“an intimate evening of exquisite music played with the kind of understated charm that makes a real connection between performer and audience”

Photo courtesy Mike Cummins

Well, the dust has about settled on my concert at mac back on June 11th (2011). Im glad to say it went really well.

To be honest, my main worry – stemming from many years experience of small time music and comedy promotion – was getting a big enough audience to make it worthwhile playing in such a big venue as the main theatre at mac, but happily, at 8.05pm on the big night, I could look nervously over a crowd of no less than 150 fans, friends and family and I’m very grateful to all that attended.

Although the nerves were building, I had the pleasure first of watching Jules Gray’s support set – he’s such an intense performer, in contrast to his casually charming between song chat with the audience.   Have a look at this video of  Jules’ rendition of the Neil Young classic “Southern Pacific”:

The track is also featured on his eponymous debut album alongside nine excellent original songs combining great melody and really insightful lyrics.

I started my set with a playback of my new track “On til Dawn” giving the audience a teasing sample of the lush backing vocals that charaterise the Mindfulmess album before taking the stage to start with a performance of one of my warmest and most uplifting piano pieces Gudonya:

(videos courtesy Marc Reck, to whom Gudonya is dedicated.)

I then launched straight into a sequence of songs from Mindfulmess and followed it with more select highlights from Valentine Court as well as a couple of pieces from what will be my third album when that comes out in 2012 and a nice rendition of Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows.

My friend and long time collaborator Leon Trimble (aka VJ Chromatouch) was, as always, doing some really fine work with the visuals, displayed to great effect on the big mac stage.  Leon’s currently putting some finishing touches to a video to my new track  On til Dawn, so watch this space.

I also took my life in my hands and, for the first ever time, performed an improvisation live on stage.  Im not sure the result was one of my best or most adventurous efforts, but it went pretty well and, in what will hopefully prove to be a long term tradition, I recorded it directly into the memory of my digital piano and will soon be sharing it exclusively as a thank you to those who joined my email list at the event.

Being an independent musician is certainly hard work and is no kind of a route to financial gain, but when an event like this comes together, it really is a very satisfying experience and a good stimulus to keep on being creative and putting what I do out there.

The album wont be in all the usual online retailers until the Autumn (to give me time to try and get some reviews), but its available to listen to now (and purchase as CD or download) exclusively from this site, so do please visit www.richbatsford.com/music/mindfulmess and have a listen.   Thanks.

To celebrate the release of my new album Mindfulmess, Im going to be performing at the Midlands Arts Centre on Saturday June 11th – something which Im excited about in all sorts of ways. This is going to be the biggest fully solo show Ive done yet and Im really looking forward to the chance to play a lot of the songs and pieces that I dont have the chance to perform in half hour sets.

Some of the songs on Mindfulmess are very personal and (I think) kinda beautiful, so the chance to share some of them with some friends and fans is going to be very special indeed.

The album will be ready by then and Im planning a special limited edition CD release – maybe as few as 150 copies – to mark the occasion.

I’ll be joined by VJ Chromatouch who is working on some special visual delights and another friend who is a very fine singer/songwriter will be joining me as a special guest.

Tickets for this very special evening are on sale for £7 or £5 concessions – please order online via the mac box office or call them on 0121 446 3232.

Its great to be able to plug a local artist and really mean it.

Jo Hamilton is a fine and subtle songs with a very individual feel – often inspired by her unusual upbringing in the wilds of Scotland as well as periods in Turkey, UAE, Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

Now based in Birmingham’s Bohemian capital – Moseley – Jo has teamed up with superb producer Jon Cotton to create a debut album which marries up Jo’s delightful vocals with a rich array of talented instrumentalists.  Not surprisingly, the album has received absolutely glowing reviews from the likes of the Guardian, Independent and Mojo.

Now Jo and her team have released a new special edition of the album, so if you dont already have it – nows a good time to buy it.   Meanwhile you can listen to some of the tracks right here:

A very exciting project for music in the West Midlands is now live:

The Pilot Project started when local music enthusiast and one time BRMB broadcasting legend Robin Valk realised that with the ongoing demise of CDs and records, there was a danger that the best in new and contemporary music was no long being catalogued as it would have once been by the British Library.  Conscious that there’s a staggering amount of quality music in the region that might not otherwise be around for ever, Robin has put together an amazing team and created the Pilot Project.

With a lot of nous and clever work from the guys at Carousel Digital, the team have created something much more than simply a time capsule for future music historians.   Instead we have a wonderfully user friendly and accessible data base of hundreds of tracks of astonishingly high quality music in a vast range of styles.

I really urge you to explore this archive and experience the breadth and quality of music around – you can listen by style, search by region or look up your favourites and click on from there.  Spend a few minutes on the site and you are absolutely bound to find some new artist that floats your boat.

Birmingham has long had an amazing number of quality artists in a truly diverse range of styles – so much so that the area’s very diversity has probably held it back in the sense of developing a strong, cohesive “scene”.  But now, innovations like the Pilot Project offer not only a fabulous snapshot of where that scene is right now, but also a very real and practical method for enabling that scene, no, that community, to really blossom and grow.

If you live in or around Birmingham you may be aware that the good folks behind the indispensible blog Created in Birmingham also set up a temporary retail space in the City Centre to sell art works of many local creatives.

This fine project came to a temporary end when their time ran out in that particular space, but the good news is that they will soon be up and running at a new venue. You can keep up with their progess on their new website and blog.

Meanwhile, theyve been running a series of spotlight pieces on the artists who’s work will be on sale, and theyve gone and done one on me. Please do have a read, its a nice little interview piece.

Birmingham is proud home to Artsfest – the UK’s biggest free arts festival and this year it was bigger and better than ever.

I was proud to have been asked to play twice – first in the delightful setting of the Industrial Gallery of the Birmingham Musem and Art Gallery.  I played a set between two ancient stone Sphinxs to an audience of around fifty people.  I was quite nervous, partly since I hadnt played much recently after two weeks campervanning in the Yorkshire Dales, but my efforts were very well received by the crowd who bought several CDs.  Two were also kind enough to mention me online as one of the highlights of their festival – thank you Rich and Jenna.

Maybe the good vibes were influenced by the benign gaze of the remarkable figure of the Sultanganj Buddha (the largest complete bronze statue of its kind in the world) from across the hall.

Later in the weekend I had the great pleasure to be peforming to probably my biggest crowd yet as a solo act on the main stage in Centernary square, sandwiched neatly between the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Rep (performing a spirited rendition of Little Shop of Horrors).  It felt great to be performing on such a big stage again (playing large crowds with Beach Boys covers outfit Gidea Park was good training).

Oddly I find Im less nervous playing the larger gigs, perhaps because its a little less personal, altho I’m sure I’ll always enjoy the more direct human contact you get from smaller rooms.

BMAG photo courtesy Timm Sonnenschein
Centnery Square photo courtesy Wayne Fox

Ive been confirmed to perform at Arts Fest the UK’s biggest FREE arts festival on Friday September 10th at 8pm in the rather amazing venue of the Industrial Gallery at the Birmingham Musem and Art Gallery.

Hearing the rich tones of my digital piano reverberating through that kind of space should be pretty amazing – looking forward to this one.

My first gig for top Birmingham music promoters Capsule was a great pleasure yesterday.

For my set, I was a little taken aback at first by how quiet the audience were – very attentive and polite.  Probably because it was in a pub – albeit in the venue room of what is certainly one of Birmingham’s very bext music pubs – I suppose I expected it to be more lively – but actually the gentle mood suited the line up very well.

If the Capsule ladies ask me back, I may well with what was my first thought for this gig – since attendees at a Capsule gig are likely to be fairly seriously into music -  and take the chance to do a fully instrumental set, but instead I played what is currently my established set for acoustic nights and such – mostly my songs, with just a couple of my instrumentals.

Next Up – Friendly Fire built on the chilled mood, with moments of intensity and neat combination of modern, geekdom and classic 70s American folk rock.

Finally Phosphorescent took the stage – not totally at their ease for several songs, perhaps in part due to having travelled down from Glasgow in the day and arriving a bit late – but their relationship with the crowd progressed as the night went on.   Some superb musicianship was on display from all six members, comprising piano, soulful lead guitar, beautiful and haunting pedal steel as well as bass, drums and rhythm.

The sound was amazing – a great PA in there with Bartram ably and assuredly handling the controls as always.

Here’s a good review of the show, with pics by Katya Ogrin (one of which Ive borrowed for this post) over on brumlive.com

Really looking forward to my first gig for local promoter heroes Capsule on Saturday June 5th at the Hare and Hounds Kings Heath.

For those that may not already know, the Capsule ladies have a exceptional 10 year hisory of running extremely good concerts and also the Supersonic Festival – two of Birmingham’s finest.

On this occasion, I’ll be supporting Phosphorescent – an interesting touring outfit from America with a very nice line folky americana.

They are based around the work of Brooklyn, NY resident Mathew Houck and have released several albums to critical acclaim, offering something to fans of Dylan, Willie Nelson or the Fleet Foxes.

They are supported by Forest Fire – whose album Survival was one of Rough Trades top ten albums of last year.

I’ll be happily propping up the bill (so get there nice and early as I’ll be up soon after the 8pm start) tickets are £10 from the ticket sellers – but I have a deal where there first 10 people to email me a reply can get tickets for only £7 – so drop me a line asap if you can make it and I’ll sort you out.
Xx