Higher Grounds Coffee

Tonight, we performed at Higher Grounds Coffee on the corner of Abbott’s Bridge Road and Peachtree Parkway in Duluth. It’s our first time doing an open-mic as Alchemy. We had a good time, though we were all a little nervous. We’re also not used to doing a 15-minute set. More like 2-3 hours on average. As such, I only felt warmed up after our set was over. My wife, who constituted the third member of our group, said that we were less of a performance piece and more of just some people drumming. She’s right. Our style doesn’t come off as a performance that your average American audience can sit through. We would need a schtik or some amazing solo pieces to really orchestrate a performance piece. That said, we’re not really a band. We don’t practice songs, but rather rhythms. Perhaps we could put together some nicely polished performance pieces, but it would be a stretch. A better fit would be to include the dancers. Next time, we’ll definitely get them out with us to entertain people. We’ll just do what we do best and make some noise!

Oh. And I’m stupid and didn’t have any pictures or recordings made. Lessons learned.

4 comments

  1. Yeah – I should probably mention that I have another site for Alchemy drumming at http://www.alchemydrumming.org. There’s a schedule there that enumerates the happenings, though I have not yet linked that to pictures from the event. For now, I could probably at least put up a link from Flickr. Thanks for the reminder, Cathi.

  2. It seems to me that in order to attract an audience these days, a percussionist has to have a gimmick. Have you considered strapping aluminum garbage cans to your feet and dancing while the others pound away on construction materials? Nah, That’ll never work….

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