Tag: performing

Music

Elephant Talk Indie Music Festival 2013

Well it was another exciting weekend for us, and of course, it was filled with music!  indie talk posterWe made it down to Atlantic City for the 4th annual Elephant Talk Indie Music Festival. Elephant Talk Indie Music Magazine’s Jerry Ryan organizes the festival each year and brings indie bands together from NJ and surrounding areas to make some noise in two neighboring music venues, The Boneyard and Le Grand Fromage,  just a block away from the shore. The thing I love about Elephant Talk Indie events is how supportive the bands are of each other. It was great to see so many musicians come together and connect!

Now we didn’t play our best set ever, in fact it was our worst yet. Just prior, Diwas had been out of town recording music for one of his other projects and I had been working over-time a bit. By the time we set up at the festival, we hadn’t even rehearsed a Rungs song for two weeks (pretty much since g-roots)! To add to that, our electronics didn’t make the sound system very happy. But regardless, all shows must go on right!? And on it did. We had fun, and the folks in the audience were just radiating with positive vibrations that sent our tiredness and frustrations far out into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. It’s so great to be surrounded by people who are in it for the music 🙂 plus we got to sign the Elephant Talk Indie guitar!

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Thank you Jerry Ryan and Elephant Talk Indie Music!

Live

More Grassroots Festival Recap

Grassroots Festival recap continues… (oh yes, there is more!)

Soooo as if playing late night Saturday night with the Sutras wasn’t enough, (see my last post if you missed this!) I played again on Sunday with ‘Diwas Gurung’! Diwas, (who is the other 50% of The Rungs) also plays in other projects, including his own solo Nepalese venture, titled, ‘Diwas Gurung’.  You can listen to it at his bandcamp if you are curious 🙂 http://diwas.bandcamp.com/album/adhunique

Anywhooo, his Sunday set included a mix of Nepalese folk songs, originals, and we even threw in a Rungs song, Missed Connections! The band included members of a previous band he was in, his current bandmate in his other indie-electro-pop duo ‘Photoreal’ annnnnnd me! It was quite the musical reunion. I played a mix of synth parts, electronic drum hits, guitar, and vocals.  Many thanks to those guys for letting me join them!

Most importantly, check out my loud pants, compliments of Diwas 🙂 videos on the way!

grassroots diwas gurung band

mandy and diwas grandstand

 

 

 

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Festival of Music and Dance!

Well I’ve slacked a little this month on my posts, but I’m back! I’ve been busy gearing up for the 23rd annual Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance that took place this weekend in Trumansburg NY.

I’ve been a regular Grassroots go-er since 2005, but this year was the best yet. The Sutras, an awesome indie-psychedelic-pop rock band from Ithaca NY invited me to sing with them! These guys are true rockers and some of the most talented musicians I’ve met, so you can imagine how psyched I was to perform with them. After two weeks of fun practices, we hit the stage around 1am on Saturday night, ready to rock the late night crowd! It was a completely different experience than what I’m used to with The Rungs. My only job was to sing certain parts of the songs, (and let me just say that EVERY song by The Sutras is super fun to sing), so I had no guitar or keys to hide behind, just me and my voice, loud and proud (or at least trying to be 🙂 ).

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The entire set was a blast. I had a funny little moment to myself when I took a look at the set list and realized we were getting towards the end, I thought,”noooo this is so much fun, not ready for it to end yet!!!!” but as the universe rules, everything must start and end. So now I am ready for the next show. Where is it at? Lets go! More music!

Diwas was there too, not performing, but manning our newest purchase, a Cannon T2i. We decided to treat ourselves to the new gadget last week and it was a great choice! Every time I looked up he was like a little spiderman getting cool angles of videos and photos. Soooo hopefully we’ll have a video from the night to share soon! In the meantime, checkout The Sutras! http://thesutras.bandcamp.com/

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Thank you June!

Well, June began with a bang, (literally a ‘bang’ – flat tire on the way to Shindig in Brooklyn!) and closed with a mellow Sunday night set at Felicia’s in Ithaca. I’m so happy our friends, The Sunday Vipers, asked us to open for them. I mean, its an honor when anyone asks us to play with them. My reaction is always, ‘Really?! You want us to open for you??!! Yes!’ And then I am secretly flattered forever that they liked our music enough to share a bill together 🙂

This night was particularly special because I’m a huge fan of Sunday Vipers, AND the venue is practically my neighbor. Diwas and I just hop on out the door, guitars and amps in hand, and take about 20 steps to load in. The awesomeness of the night can further be summed up by fun music, delicious cocktails, good friends, a great audience and one new Rungs Facebook fan! (Yes, one. I will take what I can get!)

Here is a live song from the set! This is a new one. It’s called Indecisive. You’ll get what I mean 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXrymtXgXgI&feature=player_embedded

Thank you readers, thank you June (month of the supermoon!), and thank you Sunday Vipers for an awesome night!

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close but no cigar

‘Front Desk Runaway’ is one of those songs that Diwas and I have been omitting from our set list. For some reason, something about it just didn’t sit well but we couldn’t pin point exactly what was wrong. So, we decided to avoid this song at our live shows, at least until we would have time to plop ourselves down and give it a good working out. As many of you songwriters know, some songs just don’t quite make the cut. We thought Front Desk Runaway would be one of our ‘close but no cigar’ songs.

Anyway, I’m not sure why we added it to our set last month at the Elephants for Autism Festival. We hadn’t changed anything since I first wrote it back in February, but I guess we both just missed it!

Turns out, we had a lot of fun playing it! So much fun that the song even creeped onto another set list, last Sunday’s show. Not to duplicate content, (I already posted the Front Desk Runaway from Elephants for Autism Festival), but here is a live video of the same song from our Chapter House show last Sunday. This neglected song just needs a little TLC!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dznKb82GTRE

Any other musicians out there with their own ‘close but no cigar’ songs??? Lets work on these babies!

Music

A couple of firsts

Well, the show Sunday was definitely a success. After playing gigs in a few other places these past few weeks, I was surprised to feel cozy and comfy in a room I was familiar with.  It’s the first time I’ve had that feeling playing a live show. It felt good! I think our songs are getting more consistent too, now that we’ve been playing them out a lot. Where I used to think, ‘okay here comes the next part of the song, don’t mess up!’ (and then of course I immediately, loudly and confidently would strike a sour note that instantly resulted in some funny facial expressions, ‘what was that?!’), I am now feeling an ease for the first time, almost like some of the songs are becoming automatic. I can just sink into them and rock out. It’s a great feeling!

rungs chappySome other firsts of the night include:

Inviting one of my good girlfriends up to play drums and sing some of her own original songs.

Having another friend play drums on a few covers, (Blur and Nirvana).

Playing with our openers, Erika and Doug, whose music was just enchanting. I am definitely booking another show with them soon!

So, I’m loving these new first time experiences, all thanks to music! The last first would be getting this funny picture, compliments of my dad 🙂

Art

Sunday Funday

It’s so much fun performing music, I just want all of my friends to get to do it too! We have another Sunday show coming up on June 2nd, and this time, I’ve invited some friends to come and play with us. I’m really looking forward to sharing the stage!

Meanwhile, my Photoshop skills are still in their toddler phase, but with each poster I make,  I will hopefully slowly improve….

Here is the poster for Sunday 🙂 

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..its a dual purpose poster with a little inside joke as I found someone’s old prom picture. hehehehehe 🙂 boy were they psyched to see this up around town!

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Boogie Shakedown!

What a fun Memorial Day Weekend! Thanks to some very nice friends, we were able to play at a local outdoor party, an annual Boogie Shakedown. The air was a little chilly for late May, but clear skies let the heat of the sun keep us warm. Our set was a rough one, but a few musical kinks can’t stop us from having a blast while playing live 🙂  It’s just encouragement to keep practicing! Plus, we’re our own worst critics right?

rungs at boogie shakedown

There’s no place better than a sunny outdoor party with friends, food, and fuzzy beverages to enter new musical territory..

 

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Front Desk Runaway

Luckily there was some video caught of our Elephants for Autism Music Festival set at the Boneyard in Atlantic City! This is currently our roughest song, but we decided to give it a go. Not too bad, but definitely time to vamp up the vocal practices!! Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ymi4MsgXbQ

Note the cool sparkly lights in the background. We need to get some cool sparkly lights!