I’ve just found a vlog, and I think it’s going to be my new thing. Or maybe it won’t – maybe I won’t have time for it because all my online video watching is dedicated to staying caught up on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. This could be the start of something new, or it could totally pass me by, and I just won’t know until that happens. (But really, I think this is going to be good. I’m kind of picky about the vlogs I watch, so just hitting the subscribe button is a pretty good indicator it’s going to be something I like. And as the internet knows, it’s hard to be this refreshing in a medium that’s been around since 2005. That’s forever in internet years.)
It’s easy to look back on that time when you were just getting into something and remember how fun it was. Sometimes it seems really momentous, like, “That was the summer I started listening to The Nerdist Podcast,” or just, “Remember when The Avengers came out?”. And then sometimes, later, that thing isn’t quite as “good” as it used to be. It’s changed, or you’ve changed, or it’s immediate purpose in your life has – somehow – changed.
But the thing is, there are always other great things out there to find, and those old things aren’t going away. A couple of summers ago, I was listening to The Nerdist Podcast everyday. Now I’m just listening every so often, and my daily podcast is Ear Biscuits. I still love The Nerdist, but this summer is not that same summer of 2011. And I don’t want the same old summer, I want one I can look back on and remember the start of something new.
These days, popularity and cultural relevancy are often measured by amount of Twitter followers. Julia Nunes has over 34,000. It’s a pretty good number – it shows she’s fairly well known, but isn’t famous enough to be plagued by twitter spam bots. And as a prevalent YouTube musician, Julia could easily be filling up – at least some of the smaller – music venues. (For example, Mike Tompkins recently opened for the Jonas Brothers on their tour this past August, right before their breakup cut it short. Playlist Live, the music festival featuring strictly YouTube personalities, sells out each year, with tickets going for over $100.) But, by choice, Julia Nunes plays to 40 – 50 people each night, and she does it from random people’s living rooms. She finally came to Texas this November, and I got to experience what it’s like to see a show on the living room circuit.
Julia rose to YouTube fame through her ukulele covers of popular songs. This got her the attention of notable musicians such as Ben Folds, who then asked Julia to open a few shows for him. She performed at the Bushman World Ukulele Festival, and was part of the YouTube Ukulele Orchestra. She also has performances of her own songs on YouTube and three released albums. Her music is mostly acoustic and ranges from slow and somewhat sad, to upbeat, but not quite danceable.
Living room shows aren’t extremely common. Undertow Tickets, the main living room tour organizer, usually has about five artists on tour at any given time. It’s up to the artist to publicize for it – I found out through Twitter. When I went to the Undertow website and bought my ticket it said there were only eight left. The address was a secret until I got the ticket in my email inbox. Underneath it said to arrive from 7:00 – 7:45, and the show would begin at 8. I got to the house right at 7 but I drove around for 10 minutes. I didn’t know what to expect – I didn’t want to be the first one there. When I finally pulled up to the house, I wasn’t even sure it was the right one. It was too dark to read the house number. But through the windows and glass door I could see an unusually high number of people milling about, and a pretty large collection of candles sitting in sporadic clumps, so it seemed likely this was the place. Inside, about ten people sat and stood, drinking water out of mason jars. I stared at them and they stared at me, until a woman walked up to me, about my height but a little older. She said hi, and I said hi. There was a pause before she asked if I had my ticket – which was only the information email I’d printed out. But showing it to her made me feel less like a stranger in someone’s home and more like I was there attending a show, even though really, I was both. “There’s cucumber water in the kitchen,” she added, “and beer if you’re 21.”
The room was arranged with the couch off to the side, in a little nook with a window to the from porch. Mismatched chairs outlined the rest of the room. I took a seat on the side of the couch, trying to leave as much room as possible. Slowly, others arrived, and it was definitely others of all demographics. The youngest looked about twelve, but I was surprised to see those parents-aged, since Julia Nunes is only 24, and the only seating left by then was on the floor.
As the room filled up, I started to think no one else could possibly fit, but the guests kept coming. I made friends with the three others on the couch, the one scrunched up on the floor in the corner, and the one on the floor in front of me, leaning back on my legs. My seat was right by that window to the front porch, and I watched even more people enter and squeeze in. The living room was completely full – overfull. Suddenly the small crowd turned their heads, and Julia was the one coming in. She hadn’t been hiding in some backstage/master bedroom combo, she just came in the front door.
With Julia on her ukulele and Will Sturgeon, her friend and bandmate, on guitar, the night resembled a group of friends sitting in a circle, listening to their one musical friend play what they’ve been learning – only Julia is much more talented. She was very encouraging about audience participation, and even called out a few people for hitting some impressive high notes. She covered Lorde’s “Royals”, causing 50 people to attempt harmonizing in unison. It didn’t always work, but it brought such a sense of unity to the room that it was beautiful anyway.
Before the last two songs, she stopped singing for a while to have a Q&A session. The first came from a young woman, accompanied with an eraser ring and was, “Will you marry me?” to which Julia answered, yes, and accepted the ring. After that, questions were fairly Nunes-centric, such as, “I heard you say you took a Beatles class in college, what was that like?”
Julia ends each show by getting a group picture. She said this would be one of the hardest ones because the room was so small and there were so many people. Someone turned on the lights and we scrunched the best we could manage.
The experience of a living room show was absolutely void of a concert kind of feel. While I was aware I wasn’t exactly in a room full of friends, we had all crammed into this room together for the same reason. The choice to play living rooms instead of proper venues not only made the night more memorable, but showed another unique way of how the boundaries of a musical experience can be pushed.
