Blog

As you know, in common with all music venues, we are currently closed, with no indication of when we will be able to reopen.

However, this does not mean that we are inactive. We are still operating, albeit in a ‘virtual’ environment, presenting a weekly programme of streamed live shows from artist’s homes. All ticket money is split between the artists and The Live Room, which is helping both to stay afloat while the entire industry is in lockdown. We are very grateful for your support during this incredibly difficult and worrying time.

We know that not all of you have the necessary or best equipment for accessing these live streams, so apologies if you can’t get them. If you can access them but are having difficulties, below you’ll find some tips for getting the best results.

• Use Google Chrome or Firefox as your default browser
• Clear your cache – if you don’t know how to, just Google how to clear my cache in [whichever browser you are using] 
• Check your broadband speed – this can be done by going to www.broadbandspeedtest.org.uk, www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk or there are a number of others. You do not need very high download speeds, but you do need a solid connection so the next two points are important
• Wifi should be fine for watching streams, but if your wifi is not great and there are a number of other devices connected to it, turn them off if possible 
• If you connection is still not good , if possible, connect directly to one of your router ethernet ports, using a CAT 5 or above network cable Male RJ45/Male RJ45. If you haven’t got one, you can buy one of varying lengths online pretty cheaply 
• When you get to the stream page, you can select the full screen option in the bottom right hand corner of the stream window

Casting to your smart TV via cable

• When watching on your pc or laptop, your listening experience will be enhanced by having some speakers attached. It may also be possible to stream on your smart TV using an HDMI cable. For Windows, read this article to enable this method. For Apple devices, read this

Casting wirelessly

• You may also be able to connect your laptop, tablet or even mobile phone to your TV wirelessly.
• For Windows devices, use the TV remote and select the source to Screen mirroring. It will show a screen with the TV name. On the laptop, press the Windows button and type in ‘Settings’. Then go to ‘Connected devices’ and click on the ‘Add device’ option at the top. The drop down menu will list all the devices you can mirror to. Select your TV and the laptop screen will start mirroring to the TV. The TV name also gets saved in the connected devices list, so connecting the laptop to the TV in the future is easy.
• For Apple devices, watch this YouTube video

Friday 12th June 8pm

Set list by Keith Belcher

Thanks to Mark for a fabulous streamed performance from his home in Massachusetts. A wonderful singer, songwriter and musician, we’ve had great feedback from our audience and we’ll definitely bring him along to TLR once we get the other side of this pandemic. Thank you to everyone who tuned in from home and abroad!

Mark Erelli (USA)
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
12th June 2020

INTRO-RON/HILARY

Set 1
Oklahoma
A Little Kindness
The River Always Wins
Blindsided
River Road
Charlottsville
Stranger’s Eyes

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/ HILARY/ MARK

Set 2
Delivered
Kingdom Come
Rose-Colored Rearview
By Degrees
Her Town Now
Ophelia (The Band)
Abraham

Friday 5th June 2020

Set list by Keith Belcher

Curtis Eller (USA)
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
5th June 2020

INTRO-HILARY/RON

Set 1
After The Soil Fails
Last Flight Of The Pigeon Club
Old Time Religion
Alaska
The Heart That Forgave Richard Nixon
Busby Berkeley Funeral

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/ HILARY/ CURTIS including a version of God Damn That Bird

Set 2
Waist Deep In The Big Muddy (Pete Seeger)
Sugar For The Horses
When The Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbing Along (Harry M Woods -Sung by Al Jolson)
After The Riot
Save Me Joe Louis
Sugar In My Coffin
Buster Keaton

CLOSURE

Friday 29th May 202 8pm

Set list by Keith Belcher

Some great songs, clawhammer banjo, step dance and body percussion from this Oakland, California-based couple. Wonderful entertainment and some great insight into what drives and inspires them. It’s a difficult time in the USA at the moment but they are still looking for the good in the hearts of their fellow citizens.

Evie Ladin & Keith Terry (USA)
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
29th May 2020

About the current situation: “I Think Its Only Less Stress If You’ve Got A Roof Over Your Head And Food In Your Larder” (comment made by Evie after Let Me Lay Down)

INTRO-HILARY/RON
Set 1
Dance All Night & Give The Fiddler A Dram
Jump Up & Go
Under The Waterline
News Cyclone
In The Shadow Of The Pines (Carter Family)
Have It All
Jump The Fire
Glory
Mistreated Mama/Yew Piney Mountain (Doc Boggs)

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/ HILARY/ EVIE & KEITH

Set 2
The Storm (Lotus Dickie) Evie Solo
Dime Store Glasses/Body Music & Dancing
Slip Sliding Away (Paul Simon)
Tumbleweed
Gone Again/Trad Rascal Songs
Lonesome John (John Salyer)
Precious Days
Let Me Lay Down
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Ewan MacColl)
Ease On Down
People Are You Ready

CLOSURE

Saturday 23rd May 8pm

Set list by Keith Belcher

Another great live set from across the Atlantic, this time all the way from near the Pacific coast in the San Lorenzo Valley from Lille Aeske Arthouse. An evening of superb songs and great performance from Nels Andrews.

Nels Andrews (USA)
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
23rd May 2020

INTRO-HILARY
Set 1
New Song, not named possibly Tomorrows In The Tall Grass (?) (Sci Fi Love Song)
Starboard
Memory Compass
Embassy To The Airport
Pigeon & The Crow
Three Hermits
Holy Water

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/ HILARY/ NELS ANDREWS

Set 2
Scrimshaw
Dollar & The Dream
Table By The Kitchen
Small Victories
Welterweight
Smaller Scale (A.J. Roach)
Wisteria
Jesse’s Mom

Friday 15th May 2020 8pm

Set list by Keith Belcher

Hamilton Loomis (USA)
“One Of The Best Evenings I’ve Spent In Front Of The Computer”
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
15th May 2020

INTRO-RON

Set 1
This Season
Workin’ Real Hard
Looking Into A Dream
A Woman Like You
Keep A-Knockin’ (But You Can’t Come In) (Little Richard)
Motor Head Baby (Johnny “Guitar” Watson)
When You Get Back (John Cleary)
Sugar Baby

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/ HILARY/ HAMILTON LOOMIS

Set 2
Give It Back
What It Is
Bow Wow
Eternally
Stuck In A Rut
Thinking Of You
Before You Accuse me (Take A Look At Yourself) (Bo Diddley)

CLOSURE

plus Young Werther

Friday 8th May 2020

Set list by Keith Belcher

Charm of Finches (AUSTRALIA) (Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes)
& Young Werther (Mick Young) (AUSTRALIA now DEVON)
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
8th May 2020

INTRO-HILARY

YOUNG WERTHER
Come On Back Here
Cornish Green
Homeland
All The News Is Fake
Boa Constrictor

CHAT

CHARM OF FINCHES
Set 1
Fish In The Sea
Lies
In The Gloaming
Fossil In Stone
New Song – Untitled as yet
Paint Me A Picture

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/ HILARY/ CHARM OF FINCHES

Set 2
Sky Watching
Where The Ducks Go
Slip Like Water
Her Quiet Footsteps
Your Company
The Bridge

CLOSURE

TLR Live Online

Friday 1st May 2020

Set list collected by Keith Belcher, photo by Gillian Harrison from her TV!

Virtual Show
TLR
1 May 2020

Set 1

1. Same Old
2. More Than You Should Say
3. Hold Love
4. Hills Of My Home
5. The Bluegrass Special (Bill Monroe)
6. Loneliest Songs
7. Ramblin’ Man (Hank Williams)

Interview

Set 2

1. Silver Linings
2. Wildwood Flower
3. For One More
4. Long Monday (John Prine)
5. Going Rate
6. Horses
7. Catawba (instrumental)
8. One Kind Word/Gentle On My Mind (Glen Cambell)

Well, we’ve been debriefing and working hard since the first show on Friday and thank you for all your really constructive and detailed feedback.As the first viewers for our TLR Live Online gigs, we thought we owed you some feedback of our own. The general consensus was that it worked really well and you enjoyed it. However, as we knew there would be, there were some technical issues, so I’ve listed these below, what we have done and can do about them. In no particular order:

1. Full screen access – this was one that came up quite a lot and must have been annoying, especially for those of you casting to a large screen smart TV. You’ll be glad to know that we’ve found the problem, or rather the guys at Zidivo, who are hosting it to our website did, and we’ve now changed the code and had a few people who had the problem to test it on the recording of the show now on our website, and it works! Hooray! Give it a go yourself if you haven’t already.

2. Login problems –  a few seemed to have issues here, which could have been in part down to us starting a little late (see point 3 for the reasons why). When you follow the link – which you can do at any time after it comes through – you’ll get a page with the gig title and some text and a black page. Some of you may have the login boxes to fill in, but for some reason, some may not. Don’t worry, this may be because your browser may have ‘remembered’ you, the stream will start. Around ten minutes before the show is to start, the stream window will appear with a picture of the TLR stage and a banner telling you the show will begin shortly, just be patient and it will appear. You can then hit the full screen icon.

3. Volume disparity & audio to video latency – the reason we were a little late starting was that we had a real panic just before going to air when we discovered that Luke’s set up would not work in our studio environment, so we had to rely on the fall back, which was just him doing the whole show just via his laptop camera and mic. Big lesson learned: when you think you’ve tested, test again anyway. In the end it went pretty well, largely down to Luke’s ability and his stage presence. However, it meant that we didn’t have time to check our relative microphone balances. It would also have had an affect on the synchronicity between voice and vision, although some of that can also rest with the viewer’s set up. However, we will remedy the volume balance for the next shows and we also hope that we can reduce the latency by getting artists wherever possible to wire straight to the router with an ethernet cable. An ethernet cable direct to router will also help viewers with a smoother and more solid connection too. They’re not expensive and, as we’re likely to be streamers for several months, it may well pay to at least consider it, especially if several other wifi devices are active in your household. Or alternatively, switch all the others off. 

4. Vodaphone broadband blocking  – this was a problem for a few people. One of our viewers managed to solve it in a few minutes by signing in to his Vodaphone account and he gave us these instructions (thanks Tim Bleazard):

          ‘When I went onto the link using Google Chrome on my Chromebook the video was a grey rectangle with a message saying my.zidivo was unavailable. I decided to try      and open zidivo.com in a new tab to see if there was an issue with the site and it showed a Vodafone blocking page. I went to the vodafone web site and logged in . I scrolled down to the Broadband section and clicked on Manage MY Controls. I clicked on Manage Content Control Profile. I had my settings set to Safe and changed it to Off.’

We hope all the above helps because we really want and need this to work for all of us, TLR, musicians and especially the fans without whom none of us would be here. Many thanks once again for all your support and hope that you’ll join us online again in the coming weeks.

Very best wishes and keep yourselves and loved ones safe

Ron & Hilary x

Friday 24th April 2020

Set list by Keith Belcher

Luke Jackson
Virtual Stage At The Live Room, Saltaire
24th April 2020

INTRO-RON

Set 1
Honeycomb
Forever Young (B.Dylan)
Is It Me
Leather Cross
Trouble New
Cherry Picker
Bakers Woods

CHAT & QUESTIONS RON/LUKE

Set 2
Heavy
Red Oak
1952 Vincent Black Lightning (R.Thompson)
Curse The Day
I’m Not OK With This
Cry To Me
Every Flame

CLOSURE