I’ve been a music performer for over thirty years and in that time I’ve played in bands, duos, trios, and solo. I played in cover bands, and I’ve done original music, and I’ve played in most types of venues you might imagine from bars to wineries, to stadiums. And I’ve been allowed the privilege of playing shows with a multitude of performers. This is what I’ve noticed about how to perform by watching the real pros do it.

Many acts never say a single word to the audience, the songs speak, especially in bar situations. No one is listening except for the music.

Of all of the acts who do talk to the audience between songs, the ones who garner real attention are the storytellers. The ones who engage are the ones who can spin a tale, not just talk. I played in a band with a woman for a while who had a story to tell, about her songs, but she only told one per performance. Many times it was something she just thought of, but for one song she had a running story. She revealed more of it at every gig. And she would say that she would continue the story at the next gig, which was how she led into pitching her next show.

I opened once for a fairly well-known Texas songwriter who was friends with Willie and Waylon and Townes. He played for two hours straight with a story between all the songs. The stories were riveting, you could smell the polish they had on them from the years of them being told. They were perfect, well told and led right into the song that followed. And he called me Fifi, (that is one of my stories).

I played in a band that never even took a break between songs. We also didn’t use a set list. We decided what to play next as we were finishing the song we were playing and just went right into it. We once played a two and a half hour set and never even slowed down. All original tunes and they built a night of stories to rush to the last finale.

And I’ve played with performers who told jokes. One guy rehearsed the jokes. We never rehearsed the music, but he would sit in front of a mirror and rehearse his jokes and then ask me to listen to them before we played the gig. He even had a few jokes to lead into announcing his tip jar and how he needed to buy Baby some new shoes. We always made more in tips than we made by getting paid from the venue.

There are good reasons for talking between songs as long as the talk adds to the performance. Maybe, introducing the band or pitching the venue and the bartenders or staff is a must do at some point in the performance. Pitching the next show is an almost must do, but other than that whatever is said must enhance the music or the song. I’ve noticed from the most successful singer/songwriters I know that talking about the song they are going to sing is almost taboo unless it ads something to the song its self.

For me, I don’t really introduce songs as a rule. I might tell a little story here and there, but my songs tell the story. They are also pretty vague and have a few meanings and I’ve found that telling people what they mean usually disappoints them because they had a much more elaborate and fanciful meaning in mind about what I say. I read that Bob Dylan once answered about his songs that they weren’t really about anything in particular sometimes, just words he had to get out. Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. That answer only makes the songs stronger in my opinion.

I’ve noticed people will be more impressed and happier when all the idle talk between songs is non-existent, especially if they paid to see and hear music. Less talk equals more songs, more notes, and more story. And in the end, the reason we write songs is to tell the story.

And one guy I used to play music with said, “It’s all in the story, the rest is fluff.”