What Goes Into A Showcase...

Now with my showcase creeping up (literally just over a month away) panicking sets in, the nightmares starting and getting worse, 24/7 thoughts and preparations....with all this said i wanted to give everybody a little insight of the WORK that goes into an hour of showcase.

I'm gonna take you all right back to the beginning, because in theory this showcase has taken me 3 years to get to. Its been 3 years since i started working on this album (actually a lot more) from the creative writing sessions with me, myself & I to the studio bookings, the start of the social networking to create a buzz. But i wont go into details about the years of work behind the showcase.

So once i got the album down and prepared closed off, I re-opened and completely changed the entire track listing, album name, the look and ideas behind the album, the vision, the direction. This only creates more work for which the entire showcase changes.

Venue

There can be no showcase without a venue, the venue is the core of the showcase, and even this takes a lot of thought. The research into venues, the area in which you want the venue, the size of the venue, the placing of the stage within the venue, the price oh hire, the capacity...it all has to be considered. And even though this was one of the biggest challenges for me, once this is down and found and date settled you have lift off and everything else can go full steam ahead!

Getting The Word Out and Selling

Now booking the venue and setting the date isn't all you need of course, people need to know about the showcase and I built this up to be my nightmare and now with the stage i am at it has become the easiest part of the showcase preparations! I had my head in the thought that no one is going to want to come to my showcase, why would they? But under pressure i got everybody behind it, created a buzz around it, and now my showcase is almost sold out....YES SOLD OUT!

Behind The Showcase

A lot of people have said to me "Its easy, you just pick songs and sing them" now i would love it if it was that easy, believe me, its not! Yes i have the songs prepared and i have an album but that's not all you need. You need to consider everything, who is it that is going to be coming to the showcase, what kind of things would they want to hear, how am i going to keep them interested with every song, does the song flow from each song to the next, how to open the show, how to end the show, intervals, themes....the list goes on. Its got down to the detail of, when i finish performing and I'm going to talk in between should i have low volume music in the background...really the thoughts just go wild!

People Involved

As much as i would love to be the one person i had to rely on it cant work like that. If its just me that's great, cause i know I'm going to turn up to rehearsal and i know I'm going to turn up to the show, but there's others involved. Firstly, guests, you need them to turn up, and its got to the silly question of "is there going to be a train/tube strike on the night that will stop people from coming!". But there is the guitarist to the acoustic section, there's the dancers, there's the sound engineer, there's the people i have asked to help on the night. It takes WORK to get everyone involved let alone keep them involved to turn up!

Visuals

Now i noticed when i went to the venue i chose there were screens on the walls of the stage...now luckily enough i had just released my new music video for "Wasted" and of course there was no thought process, I'm just gonna loop the video. Ta-da! Luckily also the venue is in very good condition and not a lot of stage design is needed, just a few posters!

But the Visual isn't all about the stage and what it looks like, its also about what the hell I'm going to look like, what am i going to wear and more than that, what are the dancers going to wear to not clash with what I'm going to wear!

I began with designing the kind of things i would have liked to wear at my showcase. Basically I was a little bored one day and got designing.

Of course you never find exactly what you want but had to deal with it! But once you have gone out and got tons and tons of stuff, whittling it down to what you are ACTUALLY going to wear....not good!

But after all that babble, do you know what the really problem is that Ive come to face after all this panic? I actually may have too many people interested in coming....may have to do more than one showcase :-\ then ill have to go through it all over again!