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Bob's Long Long
Long bio page VI Early in 2020 the pandemic shut down international travel, and thus my little solo tours which I’d been doing for the previous 5 years. Though I missed doing those tours and seeing my friends around the UK, I'm decidedly a bit of a hermit too, and quite happy staying at home and working on whatever it might be at that moment. My greatest concern during those early days of the pandemic, when its nature was still very much an unknown, was for friends and acquaintances who lived in crowded urban areas or tiny flats, and for those who did not share my solitary nature.
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I had heard about livestreaming before, but had no idea how it was done. I asked Kavus, who told me about OBS streaming software. It looked a bit intimidating at first, but Kavus assured me it wasn’t too hard to figure out the basics, and he was right. I plunged in at level zero knowledge in late March 2020, and by late April knew just enough about it to do my first livestream, on the 25th of April 2020. |
 Since then I have been streaming live shows roughly once a month, and love doing them - coming up with the costumes, the look and the sound for each show, making the little intoductory films, and so on. I learn something new with every show, and the excitement leading up to pressing the "START STREAMING" button is no different from that I feel when it's time to step out onto the stage at a "normal" gig. The same sort of vibe: "here we go, whatever happens there's no turning back now!" Here is a Youtube playlist of excepts from each of the streams. |
 Doing the livestreams pushed me past my barrier of ignorance regarding anything video-related, and since OBS can also record video and audio, it wasn’t long before I started thinking about what I might be able do with that. Obviously I'd need some way to put various video and audio elements together. A bit of searching led me to Shotcut video editor. Another rather harsh learning curve ensued, but the result was the first set of Band of Bob videos, finished in May 2021. You can find the growing collection of them, along with my photo-morphing videos here on my Vimeo page. Also let me add - if I could figure this stuff out, starting with zero knowledge, anyone can. One doesn't need any fancy equipment either, for instance I used the built-in webcam on a laptop for most of the videos. OBS and Shotcut are both free software. One or two microphones and any little audio interface will do. So if you're at all curious, by all means try it!
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Backing up a bit - Over the previous year or two I had been collecting song ideas which began to take on a particular character, and now that I wouldn't be doing any tours for the forseeable future, figured it was a good time to set about finishing and recording them. The lyrics of the first few were either astronomical in content: Dogstar, Whole Lotta Planets...or about animals – Railway Crocodiles, Rescue Serpent...or both: Planets and Animals! So I made that the theme for the rest of the rest of the songs, and the result was….Planets and Animals, released in October 2020.
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In early 2021, I began writing pieces intended for Hammond organ, piano and voice. Spare, minimalistic, slow-moving, with a quieter, "ceremonial" atmosphere, based around a set of motifs which would re-appear throughout in various forms. From the start I also had the fantasy that it would eventually be (a little bit like) a ritual or service carried on in an empty cathedral, so it was written to work in a large reverberant space, albeit an illusory space to be created in the studio. I worked on these scores on and off for a year, as the mood struck, I carried on until early June 2022 when I figured I had an "albums' worth", which for me is around 40 minutes. All the music was scored, so I figured I'd put that project aside until an lyric theme came along. It did, even before I'd had time to put the thing aside! I love scouring used bookshops as well as archive.org for interesting old books on topics such as ancient chapels and cathedrals, springs, fountains, wells, Victorian garden ornaments, anything mystical or haunted...(preferably all at once) and just as I finished the music described above, I came upon the 1893 book The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England by Robert Charles Hope. Consisting of brief summaries of holy wells and springs, every page was a wealth of the perfect lyric material. The day after I got the book, I read through and selected lyrics for each piece, and within a few hours I'd set lyrics to all the melodies, necessitating of course, as I had known it would, shortening or lengthening a phrase of music here and there so the words would fit. All part of the fun, and once that was finished, embarked upon the recording, beginning with piano, then organ, then the singing. 
Since the music was very sparse, only two instruments and voice, I knew the recording would go quickly, so to fully immerse myself in the desired ambience, prepared the appropriate ceremonial atmosphere in my studio, selected my garb, and got to work - first the piano, then organ, then the singing.
There was one moment of trepidation on the day I set up to record the 80-something years old Hammond, which hadn't been played for perhaps a year. When switched on, instead of the gentle, silvery whirring sound one expected to hear, there came a harsh, metallic rattling noise. I knew Hammonds needed oiling from time time, but had never heard a "dry" one before. It's a horrid sound, one could imagine something is grinding itself to dust! But it just wants some oil. A healthy dose of Genuine Hammond Generator oil * in the affected areas, then a day of rest for the oil to be distributed throughout the organ's various bits through its network of fine metal capillaries, and the next day when started up it purred like a big gentle tiger! 
The final element needed to complete my fantasy about it taking place in an empty cathedral would be to add some actual cathedral ambience, so with that in mind I paid a few visits to Saint Maurice cathedral in nearby Mirepoix at times when there would be little or nothing going on, first with a Zoom H1 recorder, then again with the laptop and two microphones, as the Zoom's stereo image isn't as wide as I desired. After I selected the recordings I wanted to use, I gave the rest of them to Pietro Riparbelli's Cathedrals project on Bandcamp, so have a look over there if you also enjoy that sort of thing.
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OK that's all I can think of for the 2022 update, hope you enjoyed, and that something in there might be of some inspiration for you and your adventure too! 
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Links: A few more things that might not have been mentioned in the tale thus far:
Alex Wroten asked me to sing a song on his Gatekeepers album so I did.
My pal Scribe Wolf has had me do a few things:
He did his own idiosycratic cover version of one of my songs on which I play the banjo solo. I'm the guest on The Other Rock Show, July 2019. In September 2019 I contributed a song to this anthology. My Youtube channel, a few videos from my solo shows, some Peter Blegvad 4tet/5tet.. Dogpatch Press asked me a few questions in their series on furry musicans. Audio interview with Zoofonix, early 2019. Tightly edited to get in as much as we could! Another interview with Open Magazine, November 2018. I sang on a song on this album by Nick Prol and the Proletarians released in 2017. Vocal coach Mark Baxter has helped me greatly improve my singing and performing. I played drums, some bass and guitar, and sang a bit and mixed this album by a furry pal of mine in 2017. I'm the guest on The Other Rock Show, December 2016. I'm a member of The Capybaras. Recommended Records release and distribute all of my CDs. |
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Since all gigs were off for the forseeable future, some of my musical acquaintances began doing livestreams from their homes. My friend Kavus Torabi did a couple from his sitting room, which I watched, and thought OK this looks like something I ought get into, and could imagine the potential for some fun set-ups and theatricality there.
Recording was finished in July 2022, and