The Unsung Nutritional Value of The Intimate. The Final "Private Practice" film: for patrons only. (Patreon)

Hello my loves~

HERE IT IS!

As promised, the film of the FINAL "Private Practice" solo piano show at Graveside Variety. It's an unlisted Youtube link, for patrons only:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyiZ67DW_KE

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If you want to share this film, here's your moment to talk people into becoming patrons, even for FREE. I made this post open to ALL PATRONS, even the "free" subscribers, so if you wanna share this, please don't share the youtube link itself or post it to social media (I'd be sad).

Just share the link to THIS POST, which has no paywall around it, but does require that people become followers of the patreon. Maybe it'll get a few folks to hop the fence to join. Use this link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105227257.

I just posted to socials, too, if you wanna go to my Instagram or Facebook and share this around. I'm barely om twtiter nowadays. Everybody there seems to have vanished. I feel like it's just me against Elon Musk fans over there nowadays. I won't give up yet, but I'm basically despairing.

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Love from my kitchen.

If you missed the ongoing story because you're NEW, and if you're NEW, WELCOME!...this is a tiny show I held last month as a patron-only offering, both online and in the room.

I have to say something before we dive into the technical: I have LOVED working this way.

The Dolls have a new set of managers to help us with stuff states-side (our long-time Australian manager, Jordan Verzar, isn't going anywhere, he's still going to be rockin like Dokken down in Australia on our behalf).

I've spent a lot of the last month EXPLAINING things to Hampton and Liz, our new team members. The more and more I find myself trying to describe what I do, and what's happened over the last, oh, 25 years, the more astounded I am that I've managed to pull this off.

I am still - after all these years - an artist who has, against increasingly fatal odds - made the work I love, with the people I love, and really enjoyed my time in this community, doing what I do best and feeling really safe and loved by the people who listen to my music. I just take it for granted less and less, if you know what I mean, as I hang out with and connect with songwriters and performers at my level of "known-ness" and watch them struggling with so, so much. There's just so much to navigate, and almost nobody I know....well, let's be honest....NOBODY I KNOW is crowdfunded at this level of consistency and support.

But I do put the work in. I put the work in because I love the work. I love the work because I love the people.

I post, I write my ass off, I do my own stunts half the time, I share my thoughts and process....but then, there are nights like this one, where I just feel it all come together.

I gotta say, being married to a Really Famous Person, as a Semi-Famous Person, has given me a fuck ton to chew on.

I've been thinking, especially as I sally forth into this new era of The Dresden Dolls, armed with these songs that I barely understand - I often don't understand my own songs until 20 years later, it seems - about scale.

About time, art, and SCALE.

About what needs to mean what to whom in order for it to have meaning.

About whether a show played for an assembly - 15 people, 78 people, 12,000 people - can have more or less worth, inherently. I believe, more and more, that scale is irrelevant.

Or maybe: that there is an incredible nutritional value in the small, the intimate, a value that you just cannot obtain from The Large, The Arena.

That there is a kind of unsung value in closing a door in a small town and throwing down at a piano for 60 people.

I know people love "intimate" shows, but especially as I gather the patrons for conversations and Q&As on this dolls tour, I find myself thinking: this is sort of the medecine to cure what ails us, espcially after years of too much internetting, too much zoom, too much facetime, too much social media.

You can go to an impersonal concert with 10,000 people and it almost feels like being on the internet, espcially with everybody's phones held aloft, endlessly capturing the meta-moment.

But to sit in a room? With peers? With no - or few - phones? To talk? To laugh and hear the laughter of each person around you? To stop a song because of a dog, a child?

Being with these patrons in Philly (here's our photo from the gathering at Ruba Club) was not just about me talking with people, it was about people talking with each other. It was about neighbors meeting each other, and each other's kids.

I don't know. Call it the mom in me.

I don't quite know how to articulate it: but there's something very important about this work, about this, in our increasingly secular world of little Church and little Ritual.

This work, under capitalism, isn't very profitable.

It's not about making money.

It's not about "engaging a fan base" - even though it is, certainly, on the surface.

It's about creating more togetherness, because we need togetherness.

So as you sally forth to watch this offering, I also have an ask: be the change that brings small performances and book groups and poetry readings and knitting clubs and story hours back into existence.

This venue lost money. It was totally unsustainable the way I was running it. But there was a path forward, I smelled it. I also have played enough small coffeeshops and art houses and teeny weeny clubs to know that there IS A WAY.

Go start a venue.

Even if it's in your living room.

If you do it?

Send photos.

And if you wind up doing it because of this post, thank me later and buy me sushi.

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Again, if you're new here.... Graveside Variety (RIP) was the venue that I was running (and that was partially patron-funded) over the past year or so.

We just closed the doors last month (with a new iteration, run by a set of local friends, being announced soon...) and this show was my final farewell to the place, to the patrons, to the ERA.

If you wanna read a full round-up of the venue and everything that went down there, I put out a FAREWELL SCRAPBOOK POST last month, so I encourage you to go catch up. It's a massive post filled with beautiful stories, and there's a few more offering-remnants of Graveside yet to go out to the patrons: two book talks (one with Katherine Yeske Taylor, one with Leslie Jamison) AND a special surprise recording from ANOTHER ARTIST. Which I almost never ever do using this patreon, but sometimes, it's called for, and I've earned the right. Espeically when she's 15 and my friends all gatherred around to make it happen.

To the old tune: "This art is your art, this art is my art".

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For this final "Private Practice" show, we hired filmmaker Anthony Mulcahy to capture this one, and he did a STUNNING job.

It's an unlisted youtube link, and it's for patrons only, so I'd suggest you use the comments section over there to chat, but you're free to comment over here, too.

Special surprise guests: Storm Large and Amelia Allen.

Storm Large is a powerhouse singer/performer/writer and front-vagina of Pink Martini, she's just a LEGEND. Her Instagram is hilarious, follow. She's also ON PATREON.

I couldn't believe my luck that she was in town THAT VERY NIGHT. Wheeee.

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Amelia Allen is a local musician, songwriter, and fronts a band called Sir Echo. You can find her on Insta here, and she ALSO has a patreon (do we see a THEME?) here: https://www.patreon.com/ameliaallen.

I met her at Campersand last summer and have been watching her hijinx with GLEE.

Rachel Jayson also guested - she was in from outta town with her kiddo to visit me. She’s a bad ass violist and guested on the final track…

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The whole thing's about an hour and a quarter.

SETLIST:

Storm and Amanda backstage discussing PORN FROM REVERE

Amanda Greets the Assembly, talks for a bit, introduces Amelia

Amelia Allen plays a song

In my Mind (by request, from Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under)

Bigger on the Inside (by request, from There Will Be No Intermission)

The Killing Type (by request, from Theatre is Evil)

Houdini (new dolls song)

The Runner (new dolls song)

Amanda introduces Storm

Storm: HER VAGINA IS EIGHT MILES WIDE....

Storm, Amelia and Amanda: I Love you So Much (Noah Britton cover) with extra viola from Rachel Jayson !

TEARS

THE END.

Enjoy watching this....we loved playing.

Here's me and storm, by the way, on SHOW day, dipping in a LAKE.

Did I mention that she was just blowing in from out of town and did this show as a specail guest because, like me, she just LOVES DOING THIS SHIT?

I paid her in beer and hugs.

Basically.

If you get that joke, please applaud.

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Some stills:

Here’s some shots from Peter Boyce -

Some photos from Anthony Mulcahy...

Strom and Amelia....

WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN???

I love you.

So much.

Amelia in the moonlight of the dressing room....ICON.

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Massive thanks to Anthony, to Ry, and to Liz and Megan for holding down the fort so beautifully...and to everyone who came to the show in person.

Love.

So.

Much.

Thank you for being my patrons.

x

x

A

------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

1. if you are a patron and new to my work, don’t forget your patronage allows you access to ALL of my patreon releases to date. HERE is the link to download my latest big solo record, “There Will Be No Intermission”, and HERE is a link to download the PDF of the art/essay book that goes with it.

2. if you’re a patron reading this post via an email notification, please click through to comment on this post. at the very least, if you’ve read it, indicate that by using the heart symbol. that's always nice for me to see, so i know who's reading.

3. see All the Things (over 150 of them) i've made so far on patreon:

http://amandapalmer.net/things

4. JOIN THE SHADOWBOX COMMUNITY FORUM, find your people, and discuss everything: https://forum.theshadowbox.net/

5. new to my music and TOTALLY OVERWHELMED? TAKE A WALK THROUGH AMANDALANDA….we made a basic list of my greatest hits n stuff (at least up until a few years ago, this desperately needs updating) on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

6. general AFP/patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer: patronhelp@amandapalmer.net