Journal update (14/07-27/07): Performing live at the Library bar, Recording session, Photographing the Art Couture Festival, Sound engineering, Attending Fiesta at the Open Arts Cafe, photoblogging the Anniversary Games at the Olympic Stadium.
Arts Couture Festival, Painswick, Cotswolds (Sunday, 14th July)
The annual Arts Couture Festival at Painswick is vibrant, eclectic, and very colourful. It included – catwalk shows, live music, a Battle of Britain flypast, body paint artists, Dali inspired fashion… and Keith Allen in a speedo!!
The festival showcases designers and artists from across the country. This year’s fashion themes included Metamorphosis, World Where You Live, and Well Suited, whilst the inspiration for the body artists was Magic.
Please see my photoblog here: http://besidetheseeside.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/art-couture-painswick.html
Sound engineering, St James’, Muswell Hill (Sunday 21st July)
On the 21st July, I had my last session behind the mixing desk for St James’ at Muswell Hill as I will shortly be moving to Putney. I’m very grateful to Chris Pearce and St James’ for training me up in the art of sound engineering. I’ve had a fab time and learnt a very useful skill.
Performing at the Library bar, Islington (Monday 22nd July)
Simon Lawrence & I both played a few of our songs at the Library in Islington. It’s a really good open mic, and a great place to try out new material. I don’t have any live pics from my set as Simon & Ed both claimed to be so captivated by my performance that they forget to take any… Erm! Don’t believe a word of it! They were just forgetful! Haha! It was good to be back on stage again.
Fiesta, Open Arts Cafe, West London Synagogue, Marble Arch (Thursday 25th July)
After witnessing (& photographing) an amazing ‘Damsel’s Most Daring’ show a few weeks ago, I was keen to see one of Maya Levy’s other creative outlets, the ‘Open Arts Cafe’. At this event various creative acts get the opportunity to perform at a regular showcase.
The theme for this month was ‘Fiesta’, and the party-theme inspired performances by – storyteller Clare Murphy, comedian Giacinto Palmieri, musician & app designer Bertie, the Purple Ladies, and Maya Levy herself. In addition to being the compere for the event, Maya also performed as well. Her Fiesta-dance song was one of the highlights from an evening filled with some great entertainment.
In addition to the performance pieces, during the interval I was sketched by artist Heather Bandenburg who created a portrait of me… with a frogs head! 😉
Recording session (Friday 26th July)
Steve Dowsett & I had a very productive recording session on Friday. We decided to continue with my song ‘Explain’, but I wanted to completely change the style from our original demo, and so we decided to scrap all of our previous work and totally re-record the song. I’m really pleased we did.
There is a huge improvement to the sound, and I feel the vibe of the recording matches the sentiment of my song more closely now. Vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, and bass were all recorded during the session on Friday. We celebrated with post-recording drinkypoos.
I’m planning to release an EP towards the end of this year and I’m sure ‘Explain’ will appear as one of the tracks on it. In the near future I will be returning to the fantastic Bonafide Studios – but not as a session musician this time – but to record a few of my songs for the acoustic CD.
Photoblogging, the Anniversary Games – Athletics, Olympic Stadium, Stratford (Saturday 27th July)
I really loved the Olympics last year, so I was super excited to be returning to Olympic Park to watch the athletics at the Anniversary Games. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to get into the Olympic Stadium last year (although I was extremely lucky to see some other Olympic events live) so it was fantastic to finally see some athletics in the stadium at last.
The Anniversary Games was a definite highlight of 2013 for me, and I had such a great day with my sister – cheering on sports stars including Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Bolt. I took loads of photographs, so please check out my photoblog. I hope to post the pics online by Saturday: http://besidetheseeside.blogspot.co.uk/
Many thanks for visiting my journal. If you haven’t done so already please follow me on facebook and twitter. Cheers 🙂
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Samantha x
Links
http://www.damselsmostdaring.com/
https://www.facebook.com/openartscafe
http://www.bonafidestudio.co.uk/