Life, Death, Clouds, Crowds: Thoughts on Tamworth and Human Sacrifice.
owdy folks. How's that for a clickbait Headline ? Not bad eh? Clickbait is not a new phenomenon however :-)
I did actually have a point related to the headline, but first, relaxing pictures of Clouds.
Ahhh.
Turns out both Rosie and I are nuts for weather formations and one of the great elements of any trip are the patterns as you drive.
More of that in a minute.
We're back from a short run across the first week of the festival where we were the alternative to the alternative. We're not sure what the alternative is but whatever it turns out to be, we're either for or against it.
Meanwhile
Tamworth is on the move, the population is pushing 40K and new housing developments are springing up.
Unusually for us, we arrived to clear blue country skies.
A symphony of station wagons.
Our first show was an early evening show on the first weekend of the festival.
I was trying to video our sets using this new sports camera - when I get the footage sorted I may even post some of it here :-)
We used the first show to do a set of all the nice stuff we don't do at Pub gigs.
Big Thought #1 - Songs and People that listen to them or not
Songs model emotional states* (see how music works by david byrne)
On our albums the songs travel from Happy (cant tax love) to to Sad (even in a lifetime) , Introspective (feel so blue) to Extroverted (give me somethng I want).
When people are out and about they tend to want stuff to dance to. That means some of our more contemplative things get sidelined.
We make the distinction between audiences that are there to listen - they will tolerate more introspective or gentle musics and riskier musical ideas, as opposed to audiences that are there to party - crank it up baby, let's dance!
Getting this read on the audience right is crucial.
The festival crowds are a combination of both. We silenced the Albert one night with 2 vocals and a guitar, coulda heard a pin drop. Same show, 2 songs later, it was all about raucousness and dancing.
Chaos theory is alive and well represented in stochastic audience analysis as performed on the fly by your favourite cellar dwellers.
With our shows at regular evening intervals we had a very well orgnised enforced period of relaxation
New songs!
Quinoa Salad
Back to the pub for another show
Rinse and repeat
Big Thought # 2 - Absence of evidence or Evidence of Absence?
Scuttlebutt and rumour have no place in an evidence based process.
Fortunately this is a blog.
There has been talk over the years of dwindling crowds attending Tamworth. I really dont have the empirical data to state yea or nay, but here's three four (anonymised) quotes
Mother of four - 'It's too expensive to bring the family, CMC rocks the hunter is cheaper' (maybe but I hear it's moved to Ipswich so there)
Local Resident 1 - 'Yeeep, the numbers are down'
Local Resident 2 - 'there's lots of accomodation still available so late in the year, not a good sign'
Performer - 'yeah but the club is packed mate'
True to form, it only took a matter of days before the Stormcellar Weather arrived.
I'm still seeing rainbows
We did an early morning interview with Georgia at the Country Underground blog. I'll cross link when the vids posted. Rosie and Mr Wizard kindly ignored my suggestions and picked a high range vocal song for an early morning session. I am not entirely done exacting my revenge on them yet. I may also post pics of that process.
and what would a country show be without the chicken wire?
Big Thought #3 - Tributes to the gods of youth and beauty - or Country Music as Human Sacrifice
This year we missed the breakfast at (CENSORED), where, for each of the preceding five years we had watched a new beautiful, gorgeous, talented, well spoken, heartfelt Young Female Country Singer introduced as the winner of the 'XYZ' contest (or equivalent).
Each year a new one.
I've worked with previous tributes (yes I do think it's Hunger Games-ish) who have been somewhat less starry-eyed at the end of the process and somehwat bemused when the Love Tap gets turned off.
Time to start singing 'New Kid In Town', or in our case, 'Country Radio' - (Just another bleeding soul, singing on a country radio).
No, not a moral judgement here. Something even stranger.
I recently visited the Aztec exhibition and was doing a little reading courtesy of Louis (hey L!) because I couldn't wrap my head around the whole sacrifice deal. It bugged me. The willing participants even more so.
Continuing Big Thoughts on the role of music, this perpetual discarding of the previous winners in favour of the new strikes me as more of a celebration of youth and beauty's flowering each year, than a quest for Music. Some deep, jungian link to a Celtic past of maidens in garlands and peat bogs.
Ok, I promise not to think too deeply for at least an hour.
Here's some relaxing cloud pics.
We had a great week in Tamworth that could only have been made better with a few more days to see some of the great acts up there.
I hope it continues to be a beacon for anyone that wants to participate in music, even for those folks who might think a little too much :-)
Along our drive back we got lost thanks to an outdated GPS map. I love getting lost.
We stopped to smell the Rosie.
The journey, that's the thing.
Oh yeah here's some great drumming from Theo.
