It's good to be busy

Part 87.


  I have a very busy week behind me, and another one just started. And guess what? I am loving it :-) We had two concerts with JPKALLIO.COM. On Thursday we were over in the Submarine bar in Crumlin. This is well known Sports bar, but to my surprise it is amazing venue as well. There was a small case of unsuitability though, I'd assume most bands playing in the venue usually are either more folky or indie rock. There is a decibel meter on top of the bar facing a stage and as soon as we started it maxed out and stayed like that until the end of our set :-D. But hey, everyone seemed to enjoy it.

  On Friday we were in Swords and in the Slaughtered Lamb. This is a quite busy battle of the bands. There was eight acts on the night and we were the second last to get on the stage. The Slaughtered lamb had a nice set up, but we were starting to feel the hanging around and two late nights. In all fairness, it is a part of the job and something I am well used to with Sliotar, in the famous words of Charlie Watts on the 25^th  anniversary of the Rolling Stones he was asked what the 25 years had been like he said: “Five years of playing and 20 years of hanging around”. It never really gets easy, but I think with time you learn to deal with it better. I think the biggest thing to keep in mind in a moments like these is that you are not alone, all your band mates and the other bands on the night are in the same situation, so moaning about it does not make any ones life any easier. It can also hard on your concentration. After waiting for four hours, you get up and play, it can feel like it sneaks up on you and sooner than you think the gig is over. There is something I do and find it helpful. After setting up and just before I play. I try to just clear my mind and slow down my breath. If you do this even for like 30 seconds, it can have surprising effect on your performance. So try it out the next time;-)

  Then on Saturday and Sunday I was busy with Sliotar. The pressure is on with the summer tours starting on in mid May. There is always some car maintenance before the tours, which I am very happy Des, the drummer in Sliotar takes a good care of. Also before any tour I look through all my guitar set ups and at the moment I am going through some changes in my acoustic guitar rig. For years I disliked acoustic guitar amps, even to the point that it might have been over 10 years since I tried one. But a friend of mine gave me a lend of Marshall AS50D which I used on the Sunday gig. I must say I was very impressed! There is definitely a reaction between the guitar and an amp that I think I have been missing with the acoustic guitar. It felt like it all made sense lot more once again. So now I am looking what else there is out on the market:-). I have met people who tell me they are very happy with their instrument set up. Personally for me, I have been a professional musician for the past 15 years now and I have constant need to improve on my sound. I think the day I stop trying to improve my sound, is the day I should call it a day... But still, all the nice toys in the world won't change what your fingers do, that's where the real magic is and that's why still after 15 years I practice almost every day.

  Now this week JPKALLIO.COM will be in the basement of Sweeney's tonight (Wednesday the 25^th of April). We'll be the first on at 9.30pm. This is the first of the Music Mediums rock/Metal nights, which they are hoping to have once a month. In all fairness it was about the time Sweeney's had a dedicated night for the harder side of the music spectrum;-) There are some great bands on tonight, and If Sweeney's basement had a decibel meter, I'm sure it would stay up all night;-)

  Then Tomorrow the 26^th of April we'll be in the Pint once again. There is always an excellent sound in the Pint and we're really looking forward to this one as well. There is a

  And this weekend I'll be in the Porterthouse with Sliotar again on Saturday and Sunday. So yep, busy week;-). And you know, when you are independent musician, busy is good. It is almost always better to be playing than not. The only way to get better at what you do is do it a lot. No amount of rehearsals will never get you the experience you get from playing live. And it is the best way to spread the word of your band As well.  Hope to see you at one of the shows.
   J.P.

To get better at playing live you need to play live.

Part 81



    I am sitting home and waiting for UPC service guy, while writing this. I have had a forced break from all the promotion work for the past few days, due to loss of internet connection. As a result I managed to fix my bicycle, that has been on my to do list for a long while and instead of working all hours of the night I actually caught up on some well needed sleep:-). In a way good timing, as I have one of the busiest weeks of Sliotar's calendar ahead of me. St Patrick's day gives us all an excuse to have a party and no one does it quite like Dublin. Sliotar will be holding court in the Porterhouse in Temple bar, we call it a Sliotarpalooza. We'll be there Thursday 15^th 6-10pm, Friday 16th 6-10pm, Saturday 17^th 6.30-1am and on Sunday from 4-11pm. Of course on top of this JPKALLIO.COM is rehearsing intensively, getting ready for our first stint of concerts in 2012, photo shoots and all the other promotion. So busy to say the least:-)

    Many musician friends of mine after hearing about Sliotars schedule have said with a sigh “oh I wish I could do that”. So I thought to shed a bit of light on few so called secrets (only people who don't know this, or refuse to believe it call it a secret) and home truths, while I already feel sorry for my fingers;-). I am fully aware of how lucky I am to be playing in Sliotar and get to play live as much as I do, to travel all around Europe playing some amazing gigs and also some not so amazing... But here are the details of the so called “secret” recipe of how Sliotar got there. I would say the number one key to the bands success and longevity is our residency in the Porterhouse, this has given us an opportunity to play live every week for the past 16 years, out of which 12 I have been there. This has made three musicians in to seasoned pros when it comes to performing live. People often ask me if I get nervous before a concert With Sliotar? No I don't. Sometimes if there is lot of hanging around I get anxious, but not nervous. I have gotten on to stage in front of nearly 3000 people or played on live TV and as long as that unit is around me, I am right at home as we have done it literally thousands of times. And I am not saying this here as to boast, I am trying to explain that to get to the point where you can step on front of any audience without having to deal with nerves, you just need to do it a lot. And with Sliotar we did, we took any gig we could to get the name out and to play to new audience. We still do this on tours if we are in a new territory. And still today my best bit of advice to any band is to play live as much and as often as possible. When no one knows you, it is not a time to pretend you're a rock star and to think you are better than this or that gig. And unless you have done those 100 or so pub gigs where you got comfortable playing with each others live, you are not ready for that big festival stage. Everybody wants to skip this and just get to do those big gigs, but it is a learning curve and there is a big reason why you need to do it. Big festival stages are where the cracks show, so make sure you fix them first before you get up there. Personally I think the sign of a great musician is when you can get on a stage, have a crap sound, everything that can, will go wrong, but you still deliver a killer concert. You need to learn that your personal needs and comforts are not important to the audience. Once the show starts, you just get on with it no matter what happens. We have had everything gone wrong with Sliotar over the years and when it does it makes for a tough gig! But you get on with it. We have had problems with power in some areas of Eastern Europe where the power supply just wasn't steady enough and kept knocking out our front of the house speakers, we have had paraffin sprayed all over our instruments by the guys doing a fire shows before us (there was no one coming near us with a cigarette that day), we have had every imaginable situation go wrong with the drums, kick pedals falling to pieces, cheap rental kits hardware collapsing, Des having to wedge drums against each others and taping everything together, but still doing a kicking show, we have had broken tooth, foot, ribs, ligaments, torn muscles, squashed knuckles, blood... lots of blood, food poisoning, serious chest infections, high fever, nervous breakdowns, electrocution... And still, the show always went on. Sixteen years a go if you would have thrown one of these things at us, we probably would have freaked out and the gig would gone down the drain, but now we just get on with it. And that level of confidence in your self and in your fellow band members only comes from playing lots of live shows. So play at any given opportunity anywhere!

    As to JPKALLIO.COM, we are still quite new band. But surely my and the other guys past experience should make it a breeze to get to the same level of confidence? No! We still need to get used to playing live together as a unit, we need to get used to covering each others backs when everything goes down south, we need to get past our individual needs and start thinking as a unit, that's what bands are made of. This is why we set our selves the 100 concert challenge in the first place:-)

   So there you go, sorry for once again running away with my rant, but hey... Now for a few bits of quick updates. Well as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, Sliotar will be celebrating 2012 Paddy's day in the Porterhouse here in Dublin from 15^th to the 18^th of March. Also this week good friends of ours and a brilliant band Mike Got Spiked are playing an album launch show in the Industry (downstairs in the Mezz) on the 15^th of March. These guys are brilliant! Check out their new video





    JPKALLIO.COM has a busy April planned as well:-) here is the gig list so far: 4^th April Sweeney's, 13^th April Adelaid bar, Sligo, 19^th April Submarine Bar, Crumlin, 20^th April Slaughtered Lamb in Swords. More on the way;-)

    So that's a lot to digest for this week, hope to see you over the weekend and back here next week. Happy St Patrick's day every one!

   J.P.