Step into the manic mind of multi vocalist/ comedian Darren Foreman aka Beardyman when he brings his ground-breaking interactive live show, ‘One Album Per Hour’, to Australia in September.
Tell people you’re going to write, record and mix a full album live in front of a room of people in just 60 minutes and they’ll tell you you’re mad. In his latest show, Beardyman does it every night and more than once he has questioned his own sanity. “I have some insight to my own sanity, but I’m probably insane,” he laughs.
“I mean it’s a mad thing to do to try and make an album in that time. I guess I always wanted to see if it was possible and I guess it is, in a way.”
Using song titles suggested by the audience, Beardyman produces songs live from scratch using the Beardytron_5000mkIV, a machine of his own concoction that possesses inexplicable and previously unheard of capabilities for recording entire compositions in real time. “It’s a concept that I’ve honed over many years and before I had the technology to do it,” he explains. “I had to build the technology to enable myself to do it. Then once I had the technology I had to refine the show itself.
“For example, when I started doing the show four years ago I wanted people to shout made-up song titles out, which was a terrible idea,” he laughs. “People would shout out song titles and I’d get this clamour, then there’d be lots of me going: ‘Wait, what? No, just you. Hang on… what?!’ and it just turned into a flame-war between every song. I quickly realised it wasn’t going to work and I got them to write things down on a piece of paper and I pull it out of a hat.”
For most performers, be they musician, comedian or the dreaded street mime, disciplined rehearsal is the key to performance. Rarely will an artist perform new or unfinished material to a paying audience, let alone perform songs that literally do not exist until the lights go down.
Beardyman, however, thrives on the mystery of not knowing what will happen each night he steps on stage and what music will spring from his mind when he pulls song titles from his hat, entirely at the mercy of people he has never met. “I find it more nerve-wracking when I have to try and remember a lot of stuff that I have to get right first time,” he says.
“If it’s something that’s pre-rehearsed, like a play, you’ve got to remember your lines and there’s a certain nerve-wracking element to something like that which for me feels a bit more uncanny.
“You’ve got to be like ‘can I dial it in today?’ if you’re doing something that’s pre-written. That for me, causes this anxiety where I think ‘do I mean this shit anymore?’ or ‘can I seem like I mean this shit anymore?’ and wonder what I’ll be able to bring to the table.
“You find that with a lot of bands, where you’ve either got to find new meaning in the song every time or you’ve got to design the songs around them being performable and get yourself in the right mood to do them.”
Beardyman’s performances present a truly unique concert experience for audiences night after night; not only is the custom-designed Beardytron_5000mkIV the only machine of its kind in existence, no two performances are ever the same.
Equal parts concert, interactive theatre and comedy, ‘One Album Per Hour’ forges a special connection between artist and audience that affords each a creative insight into the mind of the other. “It’s a very different pursuit with improvising because then you’re really going with literally what’s on your mind. It’s explorative where I get to realise what’s lying dormant in my head, things I didn’t realise were in there. It’s a little voyage of discovery for everyone.”
Of course, audience participation is essential to ‘One Album Per Hour’; the whole premise rests on their suggestions for song titles, which ignite and fuel Beardyman’s engine of creation.
With four Australian shows lined up for September, now’s a good time to start thinking of ideas for Beardyman’s nightly tracklist. “If you think of what constitutes a song title, it could be anything from a single word to a really long sentence, but in the main it’s two or three words,” he advises.
“It could be about lost love, or born of frustration, anger, joy, or it could be a question; often song titles are ironic or they have a double meaning.”
Be warned though, a Beardyman show isn’t the time or place to try out your comedy routine that your mates down the pub think is ‘totally funny, bro!’. Puns and bad jokes won’t make the cut and might just earn you a very public, verbal smackdown. “What song titles rarely are is a pun,” he says.
“A lot of people think it’s funny to write shit, Christmas cracker, dad-joke puns and I don’t accept them. At the start of the show I’ll read out the shit ones, say ‘these are written by people who haven’t got it’ and mock them, and maybe I’ll illustrate why it would make a bad song if I was to choose it.
“You have to have good stuff to work with, which is another reason why having people yell things out was a bad idea because it was unfiltered.
“So there’s a filtration process where we go through the titles… it’s a funny way for me to start the show, because the audience walk in, you don’t know them and you can’t get to them. It’s like an inkblot test… I get to see deep into people’s psyche.”
Beardyman Tour Dates
Wed 7 Sept - Sydney Opera HouseThu 8 Sept - Sydney Opera House
Sun 11 Sept - The Tivoli (Brisbane)
Tue 13 Sept - Corner Hotel (Melbourne)
