I’ve been playing with a band called X-Presidents for a while now, and we have a show Saturday July 13 at Moe’s BBQ in Englewood near the Gothic Theater. Two good things about this show are 1) You can get a delicious pulled pork sandwich or catfish nuggets while you watch, and 2) I think we’ll be going on earlier like at 8 or 9, though figuring out start time isn’t a thing that makes the “like” list usually.

I’ve been playing in bands since I was 14, and in that time I’ve played in a lot of very different bands at a lot of very different gigs.

Here are a few things I like about playing live:

1. Dressing Up

When my mom first bought me a bass guitar, she said one of the selling points was that it would let me be whoever I wanted to be onstage.

At Saturday’s show, that means I get to be Richard Nixon.

The X-Presidents band takes its inspiration from Patrick Swayze’s crew of bank robbers in Point Break, so we come out in rubber masks. I also like to make Nixon wear different suits, and in past shows I’ve been Black Tie Nixon, Summer Wedding Nixon, and Country Western Nixon.

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I’ve also worn a Pillsbury dough boy head for a Travelling Pillsbury’s show, and here I am wearing part of a pinata:

Getting dressed up to go onstage is like putting on a cape so you can go out there with more energy and less self-consciousness. The goal is to someday hit the level of Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, who famously had the brilliant idea that “When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we're playing onstage.”

2. Stage Antics

Closely related to dressing up to go onstage is considering what you’re going to do once you get up there. I don’t especially like when a show is just you playing an instrument like you would at practice, and I’ve always enjoyed being in bands that felt the same.

During my time in Dirt we would do whatever we could think of. The singer’s brother would dress up in a chicken costume and slam dance, Brett would occasionally eat an entire cabbage during a guitar solo, and several times we dressed in painter’s suits and goggles and gave nerf guns to the crowd to shoot darts at us while we played.

I’ve done my best Eddie Vedder and jumped off stuff, and my best Kurt Cobain and kicked over drum sets. One idea I adapted from Jack White, who likes to make things like tuning and microphone placement difficult so he has to work harder on stage, is that I had a guitar strap that would fall off a lot so I learned to play without it.

I’m not sure what the antics will be Saturday, but I know they will be fueled in part by …

3. Free Drinks

Most shows are at bars or venues with a bar, so most shows pay you in two free drink tickets plus whatever money they offer (usually they pay you in exactly two free drink tickets and no money). These drink tickets are usually good for PBR or a well drink, but there is something extra special about those PBRs and that whiskey.

I’ll let my Uncle Bill tell you about it:

4. Playing the Same Venues as Better Bands

It was fun to see Pinegrove at Lion’s Lair because I had already played there a few times, and also, since I played there a few times, it was very easy for me to see how good they were, so I wasn’t surprised when years later I was going to see them at the Gothic and other bigger venues that I haven’t been successful enough to play (yet?). Now, when they come out with new music or play a big venue I get to think, “Oh yea, I played the same stage as them.”

The same is true for my current favorite band in Denver, May Be Fern (we shared the Moe’s stage at a gig). The best possible version of this for me is that allegedly Aerosmith also played the Dedham High School auditorium where I played my first show, though in full disclosure it’s not recorded here and all the evidence is anecdotal from people in Dedham:

Someone please ask Steven Tyler if he remembers getting a jumbo Coke or Pepsi spilled on him at DHS and we can confirm.

5. It Takes You to Some Interesting Places

This is a story about arson at “Bar Bar,” actually the Carioca Cafe and one of Denver’s oldest dives: https://www.westword.com/restaurants/denver-dive-bar-carioca-cafe-victim-of-arson-fire-21133862.

Here are a few of the reaction quotes to that story:

And here’s some footage of me playing Bar Bar on a night that ended with the bartender subduing an unruly patron with some kind of Tiger-Style Throat Punch: