Month: January 2013

do you have any advice / rituals / pharmaceuticals to recommend for coping with stage fright?

stephin the magnetic fields: courvoisier.

corin tucker: deep belly breaths, and really warming up before going on stage.

stephen the real tuesday weld: you have to look at yourself in the mirror in the dressing room and say: “pull it together you pathetic piece of shit. what the F*** IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? get out there right NOW” very, very loudly.

james dump/yo la tengo: seek another line of work?

bridget st john: 1. breathe. 2. don’t have company backstage before you go on stage – it’s a distraction. 3. no pharmaceuticals! but if you have a sore throat singer’s saving grace herbal concoction works very well for singers.

daniel handler: I have a great self-hypnosis program in which I say to myself, “nobody cares one whit. not one flying fuck.”

fran cannane: francesca recommended vodka and grapefruit juice. just for the voice you understand…. It seems to work.

allen clapp: used xanax for a few years, but absolutely HATED it. yoga 2-3 times a week is way more helpful. also, talking to people before playing and not being a hermit is helpful, just to get out of my own head for a while. also, ruby port.

hannah grass widow: we actually made a very spontaneous shrine in our dressing room at that celebrate brooklyn show. it was very therapeutic. we just took a bunch of comfort objects and music supplies and made a really epic and weird shrine in front of our mirror. but unfortunately we usually just drink before we play to take the edge off and warm up the vocals.

matt lorelei: I used to drink heavily and then take max alerts (over-the-counter trucker speed) to focus. it did or did not work depending on your perspective. I would not recommend it. my heart rate became an issue. now I’m just less nervous because I don’t worry about reproducing the recording live. live is a separate thing and the tracks can take on a different life.

joe pines / foxgloves: the night before you play, go on stage with ld beghtol and accompany him by playing one note on an electric stylophone for four minutes.

erin a girl called eddy: there really is nothing that makes it easier for me personally. a very large guinness after though always helps.

gordon the fan modine: a slight buzz is usually nice. and, always eat after the show unless you are playing pretty late.

 

kim baxter: only when I’m playing acoustically for a small audience. my band mate tasha and I recently played at a small bookstore here in portland. we were opening up for our author friends joe meno and nathan larson. we were so nervous! I forgot to breathe the whole time and couldn’t look up. it felt like I had never played a show before. we laughed the whole ride home about how ridiculous it was that a small bookstore crowd totally intimidated us.

james dump/yo la tengo: I do not.

mark teenbeat/unrest: definitely. especially and most certainly if I’m up on stage all by myself. at the chickfactor show I played I got up there and my mind went blank. suddenly I was lyric-less. If I’m playing with other folks on stage it’s usually not a problem.

stephin the magnetic fields: just the reverse: I suffer from stage ennui.

fran cannane: once I had to get off stage and be sick in the middle of a set in chicago at an outdoor festival but that was not caused by stage fright.

corin tucker: I do get nervous, especially in front of large crowds, particularly if I’m singing for someone else’s crowd.

matt lorelei: yes and yes. lorelei was invited to play a gig in princeton, new jersey, in ’91 that ended up being in a living room. those assembled were within arms length of me. I had luckily brought a flask but I had one swig before we started and shook like a leaf the entire time. it was not fun for me.

hannah grass widow: I used to get really nervous, but it’s been a while. I definitely still get an adrenaline rush that infuses the set. there was this one time we were opening for sonic youth at prospect park for celebrate brooklyn. we hadn’t played very many big shows at the time and I can say in retrospect that we were not ready to play for 15,000 people. I got this weird freak allergy attack and my hearing got all weird. It was probably psychosomatic. then we played and it sounded really weird and I realized I was so nervous I forgot to turn on my amp and I was just playing direct. I wish we could play that show again now.

joe pines / foxgloves: it is usually very scary preparing to play, especially as I have no idea how amplifiers, tuners or microphone stands work.

erin a girl called eddy: yes. no specific incidences, but it always amounts to a feeling of sick, hollow dread right before the show. and that’s just the audience.

daniel handler: I watched a friend break down during her bat mitzvah in 1983.  everything about that is a horror story.

bridget st john: most of my stage fright comes in the days leading up to the performance – doubting that I should have agreed to play etc. by the time I am ready to go on stage I am usually quite focused and in a zone. any horror stories have been in recurring dreams of being unprepared and sloppy and starting a song and changing my mind when I can’t get through a song – but then I always wake myself up before it gets any worse!

jennifer o’connor: no, not usually.

gordon the fan modine: if I’m not nervous before a show, I might as well not play it. I think it is a gauge of energy.

gail cf: yes. I only sang onstage with the cover girls in 2002 and it was awful. I was all liquored up and had a cold and seeing the footage of it ensured that I will never do it again.

ian musical chairs: I get quite nervous at first but it wears off pretty quickly.

allen clapp: opening for the ocean blue at the troubadour in 2001, we went to dinner before the show and leisurely walked back to the club. when the stage door opened, the stage manager started screaming at us for being late, and said they had a sold out room and that we were supposed to go on in 1 minute. massive panic attack ensues. I look out, and sure enough, there is a sold-out crowd standing there waiting! the whole set I thought I was going to pass out. In between songs, I kept looking for a secret exit and couldn’t think about anything except running away. argh!