Is This in My Job Description?

Without an Executive Director this season at the Door Community Auditorium (DCA), I have had the pleasure of filling for some of those responsibilities, including announcing the performances – something that absolutely terrified me five months ago! I still can’t get used to the bright lights and not being able to see anybody in the audience, but I’ve grown a little bit more comfortable in that role.

Since I’ve announced the shows, I’ve also seen them all. This is the first year the majority of our shows have not been on Saturday nights; although our season was mostly packed into eight weeks, it has been easier to get out of the store other nights of the week. In a normal summer season, Saturday night came around and my earlier intentions to go out fizzled out.

I usually arrived at the auditorium an hour or so before each show. Our hospitality queens, Lizz Thomas and Dawn Jakubovsky or Jennifer DuPont, would be in the green room serving dinner to the performers and their crews. Most of the artists, their managers, and crews are really nice people who are very appreciative of a good meal at a table with linens and real dinnerware. They live on the road, and we give them a homey atmosphere to relax, unwind, and prepare for the evening’s show. Interesting conversations are held amongst everyone in the room – some more interesting than others – and some more inclusive of the DCA people than others.

After the show, people ask what the artists are like when they are not on stage. Here are my observations and impressions of our performers this season.

Rich Little was a little nervous prior to the show. He was pacing in and out of the dressing room and the green room, not really looking at anybody. I’d asked Scooter Lohman to be his chauffeur the two days he was here, and Scooter became his valet, bodyguard, and runner as well. Before he went onstage, he noticed a button was missing from Mr. Little’s jacket. We looked for a sewing kit, could not find one in time; Mr. Little was a bit perturbed. After intermission I noticed the button on his jacket: Scooter had fixed it during the break. Mr. Little was much more relaxed and very pleasant after the show, which was understandable – he did that entire show without any notes!

The Mountain Heart guys were young, fun, and happy to be playing music for a living. Julian Hagen gathered his “friends” in a pre-show huddle before they went onstage, and The Machine was the most oddly dressed group, and the hungriest!

Bela Fleck was kind of quiet, Edgar Meyer a perfect gentleman, and Zakir Hussain a quirky, very friendly man. I never saw John Hiatt until five minutes before show time – he stayed on his bus until the last minute. After the show, he was very talkative and excited about the energy of the audience.

Joan Baez was lovely. Very quiet and Zen-like, she wandered in and out of the green room. At one point, she came in wearing a beautiful copper colored dress; ten minutes later she came back in black yoga pants and a shirt. The next day, a patron asked me if Ms. Baez had been wearing yoga pants on stage and I had to answer yes. I guess DCA didn’t seem right for the copper dress! She and her crew of 10 men and one young woman from Madison lived on her bus; Joan had her own room, but the rest had bunks – and one bathroom for the whole bus! Glamorous.

Los Lobos was interesting and hard for the DCA staff. They all flew in from Los Angeles the day of the show – and arrived in Green Bay at two different times. The early arriving band members spent an hour or two across the street – they were silly, loud, and unorganized; and there were so many people in the green room, I did not know who was actually in the band until they walked onstage! Their crew worked hard, but they did not have time for a sound check before the show – actually they weren’t all in the building at the same time until 7:45 pm! Unfortunately, it took them a few songs to warm up – fortunately once they did warm up they put on a great show.

Gaelic Storm was really nice with band members, and had accents, from Great Britain, Ireland, and Canada. Brandi Carlile’s Australian tour manager also manages MegaDeth – very nice guy. Before she went onstage, she was backstage belting out her first song, wow! The Rednecks were not well dressed but handsome guys, until they came out of the dressing room wearing mullets! I was very glad they shed the wigs at the end of the show.

The bottom line is that all of these artists are working hard, living on the road for lengths of time, and really, very nice people that just happen to have talents that most of us cannot fathom. There is a genuine appreciation for our hospitality and they are truly honored by the audiences that come to see them perform.

After most shows, I sat around the green room with Lizz while the artists packed up and snacked on dessert. After the Redneck show, I told her that this season has taught me something very valuable: no matter how tired I was before I entered the auditorium, the energy of the performers in their pre-show rituals and on stage also energized me. I’ve stayed out way past my bedtime every show night, and driven home feeling so good. Art and music have the power to excite and invigorate – and we can all use a little of that! It has been a pleasure.

Peninsula Arts and Humanities Alliance, Inc., is a coalition of non-profit organizations whose purpose is to enhance, promote and advocate the arts, humanities and natural sciences in Door County.