The Point is: Do it…

If I sit around and think about it too much it’ll never get done. Throw ideas out there and if one sticks, even a little, go do it. Things happen because you are in the right place at the right time but that place is very rarely your couch. You can get a Lucky Break but if you’re not outside it will pass you by and someone else will get it.

Thirty years ago my wife and I joined a group called Art Salem. It sounded like a good thing, we were new to Salem and we went. At the first meeting a fellow member at the meeting asked if we would like to help her produce a video series at the local cable access station based on something she had seen in Nashville. It was a Songwriters in the Round session that was held at the Blue Bird Cafe. People sat around and swapped stories and songs. That sounded like a fun thing to do so I said sure, why not. The new Salem Cable Access station, SATV, had a brand new studio and good equipment. We started working with Julie Dougherty and produced “Songwriters in the Round”

Now I was a video editor. I wasn’t a sound engineer, I wasn’t a director and I certainly wasn’t a lighting director but I went ahead and did this show. Julie Dougherty was the host, her husband Woody was the bass player, Steve Sadler played guitar and Richie Grace played guitar and harmonica, Larry was there many times on fiddle. We had a solid host and house band. Julie invited the people she knew who were songwriters and performers from the area to be guests. The list is long and many of those people are still friends of mine today. The production ended up being hard work but was very rewarding. The main point I’m trying to make here is that I learned a lot. The lighting was sometimes good and sometimes not so great, the audio was usually pretty good although the manner in which I mic’ed everyone was a little unconventional. There was no multitrack recording for us, it was a live mix and that was that. And I had to direct the production. All the elements were there, we had cameras on wheels and each camera operator had a headset so I could talk to them. We ended up shooting 23 episodes and while some of it is a little rough they all hold up very well and are entertaining and watchable today.

After thirty years pass by it is a sad fact the some of the people we recorded have passed away. The fact that we have a well produced document of their performance is a very important thing. I wasn’t really thinking about that when we were shooting but time has a way of changing the past. For many of the guests Songwriters in the Round is the best recording of their material they have. So there is that.. and it’s an unexpected result of taking the initial step of saying “YES” instead of “Let me think about it.”

The other thing is it was a big step forward for me personally and professionally. I had no experience as a director and a little knowledge of how hard it is to light properly and a little knowledge of how hard it is to properly mic and record six people in a circle each singing and playing an instrument. Since then I’ve directed quite a few musical performances, I’ve become a fair audio engineer and am still struggling with getting good lighting but I think that will always be the case. More importantly, I have 10-20 people I call my friends that I would never have met and gotten to know.

In conclusion, I still find myself saying yes more often than not and am still growing because of it. Here is a link to the video portion of my website:

https://marksteeleproductions.com/videography

There you’ll find “Songwriters in the Round” and if you poke around on the video pages you’ll find “Resonance” and “Creativity” plus other videos that are a direct result of saying yes to Julie Dougherty 30 years ago. Check out “Long Form” too.

Thanks for listening and watching.