A lot of bands like to get an audience involved and maybe get one or two of them up on the stage from time to time when they play - I know we do.
As I've written about elsewhere, the audience generally love this, particularly if the "additional band member" has what you might call strong visual appeal while they shout some backing vocals or bash away on a tambourine.
The venue management are usually pretty keen on this kind of involvement, as long as it doesn’t descend into a free for all.
Sometimes if you have to coax a person up onto the stage you can tell they don’t feel comfortable while they’re up there. You’ll need to whisper reassurances to them if this is the case. Other times some customers can be only too at home up on there with you.
We’ve had some pretty close shaves with guys falling over and almost into our gear but last weekend was a first for us.
We invited a girl up so we could sing a ballad to/at her. She didn’t stay there long. She clearly found the attention hard to bear. We carried the song on for a minute or so before another guest arrived up uninvited. She danced around and tried to sing a little which was met with great approval from the (mostly male) bar audience.
At the end of the number I thanked her for her "input" and she left.
Fast forward to the end of the night when she appeared back up again (uninvited) for the first of our 3 encore numbers and stayed there right through to the bitter end.
In these circumstances generally, after one song one of us would whisper to our "guest" that they’d probably better leave the stage in case the management started to object. This normally does the trick. In this case though, we suggested she confine her vocals to singing backing with me when I came in and that she concentrate on her dancing.
Seemed to go down a treat all round. Sometimes you just have to roll with these things I suppose....
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