Anvil of Opportunity

Gotta love a dude wearing his own band's shirt on stage.

This past week was sucking hard until Thursday night thanks to a wide variety of frustrations, mostly stemming from my chronic impatience. Thankfully I had a gig with one of my musical projects that night as some music therapy was sorely needed.

At that gig, during our third set, I noticed a group of dudes watching us a little more closely than most of the patrons. “Musicians?”, I wondered to myself. We can kind of sniff each other out in public, like vampires and superheroes. At our last set break my suspicions were confirmed when one of them shook my hand and told me how much he was enjoying our band. He said he and his companions were on a “rock and roll tour across the U.S.”. When I asked what band he was with he said, “I’m the bassist for Anvil”.

My reply (idiotic yet brutally honest in retrospect) was, “no shit!”.

For those unaware, Anvil was the subject of last year’s acclaimed documentary that chronicled a Canadian metal band’s near-miss with rock and roll stardom yet unwavering persistence in reaching their goals. And here was their pierced and tatooed bassist with two members of his road crew hanging out in a tiny bar on a Thursday night getting a kick out of my little rockabilly band. As it turns out the band had done a short in-store set at the record shop up the street earlier in the evening in order to promote their concert the next night.

G5, as he is called (he’s a super nice guy so he gets a pass for the name) spent several minutes chatting with me and my band mates and even stayed for our short final set. I finally had the nerve to hand him a business card and humbly said, “I don’t want to be a jerk here but I’m a professional music photographer and I’d love to shoot your show tomorrow night.” He took my card and said, “no problem” while introducing me to his road manager who graciously gave me his cell phone number and told me to call Friday for the hookup.

So my week got a whole lot better in a big damn hurry. Not only did I gain access to shoot a big rock show (alongside the uber-talented and equally gracious Todd Owyoung), but I met some of the most humble and generous musicians I’ve ever encountered in this wacko business. They put on a great show and their humility and generous love for their fans was in plain view the entire time. I wish those guys all the success they’ve been chasing for so long. They deserve it.

Oh, and a word about opportunity. Keep your eyes and ears open to it at all times.  If you recognize and capitalize on it, it’s a beautiful thing. Just don’t be a douche about it.

Shots from the show are below. The lighting was not great and I’m jonesing big time for a D700 body right now to get the noise at high ISOs down to a useful level, but I had a blast anyway.  And the otherwise fine Tamron 28-75mm has got to go.  It is just too slow focusing for live shows.