RESONANCE on Tour in 2019

Since I moved my website and didn’t save blog posts from the old one, I wanted to share some past highlights with you all.

In 2019, I self-planned a tour of California. It was called the ‘Escape Velocity Tour’, to symbolise leaving my comfort zone and launching myself, like a rocket off the surface of the planet. I hired a bass player and drummer from Los Angeles (for-hire musicians who play with different bands, aka ‘session musicians’), sent them my music and charts, and traveled to LA to rehearse with them. (My drummer used to have a studio in a large complex, where Rage Against The Machine also had their rehearsal rooms!)

I researched live music venues - all the way from Sebastopol in northern California down to San Diego in the south - and pitched them with my electronic press kit, relentlessly following up with e-mails and phone calls. This was a lot of work, and at some point I had the bright idea of hiring someone to help with the chasing phone calls. It’s a pity I had that idea only late in the process, because it would have saved me a lot of time and disappointing calls. But the person I hired (a fellow musician also looking for work) was great on the phone and helped to secure one of the gigs on my eventual calendar of dates. I realized then that I’d previously been going about it all wrong, thinking I needed an agent to get me gigs. I discovered that I was pretty OK at getting gigs myself.

A really nice set of dates and venues came together, and next I needed a tour poster. I turned to a trusted collaborator, etherbrian, who had designed my album covers all the way back to 2014. I sent him a still from one of my music videos, and he turned it into a super illustration, which you can see above. For the size of the printed version, I wanted it to look like the posters at the famous San Francisco venue, The Fillmore. When you go to a gig at the Fillmore, as you leave, staff stand outside distributing posters as a keepsake. I still remember the rush of leaving a Fillmore show on a high, and being handed the band’s tour poster as I went down the stairs out into the night air.

I’ll be serializing this story, so follow along to find out more, including: the nicest town to play in, and one of the best gig experiences I’ve ever had!