Recently I stumbled upon some articles I wrote for a blog that was never fully birthed called “Rock Mama”. So step back in time with me to a distant land called 2010, where I was new to mamahood and relive the first time I invested in a sitter for some child-free rocking!
Get a babysitter!
I just had to share the joys of doing a gig without having my child there! Because most gigs we do are in low key venues, early evening or during the day all of our respective kids tend to come along. As a band we have a 6 child entourage with a 7th due sometime soon and talks of an 8th to be added in the coming year or so. And while we love the chance to expose our kids to music, show them that they too can pursue creative passions and generally just have them around it can be monumentally distracting and not at all conducive to mustering up rock-mojo.
Recently we played a gig with a giant rock next to the stage area. A giant rock the older kids could scale with ease and the equivalent of everest to my 2 year old. So all through each song I found myself terrified that I was going to have to abort mid way to scoop my broken and battered mountain climber off to the hospital any minute now. In between songs I hissed to him and the older mob to get down and be careful and during songs they just ignored me and proceeded to climb. Mid way through one set a fight broke out between two of the kids and the bass player and guitarist tried to restore order whilst ripping out some lead breaks and keeping time, not really a recipe for success. By the end of the gig we couldn’t have told you how we played and needed a good hour to just bring our blood pressure back to normal. Now that my friends is not my rock and roll dream.
On the other end of the spectrum last week we had a gig that started later than usual so we all lined up sitters and it was great! We drunk some beers, ate some pizza, could hear ourselves on stage and just got into the zone and did a proper gig. We had fun. It was relaxing. We chatted with the audience between and after sets. We could use naughty language and have a few pints of dutch courage. It almost felt like music b.c (before children). In fact it was more fun than music b.c because we were all so relaxed and enjoying the comparative freedom of an adults only night out. Brilliant.
Now babysitters are often too expensive to justify given the poor pay of the original musician and sometimes free babysitting alternatives are hard to pin down but I have made a promise to myself to limit how many gigs we do with kids underfoot. I still think its great for the kids to see their folks on stage, following their passions and music is definitely a fantastic thing for young people to be surrounded by but whenever I can from now on I want to recapture some of that b.c freedom and mix it up with some p.c (post children) appreciation of me space and musical expression. Bring on some no-kids rock-mojo!
Want to get heaps of adults only creating done? Come to Bali for my Creative Women’s Retreats. I’ve got 2, one that involves leaving the kids at home for the ultimate in child-free creating and a second especially for mamas with little ones where you get 8 hours a day of babysitting!
This article is by another creating mama.
Recent Comments