Artisan: Back on the road again

We started with the Folk for MS concert on Saturday - which was the first official Artisan gig, a pre-tour warm up for a charity we've supported for the last 20 years. If I say so myself... we did OK. Sang well, sounded good... (nice sound system, too) good enough to get lots of lovely audience comments and 2 encores. They'd asked us to top off the concert, but it would have meant not finishing until midnight, and as BB and I wanted to drive back from Oxfordshire to Huddersfield  we begged to go on last in the first half. It's a much better spot. Though the last spot has the kudos, the spot leading into the interval has the best CD sales. And the audience is fresher (and so are we!)
:-)
So we had a set list ready - deliberately longer than we expected to need as I'd not pre-prepared any links. I thought it might be good to see what hit me in the moment as I didn't particularly want to resurrect the old links. Without links we can get quite a few more songs into a set, but it really needs the links to give everyone (audience as well) the chance to breathe/relax between songs. We didn't get to sing all the songs we wanted to, but we did manage to sing our two new ones along with some old favourites. Started with Mary Ellen Carter and saved What's the Use of Wings until the encore. (Good job we got one.) The two new songs by BB, The Weathernan and Spirit of the Trees, went down well and has someone who's known us for a long time raving about 'Fear' because he'd never heard us sing it live before. The audience joined in the choruses of White Horses and Snakes and Ladders and had a creditable stab at the dah-de-dahs on Mabel. We'd been going to sing Breathing Space and After the Goldrush, but there simply wasn't time and overrunning is a heinous crime on a concert like that as it cuts someone else's set length down.

Got to meet up with my longtime friend whittering who had volunteered to do kitchen duty for the night. She makes a great chilli and dumbs it down a bit for me as spicy food and I don't always agree.

One chap we know - a festival director who has known us and our music for years - came up and said he thought we'd stepped up our performance a notch - a  huge notch, in fact. 'Taken it to another level' is the phrase he used. I'm not saying he was wrong, (I'd like to think he isn't), but bearing in mind it was our dress rehearsal (pre-tour) performance and the first time we'd been on a stage together for five years I hardly think it was in a vastly improved league of its own.

Thinking about it, there's this weird psychological thing going on... It's always been the case that a sprinkling of folks will come up after a performance and tell us that's 'the best we've ever been'... when we know damn well that we're pretty consistent in what we do. After twenty years of doing it for a living we know we're not rubbish (even if we're not always to someone's taste). The performance they just saw was likely to be equally as good as any we've ever given. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't ever room for improvement because if you get complacent about what you do then it all slips back into mediocrity, but what I think it's all about is this...

We are doomed to be consistently good, but between gigs our fans actually forget how much they like us. Subjective memory of excellence - like memory of pain and memory of pleasure - fades with time and distance. When they hear us a again they are re-surprised by the physical and mental impact three voices at full throttle can have. It's not terribly British to blow your own trumpet, but when people come up and say, 'That was the best you've ever been,' I have the urge to respond with, 'Actually, it wasn't. You've just forgotten how good we were the last time you saw us.'
:-)
(Sigh.) But I can't actually say that, can I? It's not very British.

Our new and updated tour list is here:
www.artisan-harmony.com/reunion.html

Artisan: Back on the road again

We started with the Folk for MS concert on Saturday - which was the first official Artisan gig, a pre-tour warm up for a charity we've supported for the last 20 years. If I say so myself... we did OK. Sang well, sounded good... (nice sound system, too) good enough to get lots of lovely audience comments and 2 encores. They'd asked us to top off the concert, but it would have meant not finishing until midnight, and as BB and I wanted to drive back from Oxfordshire to Huddersfield  we begged to go on last in the first half. It's a much better spot. Though the last spot has the kudos, the spot leading into the interval has the best CD sales. And the audience is fresher (and so are we!)
:-)
So we had a set list ready - deliberately longer than we expected to need as I'd not pre-prepared any links. I thought it might be good to see what hit me in the moment as I didn't particularly want to resurrect the old links. Without links we can get quite a few more songs into a set, but it really needs the links to give everyone (audience as well) the chance to breathe/relax between songs. We didn't get to sing all the songs we wanted to, but we did manage to sing our two new ones along with some old favourites. Started with Mary Ellen Carter and saved What's the Use of Wings until the encore. (Good job we got one.) The two new songs by BB, The Weathernan and Spirit of the Trees, went down well and has someone who's known us for a long time raving about 'Fear' because he'd never heard us sing it live before. The audience joined in the choruses of White Horses and Snakes and Ladders and had a creditable stab at the dah-de-dahs on Mabel. We'd been going to sing Breathing Space and After the Goldrush, but there simply wasn't time and overrunning is a heinous crime on a concert like that as it cuts someone else's set length down.

Got to meet up with my longtime friend whittering who had volunteered to do kitchen duty for the night. She makes a great chilli and dumbs it down a bit for me as spicy food and I don't always agree.

One chap we know - a festival director who has known us and our music for years - came up and said he thought we'd stepped up our performance a notch - a  huge notch, in fact. 'Taken it to another level' is the phrase he used. I'm not saying he was wrong, (I'd like to think he isn't), but bearing in mind it was our dress rehearsal (pre-tour) performance and the first time we'd been on a stage together for five years I hardly think it was in a vastly improved league of its own.

Thinking about it, there's this weird psychological thing going on... It's always been the case that a sprinkling of folks will come up after a performance and tell us that's 'the best we've ever been'... when we know damn well that we're pretty consistent in what we do. After twenty years of doing it for a living we know we're not rubbish (even if we're not always to someone's taste). The performance they just saw was likely to be equally as good as any we've ever given. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't ever room for improvement because if you get complacent about what you do then it all slips back into mediocrity, but what I think it's all about is this...

We are doomed to be consistently good, but between gigs our fans actually forget how much they like us. Subjective memory of excellence - like memory of pain and memory of pleasure - fades with time and distance. When they hear us a again they are re-surprised by the physical and mental impact three voices at full throttle can have. It's not terribly British to blow your own trumpet, but when people come up and say, 'That was the best you've ever been,' I have the urge to respond with, 'Actually, it wasn't. You've just forgotten how good we were the last time you saw us.'
:-)
(Sigh.) But I can't actually say that, can I? It's not very British.

Our new and updated tour list is here:
www.artisan-harmony.com/reunion.html

Artisan radio gig

We went into BBC Radio Leeds last night to do a live radio spot on the Durbervilles' Roots Show. Chatted a bit and sang three songs (including 2 of the new ones) in two ten-minute segments over the course of the hour-long show.

Wherever you are in the world you can listen again via the miracle of the BBC's i-player
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p008728f/The_Durbervilles_13_06_2010/

It's a small world. It turns out that one of the Durbervilles is the son of Laurie Walsh, a potter that both H and I knew on the craft circuit many years ago. We always had a soft spot for him - a big genial bloke who gave good hugs. He's retired now and enjoying a life of bowls - the sporting kind not the pottery kind. Nice to have news of him after twenty-some years.

Artisan radio gig

We went into BBC Radio Leeds last night to do a live radio spot on the Durbervilles' Roots Show. Chatted a bit and sang three songs (including 2 of the new ones) in two ten-minute segments over the course of the hour-long show.

Wherever you are in the world you can listen again via the miracle of the BBC's i-player
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p008728f/The_Durbervilles_13_06_2010/

It's a small world. It turns out that one of the Durbervilles is the son of Laurie Walsh, a potter that both H and I knew on the craft circuit many years ago. We always had a soft spot for him - a big genial bloke who gave good hugs. He's retired now and enjoying a life of bowls - the sporting kind not the pottery kind. Nice to have news of him after twenty-some years.