Well, the dust has about settled on my concert at mac back on June 11th (2011). Im glad to say it went really well.
To be honest, my main worry – stemming from many years experience of small time music and comedy promotion – was getting a big enough audience to make it worthwhile playing in such a big venue as the main theatre at mac, but happily, at 8.05pm on the big night, I could look nervously over a crowd of no less than 150 fans, friends and family and I’m very grateful to all that attended.
Although the nerves were building, I had the pleasure first of watching Jules Gray’s support set – he’s such an intense performer, in contrast to his casually charming between song chat with the audience. Have a look at this video of Jules’ rendition of the Neil Young classic “Southern Pacific”:
The track is also featured on his eponymous debut album alongside nine excellent original songs combining great melody and really insightful lyrics.
I started my set with a playback of my new track “On til Dawn” giving the audience a teasing sample of the lush backing vocals that charaterise the Mindfulmess album before taking the stage to start with a performance of one of my warmest and most uplifting piano pieces Gudonya:
(videos courtesy Marc Reck, to whom Gudonya is dedicated.)
I then launched straight into a sequence of songs from Mindfulmess and followed it with more select highlights from Valentine Court as well as a couple of pieces from what will be my third album when that comes out in 2012 and a nice rendition of Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows.
My friend and long time collaborator Leon Trimble (aka VJ Chromatouch) was, as always, doing some really fine work with the visuals, displayed to great effect on the big mac stage. Leon’s currently putting some finishing touches to a video to my new track On til Dawn, so watch this space.
I also took my life in my hands and, for the first ever time, performed an improvisation live on stage. Im not sure the result was one of my best or most adventurous efforts, but it went pretty well and, in what will hopefully prove to be a long term tradition, I recorded it directly into the memory of my digital piano and will soon be sharing it exclusively as a thank you to those who joined my email list at the event.
Being an independent musician is certainly hard work and is no kind of a route to financial gain, but when an event like this comes together, it really is a very satisfying experience and a good stimulus to keep on being creative and putting what I do out there.
The album wont be in all the usual online retailers until the Autumn (to give me time to try and get some reviews), but its available to listen to now (and purchase as CD or download) exclusively from this site, so do please visit www.richbatsford.com/music/mindfulmess and have a listen. Thanks.