An Appealing Appearance for your Audience

Shut up and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, MC, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you. Hey Rockstars, Reggie Dawson here, your host of the show. Welcome back and thank you for tuning in to the Being On Stage podcast. You know, I do a lot, a lot of motivation and inspiration and kind of like confidence building for performers. And occasionally on the podcast, I like to throw in some training now and again when it comes to being on stage. Just to give you guys, you know, a little bit more than just that motivation. So, you know, once you've taken. You know, once you've taken that step and you're out there on stage and you're doing it, you know, you want to make sure you're doing it right. You want to make sure you're doing the right things to attract the audience, to pull in the audience, to connect with the audience, engage the audience. Why? Ultimately, your audience is going to pay your bills. And that's the point of this dream, you know. I know that. And listen, whether you want to do this full time and travel and this is going to be your career, or if it's something you literally want to just pay a couple of bills each month, make something on the side, and continue to do what you love, it doesn't matter. You still want to do it right. You want to look good. You want to feel good while you're on stage. And that's actually what I want to talk about is looking good in a sense of actually looking good, being visually appealing on stage. So about a week ago, probably two weeks now, I can't remember. But anyways, the couple towns over from me is like the Pineapple Cats. It's like the capital of the world, and it's probably not the world. It's probably like of the Treasure Area. Anyways, I live on the Treasure Coast in Florida. So it's the pineapple. They're just big about pineapples in this town called Jensen Beach. And every year on Thanksgiving weekend, they have a pineapple festival, live music, other types of performers and rides and face painters and all types of vendors and people selling stuff. And it's just a huge street festival, takes over the downtown area right on the water in this town of Jensen Beach where they historically have grown a lot of pineapples. That's kind of the whole area was gigantic pineapple farms for like miles and miles and miles all the years ago. And that's where the pineapple festival comes from is celebrating the heritage and the history of the area. So we went to Pineapple Beach. Pineapple Festival, and I saw a live band, and they're really good. Like, man, they had a lot, a lot, a lot of talent. And when I want to know, we're talking visually appealing on stage. So they sounded good. You know, the music was great and everything. But something just wasn't quite right. And it took me a little while to piece it together. And so, you know, when I'm when I'm starting to work with somebody and even when I'm not like if I'm just at a show, it just it happens. I almost go into like a studying type of mentality. And I start studying the act that I'm watching. It doesn't matter what it is. I start to study it. And the main singer was was really good. He had a really good stage presence, really good voice, really good singer, really good movements on stage. The band, the drummer was great. The two or three guitarists, I don't remember how many there were. They were pretty good. So I'm just going to kind of start going through kind of the things that I noticed and and kind of where you want to be visually. So here's what I noticed. One, you're you're in a band and everything. There wasn't a whole lot of interaction with each other. And when you're in a in a group setting, interaction is part of what builds the connection with the audience, because when you're interacting and connecting on stage, that actually the audience can feel that and pick up on that. And they start to be drawn into it and feel like they're more part of your group, you know, than than just watching. And that's that's how you do it. So if you have good working relationships on stage, you're going to have a great relationship with your audience as a group. And so that's that's the one of the one thing I noticed. And I'm not doing like this full on critique of these guys, because ultimately they put on a great show. This is just a couple of things that I took note of that I want to kind of talk through on the podcast. And each of these things could probably be an entirely separate podcast in itself. I'm just doing it now because it's in my head. It's what I'm thinking about. The other the other thing I wanted to I need to point out, and it's it's it's actually it's actually to me, it's kind of a hot topic. I don't think a lot of performers or I don't think I don't think performers pay enough attention to their outfits when they're on stage and what they're actually wearing and how it works with what they're doing on stage and who they're doing it with. So this. This band was playing like hard rock, like not screamo metal hard rock, but like 80s, 90s, like harder rock, maybe even 70s. I'm not sure. Most of the band, the drummers and the two guitarists were probably late 40s, early 50s, somewhere in there. The main singer was probably late 30s, early 40s. So already there is a little bit of a gap, but that's cool. You know, bald guy. Great, great beard. I'm a beard advocate. Huge fan of beards. Um, I, I, I sell beard care kits and do beard care as well as coach performers. Actually, that's how passionate I am about beards. Um, so great beard and great voice and everything like that. And so the guitarist and the drummer, the guitarist were wearing black, like black, um, older jeans, like more vintage style jeans look like they honestly, the jeans look like they walk straight out of the 80s and stepped on stage. Um, so black jeans, um, and then. And then they had some type of like rock shirt on like some ACDC or, or Leonard Skinner type stuff. And, um, the drummer, I couldn't really tell what the drummer was wearing, but it kind of worked. Like, I think it was like a, like a, a, a, just like a plain white t-shirt or a Navy blue shirt or something like that. And, um, what the drummer wears on the bottoms doesn't really matter, I guess, cause he's behind the drum set. Uh, so then we have the main singer. When you think about the main singer, you know, this is the front man. This is the guy that that's on the microphone. He's, he's, he's the one that the audience. Is going to immediately connect with, uh, well should be immediately connecting with in this band. And he, he had great connection with the audience. There were, there were low points and I think we're all good. We all go through low points. We all have periods in our show where, you know, we're winded. We're catching our breath. We're, we're, there's a little awkward moments here and there. People aren't laughing or cheering when we were expecting them to, or when we've set it up for that thing, things happen. Um, but overall, great job on the performance. Great job with the audience. And, um, what he was wearing though, I have, I have some issues with, okay, so I already said bald guy, great beard. Um, he had on a black and white checked like, um, checkerboard chessboard, actually his t-shirt, which when the rest of your band is kind of in like a vintage black look, the black and white is still okay, because here's the thing it helps set you apart. So it kind of brings you out as the main singer, as the front man. Um, but when you're wearing something. So new and the rest of your band is wearing something vintage, it kind of offsets a little bit. So the black and white, pretty good. It goes with it. Um, however, the shorts, um, he was wearing like bright sky blue, long shorts, like past his knee, mid calf shorts. And it just, it didn't, it didn't fit on that stage. It didn't fit with the music. It didn't fit with what they were singing. It didn't fit with what they were doing. It didn't fit with the rest of the group. The, the, the bright blue shorts was almost a distraction on stage. And this is, this is why I say that not enough performers, or even, even if you are one of those performers that do, there's not enough attention paid to what you're, what's, what's being worn on stage. You know, when, when you step out on stage, you're, you're not just presenting your talent. You're presenting yourself. Okay. Um, yes, you have this talent. You have this thing. You do. And you want to entertain people with it. Well, here's, here's the thing, Skippy, and this is going to come off and make me sound kind of like an a-hole. So, um, I don't know why I set it up this way. I should have just said it. So here's the thing. Um, the biggest difference between a background act and a foreground act is audience engagement and connection. Um, and when I say background versus foreground, I'm saying the. You, you have these, and I'm going to use musicians because this is where it's most common. However, I have seen it in dance as well. Um, you have these musicians that just plays music or sings while people are at a festival walking around doing other things. They're just kind of there to have some sort of noise in the background. Um, they'll talk a little bit. Occasionally people interact with them. Um, it's nice to have a person rather than a DJ because that little bit of interaction that you want your festival or event goers to have. But generally, uh, you're kind of playing in the, for the background. The foreground acts are the people that are the people performers that people stop people watch people participate with um sing with dance with things like that and when when this this band first of all very much a foreground uh performer but one of the things that that you that has to be paid attention to is that outfit and when when you wear something like that although you're there as a foreground performer here's here's what was happening in the audience okay they it was a field and there was probably a hundred people in this field i mean you could have easily fit another 300 in there and still had room to move around so there's probably about 100 people in this field maybe 150 and nobody was doing anything with the band like they were in their groups and they'd like kind of bust out in a little dance with someone in their group once in a while um occasionally someone would turn around and laugh at the guy or like like pump their fist like yeah like they really like that song but it wasn't really there wasn't really any interaction and and part of the issue there is it wasn't presented as a performance it was presented as a band playing music and that's the biggest difference with what you wear on stage that's how you can that's that's the difference the difference and it's not background or foreground but but what what sets you up as a guy's playing music or or someone on stage versus someone performing on stage is how you appear not just how you appeal because you can have a great talent you can be amazing you can do phenomenal things on stage but if you don't have an appearance that works with what you're doing you're you you've already lost half your audience you've lost half of your connection just by putting on the wrong pair of pants this is gonna sound weird but i'm gonna go right into it and say if you would like to talk about what you're wearing on stage um hit me up jump on my calendar go to beingonstage.com slash calendar i want to work with you i want to i want to boost you listen i do the motivating and and the confidence building and that's um that's a you know that's something that every performer needs but i want to work with you one-on-one and like really fine tune these things like what you're going to wear on stage and what you're going to wear on stage why you're going to wear it and how you're going to move in it and what it's going to look like to the audience these little things this is just one piece one small tiny piece of your performance that i want to help you with um so yeah if you got anything out of this and this has helped you hop on my calendar because i listen we will we will work out the perfect the perfect outfit for the perfect performance um yeah so hop on my calendar and being on stage being on stage.com slash calendar you can also send me an email reggie at being on stage.com and as always my rock stars keep on shining