The Wages, An Illustrated Story | 23. Songs and Parables | Highway 2
“Our audience is getting older, and don’t want to drink on weeknights. People are more worried about driving home loaded. The six-night stays are over. If scale pay keeps weakening, we’ll be trying to live by passing a jug around the audience. Phil keeps saying there’s an easier way for him to book us in the casinos and those newer venues. He says things are taking a new direction. He keeps saying the T-word.”
“Tribute band? No way. I love covers, but I make them mine. I don’t want to get a bunch of crappy wigs, and be the older and shorter version of so-and-so, with a more rinky-dink light show. The stage is the only place I feel like myself sometimes. I have fought hard for that. Tell Phil to find someone else who will be happier being an actress.”
“OK miss artiste, I don’t want to do it either. But then you have to define yourself somehow, to keep people interested in you.”
“They still get excited when I play the start of ‘Trashy’, and I heard ‘Can’t Touch a Dream’ on the easy radio station in Tillsonburg. It’s my cross-over sleeper.”
“From the ’70s. Two decades ago.”
“I thought I was in some pretty good company on that station.”