Notes from the Stage: Revelation/Reflection
By Walter Beck
Well we’re winding down 2011 and it’s been a busy one for me, having just done my 26th gig for the year earlier this week. I only got another three or four shows left for the year, so if you wanna come out and catch my poetry act, you better hurry. It’s funny to think that I’ve done nearly thirty separate gigs this year so far, I don’t think I’ve done that many combined in the last five years. But that’s part of being a poet, I can’t just sit, locked in my room, writing my poems and hoping I get noticed.
I suppose I could do it that way, but I much prefer my way; being relentless, constantly writing, constantly submitting, constantly performing, constantly promoting. Not a day goes by without me doing at least one of those, usually a mix of ‘em. I’ve been told I’m unstoppable, but I’m not ready to make a claim that bold yet. We’ll see once the next few years pan out.
But I do feel unstoppable some days, I mean, I’ve my first done out-of-state gig, I did three separate gigs in one day, released two live albums (with a third one in the works), got to host the 3rd Anniversary of Poetry at the Grounds, it’s been a great year so far on the stage.
I was talking to a fellow writer about all this and he wondered why I didn’t call my performances “readings”, why was it always “shows” and “gigs”? Well first, my background is in rock n roll, I’m a former roadie, promoter and garage musician, so it’s always been “gigs” and “shows” and secondly, I don’t like the word “readings” as it applies to this. It gives me a vision of some uptight professor reading his work at a podium, poetry that won’t be understood or appreciated outside of academia.
Well fuck that, that’s not my style, I wanna get up on stage and burn, I wanna be poetry’s answer to Alice Cooper, Motley Crue or Guns N Roses. I don’t want universities and coffee shops, I want clubs and theaters, maybe even arenas. I want to make poetry alive & dangerous again, something that hasn’t been done since the days of Charles Bukowski’s boozed-up shows (if you can, get a copy of his live album Hostage). I wanna take the stage in front of a crowd of several thousand teenagers and light their brains on fire, break them free of the binds of authority and spread the word of liberty, revolution and rock n roll. I wanna be poetry’s bad boy, poetry’s outlaw.
Alright enough of that shit, let’s do a little recap here and look at some of the highlights of my year on stage so far:
Favorite Gigs:
Equality Speaks: Unplugged May 1st, ISU Sycamore Lounge: The only public appearance of the GLBTQ group Equality Speaks (we folded a couple months after this show), this remains one of my favorite shows. We had a pretty good crowd there at the Sycamore Lounge and I was in full-out gonzo; I had on a white lacy skirt, make-up, my hair braided and dyed, the works. I went up there and just swaggered through a fifteen minute set (one of my longest to date). The real beauty of it? The show was recorded and later released as my first live album Mental Cage Menstruation: Life Cycles and Blood Loss at the Sycamore Lounge.
Printer’s Row Lit Fest, NewTown Writers Showcase, June 5th, Chicago: This was it, my first out-of-state gig in Chicago at one of the biggest literary festivals in the Midwest. I went with my brother and I was sweating bullets, I didn’t know how it was going to go over. I got up there at the showcase and just let it loose, tearing through a three-piece set consisting of “Voices Drifting from the Wilderness”, “No More Martyrs Blues” and the explosive “Identity (For the ‘Brothers’)”. After my set and after the showcase, I got a lot of compliments on my set and swagger; unfortunately no video of this show exists, but there are a few pictures.
ISU Creative Writing Society Open Mic Night, October 13th, ISU Sycamore Lounge: This show was a first for me, a show where I did mainly “covers”, I only read one original piece that night “Requited Love” and the rest of the set was poems written by Raymond Luczak, Bryan Borland and Chuck Willman. I’ve read other poets work before, but this was the first time it was the main part of my set. The show was one of the best I’ve done at ISU and I think all the poets appreciated the spitfire I put behind their words.
(Not So) Favorite Gigs:
Wabash Valley Pride Tent, Terre Haute Block Party, August 27th: I think this one was my dud of the year. It’s not that the crowd was hostile or the material was bad, I was just worn out. This was my third and final performance of the day; I had already performed on the Coffee Grounds Stage and spent a couple hours walking around as a “Street Poet”. By the time I hit the WVP tent, the crowds were thinning and I was mentally exhausted.
Camp Krietenstein, Campfire Ring, June 12th: Opening campfire gigs are always a mixed blessing for me; I love being able to perform at camp, which inspires so much of my work. But I’m also playing in front of the hardest audience imaginable. Not the kids, but the Scoutmasters. Trust me; you never know what will set off a Scoutmaster and nine times out of ten, a camp director is more liable to believe a Scoutmaster than believe a staff member. So my campfire performances are always heavily censored, with every piece being approved by the program director before I hit the stage. So you have all this, mixed in with the fact that this was our first campfire of the summer and we were all still working the kinks out; once again, not one of my strongest performances.
Well that’s all for now from “Notes from the Stage”, look for more in about a month and a half, when I do full year in review. Catch one of my shows, download one of my albums and support raw, hardcore, no-bullshit poetry.
“A poet without an ego is nothing but a novelist.” –Eric Norris
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