I've been noticing one of the more frequent key word searches within the KiwiFolk site has been for "southern man". I was there (in my role as a Pog) at its inception and it's still one of the most requested songs in my repertoire.
I've written up the history of the song as it relates to the Pog Band but it would be good to hear anyone elses point of view. Particularly, it would be good to get some dates around those rugby games.
Showing posts with label performance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label performance. Show all posts
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Wellingtonians: The Singers' Club Needs You!
June Sizzled at The Singers’ Club!
Our superb guest line-up of Darren Watson plus Bob Cooper-Grundy with Kate Marshall turned up the heat and gave a full house a truly memorable evening of music that had Upper Cuba Streetjumping, despite the winter chills.
However, there will be no Singers’ Club in July! We’re taking a Mid-Winter Break to catch our breath; get ourselves organised and do some recruiting.
We have lost two of our original Residents, Alistair and Catriona, and we can’t function properly with just the two of us remaining to run the club, run the sound and stage and host the evening. Not to mention the odd performance, which is the object of the exercise!
So we are actively looking for one or two new Residents to help us. Ideally (but not necessarily), musicians, who are easy going, with a passion for live acoustic music. They should also have a small talent for organisation and a big sense of humour. We do this for fun!
There’s not a huge amount to do. We’re well set up and we have a full Programme of Guests organised out to the end of the year and the venue and the audience to support the Club. So contact us now as we need you urgently. 021 253 8996
We’ll update you about August and any changes or news nearer the time by Newsletter; and we’ll update the webpage www.nzacoustic.net
But, don’t despair, there will be live music at The Roxy on Tuesday July 31st.
Bob McNeill is in concert at the Café on that night (see below for details), so keep the last Tuesday of the month programmed in your diaries for great live acoustic music.
As ever, if you don’t want to get news about the Singers’ Club, just send us an email with ‘I don’t want this stuff!’ in the subject line. J
The Singers’ Club Residents:
Tony Hillyard & Tracey Haskell
For regular news about who’s playing at the Singers’ Club on the Last Tuesday of every month, go here: www.nzacoustic.net
If you’re interested in playing at the Singers’ Club contact Tony Hillyard:
021 253 8996 or: tonyh@clear.net.nz
Our superb guest line-up of Darren Watson plus Bob Cooper-Grundy with Kate Marshall turned up the heat and gave a full house a truly memorable evening of music that had Upper Cuba Streetjumping, despite the winter chills.
However, there will be no Singers’ Club in July! We’re taking a Mid-Winter Break to catch our breath; get ourselves organised and do some recruiting.
We have lost two of our original Residents, Alistair and Catriona, and we can’t function properly with just the two of us remaining to run the club, run the sound and stage and host the evening. Not to mention the odd performance, which is the object of the exercise!
So we are actively looking for one or two new Residents to help us. Ideally (but not necessarily), musicians, who are easy going, with a passion for live acoustic music. They should also have a small talent for organisation and a big sense of humour. We do this for fun!
There’s not a huge amount to do. We’re well set up and we have a full Programme of Guests organised out to the end of the year and the venue and the audience to support the Club. So contact us now as we need you urgently. 021 253 8996
We’ll update you about August and any changes or news nearer the time by Newsletter; and we’ll update the webpage www.nzacoustic.net
But, don’t despair, there will be live music at The Roxy on Tuesday July 31st.
Bob McNeill is in concert at the Café on that night (see below for details), so keep the last Tuesday of the month programmed in your diaries for great live acoustic music.
As ever, if you don’t want to get news about the Singers’ Club, just send us an email with ‘I don’t want this stuff!’ in the subject line. J
The Singers’ Club Residents:
Tony Hillyard & Tracey Haskell
For regular news about who’s playing at the Singers’ Club on the Last Tuesday of every month, go here: www.nzacoustic.net
If you’re interested in playing at the Singers’ Club contact Tony Hillyard:
021 253 8996 or: tonyh@clear.net.nz
Monday, April 23, 2007
Pillar to Post
Our local folkclub prides itself in giving our visiting artists all the bells and whistles when it comes to providing sound for our iconic Victorian venue. A hard room to play at the best of times, so we spend a bit on hiring the right gear for the job and having done a few dozen decent sized concerts now we (me and my team of hardworking, unpaid techies) believe we have finessed the venue. It's a wide, high vaulted room with inopportunely placed pillars but we've found the best layout, built a stage platform and arrange the room accordingly. It's a great venue when everything is working.
15:00 The boys turn up and we start lugging the speakers in (2 JBL Concert series), place them on their plinths, angle them just so - experience has taught us this is critical for uniform coverage of this widish room.
15:30 We're running out the multicore and plugging in the amps - about a kilowatt per side. The thing we know well is that big is always better where folk and acoustic music is concerned. No other music, except perhaps classical music, is more demanding of power for its wide dynamic range (soft to loud) and intolerance to any form of distortion or unnatural artifacts. "Headroom" is key and we strive to keep the sound warm, real and uniform across as much of the room as possible. To do this you ideally need big speakers gently moving swathes of air through the space to avoid peaks and troughs in different locations. It's those annoying peaks that listeners percieve as "too loud".
16:00 The lights are going up and the sound system is ticking over nicely with a CD playing through it. Lines, mics and di's are checked, the desk is EQ'd and things are looking good.
16:30 We're onto the housekeeping, taping down leads and packing cases away. Time for a celebratory beer. No hitches, callbacks or toolkit breakouts.
17:00 Soundcheck time. Enter the Talent, who look aghast and say, "We won't be needing that, this is not a rock and roll gig. We've brought our own gear."
I have to say, I was reasonably impressed with how good their own system sounded given it was one tenth the size of the system we were now packing up. Apart from being annoyed at the wasted expense (money and time) I was sad that, given how good this group was, we couldn't have made them sound as good as they could have. Needless to say, tiny speakers on a stick were never going to cut it in front of 50 plus people spread across a room as wide as this. As expected, intelligibility fell right off 30 degrees off axis, so unless you were right down in front, it was a bit of a struggle.
I suppose it comes down to a matter of trust, really. When you turn up at an unfamiliar venue, do you trust that the locals have got it sussed or do you manage what you can with what you've got. The problem here was that the detail of who was doing what was not sorted out by their agent at the time of booking. We both made assumptions.
15:00 The boys turn up and we start lugging the speakers in (2 JBL Concert series), place them on their plinths, angle them just so - experience has taught us this is critical for uniform coverage of this widish room.
15:30 We're running out the multicore and plugging in the amps - about a kilowatt per side. The thing we know well is that big is always better where folk and acoustic music is concerned. No other music, except perhaps classical music, is more demanding of power for its wide dynamic range (soft to loud) and intolerance to any form of distortion or unnatural artifacts. "Headroom" is key and we strive to keep the sound warm, real and uniform across as much of the room as possible. To do this you ideally need big speakers gently moving swathes of air through the space to avoid peaks and troughs in different locations. It's those annoying peaks that listeners percieve as "too loud".
16:00 The lights are going up and the sound system is ticking over nicely with a CD playing through it. Lines, mics and di's are checked, the desk is EQ'd and things are looking good.
16:30 We're onto the housekeeping, taping down leads and packing cases away. Time for a celebratory beer. No hitches, callbacks or toolkit breakouts.
17:00 Soundcheck time. Enter the Talent, who look aghast and say, "We won't be needing that, this is not a rock and roll gig. We've brought our own gear."
I have to say, I was reasonably impressed with how good their own system sounded given it was one tenth the size of the system we were now packing up. Apart from being annoyed at the wasted expense (money and time) I was sad that, given how good this group was, we couldn't have made them sound as good as they could have. Needless to say, tiny speakers on a stick were never going to cut it in front of 50 plus people spread across a room as wide as this. As expected, intelligibility fell right off 30 degrees off axis, so unless you were right down in front, it was a bit of a struggle.
I suppose it comes down to a matter of trust, really. When you turn up at an unfamiliar venue, do you trust that the locals have got it sussed or do you manage what you can with what you've got. The problem here was that the detail of who was doing what was not sorted out by their agent at the time of booking. We both made assumptions.
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