Monday, State of the Bill
Feb. 8th, 2010 10:29![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mapsedge With a sore throat firmly in place, I slept without my CPAP mask: the constant inflow of cool air just makes the throat even scratchier and I don't want to spend the night coughing into my mask. I'm really feeling a difference today, sort of all-over, unpleasantly tired.
Saturday's performance went very well. A small crowd - hard to pack 'em in when it's cold and snowy and your venue is far off the beaten track. I made some new friends, saw some old friends, only truly fucked up once (I started Snows of France and Holland too low and in the wrong key to boot). The audience, comprised as it was of friends, family, and regulars, was forgiving and generous, God bless them.
I think Stone Bridge's days are numbered. The owner is starting to panic that his business is still in the red. We (by which I mean his staff, his music director, and me) are constantly reminding Russ that this is normal for a new business, which he should already know as he owns two others. Hell, the place has been open less than a year!
Give it time, don't start cutting corners, blah blah blah. It remains to be seen if Russ is willing to take the advice. He changed his desserts to something more generic, is cutting back on portion sizes but not prices: signs of panic, and bad moves all around.
An outdoor shopping district, especially one in great need of renovation, a mile from the nearest major thoroughfare in a second rate suburb, isn't going to be vibrantly pulsing with life when it's cold and sloppy outside. Patience, Spring is coming. I keep looking out the windows as I play, wishing the neon on the front of the old Englewood Theatre was lit up. That'd be cool, like finding a survivor months after a disaster...which, in a way, Englewood kinda is. Disaster, I mean. Englewood has not aged well.
Back in July, there was buzz about the theater reopening, but that's been stalled by the owner's inability or unwillingness to fix the climate control for the place.
In any event, I have another performance at SBCH this Friday night, at 8:00, assuming my throat is better by then. We'll know by Wednesday, I think.
Saturday's performance went very well. A small crowd - hard to pack 'em in when it's cold and snowy and your venue is far off the beaten track. I made some new friends, saw some old friends, only truly fucked up once (I started Snows of France and Holland too low and in the wrong key to boot). The audience, comprised as it was of friends, family, and regulars, was forgiving and generous, God bless them.I think Stone Bridge's days are numbered. The owner is starting to panic that his business is still in the red. We (by which I mean his staff, his music director, and me) are constantly reminding Russ that this is normal for a new business, which he should already know as he owns two others. Hell, the place has been open less than a year!
Give it time, don't start cutting corners, blah blah blah. It remains to be seen if Russ is willing to take the advice. He changed his desserts to something more generic, is cutting back on portion sizes but not prices: signs of panic, and bad moves all around.
An outdoor shopping district, especially one in great need of renovation, a mile from the nearest major thoroughfare in a second rate suburb, isn't going to be vibrantly pulsing with life when it's cold and sloppy outside. Patience, Spring is coming. I keep looking out the windows as I play, wishing the neon on the front of the old Englewood Theatre was lit up. That'd be cool, like finding a survivor months after a disaster...which, in a way, Englewood kinda is. Disaster, I mean. Englewood has not aged well.Back in July, there was buzz about the theater reopening, but that's been stalled by the owner's inability or unwillingness to fix the climate control for the place.
In any event, I have another performance at SBCH this Friday night, at 8:00, assuming my throat is better by then. We'll know by Wednesday, I think.