When I was debating whether to attend a full afternoon version of Vance’s performance critique (this past Sunday) or go to a different performance workshop, the one I chose to attend was run by Jack Williams, officially called “finding your inner rubber chicken.” Although (or maybe because?) the workshop didn’t have much to do with its title, it was absolutely fantastic. The inner rubber chicken refers to the tools that you have – whatever they are – to catch and keep your audience’s attention. It’s one thing to play in your local area to people who already know you or your music, but what if you’re playing in Des Moines? How do you ensure that people pay attention to your music? We started out by each introducing ourselves and, in particular, what we want to accomplish in terms of performance. There was a range, between “I’d like to play well at the local open mike” to “I’d like to be able to have a full show at prominent folk clubs.” I was more towards the latter end of the spectrum. In the course of my introduction I mentioned that I had decided to stop playing gigs where people aren’t there to listen (like in bars) and got some pushback from Jack, who made an argument for these sorts of gigs I’ve heard before: they make you figure out how to get and hold the attention of people not expecting to listen to you, which can be an important skill to develop. And I agree that it is, but it’s also true that when I play those shows I inevitably end up hating playing music, and that’s not a good circumstance to urge me onwards. So I’ll keep it in mind – and I do have some shows on my schedule in places like coffeeshops where the audience might not be there specifically for me, so I might have opportunities to work on those skills regardless. I trust Jack, and understand his logic. We then each took a turn performing a song, and Jack gave his feedback on what kind of impression we made – in particular, the most important thing for each of us to do to approve. His insights were spot on. He found a way to put into words exactly what I was feeling when watching a performance but might not have been able to clearly label. Some of these were the obvious things: the importance of looking at the audience, of not moving around too much (or, conversely, being too rigid), or of not saying more than you need to in introducing a song. (He suggested avoiding anything that starts out “this is a song . . .”) Some of his comments were more subtle. Things like the matching the style of your presentation (both musically and in terms of what you say in discussing a song) to the style of the music – if it’s a fun song, have fun with the presentation. Or, in my case, working more on the dynamics of how I presented – which might have to do with volume, or emphasis, or even guitar arranging, to differently emphasize the different moods of different parts of the song. I was pleased with my performance. It’s scarier than you might imagine to play a song in this context to a group of 10 people – my heart was pounding harder as I stood up to take the stage than in most other recent performance contexts. But I was pleased with how I played, and found the critique useful – not because I hadn’t heard it before, but because I had. It rings true for me, is something I don’t think about often enough (because I’m working on so many other aspects of performance), and is something I should be focusing on more. Sometimes it feels like I have so many things to think about in presenting a song or a whole performance that I forget to fully inhabit the song. Moreover, I was pleased with my ability to take criticism. It’s hard to hear what’s wrong with your performance, and the temptation of many people was either to argue or to excuse – to argue about whether the criticism was true or to give an excuse about why you had done what you did in the less-than-perfect performance. I understand those temptations, but they’re generally not productive ways to respond to criticism. In my case, I want to hear how what I do appears to a disinterested party, and no matter why it is that it appeared that way, it’s useful to know and to try to do something about. So that I'm ready to go play in Des Moines.