#wearesheppard

So, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Rob about a week after Rolling Stones, and get this he had not one gig for me but two.  He had mentioned me working the Heart gig while I was in Buffalo but the second gig came as a surprise.  He needed me to sell for a band from Australia called Sheppard at a venue downtown called the Hollow.  I had never heard of either but jumped at the chance to make a little extra cash and have something to take my mind off personal junk.

A few days later I received a call from Sheppard's merch company and gave the guy my e-mail address and he let me know when I needed to be there and a couple days after that I received my very first vend e-mail complete with spreadsheet.  I don't think I've ever felt so official and important.  Granted there were only four shirts, a poster, and a hat, but still I got to see the listing for all the merchandise before the show.  It brought me great joy to get that e-mail.  Not only that but they were going to pay me $150 to work the gig.  And I even got to make the bank deposit.  Talk about a happy bonus.

But wait, there's more.  I got another e-mail from Live Nation asking me if while I was there I could sell for the opening band called Lawson, who are from the UK, as well.  They had one t-shirt and Live Nation would pay me $50 to work it.  I agreed and had another lovely little spreadsheet to work with.

Now, I've been in Albany for about ten years now.  When I arrived here there were a handful of really killer venues.  You had the Pepsi Arena (now called Times Union Arena where I work), Valentine's (a dive bar) both in Albany.  Then there was Revolution Hall in Troy, and my personal favorite, Saratoga Winners in Latham, and also Northern Lights (now Upstate Concert Hall) out in Clifton Park.  I'm sure there were others but those are the ones I went to.  Valentine's closed a couple years ago and reopened elsewhere as the Lowbeat.  Winners was burned down for the insurance money and Rev Hall closed.  So, we really were left with hardly any venues.  So, upon hearing about the Hollow I became really excited to see the space, because I'd been yearning for a new place to go and catch some cheap shows on my lonely Saturday nights, because divorced life, yea not so fun.

I left Saturday afternoon and headed over to the Hollow.  It was street parking which was fine all things considered.  I was stoked to be able to find a spot really close to the venue.  From my car, I quickly called Kevin and thank goodness he picked up (since Merch Mike is being a fucking butthead right now) and he answered my questions about settling and the deposit.  It'd been three years since I had to settle with the venue and I'd only done it once and I had Merch Mike on the phone every three seconds.  Nervous wasn't even close to the right word for how crazy freaking out I was.

I walked over to the venue and just walked right inside, no questions about whether or not I was actually working and no bullshit about credentials, thank goodness.  I walked over to the stage and told the guys setting up who I was and one of them, in a fabulous accent, showed me to the merch boxes of which there were only three, and told me where to set up and I got to work.  It was a table sell, so it was really simple.  There wasn't a ton of product so I was finished setting up in only an hour.  That was with a proper count in.  I even made sure to write all my numbers down in my notebook, just like Merch Mike had taught me all those years ago.  I felt like a proper Merch Girl.

I had about an hour and a half to kill in between set up and doors so I hung out in the venue.  I got to watch both bands do sound check and take a really good look at the venue.  It's actually a restaurant that has an addition that's the venue.  It's small, but really well thought out.  They even were smart and had the sound equipment on a balcony above the bar.  Merch area was a little tight, and I would have preferred it to be across the way because they had me totally invading the sound guy's space, and that space also doubled over as the backstage area for the bands.  So like, yea no room.  But there was a happy bonus in that which I'll get to later.

Once the doors opened, I was ready to sell.  I knew it wasn't going to be much in sales considering that it was also Saratoga Track opening weekend, but I had no idea there would only be about forty people there.  However people did buy some stuff.  But by the time Lawson took the stage it was really dead though.  By really dead I mean no one was coming anywhere near the merch table, so I got to go and dance to the side of the crowd and enjoy the show in full.  Yes, you read correctly, I got to go to the show.  Lawson was fantastic.  Something about British rock just makes me want to dance my ass off.  And the bassist... yum.  They were all completely delicious looking and with those accents, they were even more attractive.  When their set was over I headed back behind my table and soon they were back there too, hanging out for a while and we had a small chat about their shirt and how I sold one.  I've never seen someone get as excited as their bassist got at the thought of having sold one shirt.  It was adorable.

Once Sheppard took the stage there wasn't really a place for me to stand and dance so I stayed behind the merch table and danced there since Lawson left and went to play a game of pool.  Sheppard's manager or whatever the old guy was kept hovering on my merch table.  I don't know if he thought I was going to steal or what, but dude kept coming over looking at the table and then walking away, like fifty times in an hour long set.  Dude, chill, if I'm gonna steal something it's gonna be a Lawson shirt, I wouldn't and I didn't, but just saying.

Sheppard put on a great show as well, they were a little lighter pop rock then Lawson, but they were still danceable and fun and talented.  Did I mention both these bands were really talented?  I'm happy to see some of these newer bands actually can perform and these two bands were stoked as hell to perform despite there only being forty or fifty people there.  It was empowering to see them on stage giving a hell of a show and to see the crowd dance along.  I hadn't been to a small show in a lot of years, as all the bands I follow got big and then broke up for the most part.  It was such a pleasure to go to a small show and see the passion that is almost always missing from bands like The All-American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, and others.  They used to give out all that passion on stage but somewhere it got lost, however Sheppard and Lawson, they had it in spades at the Hollow.

At the end of the show I was ready for the little mini rush.  Sheppard was super smart and did a signing right after the show.  They let people take selfies with them and signed things for them and chatted for a little while.  It was really nice because they set the signing table right next to the merch table which meant I actually had decent business until the signing was over.

I quickly counted out and then got everything boxed up.  The venue guy come over to me three times in a span of a half an hour and asked me if I was ready with the numbers yet.  I was like dude give me ten minutes and I'll be all set.  Soon as I was done punching everything in my computer, like a legit merch girl, I had the money ready to go and the guy was nowhere to be found.  Apparently that's the norm.  Finally he came back over took the venue's fifteen percent and I was off.

I felt like I was stealing from the band making as much as I did for the night.  Monday I made the deposit at the bank and am currently still waiting for Live Nation to contact me again about the other twenty-five dollars they owe me.  Pretty sure they're going to shaft me that other twenty-five which frankly is bullshit but whatever.  I would have sold the one shirt for free, so really the joke is on them.