For some reason, it’s taken me til now to get ‘Behind Every Word’ onto the site for download sales – click here to head over to the shop. It’s only £8 – what a bargain!
Mixing new music
Today, I’ve been mixing some of the duets I recorded with Luca Formentini in Italy back in July. Luca’s a fantastically creative guitar player, and our two sound-worlds meld together really well. I’ve done preliminary mixes/edits on three tracks so far and all are really lovely. I’ll set up a MySpace page for them as soon as I can, so that there’s some stuff out there to listen to for y’all, and hopefully it’ll be released on CD before too long…
Radio from the Edinburgh Fringe
For the last two days, Danny Baker’s show on Radio London has been hijacked by Amy Lame to present two shows from the Edinburgh Fringe. On thursday she was joined by Sue Perkins, and today by Andre Vincent.
I saw Sue Perkins show at the Fringe, but it’s when she’s just chatting, riffing off whoever the guest happens to be that you really see what a remarkable comic brain she has – even though the guests are often comics, she still racks up four one-liners to anyone else’s one.
It just made me want to be back up there (apart from anything else, I’d probably have a fair stab at getting on the air on a show like that!) – I’m definitely doing three weeks next year. You can hold me to that!
Anyway, head over to the BBC Radio London webpage and click on the ‘listen again’ links for Danny Baker’s show for Thursday and Friday, and that’ll give you the two shows, with some guests from the Fringe and general Edinburgh chit-chat.
Leo Abrahams – Scene Memory
Picked up Leo Abrahams’ new CD, ‘Scene Memory’ at his gig the other night, and have been listening to it today. It’s quite a different affair from his first album, Honeytrap, which is all big melodies and involved chord progressions. This one is much more ambient – loads of really heavily filtered delay sounds on his guitar and gorgeous lush pads, through which Leo weaves his melodies is a less obvious way than before. Both albums are really beautiful, and it’s great to hear the tracks on the CD sound pretty close to the way he plays them live – I don’t know of each track on the CD is a single live performance, but it sounds like it.
If you like what I do, you REALLY ought to check out Leo’s stuff. He’s an amazing musician ,and gorgeous composer, and he’s doing the Recycle Collective on the 20th of September. Be there!
More on indulgence in music…
Been thinking about this whole question of indulgence in music, sparked off by the discussion over on the forum, and I think I’ve hit on something that might make sense of it. Maybe the difference between acceptable and unacceptable indulgence is whether the musician is playing the music they want to play or the music they want to hear – it makes some sense to describe musicians playing in front of an audience who play music that is more fun to play than to listen to as being overly self-indulgent. If instead the musicians are focussed on playing the music they want to hear, then the indulgence is from the point of view of themselves as their own audience, rather than as a performer disregarding the audience… does that make sense as a distinction? It’s certainly where I come from as a musician, particularly when making a CD – I make albums that are what I’d want to listen to. One glance at my most listened to artists list over at last.fm reveals that I spend a disproportionately large amount of time listening to myself. Everything I record is listened to repeatedly before being accepted for release. It’s run by a couple of other people whose input is appreciated, and then if I’m enjoying it, it stays. It’s not really about things that are ‘fun to play’ or clever, just those things that sound like the soundtrack to the world around me…
Does that make any sense?
Jonatha Brooke Live in New York DVD.
Jonatha Brooke is on of my time favourite singer/songwriters. Up there in the big four with Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon.
I finally got to see her play live when she came to London last year, and she was as wonderful as I’d ever imagined she would be.
Which is why I ordered her live DVD months ago, long before it was actually available, to help her out paying for the damn thing.
And this morning it arrived. So between teaching, the fairly aged feline and I have been watching it. And it genius. Of course. Beautifully shot, great song choice, her band sound remarkable, her between song chat is as charming as ever. It’s all great. You really ought to get it. It comes as a CD/DVD set, not sure what if any extras there are yet…
I own very few music DVDs. Two I think. Both are Jonatha Brooke DVDs. That says a lot.
You can buy it now from her website. It’s $17.50 + shipping, which works out to about £12 all in. For a double disc set. Shipped from the states. From the artist. It’s a no-brainer, as they say over there.
Come and see us in England again soon, J-Bro!
Spamspamspamspam
So, I switched comments back on yesterday, and have had over 300 bits of spam since then!
For fuck’s sake, is there no way of blocking this stuff from even getting here? it all gets filtered into a junk-mail folder, but then so do all the normal comments, so I have to go through them all looking for non-spam. And before any geeks ask, no they aren’t from the same IP address, so I can’t just block it, sadly.
…and I thought pizza leaflets were a pain in the arse.
Leo Abrahams gig
Went to see Leo Abrahams play last night – Leo’s an amazing guitarist and composer, who did the Recycle Collective a couple of months back, and is back with us again in September, and last night was playing at The Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell, not far at all from Darbucka, at a night called the Electro Acoustic Club.
He played a few tunes I’d heard before from his first solo album HoneyTrap, and some new stuff from his brand new album, Scene Memory, which were really really lovely. He’s using lots of really gorgeous filtered sounds on his guitar on the new stuff – anyone who likes what I do will love Leo’s music, for sure. So head over to his MySpace Page to hear some, then buy the CDs.
Go on, off you go!
A short tennis related intermission…
Now y’all know I’m not really much of a sport lover. Ambivalent would normally be an understatement.
However, I does love me some tennis, so hearing that Andy Murray had beaten Roger Federer yesterday was a pretty amazing moment. This is quite the biggest event in UK sport for quite some time, and it came second on this morning’s news to some football thing (I didn’t even know that England were playing yesterday til I heard the result this morning).
Roger Federer is pretty much the greatest Tennis player to hit the scene since Pete Sampras. He’ll go down in history as one of the all time greats, no doubt about that. His unbeaten record on grass is second to none. Ever. So for Andy to beat him is pretty amazing. And within only a few weeks of signing up with Brad Gilbert as his coach. Given that Brad’s last two high profile charges were Andre Agassi and that other American bloke with the huge serve – whassisname? Andy Roddick, that’s him – Andy Murray could really be onto something. If he does well in this tournament, it may well put him inside the world’s top 20! Amazing stuff.
OK, back to blogging about music and me.
How to do the Fringe
This is as much as a note for me to refer back to next year as it is info for you lovely bloglings, but if any of you are planning on going to The Fringe, maybe some of these tips will help –
- Venue – things to take into consideration.
The average edinburgh audience size is about 6, literally. If it’s your first year, you’re very likely to end up doing a few shows to virtually no-one. With that in mind, book a small venue. It’ll save you money, and feel less crap when you eventually get up to 15-20 people.a lot of venues charge more for ‘prime-time’ slots, so think about when your show is best going to attract an audience. I seem to do pretty well late night, so can take a cheaper slot between 11-12, rather than trying to book between 7-10pm, which is pretty much the main time for shows.
When you talk to the venue, haggle over the cost of the room. I’ve never paid full asking price for an Edinburgh venue. Check what the extras are (do you need a tech? lighting engineer? door person? backstage help? most of that will be charged) – bargain with them. The usual deal is to pay a ‘guarantee’ and then it’s a 60/40 split in your favour over and above that. Some places do a straight hire fee where you get all ticket money. others can be convinced to do a straight 50/50 split.
It’s also worth finding out what kind of publicity the venue are going to do. If you go into one of the ‘big five’ – The Pleasance, The Underbelly, The Gilded Balloon, The Assembly Rooms or C Venues – they’ll have a load of publicity of their own. It’s not worth relying on (shows in each of these venue complexes still end up with 2 people in the audience), but it’ll help. A bit. possibly.
- Promo before the fest. Make sure you get signed up to the EdFringe press office mailings, there are lots of useful things to do in there. They send out info of lots of press opportunities and other promo things like playing at the Fringe Opening party, Fringe Sunday etc.
Get good photos! there’s no substitute for having a really eye-catching image, something that says something about your show. Remember, there are close to 2000 other shows on, putting on nearly 30,000 performances in the month. That’s a lot of competition, and a tiny amount of time you have to grab the focus of your prospective audience – you need to grab them with the picture and show title first, then the strap line, then the blurb. It’s all got to be there, arty doesn’t really cut it. I’ve been given flyers where I can’t tell a) what kind of show it is, whether it be music/drama/comedy/physical theatre/dance etc. and b) what the story is if it happens to be a narrative piece. It’s all got to be there on the flyers and posters.
Also worth spending a lot of time on is your fringe programme entry – you’ve only got 40 words, so they have to be the greatest words you can think of to describe what you do. Quotes are good if they’re relevant. be descriptive, pique people’s interest, be hyperbolic – everyone else will be.
Work out your budget for promo. Flyers and posters are a must. An absolute must. But you might want to take out an ad in the programme, or some ads in the free papers at the festival (Three Weeks and SkinnyFest), or even on the EdFringe.com website. Again, you might be able to haggle on price, or team up with another show to take out an ad between you.
One way to expand your budget is to get sponsors – this can either be individuals – see Richard Herring’s SCOPE appeal for more on this – or companies that have some vested interest in the publicity you can offer. For the last two years, my show has been sponsored by the Bass Institute – an excellent music school in West London. They can obviously get access to loads of people interested in music, particularly bassists, through my show, and I give them a logo on thousands of flyers and posters, as well as a full page ad in the show programme. A great deal for all.
Use the press list! The Fringe press office sends out a press list, with the contacts of everyone who writes or broadcasts about the Fringe. Write a great press release (get help if needs be), and follow it up with additional news etc. Stick to the recommended method of communication, and don’t bug the people if they ask to be contacted only once. This again is where those killer photos come in handy. Press people are 100x more likely to write about you if you got good photos. head over to Steve Brown’s site for photo stuff – he regularly takes magazine front covers, so knows all about generating eye-catching, product-selling images for artists.
- Once you get to Edinburgh – keep doing all of the above. Use the internet to follow up radio and press contacts, chase up reviewers and sort out cabaret and showcase slots. There are a few of these – you should contact them before the fest if possible, and then follow up when you get there. Some times people have slots to fill last minute, make sure they’ve got your mobile number for last minute bookings. A lot of the showcase and cabaret slots will be 10-15 minutes long – make sure you’ve got a highly portable extract from your show. This is harder if it’s a play, but it’s worth doing for the audience it generates. Shows like Mervyn Stutter’s Pick Of the Fringe are a great way to reach a much bigger audience.
And now all those flyers and posters come into their own – put posters up in every legal possible place. Shops are a great one, cafes, restaurants – get there early to guarantee a slot on the walls. Make sure your venue has done enough promo around the building, you want to catch as much passing trade as possible. Don’t go too mad putting out piles of flyers alongside all the other piles of flyers – they get buried fairly quickly.
Then it’s time to hit the high street and sell the show – have a one sentence description – ‘late night music show’, ‘chill out comedy’ bizarre road trip comedy’ ‘shakespeare on ice’ – something that’ll grab people’s attention. Then have a prepared one paragraph description, so you don’t um and ah through it. Be confident and smilie, very friendly, ask people’s names, shake hands, say how much you’re looking forward to seeing them at the show. In short, make them feel like they are as special as the show is, and they clearly belong at it! As for quantity, you really need about 7000 flyers for your first week, and 5000 for each successive week. We had 5000 this year, and could easily have done 7000 in the time we were there. If you can get friends to come and stay and flyer for you, that’s great, but there’s nothing quite like people seeing your picture on the flyer and then chatting to you about the show.
Same with posters – about 150-250 a week should do it – make sure you put them up on the pillars on the Royal Mile at least three times a day, as they get covered up pretty quickly. Same for the boards outside the E-ticket tent.
Work out with your venue before hand what they are happy for you to do in the way of comps, 2 for 1 deals etc. Do you need to have special stickers for it? can you just write it on the flyer? how precious are they about it? If you’re doing three weeks, I’d recommend doing maximum effort in the first week just to get people through the door, try and create a bit of a buzz, get the word out. Lots of two for ones, comps to the casts of other shows etc. Be generous with other performers, most of them won’t have much money for full price tickets.
- Take care of yourself. Edinburgh folklore is all about people staying up late, getting drunk, stoned and shagging anything that moves. Clearly not a good idea if you actually want it to be a success for you. Almost everyone at the fest loses money. Perhaps this is why. I’ve never lost money there. I hardly drink at all while I there, and try to get enough sleep – I really don’t want to be falling asleep on stage. If you’re a pro, it’s work, 24 hours a day. If you take it seriously, you can do well there. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t go out late night – it might be a great way to meet people who could come to the show, or review it. There’s a whole other world at the fest that starts at midnight. Just proceed with caution. ;o)
- And finally, make sure the show is shit-hot. If your show is lame, all the promo in the world isn’t going to sell it. People will come, and you’ll get crap reviews, crap word of mouth and the crowds will die off. Come with a great show, and it’ll go the other way. Spend the time making it right, and you can do really well.
What have I missed? If you’ve ever been there, post your best tip in the comments section…