Gerry, thanks for the compliments, my friend - I really appreciate them.

Donny, the only music job I was not asked to return was one at an Italian Restaurant in Baltimore's Little Italy. It was also the only music job I ever auditioned for. The job was Friday and Saturday evenings, 8 till midnight, I had to set my gear up out of sight behind a huge grand piano so it appeared as if I were playing the piano.

The previous entertainer was and is a piano bar player, but since then completely switched gears and is making a good living doing the senior circuit instead of nite clubs and restaurants.

The day I auditioned, the owner had me connect to his sound system, which at best was awful. A 600-watt Peavy powered mixer and a couple 10-inch Peavey speakers hanging on the wall about 8 feet off the floor. His wife was on the phone and she called the shots. She wanted me to sing and play An Evening In Roma by Dean Martin. Fortunately, I could sing this phonetically in Italian and after singing the first verse and playing a short instrumental run, she told her husband to hire me.

The very first night, there was not a single person in the room other than an attractive bar maid behind the bar on the opposite side of the room. She came over, handed me a monster champagne goblet and said this is for tips and placed it on top of the piano. Then she told me that tips are few and far between and the room I was playing in was just the lounge where restaurant customers would wait until they get seated in the main restaurant. She also said that I could order anything on the menu when I wanted to take a supper break, but I never did.

At about 8:15, a half-dozen couples came into the lounge, and I started out by playing some light, background music, some bossanova stuff, mostly instrumental. One of the ladies came up to me and asked if I could perform Unchained Melody, a song I always sang with just a short instrumental interlude. When I fired it up and began singing, everyone in the room turned to look at me and 4 couples immediately got up and began dancing. When I finished, the lady's date came over and dropped a $20 in the tip jar. More people came in when I went into my usual routine, and never went into the restaurant. By the end of the night I had about $200 in the tip jar, plus I had a check for $150 for the night's performance.

When I came back the following night, there were about 40 people in the room when I arrived, the waitress behind the bar had two assistants with her, and by the end of the nite, you couldn't get another person in the room with a shoe horn. I picked up about $300 in tips that night plus my regular paycheck, but the owner came in a couple times and didn't look happy.

The following Friday, I entered into an already packed room, set up my gear, kicked off with my usual routine, the tip jar rapidly filled, there were people dancing in the adjacent hall and about 11 p.m. the owner came up to me and said this would be my last night. I was a bit puzzled when he said this because the crowds seemed to grow every time I was there. Well, turned out, that was the problem. They were coming into the lounge, drinking $2 drafts, $4 mixed drinks, and eating free snacks, but not going into the restaurant. He said I was costing him a fortune, and while he and his wife loved the music I performed, he had to find another background piano player and fired me.

I went back to the senior circuit, made a good living and didn't have to worry about getting mugged in downtown Baltimore leaving the job at midnight and getting home a 1:30 a.m.. Now, I enjoyed performing for a younger, lively crowd, and I know UD does as well, but the senior circuit was just as much fun and the hours were a whole lot better.

All the best,

Gary

Earl, based on a style that Eric B posted this past week about blues played on the Genos, I was able to obtain that Genos style and play it on my S-950 as a modified style. The very first song that came into my aging brain was Horse With No Name when the style was played at default tempo.

This is a song that I have never performed, played or sang, but I kinda liked the way it sounded, so the next step was to download the lyrics with the chords from tabs.ultimate-guitar.com which is a great site. Then I went to You Tube and listened to the song while looking at the lyrics, marked where the vocal harmony came in and went to work on it. That was 2 hours ago. Now I'm going to get some lunch, come back and record it on the S-950 to see how I sound. When I'm done, I'll post the song here.

Gary

Looking forward to your rendition after 2 hours of work.

Earl, I managed to get through this with no supplemental oxygen - too lazy to go upstairs to switch the office O2 line on.

I recorded this as a one-shot deal using the PSR-S950's onboard recorder, Sennheiser E-855 mic, the Genos 70s RockShuffle style, Main intro, D-variation and the onboard vocal harmonizer. While the Harmony-M was a bit cleaner, I couldn't get the highs I wanted for this song. I used Audacity to convert it to an MP3 and normalize the volume setting.

Click here to hear my rendition of Horse With No Name

Time to go cook supper, spaghetti and meatballs and some garlic bread - Gotta' keep that woman happy.

Nice, Gary:

Brought back lots of memories. Now I need to go and look up the name of the song-writer. Thanks for sharing. Enjoyed!

----Dave

"A Horse with No Name" is a song written by Dewey Bunnell, and originally recorded by the folk rock band America. It was the band's first and most successful single, released in late 1971 in Europe and early 1972 in the United States, and topped the charts in Canada, Finland, and the United States. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Gary

👍👌😎💎🍺⭐🎉

I have more than 2500 songs in the song folder I use. They are all on the laptop, just lyrics with chord changes. They are also on my keyboard. I probably could do a thousand of them without looking at words, not sure. When you play four hours a night, five or six nights a week, and for many of the same people, you have to keep it fresh. 30 songs won't do it.
One great thing about having them on the arranger, is that the audience can't tell you are looking at them. Most of the time all I have to do is glance at the words occasionally anyway.
One of the things I did right over the years is to write down the words and chords of EVERY song I've learned. At first I typed them, and accumulated hundreds, soon filling up several loose-leaf binders. When computers came along, I re-typed every one into a word processor.
For the past 25 or 30 years I've done them all that way.
In the past, you had to record the song, listen to it, write down the words, get a guitar or keyboard and play along with so you could figure out the chords, the key you want to do it in, etc. By the time you did all this you had pretty much learned the song.
Now it's much easier. Just pull it up on YouTube, Google the chords and lyrics, copy and paste, to make a chart, find a suitable style and go. Of course you have to make sure the words and chords are correct. Now I usually also enter the new song into the arranger as a Songbook or Registration entry. Then press one button and everything is ready to go.
To make a suitable repertoire is not a quick and easy thing.
I think it would be much easier if a person specialized in one genre, say Jazz, or Classic Rock, or Standards, or Blues or Country. I have to some of all of it.
Don't know if this is encouraging, but I hope it helps.

Good points, Don. I always figured on 20 to 30 songs per hour, which translates into somewhere between 80 and 120 songs for a 4-hour performance.

When I quit the nite-club/restaurant scene and went strictly to the senior circuit, it was for a couple reasons. First and foremost, the hourly rate was much higher than the bars and restaurants ever paid. Bars and restaurants in Baltimore and the surrounding counties pay an average of $100 per four hour performance for weeknights and $150 for Friday and Saturday. Most do not have music on Sundays, unless it's for a special event.

Additionally, the hours for the senior circuit were far better. Most of the jobs were in the middle of the day, I no longer had to drive in rush hour traffic jams and the vast majority of the jobs were situated just 15 to 20 minutes drive time from home. Gotta love it!

When it comes to tips, I quickly discovered that the locals rarely drop anything in a tip jar. However, if you get lots of tourists from out of town, they tend to be good tippers. That was the nice part about working in Little Italy - lots of out of town folks coming to the baseball and football games at both stadiums, which are relatively close to Little Italy. I'm sure DonM has a fair number of out of towners in his audiences as well at Ernest's Restaurant.

Like DonM, in my song collection, I also have a lot of variety, songs from just about every style category on the keyboard. You never know what will please certain audience members, so you really have to cover all the bases. I can clearly recall when I was filling in for a friend at The Raven Inn in Towson, Maryland one evening and decided to play and sing Black Velvet. An 85-year-old lady in the audience grabbed a 50-year-old man, dragged him out on the dancefloor and did some real close and personal dancing with him. When I finished the song, she walked over to me and said "How did you know that was my favorite song?" Then she gave be a hug and kiss, a big smile and went back to her table. What a night that was. Last time I saw the guy, he was headed for the rest room in a cold sweat.

Gary

Again, thanks to both of you for your input. I know when I was gigging 30 years ago on organ I was able to do 5-6 hours 4-5 nighta week and not repeat a single tune. I used cheat cards (5x8) for every tune. Unfortunately I can't find those cards now. So, starting all over. Problem is now I can't see the cards and lyrics/chords all that well. So... I'm in the process of learning many of those tunes as well as new ones at the same time.

Gary, Nice job on the tune. I enjoyed it and may have to add it to my book.

Don. Is there any way to get a copy of that file with the 2500 tunes in it?