Nonchalance in the face of rejection.

I just had a brief but interesting phone conversation with the guy who books one of the more active music venues in Baltimore, Joe Squared Pizza. Earlier this year, my quartet (i.e. the "B band") had played three gigs there in what was supposed to be a regular monthly spot. Then we were abruptly killed with no explanation--or at least, with semi-explanations that didn't really make sense. Since we seemed to be a hit there (I'd brought in 25 or more people, and also gained a good number of fans and sold a few CDs there), my best guess was that, in the opinion of the restaurant owner (a different guy than the booker) we were too loud for the dinner slot we were given.

Since then, I've continued to receive mass emails from this booker whenever he has dates to fill, and I've occasionally responded in the hopes of grabbing a performance slot. I've offered to bring the band in for a late-night slot, again on the premise that what we did was too loud for dinner hour. I've offered to come in as a solo piano/vocal dinner act. And the booker would never respond...yet continue to keep me on his mailing list for whenever he had open dates or band cancellations.

Today I called him to say, essentially, What the hell is up? And he was finally straight with me. "Look, as I told you, I like your stuff, I think your CD was really great, but Joe just didn't like you."

The booker basically apologized to me for the fact that the owner doesn't dig my music, and then he went on to say that he never knew exactly how to handle such situations. I told him that as far as I was concerned, I'm aware that not everybody is going to like what I do, but I'd much rather have the honest painful truth than the aggravating mystery. "I'm much happier," I told him, "knowing that I should never bother again to try to get a date at Joe Squared, rather than wondering from now until forever whether I just haven't been persistent enough, or something." I told him there were no hard feelings and that I'd appreciate him taking me off his email list, although he was welcome to keep me on his own personal performance list (he's a DJ).

So it turns out that owner Joe of Joe Squared Pizza doesn't like my music. So what? I'm so incredibly happy to be in a place in my life where a little bit of rejection feels like one single drop of water beading down my back, instead of a downpour.