Quote:
Originally Posted by Hot Vibrato
I think most venues that feature live music would frown upon an artist showing up with no PA equipment. It doesn't matter how big your lungs are, microphones and speakers can really go a long way to help the crowd hear you.
Furthermore, if you go that route, you're stuck with one sound - the sound of your voice shouting as loud as you can, accompanied by your guitar being bashed on as hard as you can. That sound can be as fatiguing for the listeners as it is for the guy who's devoting every ounce of energy he has just to be heard. Having sound reinforcement frees the artist to achieve whatever dynamics they choose - you can whisper, or you can back off the mic and scream. You can play subtle lines if you want and the crowd will hear it, or you can back off your volume control and chomp chords.
Don't get me wrong - I truly appreciate when I hear a busker 'shouting the blues" and doing it well, or the sound of a guitarist who can make himself heard without amplification. But here's nothing you can do without a PA that you can't do with one. The opposite is certainly not true.
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Maybe it's just me -
you're talking about a room not much larger than a typical suburban basement here - but as a church musician I've played venues as large as 700 seats without amplification and without taxing my physical or artistic resources, and IME when you're playing more roots-oriented forms it lends a period aura that gets lost as soon as you plug in; anybody worth his/her performer's fee should be able to carry a 50-100 seat room with no problem, and if it's a matter of a rude audience - far too prevalent these days, and easily grist for its own thread - that's why them old bluesmen packed a .32 H&R and a straight razor...
