Rokstedy: An Ode to Piano Men

Wednesday night. There was some kind of party going on at the lido deck, so the crowd was almost certainly going to be smaller than usual. Smaller crowd means less tips. That’s not good. Smaller crowd also means a bit less chaos to manage. That’s good. Not good enough to outset the inevitable loss in tips, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

The piano man stood in the bathroom of his stateroom, carefully inspecting his face. He looked drunk. To be fair, he was a bit drunk. Just a bit, though. If he wore his sunglasses, nobody would be able to tell. He stepped backwards a bit, and looked over his outfit. Purple button up with rolled sleeves, white pants, brown loafers, and to tie it all together, he slipped on his white framed shades. Simple, but just elegant enough to fit the dress code. Of course, he could not forget his mark of shame, the unadorned nametag across which his name was scrawled in plain black text. He stuck the tag into his shirt, just above his chest, left side, as he sang a scale. His brief vocal warmup, the first time he had heard his voice since the previous night.

Assured that his outfit was fine, and his voice still silky smooth, he exited his bathroom, approached his minibar, and poured out his rough estimation of a shot of whiskey into one of the complimentary wine glasses. A faux pas, sure, but if nobody saw it, then it didn’t matter. He threw the shot back, and reveled in the tingly burn it left in his throat. The perfect kick in the ass to start the night off with.

With a brisk swagger, he flew out of the stateroom and made his way across the boat towards the piano bar. The gentle rocking and swaying of the boat made it ever so slightly more difficult to walk straight, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t manage.  Just before he arrived at the bar, however, he was recognized. 

“Heyyyyy!” The man’s shout came from behind. “There’s the piano guy! You were great last night, man.”

He turned to face the man, and saw who may have very well been the drunkest person on the ship, his pale cheeks glowing a bright red blush, the chocolatini in his hands nearly spilling with every stagger the drunkard took. The piano man didn’t have time for this.

“Thanks, brother, I appreciate it. I gotta-”

“You didn’t play my song, though, and that really fucking sucked! My request was so good!”

“Ah, I’m sorry, man. I can’t play ‘em all, you know?”

“But mine was awesome! It was so much better than all those other lame requests you played.”

“Well, what did you request?”

“Across the Universe, by The Beatles.”

“Ah, I gotcha. Well, I don’t know that song, and I can’t play a song I don’t know. Now, I really have to-”

“Well you should listen to it.”

“I will. Now, I need to get to the bar. You have a good night, brother.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He turned on his heel, and speed walked right into the bar. He shouted towards the bar, “Hey, Jack, you know what to get me!”

The bartender, without turning to look at him, gave him a thumbs up and kept typing at the register. The bargoers, immediately realizing that he was finally here, gave rousing applause for the piano man. He smiled, nodded, and waved to the crowd as he sat down on his bench.

“Thank you!” He shouted, running his eyes over the crowd. Just as he expected, way less people than usual. There were a couple regulars, people who he knew liked him enough to give decent tips, but most of the crowd was unfamiliar to him. He counted no more than fifteen total attendees, less than a quarter of the bar filled. Hopefully the new people were good tippers. Hopefully more would join as the night went on. Hopefully tonight won't be a bust.

He leaned up to his mic, switched it on, and spoke into it as his soft voice boomed through the bar. “Testing, testing, one, two, three, hey hey, baby! Welcome to The Keys Piano Bar, the greatest entertainment on the seven seas, but don’t let my boss know I’m slandering the other musicians like that!”

The crowd shared a great bout of laughter, a good sign by itself. The audience didn’t seem to have any stiffs in it. Knowing they were willing to laugh and have fun was a great morale booster. 

“I hope you’re all having a fantastic night after an amazing day. If you aren’t, then don’t you worry. You’re in my hands now, baby, good times are guaranteed!”

More laughter, and a couple cheers. Cheers before he even started were a good sign. The crowd was lively, even if they were small. That would make things much easier on him. They were all clearly woozy already, which he could only assume was the work of Jack. A smirk fell across his face.

“Before we start, can we get a round of applause for your fantastic bar staff? Put your hands together for your bartender Jack, and your waiter Tommy! They’ve been working hard all day, and now they’re here to keep you feeling good and liquored up all night.”

The crowd was happy to applaud the staff, but the piano man knew good and well that wouldn’t change how much they got in tips. Nobody tipped the bartenders, they were too good for that. 

“Now, we’ll be getting started in just a moment here, so if you need to use the bathroom or get a drink before the show starts, speak now, or forever hold your peace!”

He clicked his microphone off, and started preparing for the show. He pulled his tip jar out from beneath the bench, and sneaked a five dollar bill into it. An unfortunately necessary move, he knew that people were more likely to tip if it seemed people had already done so. As he set the jar atop the piano, his attention moved to the pile of request papers resting on the fallboard. A decent amount of requests, considering the size of the crowd, but as he dug through them, they quickly revealed themselves to be disappointing. 

The first song he saw he had never heard of. The second and third, more of the same. The fourth, he knew, but it wasn’t a crowd pleaser. Number five, too slow to open with. He put that one aside to play later in the evening. The sixth request paper gave him pause. When he laid eyes on the song written on the page, he had to do a double take.  He almost couldn’t believe that this song was actually requested.

I’m Sitting on Top of the World, by Aretha Franklin. It was no deep cut, but it wasn’t among her most popular music either. It also happened to be one of the piano man’s favorite songs. He listened to it all the time as a child. It was one of the first songs he learned how to play when he started doing music professionally. He would have given anything to play it, but the sad truth was that it was no crowd pleaser. This wasn’t his show to do with whatever he liked. He had to appease the audience, do whatever was most likely to earn him tips. 

Jack sat a glass of bourbon down beside the piano man with a satisfying clink. The two exchanged a silent nod, and the piano man gave him a grin in thanks before looking back to the slip of paper in his hand.

The song was requested by someone named Marcus, from New York. Whoever Marcus was, he had very good taste in music. A shame that good taste wasn’t enough for a show like this. The piano man moved on to request number seven, which was a much more recognizable song.

He tossed the dismissed request papers into his trash can, clicked his microphone back on, and spoke once more. 

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re all ready for a night of fun. I’m gonna be starting off with a little ditty you all probably know, requested by Germaine from Alabama. Where you at, Germaine?”

“That’s me!” Cried a voice at the back of the bar, a voice belonging to an older man, whose hair matched the color of his pale gray t-shirt. 

“Make some noise for Jerry Lee Lewis, y’all! Sing along if you know the words!”

As he slammed out four chords on the piano, the small crowd cheered out. The piano man’s voice sang gleefully, “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain!”

Quadrice more, he banged on the keys. “Too much love’ll drive a man insane!” The staccato of the keys rang out, four times more. “You broke my will,” one two three four, “oh what a thrill!” One two three fo- “goodness, gracious, great balls o’ fire!”

Cheers cried out louder as the piano man warbled the first verse and gracefully waltzed his fingers across the ivories. Graceful, but forceful nonetheless.

Two minutes flew by, the audience singing along to the best of their ability, which wasn’t much. It didn’t need to be, though, all the piano man needed was engagement. An audience that stayed alive, that strived to jump and jive, that gave him drive to not just survive, but to thrive while he dived into the vive rhymes from his musical archive.

The song came to a close with applause, with cheers and adoration. As good a start to the night as any. Germaine approached the grand, keeping balance on an ornate wooden cane, and dropped two tenners into the glass jar. A better tip than the piano man expected, for a first tip. Germaine either really loved music, or he had the money to blow. Perhaps it was both.

After opening with a request, the piano man decided to follow it up with a choice from his setlist that matched the upbeat energy and would keep the room alive. Though the popularity of “Great Balls of Fire” was hard to match, the excited energy was still pervasive as the chords flew through the air and graced the ears of the bar's patrons.

They sang, they made merry. Drinks were ordered and gulped down as the pep grew stronger and stronger. Some people left, but more filed in and took their places. As the hours went by, the little glass jar atop the black grand piano grew fuller with slips of green, fuller than the piano man expected for so small a crowd. Perhaps it was the intimacy of him with such a small group, or perhaps tonight was simply special. Some days, you had good crowds, crowds willing to sing along all the time, crowds who gave great tips and didn’t fuss about unfulfilled requests. These were the kinds of crowds that made three hours fly by, and that was precisely what this crowd did. Three hours melted into three minutes in the blink of an eye.

Atop the piano, right next to his tip jar, there laid a single slip of paper. One final request, one that somehow got placed in front of him without him noticing. He only had a few minutes left of his show, just enough time to bother seeing what was on the paper. Assuming it was a crowd pleaser, it might be lucky enough to serve as the finale.

With a gracefully drunk grasp, the piano man plucked the slip from the lid, and glanced it over. He couldn’t help but mentally sigh when he read it. It was a crowd pleaser, alright, one that he had hoped he could go all night without playing. Maybe that was too much to ask for.

Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” had to be his least favorite song. Not because the song was bad. No, the song by itself was quite good. The piano man hated that song because it was inescapable. Almost every single night for three years working as a piano bar entertainer, somebody requested that song. It was a cliché. Everybody thought they were some clever genius for requesting it, but they never were, because they have the same thought as thousands of other people. 

“Haha!” They would laugh, “he’s a piano man, and I’m going to request that he play the song ‘Piano Man!’” It was trite, annoying, and most of all, it was overdone.

Still, the request had been made, and he couldn’t go out without playing a crowd pleaser. The piano man leaned into the microphone, and spoke once more.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and all my other friends, you have been a great audience tonight. Before I leave you all tonight, I’ve got one last song for you all, requested by John. Where you at, John?”

A cheer came from the back of the room, a middle aged man with short cropped hair. “That’s me!”

“I bet you all know this one, folks, sing along if you can!”

He lightly tickled the keys, stringing together quiet chords. He had no harmonica, but he didn’t need it. He could play just fine without it. Of course, the first few notes were all the crowd needed to recognise the song. The kind of person who takes the time to go to a piano bar is certain to know the stereotypical piano song.

With loud cheers, and very drunken singing along, the first verse blew past. This was all about entertainment, though, so the piano man had to alter the lyrics a bit to make the audience feel involved. It wasn’t nine o’clock, nor was it a saturday. In fact, the regular crowd wasn’t wasn’t even here. There was an old man sitting beside him, who the piano man made sure to give a sly look when the line came up, but he was drinking a glass of whiskey, not gin. The lyrics are easy to change on the fly, as he had been doing that exact thing for years.

The crowd was ecstatic. Despite how thin it was, their voices were loud. Maybe not melodious, but they were loud. They sang along, cheered the tipsy entertainer on, and chugged the last swallows of their glasses. 

There was an energy in that bar, a miasma of joy and excitement. The piano man, singing alongside the crowd as his sore fingers danced across the black and white keys, felt a great smile across his face. As repetitive as it felt to play this song so very often, the crowd’s energy that night was special. An intimate crowd, but a loud one. The song passed by, the whole bar shouting each and every chorus and verse.

The last verse arrived, and the piano man grinned. It had been a great night, and soon enough he could get his well earned rest. 

“It’s a pretty good crowd for a wednesday, I guess!” He sang, the audience laughing through their singing. “And Jack, he gives me a smile!”

Jack the bartender gave his signature grin, just as he did every time the piano man called on him during that line. 

“Cause he knows that it’s me, that you all came to see, to forget about life for a while!” 

Someone in the audience cheered, “Sure is!” and was met with a rousing laugh.

The piano man’s grin grew wider, and he took a deep breath for his grand finale as he slammed his hands upon the final chords of the song. With a crying song, he belted out the last verse for the night.

“And the piano, how it sounds like a carnival! And the microphone, it smells like bourbon! And they sit at the bar, and they put money in my jar, and say ‘man, what are you doing here?’”

The crowd chanted out all the “la, la la la, la de das” with him, but before they got to the closing chorus, the piano man cried out to them once more. “This is the last round, folks, carry it on now or forever hold your peace!”

Just as the chorus came, he stopped playing, stopped singing, and just listened to the crowd as they all happily caroled.

“Sing us a song, you’re the piano man! Sing us a song tonight! Well we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling alright!”

The piano man quietly returned to his instrument, blending the last notes with his soft crooning for one last line, “Yeah you’ve got us feeling alright!”

The bar filled with a cacophony of applause and cheering, a standing ovation from his drunken music enjoyers. He waved at them all, cheered them on in thanks, and took a bow.

His job was a difficult one. His job was one of hard hours, lots of vocal endurance, and too much traveling. Times like this, though? They made all his hard work worth it.