For my first gig, I got $75. I could make money being funny, so I pursued it as a career and have turned it into a lucrative business.
Since the music industry cracked and fell apart, gasping for the cash flow it had come to expect, much re-thinking has been the order of the day. It is a fine time to be a musician. Like walking through Sodom and Gomorrah while it is still smoking, on your way to the next gig.
You get older and come to the conclusion that it's a great gig making music. Even if you turn into an old gnarly fart, no one cares what you look like if you write good songs - the only gig is to sing well and perform.
Playing live is what it's all about for me. It's cathartic, it's emotional, it's about communing with people. The way you feel after a gig is a such a powerful thing.
We played one warm-up gig at this bar that was kinda like that bar in 'The Blues Brothers' with the chicken wire. This place called The Brick House, in Housatonic. I really can't believe we're going to play for people in New York City. I'm terrified, but it's a small enough room. But it's really just supposed to be for the fun of it.
I love entertaining people, I love playing music, and I love rocking like an animal. But at a certain point, you're playing gig after gig after gig, in town after town after town, and you're lying down, staring at another hotel-room ceiling, and it's like, 'I want to be home. I'm a dad. I've got kids.'
I had been acting since I was seven years old, but I had a combination of things happen at about the same time. 'Austin Powers' came out on DVD, I got a series regular gig on 'Buffy' and 'Can't Hardly Wait' came out.
I've never really been a confident person, except from a musical standpoint. I had to push myself early on, but it got easier with each gig.
I'm most in my element on tour, with a gig that day, like today. I'm on the road where I am supposed to be. I will be where I'm supposed to be at nighttime, on stage, in front of people, doing my thing.
I was fortunate enough to have my kids early, so being a mom always ended up being a better gig than these other parts that came along. So I always justified not really working a lot because I had a family.
When I told my mum I was going to play my first gig when I was 14, she couldn't believe it, cause I was painfully shy at that time. But I just done it, put my head down and got through it. And I suppose there's still a little bit of that, even though it's many years later and I've been doing it for a long time.
I was the music director at a dinner theater called the 'Pheasant Run Theater' in the suburbs of Chicago, and that was my side gig while I acted.
My nerves before a gig got worse; I had terrible bad nerves all the time. Once we started... I was fine.
For me to train and get ready for racing, I can't just sit in the gym all the time and that's the way it is. Responsibility starts and stops with me. My main gig is grand prix driving, that's what I do and I need to keep that in the forefront of my mind.
What I've learned in my career as an actor is that you're only as good as your collaborators. The process is many things, but it is wholly collaborative, particularly with something like 'Westworld,' which is a 10-episode-per-season gig, and we're just now on the 7th episode.
Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.
The worst gig story I have is from a club in Alabama that I think is still up and running, so I won't name the name of the club. We got hired in there to play, and the owner was pretty annoying. He kept coming up to me during the show and asking me to play 'Purple Rain.'
If I'm talking about something current, a current issue or something political, it's because I was able to read it when I was on the plane getting to the gig... a lot of it happens when I'm on the road because when I'm home, you're just mom, and that's it.
Hopefully, there's a place in music for Tinted Windows. If we're really trying to be iconic, we should just stop right now. If one of us could die, that would also help. But I don't think anybody wants that gig.
Well, for the My Generation album, there was nothing to be nervous about in them days. We used to take every day as it came. Every day was just a gig and I think we did the recording between gigs literally.
Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation.
But I always communicate with the audience. I never pretend like I'm just in my bedroom making a track. The whole point of doing a gig is, like, a feedback thing between you and the audience.
In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing.
I once got my stiletto caught in my horse's tail on stage and went flying into the audience. It was a mental gig, so I think the crowd thought it was part of the show.
On the surface, you think you wouldn't have to think at all about being asked to play Bilbo in 'The Hobbit.' It's not prison; it's a good gig. But you know it's going to take a long time, and it does. There are times when you thought: 'Gee, I've not seen my house for months.'
If I get a gig or I don't get a gig, I really have never, ever, ever cared.
I love teaching online at my website and soon I'll be writing a math book. I love to teach math. I just don't have time for a full-time teaching gig. Acting is way too time-consuming.
I decided I'd never do a series again, but I was offered a pilot for a series through Eddy Murphy Productions, and that was the gig that got me Parker Lewis.
We played a gig and we had a song that was offensive to people of the Jewish persuasion, and we led off with it, and they were offended by it, and that was that.
First acting gig was playing a victim in 'America's Most Wanted.' The night the show aired, they caught the killer!
I can't imagine doing an hour-long dramatic series because it's so much work. A sitcom is a wonderful gig. You work from 10 to 4 every day, it's fun, and you get to live at home.
After a gig I always head back to the hotel, remembering granny's words of wisdom. I cancel the late-night pizza and watch the Jonathan Ross show instead.
I can do a gig without an instrument.
It's a two-dimensional gig being a singer, and you can get lost in your own tedium and repetition.
A lot of comedians, when they have a bad gig, will blame everything but themselves. They'll blame the crowd, or the room was wrong, it had a weird vibe, or the promoter promoted a weird atmosphere.
I do some concerts. At the moment, I'm being helped a lot by a gig I play in London, which is Pizza Express.