Greetings Reader

I hope the new year is treating you well and that your performing goals are being fulfilled.

Are you performing in the Retirement Community yet?

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New Email Address:

This email introduces my new email address for Inspire the Retired correspondence -

(rich@inspiretheretired.com).

The experts tell me I needed to not use my personal email and get a professional email address so my emails get through to their destination more reliably. So there it is.

If you’re having trouble connecting let me know. You can also reach me at: RAraldiMusic@gmail.com​

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I’ve got a couple groups that you might be interested in.

If you’re on Facebook I’ve got a page entitled “Inspire the Retired - The Fulfilled Professional Performer's Course” (Link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561309325891)

And there’s a page associated with my course that I’m just getting going. If you’ve signed up to receive the free giveaway bundle you can join the Community Page. Here’s the link to sign up:

​https://rich-s-site-850f.thinkific.com/communities/Q29tbXVuaXR5LTk5NjM0​

Both these resources allow me to share thoughts, strategies, and interactions that I use in my Retirement Community performances, and interact with fellow artists like yourself.

Note: These are new programs and I’m still figuring out some of this technology (not being a techno wiz). So if you have any problems get in touch and we’ll figure it out.

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Booking for 2025​
In the “Inspire the Retired” course I mention (and go into some detail) that “booking season” runs from the fall to the end of the year.

And while that’s true (I basically had 2025 fully booked, approx 300 performances before the end of ’24. That’s enough for this year, I think at my age the days of 400+ performances a year are over!), there’s still room on many facilities calendars for bookings.

And it’s never too early to get going to set yourself up for next year. Many facilities want to have a new performer come in a time or two before they commit to booking them for the year. So don’t be discouraged if you didn’t get booking done. Just start making the contacts that you need.

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Performer's Corner​
I’m introducing a section in these emails called “Performer’s Corner”.

Performer’s corner will include thoughts, information, suggestions, etc that pertain to the unique world of performing in the retirement community. (There may or may not be relevance to other performing situations).

Here are the entries for this installment:

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Beatles grammy nomination can extend the focus on the Beatles

Do you include Beatles music in your performances? If you do, or would like to, check this out!

Last year was the 60th anniversary of the Beatles arriving in America and the beginning of “Beatlemania”!

Perhaps, like me, you worked some extra Beatles music into your program (I’m a big Beatles fan so I was glad for the opportunity).

Well, with the Grammy nomination of “Now and Then” from the Fab Four it extends the opportunity to feature their music.

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Here’s how I’ve been using this in my programs if you’d like to borrow any of it. (Feel free to pick through it and edit it as you wish).

I’ve been having some fun telling my audiences that I was going to play a song from one of this years Grammy nominee’s. I’ve been asking “Have you been keeping up with modern music?” (of course for the most part they haven’t) and then I’ll play “Yesterday” (60 years old this year) and share how the creation of “Now and Then” came about.

John had been working on some demos of new music. After his death his widow Yoko got those demo’s into Paul’s hands. In the Anthology that was released in the ’90's the remaining Beatles added their music to the other songs and released them (Free as a Bird, and True Love).

But the “Now and Then” demo had John’s voice and piano on the same track and out of balance with each other, so despite working on it they couldn’t get it to an acceptable level so they shelved it.

Fast forward almost thirty years. Of course in that time we lost George Harrison in 2001. But with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) they were able to program the computers and equipment to separate the sound of John’s voice from the sound of the piano from the original recording so they ended up with a clean vocal track.

The remaining two Beatles (Paul and Ringo, now in their 80’s) added their instruments. But what about George? Well, they had the guitar work that George had contributed in the 90’s that they were able to make use of. So here you have a Grammy nominated song that includes all four Beatles, 60 years after they won their first Grammy for “A Hard Day’s Night”.

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Performing with a mask -

For the first time in quite a while I’ve had to wear a mask at a couple performances recently.

As I mention more in depth in the Inspire the Retired course there are always periods of time where Retirement Communities are hit by one strain of flu or another. When this occurs they’ll do one of a couple things.

They might cancel performances and avoid getting groups of people together to stop the spread of the disease, or they may require masks to be worn.

The mask situation can take on two forms. I may be required to wear a mask while in the facility and for the performance, or they might require a mask as I’m moving through the facility but allow me to perform without it (usually that’s the case if the audience is more than ten feet from me, which is most of the time).

I’m in New England and we see “flu season” every year and have right along. At this point Covid really has just taken its place as one more flu that shows up (and hopefully it won’t be any more than that), but some facilities are a little quicker to go to wearing masks than they were before Covid.

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Wrapping Up

I’m hoping you’ll find these communications informative and helpful and you’ll find great value in being part of the Inspire the Retired community, but if they’re not for you I understand completely and you can unsubscribe any time below.

Until next time, all the best!

Rich