Make Your Song Stage Ready
” Spook made a great impression upon all the participants, regardless of their skill level – not an easy task, but he did it with ease and grace! We really enjoyed having this gifted teacher and performer back for another workshop!”
….. Jean Bayou , President, Songwriters Association of Washington
This workshop is a holistic combination of three other workshops: “Simple Measures for Drastic Guitar Playing Improvement, “Techniques for Effective Stage Presence” and “Secrets of Songwriting”
So, you have a song and want to make it the best you can before you start playing it in public. Or, you are already playing it out, but you feel it just hasn’t been brought to it’s full potential yet. Maybe all it needs is a few guitar licks – a simple hammer-on here or a simple bass run there. Maybe it could use a little tightening up lyrically. Maybe you could make minor adjustments to the words so that accents fall on the right syllables, or so that each line has an equal number of syllables. Maybe a simple change up in the melody range of the chorus could make your song much more exciting.
It’s been said “people don’t write hit songs – they RE-write hit songs.” This workshop will explore a healthy handful of simple changes that can make your song sparkle and be more stage ready.
This hands-on workshop is designed for the beginner and intermediate level guitar players, performers and songwriters. Bring your guitar, paper and pencil and the desire to drastically improve your guitar playing.
About the instructor:
Spook Handy has written hundreds of songs and performed over 2000 concerts in his 20+ year career. He performed alongside Pete Seeger more than fifty times in the last ten years of Pete’s life, learning many of Pete’s songs and the stories behind them. But more so, Spook learned who Pete Seeger was and what he stood for. Now Spook is on a multi-year “Remembering Pete Seeger” tour of all 50 U.S. states and all 10 Canadian provinces.
Spooks songs have been covered by dozens of other artists including Pete Seeger. His 5th album, released in 2016, “Pete, Woody & Me, Volume I – Keep the Flame Alive” charted as high as No. 3 on the International Folk Radio Charts with his own song “Vote!” reaching No. 2. He was named “Best Folk Artist” by Upstage Magazine, Gannett New Jersey, The Courier News, The Home News and About.com. His song “Whatcha Gonna Do?” was feature in the BBC documentary “Doomsday Code.” and four of his songs were used in a theatrical adaptation of Pete Seeger’s story “Abiyoyo.”
Since 1985, Spook has organized and/or MCed over 1300 musical events including New Jersey’s longest ever running open mic, “The Spook Handy Show” which ran from 1985 to 2005. He has MCed “Freehold Idol” in Freehold, NJ and “Idol Search” in Little Falls, NJ. In that time, he’s seen over 3000 musicians perform over 10,000 songs and has developed refined eyes and ears for effective stage presence and good songwriting.
Additional notes:
* Each discipline can be taught in a single workshop or a series; compacted to as short as 90 minutes or extended to as long as you’d like; or formatted in any other way to meet your needs.
* Workshops can be offered to the General Public or for Teen Only. “Teens Only” workshops are available in order to help create safe spaces and help build a sense of teen community.
* Private lessons are also offered
Book a workshop and attend for free!
Spook likes to accommodate those folks who would really love to attend workshops but have a limited budget. If you arrange for your musicians or songwriters group or any group to sponsor a workshop Spook would be happy to waive your fee. Contact Spook for more details.