period. Punto sin coma. When someone's spent time planning what they consider the most important day of their lives, and has relatives flying in from all corners of the earth, and the bride's parents are spending a boatload of money on festivities, including you, you'd better blend in. They will, remember, be taking wedding pictures, and you'll be in them. You don't want their friends, looking through the wedding albums, saying, "Who are those jerks?"
All women know this and no men do, so what follows is advice to guys. The women are going "Uh-huh," and the men are going, "Huh?"
"But they'll be wearing suits and I don't even own one." Oh, for heaven's sakes, go down to the Salvation Army and buy one. It'll be the price of three or four cups of coffee, you can add that to what you're charging the father of the bride, and you can re-use it next wedding. If you're careful, you can save the receipt and write it off on your taxes.
For one out of town concert, I'd forgotten to bring something nice to wear. I'd put it out, and just forgotten to load it into the car. I looked up used-clothing stores on my cell phone, walked to the nearest one, and bought a jacket, shirt, slacks, and tie an hour before the gig. If I hadn't had shined shoes, I could have bought them, too.
"I can't pick out clothes."
There isn't a woman on the floor of the last dance you played who wouldn't leap at the chance to spend an hour at the local Arc clothing store or Savers dressing you up. Just walk up to a group of them at the break and say, "Um, I have a problem and was wondering if you could help." Carry your instrument so they'll know you're in the band, and not just another guy with no clothes sense. With any luck, they'll all want to go.
Bring a handkerchief to gigs. Why? Someone may need it. I use mine more for wiping stuff up than for blowing my nose, but it's even good for that. When a bridesmaid or the dance organizer knocks over a drink or a coffee cup, and you whip out a bright-red handkerchief and wipe it up, you've just gotten a future gig. Pop one in your back pocket.
A comb, too. Remember to comb your hair. Women are saying, "Huh? Men are saying, "Oh. Yeah." If you have a mustache, wax it.
You're better off slightly over-dressed than under-dressed. Caterers understand this, so look at what they wear. At one graduation party I was playing, the guy who was throwing it for his girlfriend, at their home, complimented me on how nice I looked compared to his guests, then gave me three, excellent, three-piece suits that he'd been about to throw out because they no longer fit him. His guests needed them more than I did, but he figured I'd use them. They fit me.
Out-of-town gigs can require extra packing. If you're driving, no problem. To help defray the effort if you're flying, buy your outfit there or pack disposable clothes. When my socks and underwear get frayed enough to throw out, I put them in my pile of travel clothes. I pack them, wear them while I'm out of town, and leave them. It makes room in my luggage for souveniers.
Plus, throwing out the old stuff gives you an excuse to put white underwear in your drawer. My sister Jo says that mens' underwear should all be sold in either pink or gray, because that's what color it ends up after two washes anyway.
Rose Reynolds says that when she started to date her boyfriend, Jack, she invited him on a trip to England, for a dance weekend. As they were packing to come back, he looked at his dance shoes, tossed them in the trash, and packed up bottles of local beer instead.
I said, "He's a keeper."
Jack, who's a luthier (Veritable Violins), once stained a batch of fiddles with things he found in his kitchen. I traded him a mandola I bought in Romania, for eight bucks, for a fiddle he'd stained with lime Kool-Aid.
