Tag: recital

Gig Day XI: Spring Jam V

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Tonight is the Spring Jam, one of the two recitals I host on my front porch every year (the other is the Spooktacular, which is in late October).  I’m looking forward to an evening of music, merriment, and hot dogs.

This year marks the fifth Spring Jam, which has become a popular event with my private music students.  These front porch concerts started out as a way for my buddy John and me to play gigs during The Age of The Virus, when nobody was open for live music.  I realized that if I wanted to play in front of a live audience, I’d have to circumvent the hysteria and become the venue and talent.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooktacular 2024 is Tonight!

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Pickup my newest release: Spooky Season III!  Use promo code spooky to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp!  Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Thursday, 31 October 2024.

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Tonight’s the night—the 2024 Spooktacular!  My students have been working hard on their solos, and it should be a fun night.

I have done a concert around Halloween for years, and started calling it the “TJC Spooktacular” in 2019.  At that point, it was pretty much a solo show, with my buddy John hopping on to accompany me on a few tunes (or for me to accompany him).

During The Age of The Virus, I couldn’t find a venue that was booking live music, largely due to concerns about big groups of people in a confined space.  So I conceived of turning my front lawn into a seating area and my porch into a stage.  Thus, the Spooktacular in its modern iteration was born.

That first front porch Spooktacular in 2020 was not a recital for my private music students, but was instead a more self-indulgent concert:  John and I missed playing live music.  I also paid a couple of groups to perform as openers:  one of my students and his punk band—their first live gig—and two of my open mic music friends (one of whom, Sarah, I did a gig with back in August for her birthday).

Then I began to transition towards the Spooktacular being a recital for my students.  That helped to attract more people to the event, but also shifted the tone away from “raucous-but-mild-Halloween party” to “family-friendly Halloween party.”  The original Spooktacular was never bacchanalian, but the current recital version is much more focused on family fun.  The costume contest also seems to be a big hit among the little ones, too.

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Gig Day IX: TJC Spring Jam IV

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s time for another front porch concert!  This event—the TJC Spring Jam and Recital—will be the eighth Front Porch concert I’ve hosted (I think), and I’ve learned quite a bit from the others, including the last Spooktacular.

This year marks the fourth Spring Jam, which has become a popular event with my private music students.  These front porch concerts started out as a way for my buddy John and me to play gigs during The Age of The Virus, when nobody was open for live music.  I realized that if I wanted to play in front of a live audience, I’d have to circumvent the hysteria and become the venue and talent.

Gradually, the concept morphed from a self-indulgent concert into a recital for my private music students.  The Lord Has Blessed me—far beyond what I deserve—with a large clientele of private music students (I’m a bit murky on the number at the moment, as I have several seniors graduating tomorrow, but it’s around fifteen lessons a week), so it made sense to offer a couple of recital opportunities a  year for them.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spring Jam 2023 Review

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Subscribers:  the annual TPP Summer Reading List will be posted soon (sometime this month—maybe next weekend!).  I’ll also be getting back to my series on Washington, D.C., this month as well.

Another Spring Jam is in the books, and I think it was the best one yet.  I should probably write that behind the paywall, but I’d like everyone to know.

Regular readers will know that in October 2020 I launched the TJC Halloween Spooktacular (I’d done a “Spooktacular” at a coffee shop in 2019, but that was a very different event), a Halloween concert on my front porch.  That first front porch Spooktacular featured two opening bands, followed by a couple of sets from my friend John and myself.  It was a rousing success, but in retrospect, it was too long (three hours!) and needed some streamlining.

Of course, in The Age of The Virus, everyone was starving for live entertainment and social interaction after being cooped up inside with Netflix and takeout for (by that point) seven months, so I could get way with a bloated bill.  It was a success, and most folks stuck around until we wrapped up sometime after 9 PM.

While I don’t think I’ve ever repeated the success of the first Spooktacular in terms of attendance and cashflow, I do think I’ve improved the formula somewhat.

The biggest change came when I made the Spooktacular and the spin-off Spring Jam into a recital for my private music students.  Following the doldrums of Summer 2020, when I had just one piano student every week, my private lessons empire ballooned to around twenty lessons or so each week (occasionally fewer, often more).  That has been a major financial and musical blessing, but it also means I have enough students to put on a pretty good recital, even if some students can’t attend.

With this latest Spring Jam, I think I have gotten it down to more of a science—but a fun science, like playing with magnets in the seventh grade.  There’s still the fun, relaxed, DYI-spirit of the event, but everything seems to be running more smoothly.

Like playing an instrument, practice makes perfect.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Spooktacular 2022 Preview

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

The Spooktacular—my annual Halloween concert—returns in one week, on Saturday, 15 October 2022.  Since 2020—during the height of The Age of The Virus—I’ve hosted this annual celebration of musical spookiness (and spooky musicality) from my front porch.  It’s worked pretty well, and even spawned a published piece in Self-Reliance, so why mess with success?  We’re back on the front porch again.

I am adding one innovation, though, one that worked quite well with the TJC Spring Jam earlier this year:  like the Spring Jam, I’m turning the Spooktacular into a recital.  My buddy John and I will still play some tunes, and we’ll invite the kids up to play with us on “Monster Mash” and KISS’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” but the opening segment of the Spooktacular will feature my private music students.  Indeed, it’s an open invitation to anyone who wants to play a tune—come on out!

Of course, I’ll be working hard this weekend to get the house prepared for the Spooktacular—and to remind folks about it!  There are many little tasks to complete and items, large and small, to prepare, both to give everyone a fun time, and to squeeze some buckaroos out of the event.

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Gig Day VI: TJC Spring Jam II

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s time for another front porch concert!  This event—the TJC Spring Jam and Recital—will be the fourth Front Porch concert I’ve hosted (I think), and I’ve learned quite a bit from the others, especially the last Spooktacular.

This year, instead of inviting another band to open the concert, I decided to make the first portion into a recital for my private music students.  I’ve been teaching private lessons for years, but have never done a recital, so it was high-time to give my students and opportunity to share their considerable talents.

The recital element also brings with it a built-in audience:  the students naturally come with their parents—and, potentially, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends, etc.  More people means more merch sales, and possibly more tips and donations.

For this one, though, I’m not playing up the moneymaking aspect too heavily.  Yes, I hope to recoup some of my expenses for food and such, but the point is more to celebrate the hard work and talents of my private students.  If I sell some t-shirts and paintings, well, all the better.

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