happy extended contract day

Keira-WitherKay

i'm elated i just heard this morning from my agent that my current 3 month ( nov/dec/jan) contract as a solo resident musician at The Palace hotel at sun city has been picked up again for feb/mar/apr ....... yay for that

phew it's hard work here .........but very rewarding as this is a prime venue and a 5 star hotel with mostly international guests so getting great exposure........

as i said hard work over season (dec) , which is busier that usual i have 42 shows to perform just in dec alone ....... most often two a day and they 2 hr shows but unfortunately i do have to move gear ....from restaurant to the cigar bar to the pool deck or wherever they scheduled me for a show.........however it will quieten down for jan .....

but the gigs are fun and i love that i'm not pigeon holed to play what they want , but they allow me to play my usual repetoire of original world music and fingerstyle jazz which i always do and love so much ........ and thats awesome cos in my years of previous hotel work quite often you arrive with your repetoire and within a few days they trying to get you play more pop or adult contepory ect ect .to fit into that "typical prescribed hotel band repetoire ' ..... at the Palace they seem to have booked me to be me which can be quite off the wall and experimental/improvised and yeah 100% live no backtrax either ......how refreshing and hopefully a sign that venues of this calibre are actually looking for more original and unique acts rather than every hotel musician being a clone of the next with the same repetoire and format . i truly respect the Palace management for being so accepting of my unique act. ? who says one can't be part of the "establishment" and still retain one's personal identity ?

anyway i'm elated by this.......... as any pro muso will tell you regular work at a world class venue is a blessing .....

singemonkey

Cool. Congrats! Always good to hear about your life as a - very - hard-working pro musician. Gives a whole different perspective compared to reading about the lives of rock stars ?

Sjoe. It sounds exhausting though. Great when you get to play what you love though.

Keira-WitherKay

singemonkey wrote Cool. Congrats! Always good to hear about your life as a - very - hard-working pro musician. Gives a whole different perspective compared to reading about the lives of rock stars ?

well singe......... for every one rock star out there there's maybe 100 or even a 1000 of us fulltime pro muso's doing music fulltime be it in studio's as session players or hotels or cruise liners and those teaching music who support ourselves solely from music ...... everyone thinks it's be a rockstar or get a corporate day job ? but there are careers in music that are as rewarding financially as most middle class people jobs.....

but wow you should see some of the talent here even just at the palace........ we have 5 muso's on fulltime staff..... 3 pianists a sax player and me as the guiarist , but wow one of the pianists here is truly concert pianist standard .i get goosebumps just hearing him play ...... and everyone is way up the ladder as regards talent...... not just at the palace but in rest of sun city complex and the show here at the moment is Super troupers an abba and 70's variety show....... and the guitarist in the production you might know is from CT none other than andy murray , he told me the other day they also here till april or may still and i believe the traders club in entertainment centre of sun city has a great rock /pop band i was introduced to the drummer but not seen em yet ...... and don't know their name....

so yeah more to being a pro muso than just being a rock star ( but yeah admittedly we'd all give up our hotel gigs in a moment to be "rock stars" tho ? )

PeteM

Congrats Keira - respect.
Great to hear about the attitude of the management - lets hope this trend spills off into the other venues across the country, it can only be good for the music industry as a whole in SA.

IceCreamMan

EXCELLENT ..bravo ...

[deleted]

Yay! Sounds like hard work though!

Keira-WitherKay

Viccy wrote Yay! Sounds like hard work though!

? i know dire straits sang about the music industry as "money for nothing" but yes they were not working for hotels when they wrote that ?

it is a fulltime job as in hard work and it's constant .as in 6 days a week ...... but the moving of the gear is the only hard work....... i love performing so they can book me for 50 shows a month long as they give me a roadie and i'd love it . being as spontaneous as i am live .my shows are always different and exciting to me and hopefully my audience each performance so no fear of getting bored of the shows ..... or stale

Fingerpicker

Nice one Keira! Maybe they should give you your own golf cart to move the equipment around. Well done!

[deleted]

my shows are always different and exciting to me and hopefully my audience each performance so no fear of getting bored of the shows ..... or stale

That's excellent! Though I can see why a minion or two would come in handy.

Ray

Hey well done Keira. If I had a gap in my graft I'd come and carry your stuff fackenborth a bit just to lose weight which I am picking up steadily since I stopped smoking.

Keira-WitherKay

Ray wrote Hey well done Keira. If I had a gap in my graft I'd come and carry your stuff fackenborth a bit just to lose weight which I am picking up steadily since I stopped smoking.

thanks ray very kind offer. but i know you have a hidden agenda to get free access to the golf course ? playing golf everyday will do wonders for you weight ...and wow do you know the golf cvourse here.. i perform at the clubhouse ( at the Palace hotel golf course NOT the main one where they had the nedbank challenge) on some weekend afternoons for sundowners but wow what a view and a beautiful looking course...... appropriately the clubhouse is called the 'Croc lounge" cos this golf course supposedly has live crocs in the water feature or thats what i been told (urban legend or not )

Gearhead

Congrats, seen you @ the Palace and it's good 2 hear ur accepted as you are.

Trust me there's real crocs at the Lost City course - it's on a par 3 where you're hitting over a croc pond. I had my ball bounce back off the pond wall back onto the island the other day. Was not really tempting climbing don to hit the ball there.

Mark Knopfler apparently overheard a salesguy in a appliances store sell his stuff saying his life was much harder than that of the MTV musos and wrote 'money for nothing' - more a sarcastic comment from his side than his own words.

Keira-WitherKay

Gearhead wrote Congrats, seen you @ the Palace and it's good 2 hear ur accepted as you are.
.

heheh you know me and my musical philosophy ... gearhead , i would NEVER conform to doing what i don't want to .then i'd rather find another gig ...... ? so yes very happy that management accept the eclectic me

and btw when you and the missus popped into the Palace for a meal we were discussing the sound in that huge room.....well that was my 1st weekend there. but since then i got the sound in there waxed....... i have realised that actually the room has great acoustics ....... i heard it when the pianist plays he's audible ( without amplification ) thoughout the room so instead of trying to push a big sound which i was doing i have done the opposite i chucked the bass bin from the mix and turned down to basically the level of the grand piano ( ok it's not that soft it is a full sized concert grand) but playing softer i get a great balanced spread throughout the room and yeah the sound is far smoother .... so the rooms natural acoustics are doing the work NOT the amplifiers ...... and it works.....

Bob-Dubery

Gearhead wrote Mark Knopfler apparently overheard a salesguy in a appliances store sell his stuff saying his life was much harder than that of the MTV musos and wrote 'money for nothing' - more a sarcastic comment from his side than his own words.

Indeed he says that many of the lyrics are verbatim.

I started writing it in the store, in a kitchen display area in the front window. I had a piece of paper and a pencil and just started to write down some of the lines that this guy had been coming out with.... Lyrically it was pretty easy because he said a lot of it... I had to back up and actually spy through a little hole in a row of microwaves 'cause I didn't want to put him off and interrupt his flow.

Knopfler in an interview with Paul Zollo, in the book "Songwriters on Song Writing", Da Capo Press, 0-306-82165-7.

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote Cool. Congrats! Always good to hear about your life as a - very - hard-working pro musician. Gives a whole different perspective compared to reading about the lives of rock stars ?

+1. And good to know that there are options other than working in an office or being Bono.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Awesome... time to pick up a contract at the One And Only in Cape Town so we can also get some of your magic...