The soundcheck is the most honest part of the day. Two in the afternoon. Empty room. No audience. No lights. Just a man and a microphone and a guy at the board saying can you give me more. The soundcheck is where you find out if the room is going to fight you or help you.

I never had a soundcheck. Street corners do not have soundboards. Street corners do not have monitors. Street corners have traffic and wind and a hot dog cart and a jackhammer two blocks away. That is the soundcheck. If you can hear yourself over a jackhammer you are ready for any room on earth. Washington Square Park was the best soundcheck in the music industry because if you could play there you could play anywhere.

The soundcheck reveals everything. It reveals if the singer is nervous. It reveals if the guitar is out of tune. It reveals if the drummer showed up sober. It reveals if the room has a dead spot where the bass disappears. Every problem you are going to have at nine o'clock at night you can hear at two o'clock in the afternoon. The soundcheck is the dress rehearsal with no costume.

Here is what I learned from never having a soundcheck. You learn to listen to the room in real time. You learn to adjust on the first note instead of the first song. You learn that the sound is never going to be right and that is fine because the sound does not need to be right. The sound needs to be there. A perfect sound in an empty room is silence. A terrible sound in a full room is music.

Every rant I have recorded is a soundcheck. I walk up to the microphone and I do not know if the room is going to fight me or help me. Some of them land. Some of them miss. But every single one of them is honest because there is no board and there is no monitor and there is no guy saying can you give me more. There is just the corner. And the corner always gives me exactly enough.

See also: The Setlist — play what the trees want to hear. The Encore — the part nobody planned. Washington Square — the best soundcheck in the music industry. The Roadie — the person who hears the soundcheck before anyone else.