And so September passes in the blink of an eye, and with it passes the last of the summer. It seems like a life time ago that I was touring Europe just two months ago, but it's only fitting that I bid fare well to summer by returning to the last stop on the tour, the beautiful city of Lisbon. There seems to be a lot of hype around at the moment about the Portuguese capital and it's not hard to see why. The weather is stunning pretty much all year round and there is an abundance of cool bars, great places to eat, and fantastic architecture. The reason for my return to this gem of a town was to play at the MuDanca Festival, and it was with great anticipation that I flew to the city for the weekend.
As it turned out, it was one of the biggest events that I've had the pleasure of performing at. The stage alone was the largest I've played on, and it was a great opportunity not only for exposure, but also to test drive my live show in a festival environment. Safe to say my one man band act held up very well, and despite almost melting in the summer sun, it was 28c that weekend, my set went down very well with the audience, although I think some of my jokes got lost in translation. I stepped off the stage with a feeling of tremendous achievement, not because of the performance it's self, but because this felt like the beginning of great things to come. I was lucky enough to spend the whole weekend in the city and although I'd been to most of the sights last time I was there, it was nice to chill out and take in the last of the summer sun. You can watch my vlog of the trip below.
The rest of September was really about reconciling what musical direction I wanted to take in the future, and resolving in my mind the decision to work with a backing band or concentrate on being a purely solo performer. And the gigs that finally put the argument to bed were the subsequent shows that I played on my return to London, at the Lamb in Surbiton and Biddle Bros in Hackney. At both gigs the crowd really loved my one man band show and I can now move forward confident in my decision to concentrate on performing as a solo act.
I have recently invested in some new equipment which will help give more of a full drum sound, and I'm looking forward to revealing to you once my new act is fully rehearsed. Watch my vlog on this and other subjects since I've been back from Lisbon below to see what I mean.
And last but no means least, while I was in Lisbon I managed to pick up my vlogging camera, which I foolishly left behind by mistake (it's not really traveling until something goes wrong) last time round, and so I finally got around to editing the vlog that I filmed while I was in the city.