Final Performance: Review
live from The Park, 15/05/24
The final performance felt like a great success! I am still reeling from the adrenaline of such a fun show that I've put so much hard work into, and so are my session musicians; Liv and Elliot!
You can view a short, audience recorded clip bellow, but I will attach the full video recording to this blog post when I receive it!
Artistically, the original vision was to translate several of my studio singles as 'Bex Kite' into full, live band performances. The songs chosen were 'Broccoli', 'Achilles Heart', and 'Reflections', along with a cover song too for fun!
I had only ever played these songs live in front of an audience solo acoustic before, so this was a big change, but I was super excited to translate my original creative vision into a live show experience, this was just not doable before though as I mostly created the studio versions of the tracks alone.
I recruited Liv to play guitar for me, and Elliot to play drums. I decided to switch over to bass guitar while singing the lead vocals as opposed to guitar, as a lot of the quintessential guitar riffs and licks that I play on the studio versions of these songs are too difficult for me to play while singing. This was quite challenging, as I've never sang while playing bass before. I thought it would be fairly straight forward and similar to playing guitar while singing, however I found it really challenging to keep tempo at first, especially on 'Broccoli' which has a pretty fast bass line! I overcame this though with lots of practise and dedication, and I feel like I did a great job!
All three songs were written in my late teens and early twenties in my bedroom, all about my personal experiences with relationships and mental health problems. 'Bex Kite' is my personal, creative passion project, so even though I wanted this show to be high-end, I also wanted to keep the element of authenticity that my music and brand is known for. This is why we decided to all just wear our own clothes, and I'm even wearing a band shirt from a small local band called Dhalia. I wanted to keep the homegrown, DIY element of Bex Kite prominent in the show, and combine it with theatrical elements such as my lighting decisions and the visual projections behind us.
The audience interaction was amazing, I was the first act on that encouraged everyone to stand up, come up to the front of the stage and move around. They didn't take much convincing, they did what I said and they seemed to have a great time - which makes me feel good about my stage prescence!
Technically, I think the music sounded great, and you can view how far the quality of our playing together has come from the rehearsal videos throughout the year on my blog bellow! We're sounding tighter and more fluent than ever before. There were a few rhythm mistakes due to Liv not being able to hear herself well enough, and I wasn't super happy with my voice at times because I felt like I was straining in volume to keep above the instruments, however this can easily be remedied next time. I just need to be more confident regarding communicating with the sound technicians and making sure I have the sound that I want and need.
I plan to publish the full, final video online and use it to promote my album that's just released!
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