Pushing the envelope with video and backing tracks

As usual, Talking to Walls did our annual Black Hearts Parade tour for the month of March to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  Was another success.  This year, instead of playing a set with bagpipers and dancers, we just played as the three of us, with a regular show that also happened to have a video wall.

For the past year or so, we have been playing with backing tracks as a way to fly in samples, keyboards, and percussion that we a) don't use enough of to add another person to our payroll, and b) are boring parts that we don't want to ask someone to play! We use an iOS app designed for the purpose of playing backing tracks.

So we stepped it up a notch, and went from having backing tracks to synced video playing behind us. No video engineer - just running off of our stage laptop via Qlab.  It was a LOT of work, and left no room for error.  But luckily we are used to playing tight shows, so we just came roaring out the gate and barely stopped until the end!

The Irish portion was the second half of our set, played in the middle of the crowd, completely unplugged and singing at the top of our lungs surrounded by our fans.  Great memories.

-brian