 I see what's new on the Burlington waterfront. Welcome to On the Waterfront. I'm your host, Mariah Riggs, and this month I'm excited to have Sal DiFrancisco, who is a very dear friend. We actually share a birthday, who agreed to come in and talk with us this month about his amazing variety of things that he has done over his life, as well as his current role working with the Vermont Blue Society and the music industry in Vermont. Sal, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. So really quickly, I just wanted to introduce you to our audience. I know you've worn a lot of hats and done a lot of really awesome things throughout the years. Quickly, you're not from Vermont. How did you end up in Vermont? Well, I went to St. Michael's College and started in 1967. And I met my wife. I think it was 1969. I think it was love at first sight. It took me a little while to wrangle her a bit, but we got married in 1971 and decided to live here. We lived here until 1978 and then went down to Connecticut for about nine or 10 years and then came back in 86. Why did you come back? We wanted to buy a house. This was a good place. I was traveling by air for most of my business. And there was an airport nearby. Made it easy. Plus, her family was here. That's a big one. Yeah. That's a big one. My family was in Connecticut. Her family was in Vermont. So it worked out. I'm glad we got you. Thank you. I love it here. So currently, Sal is very involved in the music scene, which we're going to get to. I actually am kind of excited to take a little bit of time here and kind of delve into your background. Sure. So originally, you had some interesting jobs prior to getting into the music industry. One of my favorite is the fact that you, at one point, worked in jewelry. Oh, yes. That was a long career. I started out with interest in jewelry. I made my wife's wedding bands. And I learned that in Connecticut when I was down there. That's because I had a motorcycle accident. So I lived there for a year before I came back up. And when we came back up, I went back to school again because I had a misty year. And I started to get very interested in jewelry. So we had this business, which you don't see, called Depths of the Earth in Shelburne, in the center of Shelburne, where we made jewelry. It was sort of a fun, but it was kind of a failure. And I took that and started to work for Preston's Jewelers. It doesn't exist anymore, but that was an established. They'd been there for 100 years. And then I took a job. We went down to Connecticut, took another job, and started working in the industry there, and then ended up in New York, which I found out I was an OK jewelry, but I was a way better stone salesman. So that was much more fun. Selling stones? Yeah, I always tell people it's the closest thing to selling drugs, but legal. It was very expensive stuff. And I specialized in Ruby, Sapphires, and Emeralds. I worked for a Swiss company called Goli Bichel. That was a lot of fun, actually. Can you do valuations? You mean like look at something in an estimate cost? Well, not now because it's changed. But actually, that's an interesting concept because one of the things, working for Goli Bichel, the interesting thing is because they were a Swiss company, they could deal with everybody. We dealt with Arab nations when we had an embargo in Vermont, but the Swiss didn't have that. So there was a lot of times where we were getting jewelry from Oscar Hyman. By the way, Oscar Hyman used to sell to Tiffany's, Bulgari's, et cetera. It was always so much fun to go in in those places because we walk in and there's the double door in jewelry warehouses or wholesale. There's a double door. So you go into sort of like an airlock and you have insurance, you're bonded. So we'd be in there and we'd be sitting on a table and they'd be like five, six, and this is an $84, so $86, we have five or $6 million worth of jewelry. And it'd be falling on the floor and we'd pick it up and throw it around. And it was just so much fun because it was a commodity at the time. One of the things, I was talking about the diamonds, one of the things that the Swiss did is for a male, I had actually a good color sense, not colorblind. And we used to take, they'd buy an investment stone and I had a friend at the GIA, the Gemological Institute of America, and they'd bring in a stone that would say like five carats. And it was, I don't know if you know the numbers, but D is the most clear, and then there's an E and F, et cetera. So they bring in an E or an F stone and they'd say take it to your friend and see if you can get it down to an E or a D depending on if it was an F or an E. And I usually like about 60% of the time I could talk them into reevaluating it to a better color. And you'd make, in those days in a three to five carat stone you'd pick up 10, $15,000 a carat just by changing the color, by changing the valuation of the color. So that was one of my jobs, like I was pretty good at getting the investment stone to increase in value. Wow, that's significant though. Three carat piece, that's a lot of money. Well, when you get into those stones, even for diamonds, they're relatively rare. And the color is very, very, very clear. But I mean, you have to be very, you have to be trained to, and you have to see them a lot to see the difference between like a D, E or an F stone. Most people can't see that. Yeah, in your eyesight. Is that why they wear those little monocle things that they like look at the stone with? Well, actually, that's usually for jewelry making. And that's changed to a binocular view. That's what most people use. But when you're looking at a stone like that, you're using a fairly high-powered hand loop. And they're little teeny things, this big and the smallest one is like that big. And that goes up to like 40 or 50 power. And so you have to literally hold it, like the stone is literally an inch from your eye because of the focal length. And that's when you can see defects and things. But when they do it with diamonds, they literally put it under a microscope because the flaws are how they vary them, yeah. That's crazy. And I assume just, I mean, just for yucks and eagles, older stones, do they have a lot more cracks and fissures or are they just not as clear? Cause the old cuts or is that kind of a false assumption? It depends very much on what stone you're talking about. So if you're talking about diamonds, diamonds are very durable. I mean, they're the hardest substance. They're 10 on the ROM scale. What is that? I can never remember the name anymore. And being carbon, they don't really change. They're one of the few stones, actually the only stone that I can heat up red hot so it's glowing. And if I don't dip it in water, and let it cool naturally, it won't do anything to the stone. You couldn't do that with an emerald or... So the thing about emeralds, the precious stones are much different. They're actually much rarer. The ruby sapphire emeralds are much rarer than a diamond, especially the special colors. Really? Yeah, so you have pigeon blood red. Yeah. You have safflower blue. And, well, kelly green is actually close enough. And those are the three major. And pigeon blood, they're not mined anymore. They're in where Burma was. And they just don't exist. And pigeon blood is a very red color. All the stones you probably have seen are definitely not pigeon blood. I'll show you, I have one. I'll show you at the end of the show. I love the color. So, wow, so the semi-precious, in a lot of ways, are a lot rarer than a diamond ring? Well, precious stones. Yes, precious stones. Yeah, semi-precious is different. But even some of the semi-precious used to be called semi-precious or not. My favorite stone, if you were gonna ask me, is the Alexandrite. It's my favorite stone. And what does that look like? Well, Alexandrite is a barrel, so it's related, well, it's sort of a barrel. It's a chrysa barrel. So it's related to the other barrels like aquamarine and emerald. But what I love about Alexandrite is it has just enough chromium oxide to change color. Chromium oxide is actually green, but in a crystal structure, keep in mind crystal is actually a very distinct molecular structure. With just the right amount of chromium oxide, you get an emerald. With just a little bit of chromium oxide, you get a ruby. That's red and green. But an Alexandrite straddles the two. And so under incandescent light, which is more yellow or sunlight, it looks red, well, actually purple. But under fluorescent light, it changes to a more blue color. Well, fluorescent's a different color temperature. Right, and so those temperatures flip the stone to a different color. Wow, the spectrum. The spectrum is based on color temperature. And if you ever want to see those examples of great precious stones, obviously the Smithsonian is where you go. Yep, one place. Or what about Natural History Museum in New York? They have some, but the best collection is by far the Smithsonian. It's good to know. Yeah. I've never checked that out. And they're all free, they're fun. If you ever want to go watching DC, they're free, they're awesome. You got to love that. So you did that for a while. I did it for a long time. Do you use any of the information anymore or not? I still have connections. I have some jewelers that are still friends. And if I need a deal on a dime, then I know where to go. I need to talk to you. Now I know. Uh-oh, my significant other might be in trouble. No, I'm joking. So after you did that, you had always had a, I understand you're a fly boy and you've always been interested in flying. Well, yeah. I was flying models when I was 12. Okay. And I got a lot involved in model airplanes, which is my business, Northeast sail planes. I started flying hang gliders when I was 26. And I kind of love that. It's a little bit dangerous, especially in the beginning when we were first flying was much more dangerous than it is now. Hang gliding? Oh yeah. I've lost a lot of friends. Well, because it's kind of, I mean, that's you just kind of jump off things and go with the wind, right? Well, that's a common misconception. Okay. You have control. You do have turning capacity with it? Oh yeah, I mean, there's no way you could ever fly an aircraft without it. I mean, the only thing that you can't turn is a balloon. So there's a rudder? No, there's no rudder. A flap. No. Okay. The old hang gliders, I mean, there's some modification are set up that they're moderately what they call unstable. So they, so you use weight shift. Oh. So if I shift, if I shift, there's a barn from the triangular. If I'm shifting this way, it's going to turn this way. If I shift this way, it's gonna turn this way. It's like a bank against the wind. Kind of a bank. Yeah. You're changing where the CG is and the CG is making it roll. Oh, that's wild. Yeah. That's super. A lot of hang gliders have surfaces, some surfaces. And I've flown several of those as well. When was the last time you got out? With my sailplane, it's probably been close to 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. You still have it? No, no. I owned a 304 CZ, a Czech airplane. And sailplanes are very expensive. Okay. Super car, expensive. And they're extremely impractical because you can't take anybody with you, especially when you're paying for an airplane, a sailplane like that, they're single seat and they barely fit you. You're sitting mostly lying down. Oh, wow. Yeah. And the canopy is about this far from your head. Matter of fact, you take off the, if you want to see a sailplane pilot, if he doesn't have this beanie, he's a sailplane pilot. It's that tight. Well, it's, the canopies in those days ran five to eight grand. So first of all, you don't want to hurt yourself because it'll drill into your head. That hurts because of the turbulence, but mostly you don't want to crack your canopy because it's expensive to replace. Wow, that's interesting. And how many, I mean, I'm assuming hundreds of hours up in the air? I have about, I have like something like 3,000 hours in ultralights. I have somewhere in the vicinity of five to 600 hours in hang gliders and in sail planes, I don't know, I'm close to a thousand. Wow. Yeah. It's a lot of time up in the air. Yeah, but I have friends that are, you know, that before they were airline pilots had 10,000 hours. Now they have 30, 40,000 hours. Okay, well, you know, depends on the yardstick you're measuring yourself against everyone else with. And there's nothing worse than a doctor with a pilot's license. Why? They're the most accident prone, primarily because a doctor who's gone through years and years of school thinks he's extremely competent and he thinks he's competent in other things. And typically doctors don't get out enough to practice. So we consider them semi-dangerous. But as an entire group? In a sail, in an airplane, yeah. If they don't fly enough. Are they a big demographic who choose to go into? Well, yeah, because they have the money and they don't have a lot of time. So flying around is something they're interested in. Yeah. I prefer the group that I always liked is I like the Vietnam. The Vets? Yeah, they were great pilots. Because they know how to fly. Yeah. We perpetrated a hoax on all of lower New York state for years, actually. A hoax, sorry, you have to explain yourself now. A legal hoax. Oh goodness gracious me, what'd you do? Well, I was involved, I should say, a bunch of pilots, especially Vietnam pilots, would take up their single-seaters or two-seaters or three or four-seaters. And they were putting lights on the landing gear and on the bottom of the airplane and the wings. And they put these spotlights and they would fly in formation at 5,000 feet and they'd turn all the spotlights on. So it looked like an alien craft? Yes. And the interesting thing about people at night is you have no depth perception. You don't know that, but you don't. So we would get reports from White Plains and then Stormville, New York, where, oh, they were hovering and then suddenly they're in White Plains. Well, they were 5,000 feet and you could see them from both places. The FAA came in, I remember because I was flying in ultra light and I cut them off on their approach to the airport. I didn't get in trouble for that, I was surprised, but they were all North Korean, I mean, Korean war pilots. In those days, if you were part of the FAA, you were a pilot typically. Now it's a lot of pencil pushers, but in those days, they came in, they interviewed the pilots, they laughed, got back into their airplane and flew back to Massachusetts. And they said, you're not doing anything wrong and we're not gonna tell on you. That's hysterical. That's quite the hoax. It was quite the hoax, I was actually interviewed for it. That's kind of impressive. I might use your story. You watch out, I might have told some people about that. I was on the cover of Discover Magazine. The back of me and I wouldn't let them take the front of me. And they still said it was ultra lights and I said, no, we can't fly at night. It's not ultra lights. What are they, oh, what was it? It was airplanes, real airplanes. But to this day, if you look it up, you'll see that people still believe it was UFOs. Well, I'll have to, I'm looking it up now. Oh, sure. Totally checking that one out, so. So if you, I mean, and just really quickly too, so you're involved, you have a playing company. How did you start getting involved in the music industry in Vermont? Okay, so at the time, I was in very good shape. I'm probably 40 something pounds lighter than I am right now. And my wife and I were doing a lot of cycling. I was doing a lot of weight training. I was buff, actually. And my wife has been always wanting to sing, but she was always afraid. I knew my wife, that's kind of an unusual thing because she's not afraid of anything. But apparently she had stage fright for years. In the beginning, before about the time we were married, there were people that heard her voice and wanted her to do backup singing and things, but she said, no, which was good for me. But one day we were at a friend's house and we were having dinner and he had a garage band. He said, why don't you come out and play? And she said, okay. And she did that. And then there was a blues jam in Richmond. Used to be one at, I can't remember the bakery, but. On the rise? On the rise, thank you. You remember it. I grew up with them, so. Okay, so she was invited up. She heard that she was singing. She sang one song, sat down and cried for like 10 minutes. And then slowly, but surely, she started out with a garage band and then she got invited to another band called Spider Roulette, which she played with for a couple of years. And then decided to go solo. And she asked me to book her. And I said, well, hun, I'll do it for you, because I love you, but I'm going to the dark side if I start selling again. And that's what I think of it. When you're selling, you're on the dark side. Some people have a natural neck. I unfortunately do, and that's the problem. But it's a different personality than when I'm relaxed and. That's how it started. So I started booking her and people saw my success and they started asking me to book them. And a lot of solo artists would ask me to book them. And I said, well, I'll book you. I'm not going to charge you, because what am I going to make in this day and age? You're lucky to make $100 for a gig in a journeyman capacity. I'll take a, you can buy me a beer. Well, I got celiac disease, so I couldn't have the beer either. But I started booking a few people just to help them. I've booked a few bands here and there. I've worked with Dave Keller a little bit. I've always helped him. I've worked with the Woe Doggies. I've worked with Starline Rhythm Boys. For a little while, I like booking my wife, but I- When did this all start? Out of curiosity, timeline wise. So my wife, I'm trying to remember, she's been doing it about 11 years now, so. This is recent. Recent, yeah. Wow. So you really got involved in the music industry recently. Yeah, that's my personality. I make friends everywhere I go, or enemies, but usually friends. Frontemies? Frontemies, yeah. And so then I started getting more, she had various reiterations. And I said, well, as long as I'm doing this, I should probably, I'd like to do talent buying instead of booking. And so I offer that service to different venues. Okay, so to our audience who might not be aware of what talent buying is, how would you describe that? Okay, so booking is selling, talent buying is buying. So if you're selling, it's like my wife, I'm going to venues and say, you should have her. That's selling the service, okay. Talent buying is the opposite. I'm gonna say, okay, you're a great musician. I'm gonna book you for these dates. That's buying the talent. Okay. Most people call it just booking, but the truth is one's booking, one's talent buying. So there is a nomenclature difference between the two? Yeah, it would be like a salesman on the floor of Macy's versus the talent buyer. I mean, the buyer that buys the- That's like, okay, we're doing Jordash. Right, exactly. So that's the difference. Yeah, yeah, that's a significant difference. People like me much, they have to like me much more as a buyer than a seller. Because they have to like what you're selling, right? Yeah, and I average this time of year, three or four phone calls a day, just people wanting. That's great, so it's busy. Yeah, I mean, I can only book so many, but it's usually people that know I'm gonna book them. You know, I mean, I guess that's the other thing too. And as people watch this, I think it's important to think about is, you know, I think some of, I've heard, you know, in around town and from musicians and stuff that's sometimes the hardest part of being a musician is getting booked gigs and getting out there and doing publicity and getting a mark in the music scene. Do you have advice for them? Well, it's really difficult to, I talk to people about this all the time. First of all, you need to have some music and these days it has to be a video. Assume the buyer has the attention span of a goldfish. So you wanna assume that they're not gonna look at anything. So long intros are an out, don't do that. I see a lot of people, they have these nice long intros and then the heavy duty part of the music starts. They eliminate the intro, start out with heavy duty because this person is gonna listen to it for 20, 30 seconds and make up their mind. So that's number one. Number two is you have to be, you have to kind of, as far as approaching the venue, you have to kind of decide how, there's a fine line between being a pest and being getting in the door. Unfortunately, most venues don't have what I would call qualified buyers. I always say that they find the bartender that's the laziest and they find that they gotta do something with that person. So they make them the talent buyer. It's funny in this day and age, we have emails and texts and we have Facebook messages and actually the phone. And it's the least amount of communication now. People just ignore everything. Really? Yeah, I find the only way to get a talent buyer to catch them in the right mood at the right time and personally is better. And I usually recommend if you're a musician and you're a serious musician, you're probably not a great seller. Well, we talk about this a lot in the art world. Some of the best artists are the worst publicity, PR, marketing people. And then some of the most successful artists are just really good at marketing and advertising. They're not necessarily the best artists. But they're just not the best artists. It's like you can just go fall back on something like, well, Van Gogh, I mean, there's a classic example. He died penniless, but he was a genius. And unfortunately they don't go hand in hand. No, and artists are very much like that. Plus, it's incredibly soul-sucking to have some unqualified youngster. I'm old and I'm gonna be like that. Say to me, not to me, but to anyone that I don't think your music is. I don't like your music or it doesn't fit or something like that. And I can certainly take that because I'm a salesman. I take it personally, but I go to over it. Musician, it's just hard on them. And so I recommend, one of my biggest recommendations to musicians is don't book yourself. Find a family member or find someone who's a salesman. It could be your wife, could be your girlfriend, could be your cousin or your uncle or your niece or whatever that can actually deal with it and let them do it and you'll be much more successful. Because it kinda protects you, it creates that buffer. And they're gonna be more dedicated to it and they're gonna say things that you may or may not be willing to say. And it's their opinion, they might not necessarily know your family. And you're like, oh, but I really love them and it's amazing what somebody who's not part of the band telling you that will do for the sales strategy. Exactly. Of getting it out there. That's an interesting point. But also get a video that works. And these days, it's not hard to make one. Just don't make it with an iPhone. Well, actually iPhones, strangely enough, are kind of okay, but don't, I see a lot of videos with people that are bands and it's in the middle of a live performance and somebody's taking a video and all you hear is the crowd and the sound sounds like it's talking through like this. I'm going, that's not gonna promote your music. Sounds like it's through a water slide. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do a nice video and... Make sure you get audio out on whatever recording you're... I mean, if you're playing live, get a out channel so you can actually get the proper mixing of your music. Well, the proper mix is when... It sounds so much better. I do some video recording for people and I tell them, I don't like, I know you want me to do it live, I'm not crazy, I think they're better in the studio. I know you don't have the energy quite, but it's just better sound and I record off a board multi-track. So they're coming into the board, it's coming into my computer in separate tracks and it's not quite what you do in a recording studio, but it's close enough. Well, that's, I mean, and that's another thought too, is like, you know, not only is it getting the bookings out there, you know, I mean, what do you see as far as like the recording industry right now in Vermont? Well, there's a lot of small studios. Yeah, there are. Some of them are quite good and some of them are okay. But it's amazing. I feel like in the last 10 years there's been, and maybe that's the technology, making it more available for people. Well, I mean, I have a home recording studio. I mean, it's not, it's basically my living room and it works because it's dead and it's good enough. Yep. But yeah, there's a lot of new players, mostly digital recording. Yep, yeah. People are still trying to use the old analog for the sound, but there's such a high failure rate with the older equipment that that gets to be problematic. Yeah, you start getting that signal noise. Well, it's not just a signal noise, it's just like, you know, you know, tube stale and you're in the middle of a recording session. I didn't know that this particular piece went down and so you've gone through all this work and next thing you know, you're gonna wait two months to get another tube. Yeah, vacuum tube and you have to find out nasty because they don't make them anymore. Well, especially since most of the vacuum tubes are made in Russia. Really? Yeah. And they're far superior, by the way, to transistors. So you're on the board of the Vermont Blue Society. Yes. And I thought you should take a little moment to promote the Vermont Blue Society. What do you guys do? How did it start? If anybody's interested in the Vermont Blue Society, how would they get involved or find out more information? Well, first of all, that part's easy. You go to vermontbluesociety.org and there's our website. Okay. We have a Facebook page, Vermont Blue Society, which I maintain mostly. It started with some founding members. Dennis Willmont was one of them, Sandy Combs was another. That Charlie Frazier, you might know that name. They were the founding members and they wanted to have a club that really promotes blues. And so our goal is to promote the local talent to bring in, to have some events. We have our annual meeting. We have, you think I would remember the name of it, but it's... Some lovely events. You just had one at my facility two weeks ago. People love that event, by the way. It was wonderful. We bring in some local people. We bring in some people from out of town and we do the, there's National Blues Society, which we're a branch of, I guess you would call it. And each year they have a, we run a competition and the winners, it's two categories. One is a solo duet and then anything up from there. And the winners go to Memphis and they compete in the national competition. That's so cool. It's a great experience. Typically, we send them and then we start raising money to get them there, but it's... That's wonderful. It's nice to know that there's that grassroots, you know, uplifting like people in blues in Vermont because it is between bluegrass and blues, it's kind of an indicative music in Vermont. There's a lot of blues in Vermont. Yes, and a lot of bluegrass. Yeah, and a lot of bluegrass, it's real. Really quickly, I did want to kind of segue, I know we're running out of time and how we know each other is doing the Main Street Landing Thursday Night Music Series, which is every Thursday night on the back patio of Union Station, which is directly above the train station on the Burlington Waterfront. We do a Thursday series starting at five o'clock, all summer long. And part of the reason why I exist is because Sal is so remarkable at booking our bands for us. Which has been a really fun collaboration. Yes, I've enjoyed it. But let's talk about that patio for a minute. Okay. Sometimes I want to call it the secret garden because it's on the main floor from the front and it's on the second floor from the bottom. It's kind of a split level. If you walk around the back, there's this really cool half round cobblestone patio that is just the perfect place. And I wish more people knew where it was. Well, it sounds like Sal just gave you instructions. Yeah. So that should help tremendously. Just walk around the back of the building and it's right there. You'll hear music. You'll be hearing music on Thursday evenings all summer long back there. We had some great, I got Carubo, by the way. You did? All right, cool. What other bands we got going on this summer? We have Blues Over Easy, which is kind of a super group with Paul Asbell and Jeff Salisbury. Clyde Statz. We have, I'm trying to remember the names. We have the Ray Vega Band. We have Blues for Breakfast. Yeah. That's a good example. It's a good example of what we're doing. It's going to be fun. Yeah. It's going to be really exciting. So come check that out this summer. Very good idea. So I wanted to, I have this interesting. I got a great list of questions from your wife. Oh. Before I interviewed you. And I'm really curious, what are the five Fs? Oh, well. Food fishing, flying, something, and then, what are- Phenagling. Phenagling. Well, the one that you said something is a four letter word that starts with F. Oh, goodness. Well, we can't do that until- Yeah. But I can say- Wow, honey. Well, I made that list when I was- That's adorable. In my 20s. Oh, wow. Really? So this has been like an ongoing thing. Well, I love fishing. I love flying. Okay. I love food. Food. I love- Well, I mean, I'm a male. Why wouldn't I love the other one? And Phenagling is what I do. Phenagling is the term for- You are a master Phenagler. Right. I would actually say, you know, maybe that should be like your title, master Phenagler. People have called me that more than I want to. More than you care to address? Yes. That's pretty cool. So fishing, I mean, maybe that's another reason why I ended up in Vermont. Oh, I love fishing. It's a great place for it. Yeah. I haven't fished a lot in the last few years, but actually my favorite place in Vermont is the Upper Huntington. I just love where the three pools are, where people- Yeah, triple buckets. Yeah. Just above that. You know, I'm from Huntington. That's why I said, I figured you knew it. I know it a little bit. Yeah. So I love just north of that, like as you go past the pools. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. And now, you know, we actually have names for those. So, you know, someday we'll have to do a tour. So after triple buckets is there's Sandy Beach and then there's Pebble Beach. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's names for all of those spaces. And I've been fishing there since I was in my 20s. That's wild. Yeah. And I've always loved- I mean, there's something about a little trout stream, a little brook trout stream that's just wonderful. That's super cool. Yeah. So you know, I was, you know, somebody's watching this, right? And they're trying to start a band in Vermont or in Burlington. What would your advice be for them as they were trying to get their name out and trying to book gigs and break into the scene that we have locally? Well, that's always a tough one. But here's the best, my best advice is get very practiced. Don't mess around with that. Make your, instead of a performance, well, instead of playing, make it a performance. This is an issue I have with a lot of people. A lot of people say, okay, I've got my set list. I'm going to play 20 songs. And that's it. No. The people that are very successful, like Chad Hollister, for example, is a good one. He's a showman. And so you need someone to relate to the audience, to make it a little special, do a few things that make it, you know, first have the musicianship. You have to have that. But make it a little special so that you're doing something different, maybe something funny, maybe something exciting in the middle of that performance. And if you go to some of the national performances, that's exactly, well, we won't get into how far that's gone. But you'll see that. And I think that makes a difference. Yeah. And try not to take too many free gigs, because you will always be branded with that. So once you go... Being too cheap. Well, spoken like a true booking agent. Once you take a free gig, it's all downhill from there? Is that the... Well, you might take a few... I always say, if you need free gigs you want to play, try to get charity gigs, because at least you're getting real exposure. But doing something for food or drink, they're just never going to book you for more. It's just the way it works. Well, you're also giving your art for free, and we all know that that's a slippery slope. Yes. Because it's hard to charge more when you're already giving something away for free. And I've known several... I consider successful artists now that are having a hard time moving up, because they've got the reputation of giving it away. Even though they're really well known and they're doing albums that are selling and things like that, they just can't quite move the dial very much. So that almost in some ways creates like a glass ceiling, some sort of a way that you can't grow. And my wife has done a ridiculous amount of gigs in a year. And when is your wife's name? Cooey. See? We need to know that. So when you see Cooey... Cooey. And I'm looking at your website... Yeah, everybody says Cooly Coo-Dee, Coo-Me, Coo-Kee. It's all those without that consonant. Coo-Kee without a K, Coo-Loo without an L. And if you go to that website, you can find out where she's playing, because she plays all over the state. Yeah. Well, I'd go to the Facebook page, because I haven't been very good with the website lately. Oh, thank you for the story. I'm just admitting it. Yeah, at least you're honest. Yeah. Well, Sal, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming here. Thank you guys so much for joining us this month. Thank you. And I'll see you right back here next month. Take care.