Learning to handle stage fright (and an open bar) at 80 years old
Forty expectant friends waited on the sand near Lava Falls. As I tuned my guitar against the river’s roar, I mentally rehearsed my canyon-themed parody of Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind. Worries about the acoustics mixed with fear of botching the new lyrics.
The familiar icy grip of stage fright took hold.
One of my rafting friends appeared, glancing over both shoulders as if checking for Russian spies. He produced a leather-covered flask.
“Scotch, John? Want a shot?”
“No thanks. I’ve given up alcohol.”
I’d been dry since October 1st of last year, the end of a valedictory European trip that dissolved into pub crawls and heroic benders. Still, temptation kept coming.
A willowy blonde in a Lycra wetsuit offered Malbec. Kevin pushed tequila. Dave tried a Coors. Unknown to me, the entire party had smuggled booze onto the trip, stashing bottles on every raft and cooling cans in the Colorado.
I was running out of polite ways to say no.
Showtime approached, and I surveyed my audience: athletic outdoorsmen and women, a few professionals — doctors, a chemist, a teacher, an attorney — but mostly regular folks. What should I play?
I decided to open with a lowbrow tension-breaker: my ode to the Groover Porta-loo, in the spirit of Benny Hill — sung to Bob Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.
The Groover, affectionately named after its grooved ammo-box origins, is the first thing set up at camp and the last thing packed away. Cheap laughs, yes — but Mel Brooks never feared lowbrow humor. Why should I?
Next: a John Denver song — he had close connections with environmentalism until his close and fatal connection with a mountainside. I’d do Take Me Home, Country Roads, rewritten to acknowledge the canyon’s Indigenous inhabitants.
Not exactly Bernie Taupin, but not bad for this far out of town.
I’d finish with Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, reworked as Rafting State of Mind.
One of my favorite songs — a bluesy tune with chords similar to those of Georgia on My Mind. Let me see if I can remember the bridge:
As the river thundered behind me, my anxiety rose. I thought I knew the words, but would anyone hear them? I positioned myself with my back to the cliffs, oil lamps glowing around the beach like a Kon-Tiki set, and began deep breathing. Another margarita appeared. I declined. Ten months sober wasn’t about to end on a sandy beach.
I reminded myself that even the great performers get stage fright. Barbra Streisand once forgot her lyrics and didn’t perform publicly for 27 years. My mantra came from Noël Coward: whatever happens, keep playing. Finish the show.
Showtime
Our expedition leader introduced me. My pulse spiked.
I launched straight into Groover Porta-loo. Easy laughs for toilet jokes, but I finished on a philosophical note:
Encouraged, I rolled right into Country Roads, earning murmurs of approval when I contrasted the Colorado River with the works of man.
Somewhere in the applause, I felt it — that crucial moment when the certainty of triumph finally eclipses the dread of disaster. The audience clapped enthusiastically — I had reached that blessed plateau, and I relaxed.
Then came the highlight: Rafting State of Mind.
“So far, so good,” I thought, as the crowd listened intently. In the last verse, I plugged our hosts, Arizona River Runners:
When it comes down to reality,
there’s no place else I’d rather be.
With Arizona River Runners looking after me.
On the Colorado, having the greatest time.
I’m in a rafting state of mind.
Soon, musical rafters were singing the refrain in three-part harmony as a kind of magic settled over the beach.
I repeated the last line, ending on a jazzy, unresolved chord.
“I’m in a rafting state of mind.”
Cheers erupted. “More! More!”
I was too old and too experienced to dilute my triumph with an anticlimactic encore. I stopped there. Always leave them wanting more.
Rafters surged forward to embrace me, wiping away tears. The adulation baffled me. Why such an extravagant response? The romance of the canyon? The hypnotic candlelight? Or does the river simply lower social barriers to the level of a Carnival cruise?”
Then I noticed the slurred speech, the unsteady footing, the unmistakable waft of boozy breath.
They were all hammered.
Sloshed, sozzled, plastered — three sheets to the wind.
And there I sat: an aged but sober performer, fingers clean, timing intact, critical faculties unimpaired. Before me, an audience whose enthusiasm owed at least as much to alcohol and shared social energy as to musical quality.
The moral: when performing in public, make sure your audience is more intoxicated than you are.
I wiped the wet kisses from my face, sheathed my carbon-fiber guitar, and headed for my lonely cot under the stars.
Follow this link for a performance of “Rafting State of Mind”
