After several fun-filled months in the Florida Keys, I'm underway and headed to the semi-frozen north. I really didn't want to leave Marathon Key, Florida, and the wonderful people I met down there didn't want me to leave as well. It's a fantastic place, the weather was great, only a couple hours of rain in the four months I was there.
I learned a lot in Marathon and on the trip south. The payscale for entertainer/musicians gets lower and lower the farther south you get from the mid-Atlantic region. There were a lot of good to excellent musicians along the way that really put on a good show, but they often didn't make enough to cover gasoline expenses.
Of course, there were lots of "Have Guitar Will Travel" kind of entertainers as well. Most ranged from poor to just awful. Some knew more chords than anyone on the planet, but they either had a lousy sense of timing, or they couldn't sing. Sure, they tried to sing, but in most instances they shouldn't have.
I was among the fortunate few entertainers in Marathon that could read an audience. The vast majority of the Have Guitar Will Travel guys just played what they liked to play and figured that was all that was necessary to captivate the crowds. WRONG! They didn't provide any variety, they failed to play and sing songs that were appropriate for the audiences, and usually, after the first hour, the crowd size dropped off by 75 or more percent.
Now, I'm gonna brag! Everyplace I performed I kept the crowd loving every minute of every song. There were complements galore, and the bartenders, who were all in their late 30s to early 40s, said I was the only entertainer on the island that captivated the audiences and kept them buying long after Happy Hour ended. When you get complements like that from the bar tenders, it really makes you feel like you're doing something right.
It will probably take just over a month to get home, which will put me in the Chesapeake's upper reaches sometime around the first week in April. Then it's catchup time, time to do the income taxes, time to catch up on all the mail, and the first job of the season begins April 13th. From that point on it's just about non-stop, 5 to 6 days a week behind the keyboard and keeping the ladies happy.
The past several months have been the trip of a lifetime, something that many individuals claim they wish they would have made, but for one reason or another, never will. I feel very fortunate to have been able to do the many things I've done in my lifetime, and if my health allows, I hope to make a repeat performance in 2014.
Cheers,
Gary
PS: Some new photos will soon be posted in this thread.
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