Before the gig I am always nervous, even if it’s with people I know.  Usually, when I’m nervous, my GI lets me know how unhappy it is, and the stomach cramps start.  If I’m lucky that’s all they are. 

 If I’ve had to learn a bunch of songs, I don’t go out of the house until it’s time to leave.   I’m not saying I sit inside and study all day, but I don’t want to go out.  I fold laundry, I wash dishes, I clean the floor, I change the bed linen.  I nap.  I will run through some tunes, maybe once, maybe twice, but I’ve usually got all my studying done
before the day of the gig, and so before I leave, I stay inside and relax. 

A couple of hours before leaving, I load the car.  I live in mortal terror of forgetting something important and these days it seems to happen more and more often.  It depends on the gig, too.  Outdoor festival?  Then I need Incest Bear, and that means
two speaker cabinets and my amp bag.  Taking the amp bag means double-checking the contents.  Obviously the amp’s in there, but speaker cables?  Quarter-inch to Speakon adapters?  Power cord?  You’d be surprised how these things can walk away. Incest Bear also
requires my two-wheeler, which for some reason I have usually misplaced.   If it’s a quieter gig, that means Baby Bear, and I always keep a power cord for Baby Bear in the gig bag.  That’s also where the line cords and the tuner are, so while I’m
in there I check those too. 

 Do I need my sheet music or my tablet with the Real Book?  That means I need my music stand, and while I’m getting that out of the garage I grab a guitar stand, too. 

Am I singing on this one?  Then I need a mic stand, and that means I have to check for my microphone, which is a Shure SM-58 and which I always keep in the upper pouch on the gig bag.  Am I using the harmonizer too?  Then I have to grab the harmonizer bag, and
that means double-checking that the power adapter, power strips, extension, and at least two mic cables are in there as well.

 Am I playing upright?  That means I have to pack everything over to one side in the car, so Mamuu will fit on the other side.  I always bring an electric bass to any gig I’m playing upright on, just in case.  That has to go in the front seat because now there’s no more room in the back.

 Is this a gig involving Frankenstein, my foot-actuated electronic drum set? That means things just got a lot more complicated. I need all three crates labeled "Guts" (all the cables and wiring), "Brain" (the Roland TD-10 module that controls everything), and "Body" (all seven pedals including the Gibraltar double-bass rig), Baby Bear, the speaker for the drums, my stool and carpet, and about a million other little things to make it all fit together.

 Once everything is in the car, I point to everything and say its name.  For some reason, this is important, but I can’t say why. 

Time to get ready.  After showering, I have to choose clothes.  If this is just a regular ol' gig-type gig, I default to my comfort wear, which means jeans, my old combat boots, and a shirt with buttons.  If it’s a festival, that means black jeans and a bowling shirt.  If it’s a corporate gig or something in a jazz club, that means my black suit, which is just about ready for the rag bag.  If I’m wearing the suit, that means a shirt that has some zing as far as color goes, and the tackier the better—but only solid colors, now.  No prints. 

Of course, if I’m picking out a colored shirt, that means my watch has to match.  I’ve got a bunch of crappy ones, and, thanks, to my brother, two or three nicer ones, and they all have a different color face so I can coordinate.  Hey, you likepeanut-butter-and-onion sandwiches, or all your shoes have to be pointing southeast,
or some other quirk of your own, so leave mine alone. 

 When I get in the car to leave, I program the address into GPS even
if it’s a place I’ve been before, because that lets me know how much time I have to get there.  If I have to speed,  it makes the stomach cramps worse, plus my hands get all sweaty until
I’m a bundle of nerves.  I like to take it easy these days.  Early to the gig?  Go in and have a beer.  Can’t go in yet?  Nap time.

On the way there, I listen to an audiobook, unless it’s a gig I’ve been studying for, and then I put the new stuff on repeat and study some more as I go, just to put that last bit of polish on.  While I’m driving, I like to imagine where my fingers are going to fall on the fretboard as the song plays, so in a crappy way it’s almost like practicing.  Every little bit helps. 

 Halfway to the gig is usually when I realize I’ve forgotten my earplugs again, so I swing into a Walgreen’s as soon as I get off the expressway.  They cost about 5 bucks a shot and I keep forgetting them, which is why the drawer of my nightstand contains about thirty pairs of crappy earplugs that have been used only once. 

When I get to the venue, once I’m past security, I look around for cars that I recognize.  I hate being the first one there, and usually I’m not—most of the drummers I work with are set up by the time I arrive at my customary hour-before-hit.  If I am the first, and the gig is inside somewhere, I go in to case the joint, and I always bring a bass with me (not Mamuu) so they know I’m with the band. 

 Stage location established, now it’s time for the load-in.  I can just carry Baby Bear, but Incest Bear requires the two-wheeler, which means bungee cords, and it also means finding a ramp, something which can’t always be found because it isn’t always there.  This makes me grumpy, because a) Incest Bear is friggin’ heavy and b) usually requires that I have to make two trips. 

 Getting stuff onto the stage is a job I’m always glad to get over with, and then it’s time to find power. If there’s a sound guy, he or she can usually show me, which is also a good time to show him or her where the DI is on the amp.  With Baby Bear, it’s on the back,
and then you have to hit the switch for either DI or line-level output.  Incest Bear?  It’s on the front, and there’s no switch, so what you get is what you get. 

 I like to get the amp all set up and powered before I do the last part, which is also my favorite, and of which I never grow tired, and that is the part where I take Woody out.

 When I saw my natural-finish Washburn XB500 Bantam 5-string in 1999, forlorn and hanging forgotten in the used section of a broken-down music store on the lost side of Bolingbrook, complete with stock soapbar pickups, I was instantly smitten.  That shape, that color, that feel.  I still like to just look at it, something that is hard to do when I’m playing it, but which also matters little because I’d rather play it than look at it.  It’s honestly a crappy-sounding
instrument all around unless the strings are less than two gigs old, which gets expensive.  And I’m certainly a bush-league player at best, but, put simply, I think the old ax and I are greater together than either would be apart.  It sounds like garbage on solos, which is great because I hate soloing anyway.   We complement each other, I think.

 It was never designed for the hard road work it’s gotten over the years; the frets are green with corrosion and badly need replacement; the groove in the top over the neck pickup is
growing bigger and bigger; the neck itself is starting to collapse and the G string is starting to fret out above the 15th.  The varnish is worn through in places; and yet the stock pickups are still hanging in there, though their part numbers are long since worn away from years of abrasion from the days when I was shotgunning “Paranoid” playing eighths with my fingers instead of a pick.  Listen to the only Five Year Jacket album I played on and you’ll hear 
clackity-clackity as my nervous playing pulls the strings repeatedly into the pole pieces. 

I don’t know what year it is, but I’ve had it for the better part of 30 years now and, while I own other basses, they were purchased for specific purposes (the Fender Jazz V was to quiet the naysaysers
who said I couldn’t play a Washburn in blues clubs; the Ibanez was meant  to go into the closet at St. Joseph’s in Bradley so I could ride my motorcycle down on Mass days; the upright kinda speaks for itself), and they’ve never replaced it. 

 Poor thing; all those years and never a hard case, always a gig bag.  It has worn the miles with surprising resilience, though the D-tuner, the one on the bottom and endmost on the headstock,has taken some lumps.  I still think it looks pretty good, for an old geezer. 

It’s been played in the rain and snow, in front of thousands and in front of a pissed-off looking table of three who got up and left as soon as we started playing, out in the broiling sun and sitting around a campfire, at the poshest hotels in the city and at barn dances.  It’s been dropped and knocked over, thrown up on, had beer spilled on it and once, I landed on it when I fainted at a gig.  The nut broke in half at another gig; I fixed it with Krazy Glue
the bartender had and that was that.   It’s still on there.   

Good old girl.  Taking it out of the bag always brings a smile to my face. I give it a once-over with the tuner.  It’s usually pretty close to in; even getting knocked around in the car and with the temperature changes from outdoors to indoors in the winter, it doesn’t get too far out of whack.  Except the D-string; like I said, that tuner is in a position for punishment.  No matter; the stock tuning machines still turn easily and with a well-oiled precision that is a testament to their sealed construction.  I turn the volume all the way up (I always run it wide open and adjust stage level at the amp)
and add a little active for some balls at the bottom.  The pickup position knob gets set right in the middle, and I roll off almost all the treble, because otherwise, it buzzes. 

 My right thumb settles on the neck pickup where it has sat countless times before over the years, and my thumbnail finds its old familiar spot in its old familiar groove. 

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Finally, it's time to play.