Boy Wonder: Professional Musician 159

Day 158 - August 16th 2009

Day 3 of my 7 Day Stretch. Today would be the Tritone. The Tritone was the first place I ever went looking for a gig with the Boy Wonder project. I had hear that it was the place to play in Philly, not like I cared about crap like that I just wanted to play shows. After months of persistence the guy literally told me I’m not good enough to play here and probably would never be. I was of course hurt by his words, I was 19, 20 at the time and just wanted to play for fun. I did get two things out of that experience that would shape the direction my career took. One it sort of shifted my thinking to thinking outside of the box. I ended up playing in Supermarkets and Malls and stuff like that before I go a legit club gig. Two it showed me how never to treat artists because frankly you never know who you’re looking at.

I remember my first show there a couple of years ago, a charity show that my friends put together and tme walking in and the same guy that basically told me that I wasn’t good enough to play in his club all those years earlier basically kissing my ass wanting to get my number so that we could set up a real show there. As I stepped on stage I (in probably my most unprofessional moment ever) proceeded to tell the story of how the booker here told me that I would never be good enough to play his shit hole of a club, and me and the boys proceeded to rock that place hard.

Since then I’ve hosted their open mic in place of my good friends The Absolute Zeros and I’ve played there occasionally at the request of friends and what not. When I walked in there as a 19 year old kid I never imagined that I would be at a place where booking a gig at the Tritone would be a step back.

Tonight we were stopped dead in our tracks. Several members of the opening band The Good News were under 21 so they weren’t allowed to be in there. Of course the all powerful Tritone didn’t bother to tell the City Line guys that was going to be the case tonight. It’s clear on the website the owner says, but I basically stepped in and said that you dealt with these kids directly and probably didn’t tell them to look on the website and never bothered ot ay anything ot them while you were working out the details. So basically these boneheads probably had an empty bar all night.

After calling every venue in town to move the show we decided to turn it into a house party at Mike Mitchell’s house. We had a couple of beers and jammed on some tunes. It was fun kicking it with the City Line Guys and Matt Spitko, I rarelt have musician friends that like the same music I like so it was an interesting experience. It really inspired me to sit down and write some songs tomorrow.

Got a chance to kick it with Mike Mitchell cause he gave me a ride home. What a nice guy, City Line’s going to be huge.

3 down 4 to go

One of Mike Mitchell (Of City Line)'s classic numbers