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Looper's Delight
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Edwin Hurwitz wrote: "PS I am getting pretty jealous of all the people living in the Bay area, hearing about the shows going on and opportunities to perform. Anyone here in the Denver/Boulder region that I can go see?" Dear Edwin, Having been one of the people who has put on a lot of live looping shows in the Bay Area I wanted to share with you that everyone of these gigs was chiseled out of stone because there was no such thing as a venue for live looping...............people didn't know what it was. What we did and what I'd like to encourage everyone to do in their communities that have more than 2 live loopers in them is to do one yourself, even if you are afraid that you don't know how to do it. I was scared shitless to do the first five or six of them, myself but discovered that a lot of people are interested in hearing something different in music. Here's a simple template for what it takes to make a looping festival (even if it has only three artists in it like our Guitar Mini Looping Festival this coming Sunday. Look around your area and find a venue that is having a hard time getting patrons to come..............a bar that's not so popular, a brand new coffee shop, if possible, a brand new and very insecure venue that has opened up. Go to these people and say that you want to do a show on a really off night (we started with Tuesdays and Sundays originally) that will cost the bar/coffeshop/art gallery/venue no money to produce and that you are sure that you can bring 20-25 patrons in that would normally not come into the place. Then find 3-10 loopers in your area or surrounding cities; book them and get everybody to do anything possible to publicize the gig. Undoubtely, someone will have a P.A. to add to donate for the evening (we are a bunch of Gear Aquisition Syndrome junkies are we not?)............... Next, go to the newspapers that is around and let them know that you are part of a burgeoning international live looping scene (it actually is quite burgeoning these days............lol..........just look at Zurich, Firenze, Cambridge and Kobe) and that you are turning the citizens of your fair city onto a free concert of really creative music. Next, call up the local college or independent radio station in the area, give them the same hype and ask if you could come on the air and either 1) play a lo tech live performance or 2) do an interview on the new movement (electronica shows are really responsive to this as well as any new music shows) and then bring in as many CD samples of the artist who are going to play as possible to play representative music----if you want to get fancy and have the wherewithall..........make a compilation CD with 1 or 2 minute snippets of representative music and make up a hand full of copies to give to journalists and disc jockeys. We mostly have fairly small rigs or even with big rigs there usually aren't more than a couple of racks (albeit high ones in the case of a Ted Killian.........lol) so all the performers can fit on one stage usually. This makes for a fast moving show for newbies (people who don't know what the hell we are doing) and you don't have to have set changes. Divide the evening (or afternoon into evening) into the number of performers and give everyone at least a 30 minute set if not a 45 minute set. This is the exact formula I've used time after time after time to do the 25 some odd festivals that I've been directly involved with. So, pardon my gratuitous advice, but don't be jealous of the Bay Area.............put the effort into creating a show like this like the Matt Davignons and Bernhard Wagners and Hans Lindauers have. We created all of this out of nothing. We had no money. We had no one interested in what we did. We just got creative and worked really hard. Besides I want to be invited as a guest artist to the next Boulder Live Looping Festival so I'm just being narcissistic. yours, sincerely, Rick Walker ps If you ever need any advice (anyone) about how to overcome obstacles in your community, I've encountered just about every obstacle that one could think of from lack of venues to disgruntled festival attendees so I would be more than happy to help out with whatever I've learned to help you do it.