In the revolving door of the Phnom Penh music scene there’s always a groundswell of original music that surfaces from time to time before dissipating, waves breaking on the shoreline so to speak. For the last couple of years the Originals Acoustic Showcase, first at Back Street Bar and now at The Deck, has been attempting to provide (succeeding!) a platform for a range of artists to perform their own compositions in a welcoming environment. Ahead of the first of the new series on Saturday, organiser and performer Lewis McTighe sat down with LengPleng to discuss the history and ethos of The Originals.
LP: So The Originals is back!
LM: The Originals never goes away, we just do it in seasons – both musicians and audience often go away for the summer, and it always takes it a while to get it rolling again. We usually run about nine months of the year. This is the third season – I don’t remember exactly when the first one was – about two and a half years, roughly.
Back in 2022 at Sunset Boulevard Arone Silverman put on what was called the Original Artists Showcase a couple of times. His original concept was a sofa on the stage, like a talk show, where a trio of artists would take turns spending some time talking about a song, or the process, or the inspiration – talk, engage, play one song, and then the next musician would come on. Less music, more interaction, more curiosity being satisfied.
At the time I was working on a project called Skin & String, an acoustic trio with guitar, voice, Michelle Neukirchen on the cello and Hubert Sakaue on the congas. After a S&S show at Odom Gardens we were approached by Cenk Sahin, who was managing Back Street Bar at the time, who invited us to play every Sunday. So suddenly we had a residency, but with only one rehearsal a week and a gig every week, there was really no time to write and prepare new material. So we took Arone’s idea and modified it, allowing three performers two 20 minute slots in the same round robin format. I saw how much more interesting it is for the audience. Three hours of the same voice, the same style and sound, tends to become merely background.
Back Street hosted us in the beautiful open courtyard space, again we had the sofa, the coffee table, the intimate living room atmosphere. Unfortunately the noise of Bassac Street was a challenge. I was fortunate to have some really excellent musicians participate – Metta Legita comes to mind, she brought an acoustic piano in – and that was really encouraging.
LP: And then there was the change of location.
LM: We moved to The Deck – coincidentally around the same time as Cenk – where we found a very different environment, a different crowd, and we moved to Saturdays, to fit with The Deck’s live music schedule. For the second season it was the last Saturday of the month, this time we’ll be first Saturday of the month. Over time we’ve improved the set-up and the sound – instead of having the musicians against the wall and the audience spread around, the musicians are now in the middle, so everyone’s a little bit closer. We have a commitment to good sound. You will be looked after, you will be taken care of, and all you need to do is turn up and be the artist.
LP: How do you choose who plays each month?
LM: This is the goal: we want chilled original music. Initially the format was me and two other acts, later I found I didn’t need to play each time, and that felt right, I felt like I was really promoting something beyond me.
I don’t want three country artists – I want, say, a country artist, a hip-hop artist and a doom rock act, juxtaposing styles. Then occasionally we’ll do a theme, like all the artists using piano, or all doing live beat making. I’d like to do more of that. I love it when the Siem Reap players come to town, I’m also in contact with a couple of guys in Bangkok. I like to book well in advance – months ahead if I can.
LP: What do you look for in a prospective performer?
LM: The difficulty we’ve had over the last couple of years is musicians have either been passing through, and you’ll never see them again, or they’ve been here for a stint, they’ve done their time and they’ve moved on. So the pool is looking a little thin at the moment. I’ve moved away from the singer-songwriter requirement now – we’ve had the abstract mathematical music of Northpoint, we had Kosal Khiev doing his spoken word, which was really cool.
I’m always asking people: would you like to do an Originals show, and they’re often, like, I don’t have enough songs, or I would need some time to finish my songs. And I’ll book them in two months ahead, so it’s become a tool that people use to finish songs, sometimes that they’ve been sitting on for years. There have been musicians who play in bands, maybe as the secondary vocalist or lead guitarist, who have used it as a launchpad for their own work. And you’re one of three artists, it’s not all on you.
I feel that in the music community in Phnom Penh, the musicians really respect what The Originals is, and the ethos behind promoting original music. There’s lots of reasons why there isn’t loads of original music around, and there are musicians, especially acoustic performers, who don’t necessarily have the opportunities. And here we’re only asking for 40 minutes, seven or eight songs is enough.
Whatever the order is, someone has played before you, and it inspires you – there’s something about the second pass. The first pass is always not quite as good as the second pass. As soon as someone nails a song, and it gets that ripple reaction, everyone suddenly ups their game.
And then there are people like myself, Cove Aaronoff, other people, who are in gigging bands, who have kind of lost the enthusiasm for solo acoustic gigs. It’s not the same. After this one I probably won’t want to do another one for another six or seven months; it doesn’t satisfy me like it used to, so that’s why I pull in a couple of people to accompany me. This one I’ll do with Gary Custance and Chris Rompre, sometimes I do it with Michelle on the cello, Skin & Strings style.
The Originals Acoustic Showcase season three kicks off on Saturday 6 at The Deck with Muz Muskett, Scott Bywater, and Lewis, Gary & Chris.
