Working on Cruise Ships as a Musician

This summer 2004, I've had the opportunity to work on a cruise ship (Summit from the Celebrity line). Now that I'm back on land and living a normal life again, I can write about it, having stepped back from my experiences.

For a guy that had never traveled to "far away lands" before, it was the experience of a life time. My first night and first show, I was terrified. But it was one of those good "terrifications" cause from then on, I was going to grow as a musician and a human being. I found myself on stage with music I had never seen before. There were purple and green lights above my head just to add to the distraction and stress. Now, I consider myself an introvert to a large degree, which means from a physiological point of view that I am easily excitable (perhaps in all senses of the word!). I may appear calm, but inside it's a whole different world. So my first week was tough. But I still managed to go have a few beers with my band leader down in the crew bar until 3am (which would have been 6am in Montreal due to the time difference) on my first night.

The crew bar. That was for me another source of unneeded stress. I don't like bars. But I like people. So I made a few sacrifices and recked my ear drums some more by spending a minimum of my time in the crew bar screaming over the loudest speakers from hell to try to talk to someone. Obviously, I don't like loud noise. Luckily some of my best friends also didn't like the noisy and smoky crew bar so we hung out in the staff bar most of the time. The staff bar was a relatively healthier environment. So by the end of the week, my back and neck muscles were fully twisted and ready to rip inside my skin. But things got better pretty quickly.

The shows. Doing 4 production shows per week was pretty intense for me. But I soon found out how cheezy music can really get. If there is any word to describe the shows it would be fake. Its all about the illusion of greatness. I enjoyed seeing this psychological trickery in action from behind the sceenes. It's funny how much bubble gum music you can feed an audience and they just chew it right up without choking or vomitting. The public ear is oblivious to true sonic pleasures. It is so unrefined that it makes me angry at our capitalist culture. The media has created such watered down music that people nowadays are seldom exposed to real art. (That's a whole other topic I could say lots about). So you have to bang things into their ears with lots of distortion and screams. After a few months my fingers had become callous because I had been banging at ff constantly. We had only one dynamic as a band all summer and that was forte. To top it off, most sound technicians didn't know what they were doing. I have never heard a violin screech so much into speakers!! A bad violinist with a bad sound man is one of the most painful combinations. I'm not saying that all contemporary music that has air time is bad music. But most of it is limited in its artistic expression. Consequently, the music on the ship reflected this phenomenon of lack of true expression. (But on the other hand the dancers were great!) And as musicians being aware of this phenomenon , we made our own fun (especially the brass section) on stage and especially at rehearsals.

But there were lots of great things hiden within the infernal nature of cruise ship entertainment. I did grow as a musician. For me, playing with a band (a pretty damn good one), has given me the chance to become more confident as a musician. It also gave me the chance to play with just my right hand when I felt like it. It essentially taught me not to care so much about what came out of me when I played. And its odd how much that actually improves improvised accompaniements.

But what is most memorable is all the good times I spent with friends after the shows. That, to me was the most satisfying part of being on a cruise. Its never the jobs themselves that bring the most satisfaction; its the people you work with. Its those subtle insignificant moments you share with friends that count. Playing Phase 10 for example. We had alot of good laughs around this game. Or getting drinks for people and then receiving drinks from people. Its not the drinkingthat matters; its who you get it from, hehe! This kind of sharing element is important to me. When you are connected to human beings all is well, no matter how much life conditions around suck. Though it happens life conditions weren't all that bad either on the ship (except for the redundant employee buffet meals and the no-privacy miniature rooms we had to share).

As an artist, I realize that the cruise ship industry will not fullfil me musically. It is not a musical job I will do forever. I see it as giving my musical services rather than my artistic expression. Although I do give my fullest artistic expression, the music arrangements themselves often don't allow for much. But I would do more contracts for the life experience it gives. It is not really for music that I like the ships. Its not even for the money or the lack of true responsibilities (although that is part of the equation). It is for the traveling and meeting of new friends, and experiencing things that maybe not so many people get to experience. For that I am grateful and I won't take it for granted. And thus, I head for the carribeans in January...