But nowadays, in addition to my full time job at the Department of Music at Sacramento State, I'm also playing full time for the California Musical Theatre production of Forever Plaid. And this is a big thing for me. It's a professional gig - one of not very many - although I've never seen myself as a 'professional' bassist. Still don't. But it's fun, it's do-able, and right now it's helping to pay chunks off of my bills.
It's funny how life can work itself out sometimes. I was never much into musicals going through high school, nor even in college. Sure, I went to a few here and there over the years, and played in one in high school once. But it just never was part of my life.
It was in 2006 - seven years after I graduated from college - that I happened to go see a production of Baby put on by Runaway Stage Productions. One of my friends was in the orchestra. Well, as it turns out, several people whom I knew were in the orchestra. After a random comment following the show to one of those old friends - who happened to be the orchestra contractor as well - to the effect of, "If you ever need a bass player let me know", I was drafted into that world and began playing again. It had been seven years since I had played anything! But there I was, part of a group, playing for fun and making just a little bit of money on the side. Good times.
You meet a lot of people in this type of endeavor, do a lot of networking, whether you realize it or not. Often this unrealized networking appears, in retrospect, to be merely 'coincidences'.
After my seven-year hiatus from playing bass, after getting drawn into musical theater, it was a lot of little random coincidences that eventually brought me to Forever Plaid, to where I am now, financially stronger. And happier.
I had met Chelsea through the drum corps. She just happened to be playing musicals for Garbeau's, another now-defunct company. She happened to meet Chris there, the pianist who also happened to work for the Theatre Department at Sacramento State where she was a student and I was on the staff. Chris happened to hire her to play a musical at Sac State, 42nd Street, and she happened to need a sub, and just happened to call me. I met Chris there, who just happened, sometime later, to get a real good gig at the 'new' Cosmopolitan Cabaret playing Forever Plaid.
Chris had phoned me about doing this gig in the fall of 2008, but with everything I had going on with work and graduate school, I just couldn't commit to it. I later regretted turning down such an awesome opportunity. But as things go, he just happened to bring Chelsea on board, and she subsequently just happened to bring me onboard as her sub. Then in the spring of 2009, for various reasons I won't go into here, Chelsea had to leave the show, and I became the full time player all of the sudden.
Where will it go from here? Who knows. Plaid will be running until September 6, and then a new show that doesn't involve live musicians will be in. So the fall is looking like a break for me, from playing anyway. I guess it will be time for me to hit the books again, and see if I can't get a few steps closer to that Master's degree.
The scuttlebutt is that the Cosmopolitan will be running 14 week shows then, as opposed to open runs. Which means that there would be three shows per year there, basically. I doubt very highly that they will stray away from having live music for too long. So you never know...I could be on stage again.
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