Spirit of Washinton

Of all the widely varied musical experiences I have had through the years, one of the more unusual gigs I had was that of drummer for the main deck house band on the Spirit of Washington for it's first 6 years. My first year I just did lunch cruises with the keyboard player, then we added a singer and guitarist for the dinner and moonlight cruises and I did all cruises for the next 5 years til I moved out to Colorado. The waitstaff were all performers and would do a15 min Broadway Revue after dinner. We would back them live and we also had a cassette tape (it was the 80's) of all the ensemble vocals to fill out the sound. Explaining the necessity of never straying because of that click was always one of the first rehearsals every season. We then would start the dance music. Everything we did was on a sequencer, so I've been working with a click for over 35 years. We would go from early March til New Year's Eve, and I think I once figured out that I averaged 17 gigs a week! It was a great gig for a musician because we had to be able to comfortably play a wide variety of styles. We could have a bunch of teens from Philly one day, and do the Electric Slide all night, a swing jazz lunch cruise the next day, and then that night as it happened once, could be the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We always played Anchors Aweigh when we pulled away from the dock, but for that night, we needed to learn all the service songs.
Discipline, in my opinion, is one of the most elusive traits to master, and a gig like that gave you no choice, like making songs you played every cruise sound fresh because your audience was brand new every cruise, The mental aspect of gigging is huge. It's never about us, it' always about the performance whether it's for 10 people or 10,000!