How do I play my music live? That's the question I'm currently grappling with and it may seem an odd one to the many people who have seen me play live over the years. When it comes to live performance I am not backward in coming forwards, I've been playing live for decades either solo or with various bands. I've played covers and my own songs in pubs and clubs all over the country, indeed it's not too much of an exaggeration to say I've performed all over the world. But earlier this year I called time on my solo gigs, I was tired of playing covers with just my voice and an acoustic guitar. I'm confident enough to say I'm good at it, but over the years I've occasionally struggled to enjoy it, no more so than when playing my own songs.
When I write and produce my own songs I hear the full arrangement in my head. I hear the drums, the bass, the backing vocals and all the various bells and whistles (and trumpets) that realise the original idea I had. Trying to replicate that with just my voice and an acoustic guitar is really difficult, and for me, often unfulfilling. Many artists approach this from the other direction, they write and record songs with a band, play them live with that full arrangement then later on in their careers they maybe start doing pared back, acoustic versions (think MTV Unplugged) - I'm moving in the opposite direction, I've played my songs acoustically for years, now I want to create the full sound, live. Now the obvious solution, and one that's been suggested to me more than once when I've raised this issue on social media, is "start a band". I've played in 5 different bands over the years, all covers bands, and I've really enjoyed it. I've played cajon, bass, guitar, ukelele, trumpet and I've sung. As I've got older it's become clear to me that getting enough people together with enough time to practice and play the gigs I'd like to play would be practically impossible at this point. My current band, Echochamber, is a 3-man outfit and we manage 2-3 gigs a year at best. Late middle-age blokes, like me, are busy. We've got jobs and mortgages and chores to do and responsibilities all of which, necessarily, come before the desire to get together and make some noise.
Over the past 7 months I've produced and released a new song every month, it's been loads of fun and I'm really pleased with what I've achieved, but it's taken most of my spare time. There's simply no way I could do that, and get a band together to practice the songs, find gigs and play them live. But I do want to play them live, and that's my conundrum right now. I think there may be an answer - backing tracks! Now before you get all sniffy let's think about this. Most pop artists, indeed the most successful artists in the world right now, perform live to backing tracks, and one of my favourite bands of all time, Carter USM, famously played some of their most iconic gigs to backing tracks. This isn't about miming along to something, this is about playing my songs, with live guitar and live vocals, but with the rest of the backing, drums, bass, backing vocals, on a pre-recorded track. Not forgetting of course that I played and recorded everything on the backing track too. I haven't tried it yet, that's my focus for the next few weeks. Consequently I don't think I'm going to release a new song in November, I did start on something and have a really beautiful little synthy chord progression waiting to be built on, but I think I'd like to work out this new live format first. If I can work out how to do it with a sound that I'm happy with, I might try some live-streamed gigs. I haven't done that since the Covid lockdowns, but it was quite good fun back then. If I can start regular livestreamed gigs on Youtube and Twitch then I can work out how I can take it offline and into the real world.