Ruune Zoom Music Performance (Fixed Link)
and some bonus thoughts
First things first and the reason for this bonus entry: last newsletter it was brought to my attention that the link was broken to register for my zoom music performance on April 27th at 2pm PST. Here is a fixed link! A reminder that I only move forward with these performances if ten people register by a week before, so feel free to invite a friend to sign up. (I just realized that gives ya 3 days, so sign up or not, no worries!)
Also, my show in Olympia at Lantern Records is no longer happening. I had a really amazing time doing 4 sweet shows on the East Coast with some of my favorite songwriters. You can find mini reviews of them if you keep reading (I lied, I ran out of writing omph, but maybe I will make a zine of reviews later), but for now I have shows in Oregon and Washington coming up and you can find out about them here.
(above: performing at PRISM Analog in Portland ME, to a crowd of 40-50 silently weeping listeners)
I am going to try to keep these newsletters to 4-5 times a year, learning to record and save up my thoughts, learning to process more slowly and make more capacity in my life. While I am here, here are some thoughts based on recent answers to questions that have come my way, either personally or to the stratosphere.
Recently my friend Clara of Lady Queen Paradise and host to Public Universal Fantasy asked the musicians in their circuit two questions:
What would it look like if someone could only get your music on physical copy?
How would you proceed as a musician if you could no longer play shows?
I loved these questions because the first one is actually true for me. All of my old music is of course, available online (although recently I deleted my bandcamp, a freeing action with the hilarious side effect of the website telling me that I was devastating and aggravating my fans) but the new stuff I have been working on I have not released anywhere and is only available via cassette tapes of various live shows that I have recorded each time I perform. Sometimes (rarely) people ask me where they can stream my music and I glee in saying “too bad!”, which yes, is kind of rude: but is also extremely liberating after years and years of putting in endless amounts of effort to reach “wider exposure”. As a fan of dungeons and dragons (and a forever dungeon master myself) I find joy in creating and designing a “quest” that listeners have to go on in order to engage with my work. To participate, you must be willing to walk between the sphinxes in the never ending story.
I mean, at the end of the day, it’s not really that big of a deal. But it is, and I love it! My music is not for someone to scroll past and quickly judge. You have to want to find it to listen to it, you have to prepare for it. I am interesting in finding other artists who operate in this way, so feel free to share in the comments in you know any!
In a similar sense I don’t think there is a situation in which performance is no longer possible. I know that this question was asked with COVID in mind, how for many shows are not possible because huge swatches of indie music (both below and above) have decided to live in a post pandemic reality while many of us still live in a world where the dangers are very real. There are many people who do not care, who move through gigs as if there is nothing wrong, perhaps getting sick, perhaps getting others sick, and thinking nothing of it. Many immunocomromised, disabled, and conscentious folks have a hard time operating in music communities because of this.
However (and what I am about to say does NOT invalidate those feelings, at all) I have had really wonderful times redefining what shows look like. Shows do not have to have 150 people to be meaningful! Shows do not have to take place in venues, a performance can be to 5 people spaced out in a living room. A show can be in a park. I play songs for the river sometimes. Also, as someone who has organized plenty of shows, it has been heartening how much people respond to masking when it is prompted on flyers. I often say “please wear a mask” instead of “masks required” because I do not always have enough support at a show to enforce it, and don’t want anyone to walk into a situation unawares who was expecting one thing but finding another: but even on my last new england string of shows I was not 100% sure of the communities I was playing in, and I still was able to perform to mostly masked crowds. My last show with New Here had roughly 100-150 people and 99% of the attendees masked up. Some people are less likely to go to shows that are set up in the reality I perform in, but others see something they want to be a part of and show up.
So, I don’t see a reality in which I would stop performing, it is a huge part of who I am. I will continue to craft the “gig experience” I want to play in, even if the audiences get smaller and smaller, and I will find them more and more meaningful.
BUT! If I had to stop performing, I would probably pivot back to writing music for video games and music, as best I could. Never as a job, always as something that makes my life more satisfying.
<3
Founding Editor - Gregory James McKillop
Community Outreach Coordinator - Bentabia Beacon Bezalel
Technical Operations Engagement - Ruune