The place (The Dolphin Inn) was rammed for a Thursday night and the audience were treated to 2 and a half hours of amazing and diverse entertainment - all delivered without amps, mic and pa's.
I introduced the evening and we kicked off with Emmy-Lee who treated us to 15 minutes of passionate, heart-wrenching glory. Next up was 3 piece Botyov 1791 who, with fiddle, bodran and guitar, really got the crowd going. As Matt (Blake) and Chris (The LCD) were running late, Cath (Botyov 1791) and Nic Bradford (Louche Manouche) gave us a couple of fiddle and guitar tunes and I filled in with a couple of my own but then The LCD played an amazing 15 minutes. We were then joined by Ben Woodward (or Wood, why don't people wear name tags!) who was an unexpected pleasure. Matt Blake stopped the show as he managed to break a string before even playing a note. After being offered a plethora of replacements, he gratefully took up Nic Bradford's offer and ripped into a most wonderful set.
I had planned to have a little interval but due to the amount of good folk wanting to play we cracked on and Emmy-Lee, Botyov 1791, The LCD and Matt Blake played another short set each.
For a first try at this Pure Acoustica event it surpassed my expectations. I had full confidence in all the acts, otherwise I wouldn't have booked them. They (you) all played wonderfully and the audience was well into it, as were the owners Sandy and Chris.
The eagle eyed amongst you would have spotted a rather sexy Sennheiser microphone sitting innocently positioned on a small table. This was connected to an equally sexy mini-disc recorder. THIS was possibly, the most important aspect of the evening. The recordings of the evening are of a very high quality and show everyone off very well. The plan is to use these recordings to attract other venues as well as to sell at gigs and on the net.
I spent most of Saturday mixing and mastering these tracks and have loaded 10 of the best on to the Pure Acoustica Reverbnation site. They are for anyone to listen too at present but may be for fans only in the future. They are only little MP3 files, I do have sexy fat wav files too. Visit the Pure Acoustica label here to listen If you are part of Pure Acoustica then you should have a profile on reverbnation and if you haven't, why the fuck not?
So, what lessons have I learned from this?
Was it all wonderful?
Could I have done anything better?
When I arrived, Chris the landlord suggested that he hang a mic over the performing area. the Dolphin has an "ambient" kind of speaker system that allows music to reach all areas of the pub. It's not strictly a pa system as it has no volume control and there is only one mic.
Nevertheless, I asked him not to as this would go against the whole Pure Acoustica idea.
I think this was a mistake and told him as much afterwards. In a pub as big as The Dolphin, it would have been appropriate to use. Plus, as far as the policy of Pure Acoustica goes, I make the rules so what does it matter eh?
I could have remembered to turn the fucking mic on at the beginning of the evening and NOT miss Emmy-Lee first set!
I could have publicised it a little more. Mrs Nick (the Memsaab) usually does all that arty stuff but she has been stricken with a chest infection (slacker) so wasn't able to come up with her normal selection of pretties.
Apart from that though, a pretty damn good start to the Pure Acoustica venture.
So, dearly beloveds, any comments/questions?
