BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Some Thoughts of Playing Live

So my goal of consistently playing open mic on a regular basis again is happening.  I've really just been playing Steel City Coffee House.  I've really found that the people at Steel City are SUPER supportive.  I love the crowd and the atmosphere.  So I'm trying to just stick with their Thursday evening open mic as my regular open mic.  I like to go and play a little early and then order a coffee shop type beverage and work on writing my book.

There are a lot of very good acts and very talented people there!  There are also a lot of just super nice people there.  Whenever I get off stage after I play people clap super appreciatively and it's just great.

So I'm hoping that once I play there for a while I can try and get a show there!  Even just opening for someone on an "off night" would be cool.  Once I get a show or two there hopefully that will allow me to book shows at other places around the philadelphia area.  It seems like a lot of the other venues and people who run venues all know Steel City.  It's kind of like the most famous of all the open mics.  So I'm hoping once I can get a show there... that will be a big thing to add to my music show playing resume that will allow me to play bigger and better levels of shows!

I think after I play open mic there for a while or even a few shows I might start trying to get more video footage and then I can post that video footage on youtube.  I definitely want more live footage online for the world to see.

Hopefully I can focus as well on building a local fanbase.  That's going to be another one of my goals.  I want to try and start to get a little fanbase and start getting shows where I see the same faces coming to shows I play.  That'd be pretty cool.  I think the freakiest/coolest/weirdest thing ever will be when I'm playing and someone is singing along to one of my songs.  I'd be like... "Whoaaaaa" if that ever happened.  Anywho so I'm going to definitely do as the improv idea I talked about in my previous post and just keep with it.  Just keep with open mic and keep it up and see if I can start to make something happen on the local live scene with my music.