first performance

Last night I performed for the first time as “Axis Evil” at the Gopher Hole north of Escondido CA. It went very well given that it was my first live performance in about four years and given that the PA system sucked. I was nervous, but I played through my mistakes. I’ve appended a photo below.

I opened the show, so I started with “Talk”. Since the main band was an acoustic act this surprised the audience a bit, but I wanted to leave an impression. Nobody expected the sound I gave them. Also, since I only showed up with a guitar and microphone, no one expected the rest of the band to come through the PA from my iPad.

I still had to pay for my margaritas though.  J

I spent Friday night strategically removing tracks from the recordings of “Talk” and my cover of Madonna's “La Isla Bonita”; the tracks that I intended to play live. For “Talk” this was the lead material except for the chorus, which is too hard for me to play while singing. For “La Isla Bonita”, I cut the chords that marked the beat and played them live.

I spent all day Saturday practicing. This was a challenge because I needed to both practice singing and prevent overworking my voice. So I rehearsed the guitar part a lot by itself between rehearsing the guitar/singing to give my voice rest.

During the performance my voice shook a little, and I didn’t “move” with the music like I usually do. This was all due to nervousness. But I still sang with confidence that was more an act than how I actually felt.

Thinking in terms of “branding” my music, I had to decide what to wear. I decided not to dress “like a rock musician” and instead showed up as I normally would at that particular bar (I am a regular there, which is why they let me perform). I think this too surprised the audience when a nicely, conservatively dressed woman started with the jarring entrance of “Talk” and sang with a masculine voice. Oh well. I don’t hide who I am when I perform music.

For the tech I used an iRig2 to plug my guitar into the iPad, and used the AmpliTube software to simulate the amp/effects and mix the MP3 file containing the rest of the band. Then all I had to do was plug the output of the iRig2 into the mixer.