First, Bob Gibson once told me when I told him I thought the show I'd just done was not very good, "Art, after a while of doing it, we are much more even than we seem to want to admit! The "bad shows" aren't as bad as we think, and the good shows aren't as great as we thought either."

That said, when I was playing with an audience that knew where I was coming from, and we were on the same page about the music, I would get so into showing folks what I had "found" that I often achieved a state called "FLOW" by Mihaly Chick-sent-me-hi-ye (phonetic spelling) in his book, also called FLOW. When one is in FLOW, time flies an seems to disappear, and you feel so at-one with what you are doing that it's quite intoxicating!

Now, I "learned" how to get 'there' even when I was playing for an audience who wasn't into folk music as I knew it to be. I grew into enjoying myself in less than perfect situations because that was in my audiences, and my own, best interest. What I was doing was more likely to pay the rent as well. I suspect I prefer to call this flexibility/adapting/compromise my "maturation."

An example: During the 1980s and '90s I had ten years of doing gigs every other day---5 months a year---on excursion steamboats (not gambling boats) on the Mississippi River. The audiences were NOT made up of folkies by any stretch!! Often, during a show, a towboat would pass and/or a tornado would float lazily by, or it would just be a lovely sunny day out on deck. When this happened, EVERYONE would leave the room and go out on deck. (You might say, as some did, that I wasn't playing with a full deck!) In this empty room, I did my whole show and the passengers heard it through speakers outside. I could see people approving through the windows---laughing, crying, belching, performing unnatural acts etc. etc.

All in all, I loved it---even when it was depressing. It sure did beat working!

Art Thieme