There weren’t a lot of people in the room, and the music hadn’t fostered an out-of-control, rocking vibe. That said, the show hadn’t been a terrible experience. Certainly not enough to warrant the lead singer walking off stage with tears in her eyes.

But that’s how it played out June 8 at Nashville’s Exit/In. Headliners the Heartless Bastards did what they do to a half-full room of semi-interested, mostly drunken spectators. For much of the show, their mellow garage rock went over fine with the crowd. Lead singer Erica Wennerstrom’s powerful voice, with ample range and heartache, owned the room, melodic enough to stop those less involved and make them take notice from time to time. Nothing too complicated developed over the course of the night, nothing too mind-blowing or out there transpired. A decent band played a solid show that could have used a better promoter.

Around the 70-minute mark, though, Wennerstrom, who hadn’t done much interacting with the room the entire show, told us, “We’re just going to go ahead and play our encore now if it’s all the same to you,” hinting none-too-subtly that they felt people weren’t digging them and had had enough. The 20 or so people standing close to the stage began yelling and whooping at this, realizing our polite response thus far wasn’t showing the musicians the appreciation they, or at least Wennerstrom, needed.

Now embarrassed, Wennerstrom bashfully strummed the opening chords to another mellow blues rock number while the drummer and bass player awaited their respective cues. After five, maybe 10 seconds, she put down her guitar, offered a quick “I’m sorry” and ran backstage in tears. The drummer and bassist exchanged a look before going back to talk her off the cliff.

The crowd responded as any bunch of rock show fans wanting their money’s worth would, revving the intensity of the hollering and shouting, doing everything it could to sound greater than its meager numbers. Five minutes passed before the band came back on stage, Wennerstrom looking decidedly different, puffy-eyed and disheveled, no doubt worn-out from the experience.

They played two more songs with energy and emotion generally absent from the rest of their performance, and the crowd let the Heartless Bastards know that the effort was much appreciated. We were all in this together, and their final stand hadn’t fallen on deaf ears.

After the show, however, the collective mood changed. The sentiment was no longer “Man, I’m glad she came back out, that was pretty great”; it had morphed into “Who the f#*k does she think she is? We paid 14 bucks for that bullsh*t!”

Artists are fragile people; this has been a constant throughout human existence. Rock stars have been an especially sensitive lot, possibly because of their constant public performance, maybe due to the nature of the image-above-all-else industry that coddles and, eventually, destroys them. No matter the person, though, there is almost no worse feeling than giving everything on a stage and not feeling respected by those in attendance.

However, it’s also pretty lousy being out in that crowd and deemed not important enough by a performer to properly finish a show she was paid to play. Even if the money taken from the show is barely enough to gas up the bus and make it to the next town, that money was earned on the basis of the entertainers entertaining.

Millions of unknowns slave over their art for nothing other than the buzz of artistic creation, or the vague dream of, somehow, someday, finding an audience. Having a band that sticks together long enough with people who fully commit themselves in the service of crafting something original and defining is a beautiful cosmic accident. It’s a precious thing to have a band that people will actually pay to see, regardless of how many show up on a given Friday night. Performers don’t do anyone any favors by defecating down that well.

As it happened, local opener The Attack! did a fantastic job of warming up the small crowd with its charging rock sound and active singer/guitarist, a frontman committed from the get-go to giving those that showed up early a good time. Ultimately, the band won the crowd over with its energy and enthusiasm, and might be heading places in large part due to these attributes.

Had Wennerstrom been paying attention during The Attack!’s performance, she might have been reminded why the Heartless Bastards exist in the first place, why her and her bandmates do what they do every night, and why anyone paid to watch them perform.

It’s not as though this was their first show, but it very well may be the last Heartless Bastards show those in attendance will want to see. People don’t want to get shit on for free, nevermind paying money for the pleasure.