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screencap from @baltshowplace
It is that time of the year again.
The “last show for a while” local band shows have happened, the “in town for the holidays” one-off shows are beginning to be promoted, the Holiday Mart Craft blitz has begun… ’tis the season!
And one thing remains iron-clad.
No one will have a show on Thanksgiving.
They will have shows any other night of the year, barring Christmas eve/day. They will hook up a radiator in a park, play in a field, rock out in a basement, roll the dice on a Monday night show… but no one messes with the fourth Thursday in November in the United States of America. It is almost like there was an act of Congress!
Is it out of respect for the holiday? No, definitely not. The holiday probably gives others in the musician’s lives the agency and temerity to push them to return home via offers of a free meal and a plane ticket. Money on the table, so to speak, despite the travel headaches involved. It could be argued that the “Thanksgiving truce” AKA “no shows on this day” holds more like the reason public schools have off for certain holidays; not in observance, but because statistically the majority of their student body would be absent. A bit clinical, but more exact.
Is it because there is a general prohibition on entertainment on that day? No, definitely not. After years of not having it in my family, some have joined that love sports. They spend the day of Thanksgiving with us but away from us, glued to the television, watching various games or preparing to attend local vaunted matches. Or, they may be tuned in that morning to the big parade in New York City. Will someone organize some kind of “Turkey Shoot Mega-Show” one of these days, sensing the opportunity? Not so far.
Is it because it is a day off for bars and venues and record stores, hey, they will take it? I hope so. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving in one of the busiest bar nights of the year. My friends who run record stores will spend the holiday closed, sure, but stocking up for the “Record Store Day” crowds. It is a pause, hard for those of us without a place to go, but still a needed one in a frenzied season.
For now, the “Thanksgiving truce” holds. Fewer and fewer folks cook. People are more isolated than they have ever been before. The generation that is springing for those plane tickets is passing on and I don’t see us Gen’Xers doing the same thing (we literally don’t have the saved money to spend due to wage stagnation that began in 1973). Who will be the one that breaks the truce? Time will tell. This is America, after all. We never stop, even in the underground, and one turkey don’t stop no show.
IG: @kim_tabara
Bluesky: @timkabara.bsky.social
