I Want to Ride My Bike Show
On the 25th January I was invited to perform at the wonderful I Want to Ride My Bike café in Cardiff. I was lucky to perform in front of a fantastic audience who were very respectful, supportive and engaged. The event was hosted by one Arianwen Rowson, who worked really hard to pull together a brilliant selection of artists (This is a link to Ari's Soundcloud, listen if you get chance it's some good stuff - https://soundcloud.com/arianwen-rowson?fbclid=IwAR3w4RJgvJYky2hDqXH90Hm-kFizdeaLw4VPpeOGS0_g5GPvOGNLcmOngr4 )
Despite being exhausted from train journeys and skipping dinner to be there, I had a fabulous time. It was wonderful to be part of a local event such as this when many cities like Cardiff are facing losing their grassroots live music venues.
It's quite a wondrous thing to be able to share your music with a live audience. A lot of the time I make my music in a vacuum. I don't often get to work with other songwriters or musicians to produce my work and this is why I enjoy performing at these sorts of events. For a few hours my music gets to exist in a tangible space outside of its vacuum. Audience responses have been known to make me reconsider a song entirely, sometimes even going so far as to change their meaning to me.
Live music can do wonderful things for a community. It can bring us together with like minded people who share similar tastes but also open our minds to something new and exciting. It can support independent businesses who bring quirky and safe spaces to our cities and unite people in a common interest. In turn you support your local musicians. In a time of self-releasing, Spotify and Instagram these live music spaces are more important than ever to musicians in terms of promoting ourselves, meeting new people, gaining new followers and meeting other musicians. So this weekend, if you are twiddling your thumbs wondering what to do on your Saturday night, give your local area a quick google and see if there's any live music events going on. There's a good chance that by appearing in that audience you are going to make someone's day.
A huge thank you to Arianwen, the I Want to Ride My Bike Café staff and the lovely audience who made it in to watch the live music on Friday night. You made my day!
