The stage style superpower

The difference between playing and performing

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“You’re a good bassist and all, but you need a better look,” she said, her eyes on my make-up-free face and unstyled hair.

Equal parts mortified and fuming, I left the table arguing with her in my head about how I just wanted to be treated the same as the other male members of the band, valued for my playing, not my hairstyle.

It was during the last year of my undergrad jazz degree at Auckland University that I got to tour with Steve Smith, the jazz fusion drummer best known for playing with Journey.

As the bass player in the band, I spent a lot of time with Steve and his girlfriend, the aforementioned style critic who was visiting New Zealand with him.

Like a lot of American musicians, turning the trip into a working vacay was one of the selling points for flying 10,000 miles to play gigs at the bottom of the world.

I was in my early twenties at the time and dead set on moving to New York after college to be a heavy, modern, jazz bass player. I had worked hard to learn my craft and playing with a musician of Steve’s caliber was a huge accomplishment, yet here I was being told my hair wasn’t cute enough.

I was seething.

At the time, I brushed her comments off as those of someone who didn’t “get it”.

She’s was just someone’s girlfriend, I thought rolling my eyes.

A girlfriend who had no authority to give me career advice. I knew how to play the head to Donna Lee on upright bass and I was going places in the jazz world, dammit!

At that early stage of my career, I didn’t see sticking out on stage as a superpower. All I wanted was to be treated like “one of the boys in the band”.

I wanted to wear the same shitty, cheap black suit they all bought from the mall and spend my time backstage warming up, not getting made up.

I resented the fact that just because I was a girl people would pay more attention to what I wore than what I played.

That if my trumpet-playing male friend rolled out of bed and took his rumpled ass on stage as-is no one would say anything, but I was expected to be fully coiffed and primped before I dare set foot on the bandstand.

Steve’s girlfriend’s advice annoyed me, but it also stuck with me.

Many years and 1000 gigs later I realized she wasn’t saying my look was more important than my bass playing.

She was saying that if I had both elements nailed, nothing could hold me back.

This is the point she was making: performing is a visual medium.

When you’re just playing music then sure - that’s all about the aural experience. But as soon as you step on stage and there are people in the audience watching you - then it becomes performing.

And performing means more than just getting the notes right.

Performing is about creating an experience for the audience.

It’s about giving them something interesting to look at as well as listen to.

Making them feel like you’re having a blast up there, even if you’re tired, or sick, or secretly thinking about what you’re going to buy tomorrow at the grocery store.

People go to concerts to be entertained, entranced, and to be transported somewhere else. Somewhere magical. Otherwise, they’d just listen to music in the living room at home in their sweatpants.

Part of your job as a performer is creating that experience for them, and putting effort into your stage attire is a signal to the crowd that the concert is important to you.

It’s is a sign of respect.

For the other musicians, for the audience, and for yourself.

And, not for nothing, it also gets you booked more.

When you play great, bring a professional attitude, put on a killer show, AND look the part, you really are unstoppable.

Now, I see the ability to bring both musical power AND style to the stage as a superpower.

So thanks for the career tip, Steve’s girlfriend. You were right on the money.