A few years ago I made the choice to try my hand at playing my guitar and singing while in open mic night at a single one of the bars I appreciate going to in town.
I didn’t assume it would ever develop into anything, let alone an ongoing set of local gigs.
There were a handful of people at the bar that evening who encouraged me to play more after I finished a rendition of America from Simon and Garfunkel. I just had my acoustic guitar with me that evening, however nowadays I use more stage equipment. I commonly play my electric guitar into a series of effects pedals before running the audio in and out of my ipad. The songs recording software allows me to play bass and drum backing tracks while I perform on my electric guitar. It would be wonderful to play in some kind of band in the distant future, however for the moment I am more than pleased just playing as a solo act at local bars. Happily the main bar that I play at the most has its own PA system inside. It would be tremendously difficult for me to cart my own PA system around to every bar at which I perform. They even have a full stage lighting kit with various spotlights and an array of multi-colored lights. For the moment I am just going to treat this like a part time job without any delusions about getting a full stage show to travel the country or the world. It’s an exciting activity and a fantastic way to decompress from a long and grueling work week. It’s also great not having to deal with unit rentals to get access to a good PA system.