Nik Hamby

February.  What a month, so far!  I started with the night at Kingston Butter Factory, then did another two open mic events at Banshees, which is closer to home.  There was opportunity to do a longer set on the first of those nights - and I sang nine of my songs, including a new one "You Draw Blood".  It's a great song and I had a very positive response to it, so that will be on my release radar very soon - and you'll be able to hear it, too! I decided to enter the Vanda & Young Global Songwriting Competition this year, for the first time.  It's described as "... one of the world's most prestigious songwriting competitions" with a combined prize pool of AUD$70,000.  The judging panel is comprised of high-profile industry professionals and winners are expected to be announced around the end of June.  Fingers crossed! Over the weekend, I attended an APRA AMCOS (music rights management organisation) seminar, at the QUT campus in Brisbane. There were...

Kingston Butter Factory in Logan runs open mic nights as part of their Arts Development program.  I went along for the first time in February and played a few of my songs.  Rebecca came with me and took some footage of me playing. Clips of those are on my FB page, if you want to have a look. It was a good night with quite a few people taking part, many playing originals.  There was a lot of encouragement.  The audience was very attentive and it always feels good for people to really listen to your songs.  It looks like there is opportunity to put in for more work in that area, in terms of longer sets/proper gigs as well as more open mic nights.  (I'll miss the March open mic but should be able to attend in April).     Steve T from Radio Logan 101FM played a couple of songs and we chatted afterwards.  As a follow-on from that meeting, I'll soon be in contact with a program director to tee up a live-interview and play some songs on-air....