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Last Friday (April 17th) Lobelia and I played our first house concert in a couple of months in Leith, Edinburgh.
It was a great demonstration of everything that’s cool about house concerts:

It was organised very much at the last minute (wasn’t even advertised at all until 2 weeks before the gig),
It was booked by someone who’d [...]

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I’ve blogged a lot of late about the whole house concert phenomenon, and Lo and I seem to have inspired a few people with our house concert tour to get out and do it themselves. On Sunday afternoon, Neil Alexander and his amazing jazz/prog/fusion/rock trio Nail played a web-cast house concert from upstate New York, watched by about 15-20 in the room, and across the course of the gig, over 100 online.

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So, we’ve been back in England a few weeks. I’ve even had time to do my busiest week of masterclasses ever! (more on that later, I promise)
For now, it’s time to round up some of the lessons and tips from our house-concert-based, social-media-driven jaunt to the US over christmas/january.
A few salient points to start with:

most [...]

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So, as I outlined in Pt 1, Social networks can be a really tough place to inhabit as a musician, because you’re going to get a LOT of artists sending you friend requests expecting you to check out their music.

The idea for the artist, in that case, is that numbers mean everything. If I have 80,000 Myspace friends I must be doing something right, right? Surely that means that a percentage of them are going to become fans, tell their friends and then go and buy my CDs. Surely those kind of numbers will land me a record deal? Any label that knows I’ve got 80,000 devoted Myspace ‘fans’ will surely snap me up?

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Welcome! Whether you want to

book me (or me & Lobelia, or Lawson/Dodds/Wood) for a gig,
get me to speak at your college/university,
ask me to play on or produce your record,
ask me to open for you on tour,
interview me for your mag/site/newspaper,
ask me to write for your mag/site/newspaper…

whatever it is, email me via the form over here.
That’s [...]

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Pillow Mountain Records is a label that only exists to release music involving me. It’s not that I don’t like other people’s music, it’s just that they’d do a better job of selling it than I would.
It only really exists in name, as a brand that sort of lets you in on what to expect, [...]

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Well, our concert tour has come to an end. Will blog about the amazingness of the whole thing soon, but first, here’s a lil video that Geoff Hickman took at the inauguration party/house concert we had down in Newport Beach, with the lovely and amazing Kerry Getz, which also featured Jason Feddy, Matthew Von Doran, Seth Horan, Ed Sheets and a whole load of hugely talented Hawaiians:

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NAMM so far has been a whole lot of fun - have met up with loads of great friends, checked out some fab music gear, chatted a lot, drank coffee, playing some music on the looperlative booth (and discovered a couple of amazing new Looperlative features - video coming on those ASAP!)

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One of the magical things about house concerts is just how quickly they can be put together. Because there’s no ‘press’ involved, no promotional deadlines to hit, emails can be sent out to friends as soon as the gig is decided on, and an audience can be rustled up in about 2-3 weeks.

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Tonight’s our last night in Nashville, the town that both Lobelia and I think is the US city we’d be most happy to live in were we to move here… It’s so full of amazing people, and has an incredibly vibrant and exciting arts world. Ironically perhaps, it exists a long way outside of the music scene that makes Nashville famous, but throughout the city there are people producing amazing and vibrant art, music, and writing.

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