Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I was talking to my brother-in-law earlier today and he was telling me about his four week gig, playing bass in the community theatre's production of Always ... Pasty Cline. This is his third or fourth similar gig at the theatre. The gig is funding a new Harke amp (he's an MD during the day).

I was wondering if any other forumites have had a similar type of experience?

Just out of high school I was involved with two productions playing bass, one was Godspell, the other was an original rock opera, The Most High, by a guy I knew back in those days. He also produced Tommy at our local JCC in '71; I was in the cast and involved with stage crew for it.

In high school, college, and a few years thereafter I played in pit orchestras for musicals. I started off playing trombone in Bye Bye Birdie and Oklahoma (these are just the ones I can remember) and went on to find a niche playing guitar in shows like Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Unsinkable Molly Brown, Lil Abner, etc. No surprise here, but there aren't a lot of guitar players in orchestral circles, so that worked out really well, in that one gig led to another, then another etc etc. For the guitar gigs I used a '74 330 MG (21 fretter) and '63 900 MG. The 900 actually sounded best.

Then I got into the acting side, did a couple Shakespeare shows and decided I didn't like rehearsing lines with a bunch of fruitcakes for 20 hours a week for three months, just to put on a three or four show run.

Most of the playing I've done in the past 10 years has been in musical theatre. I've probably done around 30 productions in total, most of it your "typical" fare. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat is basically a license to print money around these parts - the theatres are always packed! Its a fun show to do musically - lots of variety and no annoying dialogue. And to be quite honest, I've found that theatre gigs are more lucrative monetarily than "bar" gigs, plus you're home at a reasonable time.

+1 steve

jdogric12aolcom wrote:... went on to find a niche playing guitar in shows like Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Unsinkable Molly Brown, Lil Abner, etc.

Interesting you should mention that. I got to play fiddle in the pit band when the University of Kansas Theater Dep't. did Best Little Whorehouse. Fun!


JimK

86kubicki wrote:And to be quite honest, I've found that theatre gigs are more lucrative monetarily than "bar" gigs, plus you're home at a reasonable time.

Plus you have less risk of a bar patron vomiting on you, or maybe that's just a reflection of the bars I played...

I play most of the big shows that come into the Boston Theaters - The Wang, Colonial, and Opera House. I've been doing them for 11 years or so. When they go on for weeks at a time, it can be a challenge to keep my head in it. Most of the time, it's a ton of fun.

When I was in the Musician's Union I played a lot of Miss America Pageant franchise (Miss Salinas, Miss Santa Clara, Miss Santa Cruz, etc) orchestra pit jobs. Most of that stuff was Showtunes from whatever was popular that year, from CATS to whatever Disney had out (Little Mermaid, etc), plus lots of popular standards, many of which are older Showtunes.

That stuff dried up years ago around here though. They all went to canned music.

A sad but ubiquitous trend.