Aftermath of the Summer Concert Series Gig

Hey, what's up everybody! It's Jared judge, welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. All right, so I am not on a walk today, you can probably hear my cart rattling around with all my gear in the car here. So I'm on my way to that wedding expo that I mentioned several episodes ago that I got for free, which is awesome. I'm obviously I'm not going to talk about that yet, because it hasn't happened yet. But I'm excited. I'm going to be playing a lot. But I did want to tell you guys that two nights ago was that public show that I did. It was the party in the park, in Bennett, Colorado, where it was part of their summer concert series that you know, me as a private event musician. This was actually one of my first concerts where I actually had a stage. And I was real nervous about it. I didn't episode asking about stage banter. And thank you to those of you who gave me some great tips on that. It I want to tell you about how it went. So I hope you don't mind. It went very well. It was great. It was well attended. And the organizer. She said that this was the most they had had out of many of their their concerts in the series, even in past years. Like I had the most people sticking around for a while. And it was it was so much fun. People said like the variety of music I picked was great. So I picked some good setlist I, my stage manager, I didn't do a ton of like a maybe I introduced a couple songs. You know, I obviously said who I was, and thanks, everybody, for coming thanks to the Bennett Arts Council for sponsoring the event. And my wife was in the audience, she said that, that what I did was like perfect it was it was not too much. It wasn't too little. I didn't have a surprising piece of like feedback where it was it was my own like feeling of how something went, which was using the IBM's, the in ear monitors was amazing. I loved it, it was the best that I've felt playing with my backing tracks like I could hear him, I could hear myself. But the surprising part about that was that it made me feel disconnected from the audience. So I don't know if those of you who use IBM's also feel that way. Because honestly, it just felt like I was practicing. I just felt cut off from the world. And it was great because I could focus on my music and focus on my playing, which was so much fun. But I guess I kind of missed a bit of like, the feeling of connectedness with the audience that comes when my ears are not basically wearing really expensive earplugs. So I'm actually one thing that was really cool is I got asked to do an encore. Like I played my last song, which was of course don't stop believing. And then people were applauding, and they're, like chanting one more song, one more song, which I was shocked because I to be honest, that was my first time ever being asked to play an encore. And it felt good. It really did. So I was using my items for everything I'd actually taken them out after don't stop believing. And then when they asked like encore, I didn't quite have time to put both of them back in. So I only put one in. And instantly like that actually felt so much better because I could hear the audience. And I felt connected with them, which was great. So yeah, concert went well. I had a bunch of people dancing during various songs. Kids were dancing, grandparents were dancing. And it was just great, good experience. I'm very pleased with my first like, big concert. They said I think there were 100 or so people there. And then at the end of the gig, the organizer, her name is Denise. She was she was chatting with me. She actually like random gave me a hug, which was so nice. And she said yeah, it was so good. We have so many people say such great things. And we would love to have you back. So would you like to come back, which I think that is the highest honor that you could get from one of these kinds of gigs is being asked back. There was another organizer of a festival. They run a festival there that she said yeah, we have about 3500 people who come to this festival. We have a lot more bands and each each musician gets like 1530 minutes. And if you're interested we'd love to have you but the crazy part is that it coincides with my anniversary with my wife. So we have to chat about that. I have to find out some more info. But yeah, so I got asked to play back in the park for a regular concert and then also for this festival. So basically two gigs came out of this one plus, like the organizer knew that I'm more of a private event musicians so she said yeah, there's we collaborate with this place is called mais BB, which is a wedding venue, but we also have host concerts there and And we would love to have you have you there because that might be a better fit, since it is a wedding venue. So yeah, all in all, I'm happy with it, it gave me a good chance to like really put to put put on display the work that I put in, because I put a lot of work in practicing for this gag, I learned a lot of new tunes for it. And, you know, it's one thing to learn it in the practice room, it's a totally different thing to put it on stage, and still haven't come across as good if not better than in the practice room. And I definitely feed off of the energy of the crowd, which was why it was a little bit sad that the items made me feel a little disconnected from them. I have heard that some people put a microphone on the audience, like just at the foot of the stage or something to get some of that room noise. And that's something I'm going to consider doing in the future. Just because I do love that feedback loop. I think that's very helpful as a musician. So I'll very happy with my first public performance in Colorado. Well, technically second, because of that are on the farm good guy did a while ago, but this one was much better attended than the art on the farm. And I don't know, like I said before, I'm starting to catch the bug a little bit about playing public shows. And clearly the the act that I've put on is something that people enjoy. I think people enjoyed the variety of some of the comments were like, I've never seen an electric violin before. That's really cool. And I think that it has some potential to be a thing. I mean, obviously it has potential because I got good feedback. And I got paid really well for this gig. So let's keep it going. Yeah, appreciate you guys just kind of listen to me reflect on that gig and hear some of the feedback. And by the way, this gig actually came from my profile on Thumbtack. So if you are not familiar with the Thumbtack platform, I do recommend it. You do pay per lead. And many of the leads that come in are private events. But this specific lead was for a public event put on by a town. So you can get a mix of private and public gigs from Thumbtack. And I'm not, you know paid by thumbtack to give this endorsement or anything like that. But just know that you do pay every time a lead comes in. So you got to make sure that you respond to those leads in time. All right, thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. And remember, "Your music won't market itself!".