cheap spotlights, big crowd, loud noises

The River Hill Coffee House was wonderful! It took place October 19th, this past friday night from 7- 10:30. A friend of mine, Kathleen Littleton, was in charge of organizing the event, so she found a way to allow me to play (without me attending any of the meetings.. etc) They had so much equipment at this show, I can't explain how many guitar amps and microphone cords were filling up the huge area designated as the "stage" in the river hill cafeteria. enough power amps for people working at the wendy's down the street to hear some of the music! There were couches and rugs, and tables with artsy products and art work hung up over folded up cafeteria tables. Not to mention the dim lights from christmas lights and the two "spotlights" created by lightbulbs in those metal bowl-shaped devices.

Now that you have a feel for the setting.. I performed 3 songs, "spectacular", "what you'd say", and "maybe". And my faithful fans/friends and myself agreed that it was one of the best performances yet. I think all of this recording has made me become a little more consistent in my performances. A lot of times when I perform lots of songs I'll lose track of where I am in the song or simply forget some of the words, but with the hard work in the recording studio (if i can call an office with a computer and microphone a recording studio) I've really got all the songs figured out.

I've had so much fun with all of this lately, making CDs for my close friends (because the CDs still are not perfected in any way), performing at different venues, meeting tons of great people, and hearing so much good music... that I've been behind in all the paperwork! Like my paper for example, that I haven't started writing. I could totally write a personal essay about what this experience has been like, but RESEARCH is something i need to focus on and just DO even though it can be painful!

The holiday's are coming and the deadline for the maryland application is 10 days away. Next step would be to focus on these writing assignments, and rather than perfecting my recordings of my songs.. I'll start getting a grasp on my paper. there's so much i could still write about, it's scary to narrow-down. I'm starting to think I should bring out 3 different aspects of what makes a good musician and then pull examples from various artists to exemplify these qualities. That could get really messy though. We'll see!


Jodi