A world tour from your living Room
As lockdown eases, playing live doesn’t & tours still lie between nostalgic memory & hopeful projection. With the surviving venues starting to open their booking books most are already booked 2 years in advance, artists are sitting on albums for release not knowing how or when to schedule & with folks getting more adept at home live feed
broadcasting, we now see the rise of cross broadcasting networks & slowly more lock down releases, singles, albums but mostly jigsawed together videos emerging. It’s all I can do to keep up with this super nova burst of creativity.
Our own post lockdown phenom iMTV – international Moose TV now also experimenting with cross broadcasting & with not just new artists every day joining but also with other networks in other countries and continents tying in, the prospect has arrived of someone picking up their guitar of an evening and before dinner reaching a potential audience of 100,000’s of dedicated followers of indie music fashion in one broadcast and a whole world of them in a week’s worth of targeted events.
Meet Ronan MacManus if you don’t already know Ronan you will know of his brother Declan (AKA Elvis Costello) Ronan is a prime example of what can be achieved with a little help from his friends (you & me) he has, of his own industry & necessity, built a Corona cottage industry our of the Corvid rubble and with the support of another Fretsore Records
https://www.fretsorerecords.com/ Ronan has carried on releasing records & found a sympathetic wave there for them & his broadcasts, ready to carry his career through these choppy seas around his unmissable “Live Tuesday”. He does requests, people tip for songs, they tip for his brothers songs ( don’t tell him J ) he is growing his Patreon community, broadcasting shows & product just for them at only £5 a month while pouring his heart and soul into his home broadcasting device, all live from The Brand New Zeros Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/brandnewzero
Ronan has also managed to film, edit, produce & release a lockdown band video/single “Human Kindness” that is for me “the” Covid anthem we are delighted that “Human Kindness” premiered with us on iMTV and to have his show pulling thousands of plays and views across both our networks together each week. That’s a picture that is mirrored on iMTV international Moose TV every night of the week now across a truly international system, with the likes of Cary Morin (Native American Blues man from Colorado), Joel McColl’s The Songbirds live from New World Deli, Austin,TX,, CherryPill (from South Africa) Gary Anderson (Scotland) Bex Marshall (House of Mercy England) Christopher Hawley (Venus Beach California) Martin Praetorius (Germany)David Starr (Colorado) Noel McKay
(Nashville) Ben Reel (England) etc, we have the legend that is Christine Collister joining the rostra this week and the indefatigable consciousness channelling Ellis Delaney joining us soon from the heart of revolutionary America her beleaguered home town of Minneapolis, Minnesota
What’s next then I wonder? Well its where this article started, I figure more folks will decide why risk touring & will choose to do world tours from their home studio, the same artists that are already producing, marketing & distributing entire albums from there. IE Ronan is now tethering his Brazilian, New England, Old England & Antipodean promoters into his network, & about to schedule a virtual tour, we are doing the same with, all the promoters, venues, face book open mic, fan/musician groups, Festivals, venues & house concerts we’ve visited in our 4 year stravaig. Soon any artist will have the means to reach their support structure with a new releases as effectively in this strange new world as they ever could have traditionally & still schedule it in with painting the house, walking the dogs, even doing the dishes & maybe even writing & producing that next album.
Touring could well be so difficult its a concept in danger of becoming obsolete.
If you’re interested in any of the questions brought up here. [email protected]
Editorial Rob Ellen