Playing outdoors can be a lot of fun, especially if it’s on a big stage to a large crowd. Summer outdoor gigs have a warm vibe that’s great to be part of. But playing outside can also offer some of the toughest challenges you’ll ever face as a gigging musician.
What’s the mental image you get when you think of outdoor concerts? Open spaces, communal gatherings, mellow times, the excitement of big crowds grooving to songs that everyone loves. I have a feeling you won’t be thinking of passing out from heat stroke, or struggling to form chords because your hands are painfully numb from the cold. Yet these and many other difficult situations are not uncommon when you’re performing into the great wide open.
The four most intense adverse environmental conditions to encounter are heat, cold, rain, and wind – sometimes in combination.
When it’s hot, rule number one is to stay hydrated. Drink lots of water, seltzer, Gatorade, or a similar drink. I would not recommend caffeinated energy drinks. Especially, don’t drink alcohol, which has a dehydrating effect, aside from the fact that you’ll get more buzzed from drinking while hot and sweating. Even if you think you’ve got things under control, your body is going to be fighting against the heat, and it needs water to keep an equilibrium. If you drink beer during the set and feel like crap later, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Be aware of the balance your body wants.
Protect yourself from the sun! Once our band played the Port Palooza festival in Port Jefferson, New York, where the 90-plus-degree sun was blasting directly onto the stage. There was no escape from it. Our singer/instrumentalist was overcome by heat stroke about 20 minutes into the set. She almost passed out on stage. She had to stop. And it was in the middle of a live radio broadcast. "I knew something was wrong and started guzzling water after each song. Then I poured a bottle of water on my head right before starting to collapse." She told the bass player she was having a problem, and our bassist helped her off the stage.
The remaining band members soldiered on for a minute or two with a Spinal Tap-plays-jazz improv but it soon became clear that our singer was in trouble and we quickly cut things short. Since it was a big festival, thankfully EMTs were on hand. Our singer recovered, but it took a while. Our singer told me, "After about 10 minutes I was feeling much better but I really don't have any recollection of how I got off the stage." The rest of the set and radio broadcast? Forget it.
Since then, we've paid much more attention to protecting ourselves from the hot sun, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Many musicians bring a portable folding awning to outdoor gigs. You can get a 10 x 10 pop up canopy starting at about $60.
Playing under a collapsible tent may not be the most glamorous setting, but you'll be glad to be there when the rain starts pouring or the 95-degree sun blazes. Unidentified duo at the Gallery North Outdoor Art Show and Music Festival, September 20, 2024.
This might seem obvious but in the heat of battle, things get forgotten – if you use sunscreen, don’t forget to wash your hands afterward! Otherwise, your guitar or bass neck or keyboard will become a sticky unplayable mess.
Sunglasses can be your friend. You will find out why they’re called sunglasses.
Oh yeah, if you rely on an iPad and the sun is shining on it, forget it. You’d better bring paper music, as the iPad screen will be washed out and unusable. The same goes for pedal boards and tuners – you won’t be able to see the lights, or the indicator on your tuner.
An ideal outdoor performance setup: Eliana Blanchard aka Element at Badfins Food + Brew, Clearwater Beach, Florida, February 2025. The covered space provides protection from the...elements...while allowing outdoor patrons to enjoy her excellent music.
With summer come bugs. Some of us attract bugs more than others – I’ll refrain from making drummer jokes here – some people have body chemistry that really is more appealing to flying insects. It can be more than a distraction when playing live. I once had a bee hover around my left hand, and I’m sure the audience was wondering why I was constantly taking my hand off the neck and flicking my arm instead of playing the song. When the sun goes down the bugs come out, and getting bitten by mosquitoes and other critters can be anything from distracting to maddening. But that's nothing compared to an entomological encounter that happened in June 2006. More later...it's the only story that could rightfully conclude this article...
Also, keep in mind that bug spray can be even more damaging to nitro finishes than sunscreen. I know a musician’s instrument is an extension of their personality, but when playing in the heat, one might want to choose an axe whose main attribute is durability. Modern polyester and polyurethane finishes are extremely tough. Also, when playing in hot and humid environments, the back of a guitar or bass neck can get really sticky. I like to keep a spray-on lubricant called Finger Ease on hand, but guitar polish and a cloth will work to keep a neck slick during a high-humidity set. One time at a Mattituck Strawberry Festival, located on the North Fork of Long Island, my neck felt like glue. In desperation with nothing else at hand I poured water over the neck of my guitar and wiped it down just to make it playable. It was a poly-finished neck, so no harm done. And yes, I had brought that particular guitar to the gig knowing that humidity would be an issue.
At the other temperature extreme is playing in the cold. It can be uncomfortable when temperatures are less than around 55, extremely difficult when it gets below 50, and absolute torture when it plummets below that. Never mind the fact that you’ll feel chilled throughout your body – your hands can get uncomfortably numb and painful to the point where it becomes physically impossible to play properly. When this happens, you will not be able to play those fancy fast runs or even certain chords and will have to adapt and simplify on the fly. My friend George Cintron once played a holiday gig with Enrique Iglesias in 38 degree weather. On national television. There were space heaters but he told me they were mostly ineffective. When I asked him how the gig was, he said, “painful.”
When booking an outdoor gig in the early spring or fall, unless you’re in a temperate climate, be aware that the playing conditions may get cold, especially if near the water. Sometimes the cold can sneak up on you, like when you start a gig in the early afternoon and it doesn’t end until later in the day or evening and the temps drop precipitously. Early-morning farmers’ market gigs and the like can be much colder than later in the day. (You mean you haven’t played a 9 a.m. gig outdoors in New York in late October?)
Your on-stage attire then becomes more a consideration of comfort than looking cool. Under these conditions, no one in the audience – if you have one – is going to be deducting style points. Some musicians wear gloves with the fingers cut out, but personally, I’ve never been able to play with those on.
The cold will be exacerbated if it’s cloudy or windy. If you use sheet music or cheat sheets, bring clips to secure the pages. At a windy farmers’ market gig last summer, our duo would have been torpedoed by the pages in our books flapping in the wind if not for our friend, who played before us who gave us some binder clips. I attended a concert by Genesis tribute band Seconds Out and a few minutes into the set, the keyboard player’s cheat sheet for his synth settings went flying into the air. I ran after it, but it landed behind a fence. He managed to get through the gig, at a high stress level and with some fudging. The wind can also tangle up long dresses, blow hats off or cause other wardrobe mayhem. Windscreens on mics are invaluable when it feels like you’re in that scene from The Wizard of Oz.
One sheet to the wind: Genesis tribute band Seconds Out doing a soundcheck at the John Philip Sousa Memorial Bandshell in Sunset Park, Port Washington, NY, July 2024. The bandshell didn't prevent a gust from blowing the keyboard player's cheat sheet away when they went on.
Make sure your instruments are secure on their stands! I watched a friend’s beautiful Heritage hollow body guitar get blown off a stand by a wind gust as we were playing a song – and we gaped in horror as it landed on the headstock, which snapped right off.
Sometimes it will get so cold that you simply cannot play, like the time at the Port Jefferson Harvest Fest when the clouds rolled in and the wind from the harbor got severe. The promoter told us to stop if we couldn’t play any longer. We couldn’t play any longer. We stopped.
Rain can be anywhere from tough to brutal to deal with, aside from the fact that it will cut your audience down to almost nothing. Although many venues will have you under a tent or enclosed stage, some will not. The easy way out is when the gig gets cancelled for a rainout. The hard thing to deal with is when the gig is rain or shine. Even if the stage is covered, your gear will get wet during load in and load out, and if there’s a strong wind, you will get wet and water will blow onto your gear. If it’s not during the height of the summer, you will get cold as well. If you forgot to bring a change of clothes, you will be playing in wet clothes, which is really, really, really uncomfortable.
This was the stage after the rain and before our band went on at a car show in Southampton in August, 2024. We wiped it down with whatever towels and blankets we could find and made it through the gig.
And yeah, you’ll be plugged in, and we all know what a festive combination water and electricity make. I’ve done gigs where the rain stopped but the stage was wet, and to say it didn’t inspire confidence would be an understatement. In professional situations, you’ll have, well, professionals who will make the call as to whether it’s safe to play the gig. But in most local situations it’ll be the band who has to decide. Is soldiering on worth the risk of equipment damage or electrocution? It’s often not a rhetorical question. (I think most of us would agree that the greatest outdoor performance ever in the rain was Prince at the 2007 Super Bowl.)
I’ve mentioned this before, but the overall sound of the band and your amp in particular will be very different than when playing indoors. The sound doesn’t reflect, and your amp will be much lower in volume. A lot of the sound of the other musicians will get lost in the open air. If you don’t have a sound person to do your mix, have one of the musicians go out in front of the band while playing a song, and listen and suggest adjustments until the balance and overall volume are OK. If you do have the luxury of a sound tech (or techs), trust them to handle the mix, and be aware that you’re going to hear as much or more of your amp sound though the stage monitors as via the amp. It takes some getting used to at first, but if you have a great onstage mix, there’s really nothing like it.
When playing gigs at a local level, don’t assume the lighting will be adequate. At the Montauk Music Festival last year, our band was the last act of the night. The band before us was running late and taking their sweet unprofessional time about getting off the stage (and being completely inconsiderate dorks about it; I’d shame them here but I deservedly forgot their name). As a result, we went on when it was completely dark and there was no lighting whatsoever on the stage. We literally couldn’t see our instruments. Happily, an astute waitress gathered some battery-powered LED lights from the tables and placed them on the stage, which got us through the gig. We were told that people were out there enjoying us – but we couldn’t see them.
Strung out: if our band hadn't brought these lights to this August 2024 car show gig, we would literally have been playing in the dark and like the lights, screwed.
But the following story may be the ultimate outdoor gig nightmare. (Thanks to those on The Buck Zone Facebook page who provided eyewitness and other accounts.) On June 30, 2006, Blue Öyster Cult played in Trempealeau, Wisconsin, on the banks of the Mississippi River. A swarm of mayflies hatched that night, an annual occurrence, midway through the band's set. The mayflies were attracted to the stage lights. By the time the set was nearing its end, lead guitarist Buck Dharma had a towel over his head and bugs were flying into singer/guitarist Eric Bloom's mouth. BOC had to cut their set short. As Bloom noted, the dead bugs on the floor were so thick it felt like he was skating on ice. "The grossest part was getting the dead bugs out of my stage shoes in the hotel bathroom sink."
The swarm was so big it was picked up by radar. One witness to the scene said that snowplows had to clear the mayflies off the roads the next morning.
Imagine encountering this at a gig! Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Adolson 13.
When playing outdoors, as in any gig situation, the main thing to keep in mind is to be as prepared as possible. Or try to be. I don't know any bands who carry a radar system.
Header image: my friend Ray playing on a very windy day at Northport harbor, Northport, NY, October 19, 2024. If it weren't for his stash of binder clips, his music would have been blown away; same for our duo that followed him.
