Well done, dude! In honor of your first live performance, I will tell you the drool story…
When I was a bit of a hardcore bluegrass guitar player, I’d go to a regular Tuesday night jam. Bluegrass, like jazz, has a lot of standards. Everybody knew the tunes, and the guy who led the jams would give you the nod when it was your turn to take a solo, usually 16 bars or so. I was content to keep rhythm for most of it, but I could handle some of the songs when my turn came up.
There was one song that always gave me trouble, Blackberry Blossom. No matter how often I practiced it at home, I could never get it right in front of people, so I would always shake it off when I got the nod, and the leader would pass it along to the dobro player, mandolin player, whatever.
One night I looked up at exactly the wrong time and got the nod on Blackberry Blossom with NO time to pass it along to someone else. I had to play it.
I nailed it! I played it perfectly, including some tricky bits I’d worked out at home. I was flying high until I noticed everyone staring at me and realized that my chin was wet.
Apparently, I was so focused on getting the tune right that my mouth was hanging open the whole time and I had drooled down the front of my guitar and into my lap.
So if you got through your first performance without drooling in front of the crowd, you get extra cool points for nailing it!