My band, Arbelos, has had an interesting few months as we dipped our toes into the world of live touring. We played in Dumfries, Edinburgh and Glasgow and had a lot of fun doing as well as learning about the process of bringing our recorded music to a real-time performance. Now we are taking stock, planning the next CD and a very special show for December.
The live experience has me thinking in new ways about song writing and I am trying to create my music with performance in mind from the start. Once the band can really play a song, then we’ll start to put down the album track rather than growing it in a computer layer by layer. The clever recording stuff can still go in there but on the back of a stronger core performance.
For December I’ve hired my favourite theatre, the Brigend in Dumfries. This is the home theatre of the Dumfries Musical Theatre Company, which was called the Dumfries Musical and Operatic Society when I was a member many years ago. It was in that very theatre that I met my wife.
The new show is tentatively entitled Christmas with Arbelos and Friends and is the first in our new-format live performances which will be more strongly themed, possibly telling a story. This time we have gathered some musical and theatrical friends to help us along and hope to make a memorable piece of seasonal entertainment.