The Last Gig

I spend an evening a week rehearsing with a rock band called The Aventines. We play gigs around town occasionally, all for fun of course. It's a blast. I love singing and I love spending time with the band.

Getting pregnant, of course, means everything in life changes, and the band is no exception.

Our band is loud. When I say loud, I mean loud. I mean turn-it-up-to-eleven, three-jackhammers-in-a-closet loud. I'm a tad concerned about noise exposure for the baby, so we've miked up the rehearsal space and now I sing from another room across the hall, listening in on a pair of headphones. So that's pretty good, though it feels very odd listening to them through the wall like that.

We've been rehearsing at our house, in the room that is now earmarked for the nursery, so now we'll be moving all the stuff down to a different room. That's no problem, but a little bit of a pain.

Gigs are another matter altogether. We don't often play first, and the order of the bands playing is often in question, so we usually sit through hours of loud music before we get on and we stick around after to show support for the other bands. So, in preparation for the development of the baby's cochlea, which is supposed to be functional at about 24 weeks, we're going to cut out performing. This is a little painful, but it gives us lots of time to focus on new material and maybe do some recording in the interim.

We had our last gig on Saturday night, at the beginning of my 9th week, at the Red Room on 82nd Ave in Portland, OR. It was really fun. Just a blast. Fortunately for baby, although I thought it was a pretty raw deal when it passed, smoking was outlawed in bars in January. I drank a lot of water and nibbled on some french fries, gave somebody else my free drink tickets, had fun watching my friends get toasted, listened to some cool bands, and went on at eleven. I think we did a pretty good set. The guys were on it, the sound was good, the place was pretty well populated.

We wrapped up, and I was talking to the singer from another band, Mike Helms and the Nefarious Clydes, and I got a little green. I hope Mike didn't take it personally when I made a face. I went to the table and probably thoroughly grossed out some of our friends with a little standard dry heaving action. Someone I hadn't met tried to congratulate me on a good show and I blurted that I might throw up. I asked Garrett to get my stuff from the corner and we left through the front door... right through all the smokers. OOF

Now, as an ex-smoker, I have to say, I loved smoking. I loved everything about it but the phlegm and the cancer risk. I hated the folks that whined about smokers and second hand smoke. I thought the whole anti-smoking movement was just full of self-righteous whiners.

But man, I have to say, that smoke was all I needed. Walking out that front door was walking through a wall of smoke. I called out goodbye to my friends and doubled over once for a good heave on the way to the back parking lot. A random lady coming out of an apartment asked if I was ok, and I said I was fine, just pregnant. What must she have thought? Here is this girl, clearly ill, stumbling out of a bar at 12am, doubled over in the back parking lot. Pregnant? That's a new one.

I almost made it. I tried. But my body couldn't take it anymore and I hurled right there behind the truck. In the parking lot. Behind a bar. How very rock and roll. I think there may have been witnesses. Classy.

In the end, I guess it just means there is more than one reason not to do any gigs until after baby comes.

As a general rule though, most of the time, the nausea is much improved. I think bars probably just smell bad and maybe I didn't get enough protein in my dinner that night. Also, I put a ton of pressure on my gut singing.