Wynton Marsalis walks into the Blue Note, and you’re on the drums playing polkas. What does he see?
That’s the question an older musician asked Spencer Inch on a cruise ship, years before Spencer landed the drum chair on the national tour of Water for Elephants. The old timer laid it out plainly. If Wynton sees you bored, phoning it in, and dragging through the set, he’s never calling you for anything. But if he sees you playing those polkas like they’re the greatest music ever written, locked into the style and putting out good energy, he just might call you for something.
Here’s what most young players get wrong. They save their best playing for the gigs they think matter, and they coast through everything else. The polka set. The children’s theater production of Les Mis. The Tuesday night when the house is half empty and nobody seems to be paying attention.
Those are exactly the gigs that matter. Somebody is always watching, and the person who hires you next is usually judging you on the gig you thought was beneath you.
Spencer understood this early, and he took every single gig seriously no matter what it was. He listened to the records, learned the styles, and showed up prepared. Today he’s one of the busiest drummers in the tri-state area — because he treated the polkas like they were Broadway.
My full conversation with Spencer is Episode 108 of the Broadway Drumming 101 podcast, and it’s dropping soon. We get into his path from cruise ships to the New York theater scene, the relationships that opened doors, and what it actually takes to build a career in this business.
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For more: https://www.spencerinch.com
Which reminds me of that Biergarten/Polka gig you connected me with in Connecticut last year. I don't think Wynton came by, but I had a blast nonetheless. And the fact that they paid us in beer made the deal even better...