This week, the town of Brownwood will be turned into “Reunion Central” as the Brownwood Reunion kicks off Friday with a concert headlined by 90’s rock band Everclear. There will be music, and performances of many varieties. A performer myself, I’d like to take a minute to dissect a performance, and what it takes to get ready for one.
First, you have to decide what kind of performance this is going to be. That is usually dictated by the event. Is it a concert?, a play?, a radio morning show?, etc. After that decision has been made, you begin to prepare. You learn your lines at home on the sofa, you research the guitar part you have been assigned and listen to the CD or your iPod to get the nuances down just right, or you keep your ears and eyes open to the world around you to find the humor in every day situations, and try your best to remember it for later!
Then, in group performance settings, you get together with the rest of the cast, or band, and go through the play or songs until you feel good enough with the material that you don’t need your script or sheet music anymore.
And then the nuances start to creep in.
You decide how your character walks or holds a glass. You think about what part of the song calls for a jump to accentuate the beat, and when to actually START that jump so you land on time and don’t look stupid! Oh, and that “guitar face” that we make? We know we do it. It helps. Really.
Then the week before the performance, you start to get the “pre-show jitters”, those little squirrel-ly feelings that won’t go away. But you learn to control them, and make them feed your performance. You fine tune your blocking and prop handling skills, you decide where everyone is going to stand on-stage and make sure you can see the whole band. And in the radio world, you gather up your stories and things you want to talk about and head into the studio.
Then, the performance is here. It’s time. Go time, time to make magic. You grab your guitar, you put on your costume, you turn on the mic, and go. After it’s all over and done, you look at the clock and thing, I can’t have been up there for that long! It was just a second ago that I was nervously waiting for my turn, that can’t be right…
But it is, and you feel great, like you could run a marathon or fly. And that feeling is why you do this, why you work so hard at something that only a few people can do. Because it makes you feel like you’re on top, if only for just a moment.
Then the adrenaline wears off and you want nothing but a nice soft bed to lay down on for the next two days!
And once you recover from that performance, you start planning the next one.
Ben Cox is the morning show host of “Ben Cox in the Morning” on KQBZ, 96.9 FM in Brownwood Texas. He is the new in-stadium voice of the Howard Payne Yellow Jackets football team, & Ben is also an event DJ for weddings, parties and the like.
The thoughts and comments reflected in this column are those of the writer alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Wendlee Broadcasting, or its affiliates.
