I've got about 27 gigs right now. I've got radio, I've got television, I've got The Washington Post.
Some gigs will go great. I figure you do a gig, and as many as can get there will get there.
I tried the religion scam in Miami, so I know how hard that gig is. But, if you can get it to work, starting your own religion is a license to print money.
I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.
I had a band with a girl in New York, and we would go around and do gigs. And then I happened to start getting work as an actress.
You never know which gig is going to be your last.
For The Truman Show, I worked for a few weeks, do my gig, then I was done.
There was a period when I stopped talking so much, because I was just going through certain things. I just did the gigs and just stayed in, tried to stay away.
Being a rock 'n' roll star ain't a part-time gig.
It's just to break things up between stand-up gigs. I would only do it periodically. Maybe just an East Coast thing.
It was like an explosion. You just don't get ready for it. I don't even know how you can, because you just don't expect it. For me, up until that point, you would do a gig, and then you'd go out and try to find the next job.
I was occasionally getting calls for some things. But I would say, 22 to 29 was a lot of scuffling. Hoping to get called for bad wedding gigs and I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months.
I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.
You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.
Every time I'm not on a project, I'm writing or in the studio or doing gigs DJing.
The best practice you can get is on the bandstand, but in between gigs I feel I have to stay in shape.
I want to have a good time myself. I don't want to dread going to work no matter what the gig is. I think, selfishly, I will make sure that I have a good time; how about that?
I was fortunate enough to have my kids early, so being a mom always ended up being a better gig than these other parts that came along. So I always justified not really working a lot because I had a family.
Obviously I still gig on my own, but I've always heard my music with a band.
No matter what - rehearsed, under-rehearsed, over-rehearsed, doubts about rehearsing - the first gig is always the first gig, and you put on your little praying hat, batten down the hatch, and do what you do.