Daily Loaf

Jobsite Theater officially turned 10 years old last month, which we celebrated with Jobsite’s Rockin’ 10^th Birthday Party at New World Brewery.

The anniversary got me thinking.

At the very beginning, this company was an experiment I was willing to go along with for a year. Considering my initial move back to Tampa was supposed to be to get my head straight after too many years of continuous schooling, it didn’t seem such a heavy commitment. The end of that year saw Jobsite having its greatest success to date in our original mounting of The History of the Devil, it saw the door fly wide open for us to work regularly at TBPAC, donors and sponsors started falling into place and on a personal front I’d begun a relationship with a pretty cool chick who actually put up with me and wasn’t batshit crazy.

It’s been year to year since. How are we doing? Still moving forward? Am I settling? The end of the year analysis has always pointed to things being in good, if not always magically fantastic, shape.

I still consider myself lucky to be here at all, a blue-collar kid from Jacksonville whose cultural upbringing consisted of funny car races, fish fries and turkey shoots. Honored that this thing has become something durable, dependable and necessary. Blessed to have so many people on both sides of the curtain who care enough to give, collaborate and make time to spend with us.

So – what have I learned in 10 years? Let me see if I can make a list. 10 for 10.

• Don’t bring a bottle of whiskey to a meeting. You won’t get anything accomplished and someone’s going to punch someone else in the face.

• Best intentions aside, you can’t keep anything running as a pure democratic collective. Somebody actually needs to be in charge from time to time, open enough to listen to those surrounding them and reasonable enough to know when to yield to the will of the majority.

• Know who you are. Write a manifesto on bar napkins, videotape your coterie’s clandestine meetings, draw up a business plan, define your mission. This helps you stay focused, and is something to point back to when you start to argue or feel lost.

• You’re never going to raise enough money. Ever. The minute you think you have enough money, fate will laugh dead in your face. Find someone who loves chasing money, then clone them as many times as possible.

• If you don’t consider yourself a promoter, and if you can’t stay at it relentlessly – find someone who will. Buy them off with pizzas, pints, BBQ – whatever it takes. You need to stay in people’s faces 24/7.

• You can’t take no for an answer. We’d never have gotten off the ground if we just gave up every time we got shot down. We still get shot down – over the rights to shows, over sponsorships, over season tickets, over asking our friends to show up to stuff. Suck it up and keep at it.

• Get out of your sphere more often, it will pay off. We’ve worked with close to a dozen bands, countless visual artists, media parties, special events, we’ve packed up and played other cities. Supporting the arts doesn’t mean just supporting your art. There’s no coincidence now we have painters, musicians, bartenders, media-types etc that we count as regulars.

• Don’t believe the hype. Just because something becomes a popular buzzword doesn’t mean anything’s actually going to change for you. “Creative classers,” “the culturally curious,” “City of the Arts” – these things look great on press releases and help sell book and speaking tours, but don’t be fooled that these people are actually interested in doing anything about anything. Go about your business and do your thing – there’s no savior coming.

• Be yourself. Too many people get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses or what the big trend is coming out of some other big city. You need to be in the know, sure, but that doesn’t mean you should drop everything you’re doing and copycat. Remember how you defined yourself? Are you staying true to that, evolving or just doing it because you don’t want to feel left out? Not every fad is a good idea. Remember those ponchos Jennifer Aniston wore? They sucked, but every girl I know ended up wearing them for a month anyway.

• Surround yourself with good people, and be good to them. We’re not in the position to pay anyone enough to be treated like crap, but even if we were it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. Jobsite works because it’s mightier than any individual. Jobsite is strong because we’re several dozen reeds bundled together and impossible to break over a knee. When times might get tough, I know we’ll come together. I can count on that, because we always try to do our best for people.

I’m sure there’s more, but I said I’d stick to 10.

I’m really looking forward to 10 more years in Tampa and beyond. I still believe this place is capable of great things.

Oh, and thanks to CreLo’s David Warner for asking me to come on board and contribute to this blog. Now I have one more place to struggle to keep up content. I was told I’m free to write about Jobsite, the arts community, my addiction to Rock Band, new and interesting recipes (side note: don’t ever cheap out and replace pancetta with bacon ever again, Garcia) -whatever I like.

Nifty. I look forward to it.

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