Chapter 22: Working with Tom Jackson Productions and Amy Wolter

Posted by admin on July 6th, 2010 | No Comments »

This week I am going to post a blog post by Amy Wolter, the live music producer from Tom Jackson productions that we flew in from Nashville to work with us on our show last week.  She wrote a post about the experience on her own blog and I liked it so I’m going to repost it

Here is the link to it: http://bit.ly/9xXEu6

On a personal note, the experience was a very worthwhile one.  One of the things that Amy helped us understand as band is how to step out of our “musician heads” and step into the head of being a member of the audience.  Most audience members don’t speak the same musical language that musicians speak, so they will actually HEAR something better when they can SEE it.  Amy helped show us how to SHOW the audience what we were playing which at first, made some of us uncomfortable or feel insecure.  However as the band leader I encouraged everybody to take risks and trust Amy’s expertise in the subject of Live Performance Production and as we continued to work, we started to get more comfortable with some of the movement we were doing.  Even simple things like walking to the front of the stage to take a solo or highlight a bass line made huge differences.

Our first show since our work with Amy is tomorrow night in Burlington VT.  We are excited to see how our connection with our audience benefits from this work and are eager to share it with you all.

Stay tuned…

Chapter 21: Playing for a Small Audience

Posted by admin on June 23rd, 2010 | 50 Comments »

This past thursday we ventured back into Central Pennsylvania for a 2-set show at a great venue that we had played at once before called the “Stage on Herr.”

Having only been to the area once before, we don’t have the biggest following out there just yet, and given the fact that there was the big Harrisburg annual block party festival across the river, we played to a very small audience.

It costs money to travel to venues way outside the city.  Every time we do it we have to ask ourselves, is this worth the investment?  Will this help us grow and build our fanbase?

When we first took the stage and saw the small amount of people in the audience, though I was excited (I’m always excited to play shows) the business part of me questioned whether it was worth our money to travel all this way. The venue and the people who run it are spectacular but were we going to be able to walk away feeling like we had made enough of an impact to come back?

Every show is an amazing learning experience, and this particular show provided me with the learning experience that there is no audience too small to fully “bring it.”  Our “Stage on Herr” show was a huge success for us not only because we had a good time and the music was solid (for the most part but more so because we brought it completely, and the 20 or so people in the audience loved us, put their name down on the email list, asked for autographs and told us they would bring friends the next time we came.

I asked a couple of the people in the audience whether they thought that we should come back or not, and how they felt the rest of the audience liked the show.  One guy even said to me “don’t be discouraged because of the lack of turnout tonight.  There is a huge anual block party going on tonight and most of the town is over there.  You guys were truly spectacular and I think that people in Harrisburg would love you.  You should definitely come back.” Another fan offered us their home for us to all stay in the next time we came back.

The sound guy also said he wanted to open for us the next time we came around with his local band.

I left feeling proud of us for bringing our best no matter what.  The Stage on Herr was so hospitable the last time we came there in April and we were very excited to come back last week.  Same goes for the next time we come back as well.  Thanks Harrisburg for being so great.  We’ll see you soon.

Zach