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My first time playing live! (with links to audio)
3 years ago
I had a bit of a milestone moment on Sunday, as I performed a couple of my songs live for an audience for the first time ever. Sure, I've done karaoke a hundred times, and performed comedy songs at conventions as part of 
dramaarmada, but until now I've never sang any of my original, serious songs in public-- which is crazy, because I've been writing songs for 35 years. As someone who isn't a performance-level musician, playing live is just something that I've always told myself I couldn't really do. But after the last couple of year's February Album Writing Month challenges, I've gotten such a boost of confidence from other songwriters that I started to think that maybe I should at least dip my toe in the water and see how it feels. Well, this past Sunday, I dipped my toe in... and it felt good lol.
My long-time partner-in-rhyme
sedge graciously took the time to help me translate three of my songs into acoustic guitar renditions, and trekked up to Nashua to play at the open mic with me. We ended up having to cut one of our songs for time, but we played my recent song "Dinosaurs", and an older personal favorite, 2008's "Walking Away". They both went over well, but it was "Dinosaurs" that was the clear crowd favorite. I had a half-dozen other performers come to me and tell me how much they enjoyed it, including one of the event organizers, who insisted that I come back for future open mics and said, "You belong here". All in all, it went better than I could have hoped for. And my mom, my brother and my sister-in-law came to support me.
My hope going into this was to just be able to cross something off my bucket list... to be able to say, "At least I did it once in my life". But now, it's possible that this is the start of something. The one downside is that I don't want to have to prevail upon friends for assistance every time I want to do this. I don't know how to get around that, though. The woman who urged me to come back said that I could come back and sing along to a pre-recorded backing track if necessary, but I would feel very weird doing that when nobody else was performing that way. I'm starting to wonder how difficult it would be to start learning how to play the guitar at 51 lol.
Anyway, if anyone's interested, here are links to the audio from the show. They were recorded with my ancient phone, so apologies for the less-than-stellar sound quality.
https://soundcloud.com/i_am_kiffa/d.....nh-june-5-2022
https://soundcloud.com/i_am_kiffa/w.....nh-june-5-2022
dramaarmada, but until now I've never sang any of my original, serious songs in public-- which is crazy, because I've been writing songs for 35 years. As someone who isn't a performance-level musician, playing live is just something that I've always told myself I couldn't really do. But after the last couple of year's February Album Writing Month challenges, I've gotten such a boost of confidence from other songwriters that I started to think that maybe I should at least dip my toe in the water and see how it feels. Well, this past Sunday, I dipped my toe in... and it felt good lol.My long-time partner-in-rhyme
sedge graciously took the time to help me translate three of my songs into acoustic guitar renditions, and trekked up to Nashua to play at the open mic with me. We ended up having to cut one of our songs for time, but we played my recent song "Dinosaurs", and an older personal favorite, 2008's "Walking Away". They both went over well, but it was "Dinosaurs" that was the clear crowd favorite. I had a half-dozen other performers come to me and tell me how much they enjoyed it, including one of the event organizers, who insisted that I come back for future open mics and said, "You belong here". All in all, it went better than I could have hoped for. And my mom, my brother and my sister-in-law came to support me.My hope going into this was to just be able to cross something off my bucket list... to be able to say, "At least I did it once in my life". But now, it's possible that this is the start of something. The one downside is that I don't want to have to prevail upon friends for assistance every time I want to do this. I don't know how to get around that, though. The woman who urged me to come back said that I could come back and sing along to a pre-recorded backing track if necessary, but I would feel very weird doing that when nobody else was performing that way. I'm starting to wonder how difficult it would be to start learning how to play the guitar at 51 lol.
Anyway, if anyone's interested, here are links to the audio from the show. They were recorded with my ancient phone, so apologies for the less-than-stellar sound quality.
https://soundcloud.com/i_am_kiffa/d.....nh-june-5-2022
https://soundcloud.com/i_am_kiffa/w.....nh-june-5-2022
I hope this is the start of something big/worthwhile for you!