singer and songwriter ben bruce

Hey everybody!

Wow. What a weekend. Summer Meltdown was thousands of happy people in a very special happy place, listening to (mostly) happy music. I myself played my most positive set, which I felt was proper since I was playing at 1pm on Friday to open up the festival.

I was very prepared — well-rehearsed set, plenty of time to get ready. I knelt down and tuned my guitar just before getting up onstage. The sound man (Alex) called me to the stage and we did a little soundcheck (I played a bit of “Melissa” by the Allman Brothers) and everything was fine. He nodded at me.

I bent down to get some water and flatten out my set list. I stood up and said a few scripted words to open the festival, and then with a big flourish, I strummed my guitar … and it was horribly out of tune! So bad that I looked at the sound man and he was waving his hand in front of his neck like, “Don’t do that again.”

So I had to kneel down and tune it up again before I could get started!

But the rest of the set went great. I was proud of myself. Here’s my very first ever review:

“Sometimes you have to jump and pray for wings,” sang singer/songwriter Ben Bruce during his quite cool solo set where his tender, nicely composed songs recalled John Denver and particularly Assembly of Dust’s Reid Genauer, who Bruce strongly resembled in both voice and all-out-there-on-the-stage delivery. Telling stories about faces in the fire with blinding insight and singing simple songs full of tender vibrations, Bruce showed himself a tunesmith to keep an eye on and even ballsily tackled Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Like ALL of the scheduling at Meltdown 9, this proved the ideal music for the hour and audience.

Read more on the festival: http://www.jambase.com/Articles/19394/Summer-Meltdown-08.13-–-08.16-WA

The set was recorded, but so far all I have is this video a friend of mine shot:

http://www.benbruce.com/video/-the-way-is-wide-august-14-2009-summer-meltdown

Enjoy!