An intimate audio experience with performer and vocal artist Kate Dimbleby about making it up as you go along, creativity and the importance of getting out of your comfort zone.
Long day, feeling exhausted but rather than dive into a box set with a glass of wine, I came to the shed and started chatting and then started singing...
Something about the evening light conjured up nightingales and my favourite old fashioned songs..
Sing through it. Sing with it. Live from my Woodshed.
Sometimes, I just have to come into the woodshed and create rough and ready versions of songs. A way of coming back to process and singing what I feel. I layer the vocals and get deep into the song as if it's a painting.
This afternoon it was Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows.
Enjoy the process!
My first real live guest in the woodshed. Keith Warmington, broadcaster, harmonica player, guitarist and songwriter. And my neighbour. This is the first time we've seen each other properly since the summer and it's just a chat really.
Our last gig was in January 2020. I remember saying to him that I thought it might be my last gig for a while.
Then, a few weeks ago in April 2021, he sent me his lockdown song and I had to invite him into the Woodshed to sing it.
There's more of this session but the sound was a bit wobbly (again). I promise I'll sort it out for next time!
"Try to enjoy the Process"
I invited the wonderful writer and writing mentor Cathy Rentzenbrink into my Woodshed and the sound failed.
This meant that I could hear Cathy but she and the audience couldn't hear me. So she was alone. With occasional interjections from me on the live chat.
Like a true pro, she carried on talking in this very special episode, a writer alone in the woodshed reflecting on writing, creativity and how fear blocks us.
Thank you Cathy for embodying what this show is about. Making it up, improvising even when no-one is listening without worrying about feedback from the audience, and just letting it flow.
Cathy talks about "writing what the heart longs for" and how you can't ever know at the beginning of a creative project what things are going to turn into. "I have to follow my nose and trust"
This is the art of improvising in action - Cathy's authenticity - communicating, leaving space for silence and letting herself reflect in real time. As well as a poignant observation of the loneliness of the pandemic.
"I feel so moved by the existence of other human beings. I want to reach through the screen and stroke their faces"
Do listen and enjoy.
An episode that started with sun and ended with a hailstorm!
Talking and singing about weather, emotional and atmospheric and how we find ways to move through it.
Minky the cat shows up of course. And Prince. No, not Harry.
Just plough in or wait for perfection? It's becoming clear what I like...but this was a lovely live show with a song from Bugsy Malone, a pissed woman from Vermont (does that mean drunk or angry?) and finally a treat from Cheryl and her Mum singing their way to the grocery store!
An intimate audio experience live from my woodshed - about singing what you see and making it up as you go along.
This one is all about Cheryl and the sun!
So this is the episode where some actual listeners turned up live in my woodshed!
Which is obviously the point but took me a little by surprise. There was a lot of singing - Stand By Me, Flowers Never Bend, Use your voice and some chat about getting out of your comfort zone....oh and alot of questions about Roland Boss, my trusty vocal looper and friend.
If at first you succeed, don't bank on it working every time!
About being stuck and using your voice to move through it.
The third episode of this intimate audio experience with me Kate Dimbleby in my Woodshed. There will be singing along and chat.
It will be live and unplanned.
Featuring These Things They Will Come (https://katedimbleby.bandcamp.com/album/songbirds)
Something for the Weekend (not by Divine Comedy)
and a lullaby just for you!
