Sidestepping the tar pit of authenticity or what is or is not real, here’s the core appeal of the acoustic performer as I see it: if the electricity goes off, you can sit on the edge of the stage and play something. As long as you don’t play louder than you sing, people will recognize it as communication and possibly even entertainment. And as traditional acappella performers and instrumentalists will demonstrate, you don’t even need both, just one or the other.
Not that you ever want it to come to that. At least, I don’t. Anyone who regularly boils a kettle knows that electricity’s not a bad thing. Onstage, we use microphones, a PA and pickups on our guitars. We are not purely acoustic. Acoustic sensibility or no, I can’t blame artists for turning to current technology in an attempt to give the best performance they can.

I’ve heard the siren call myself. I saw a solo performer at a local pub. He had backup tracks on an iPod plugged into his PA. He had a lot of work in that database; his repertoire was large and fluid – he took requests and everything! The iPod never crashed while I was there and I was smitten with the idea for weeks. He sounded good and I’ll bet he was earning good money.
But there are many drawbacks: assembling a quality track base – originals and covers, the more complex live setup, the nearly inevitable crashes and the creeping feeling that you’ve just turned your art into, well, karaoke.
Look, we’re Postcard Comets, not Coldplay. We’re not famous. Our audience has neither obsessions nor expectations based on our recordings. Very few people even know our tracks. Really, why the pressure to reproduce them exactly onstage?
I love to do covers. It’s fascinating to hone a well-known song to its elements - doing Motown tunes, say, with just voice and guitar. So, for me, it’s no compromise to sprinkle a set with tunes that folks might know. But we’re songwriters. We have a lot of original songs here on this website. In choosing our live repertoire, we have plenty of our own material from which to choose.
But here’s the thing: when shaping songs for a set, we effectively treat our original tunes as covers. Like covers, none of them will sound precisely like the “original”. But if we can find a tune’s essence with just bass and guitar, that’s one we’ll do onstage. It’s fun, those familiar with the recording will recognize the tune and the song reaches an audience.
It’s no secret that recording and live performance are different ways of creating and experiencing music. I see them as parallel, noncompetitive paths. Either way, the lure of tech-assisted perfection is as much an illusion as perfection itself. On stage, with a bit of thought and a good song, the goal is a balance of the song’s needs and an affecting, pared-back acoustic performance.
And, in our case, with no laptop overheating in the footlights.