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TheSunManager’s album tour wants to visit your town
“As I see it, music as it is propagated locally is largely through live performances and gigging,” says April Hernandez, the lead vocalist and musician behind TheSunManager project.
“There are a lot of people who discover new music because they watch a certain band, and of course other bands are included in the lineup.”
This, she says, is why people like her do album tours, and bar tours in general, in support of their music. I was thus surprised that she issued a call-out on Twitter, asking if she could play out-of-town gigs in support of her new album, Worth. The album was released last February.
But first, a word about the musician and her project. Hernandez learned to play the guitar by herself at a young age, often sneaking out with her sister’s guitar to do so. She played in several bands before she started playing solo as TheSunManager.
The story of this name had to do with the fact that she was looking for a unique domain name for her work, but as time went on, she felt that it gained new meaning. “For me, it means that we are in charge of our own happiness,” she says.
She adds that putting the sun, a symbol of joy and happiness, next to “manager” was “a reminder to myself that I have a choice.”
Of the new album, Hernandez said that initially she wanted to part ways with the country-folk sound of TheSunManager's first self-titled EP, which featured, as she describes it, “the shuffle of the drums and the shuffle of the guitar.” “I wanted it to veer away from that while preserving the [songwriting],” she says.
The album is in a sense an extension of the last track of her EP, a song called “In Darkness.”
The album, like that track, delves more into introspection and, as she puts it, “how a person navigates through daily life and experiences.” It is a personal album in a sense, but she says that she wrote it in a way that “people can find themselves within the songs and somehow relate and own the songs themselves.”
We mentioned earlier her reasons for why acts like her do album tours—it allows people to discover both new music and new acts to appreciate. The downside is that in a highly centralized music environment, musicians in, say, Manila, prefer to play within Manila, even if they have fans out of town.
So Hernandez plans to do a DIY album tour, much in the mold of what folk-pop musician Lucy Rose, who has visited Manila twice, did on a recent tour.
Such a concept is not new locally. A number of bands spent the weekend of the 25th of March on a similar DIY bar tour covering Cebu and Bacolod, and bands from Cebu before have played similar tours in Manila as well.
“I wanted to see where the people would want the music to be brought,” Hernandez says, so she issued the little request online. So far, the response has been positive.
“I have people contacting me from Lucena and Los Baños who are fans of music here in Manila,” she says, “and if I can do a show and help my fellow artists go to their place for them to experience music the same way we do here, it’s a win-win situation for me, I guess!” One advantage is that she has experience organizing events, which can be of help to other musicians who either do not have the means or the expertise.
After finishing the Manila leg of the tour, Hernandez plans to continue gigging in as many places as she could within the metropolis, and then to tackle more out-of-town shows. “The people that have contacted me haven’t promised, like, a date,” she said, “but hopefully in a couple of months we can solidify something.” She plans to make a mini-documentary of the tour too.
always a treat to watch @TheSunManager play! #WorthBarTour ???????? pic.twitter.com/qFDVUR3MeY
— Jeremy Caisip (@jeremycaisip) March 29, 2017
The whole DIY tour concept could mean, for instance, that Hernandez doesn’t need to book a hotel or play in a bar to promote TheSunManager’s music out of town. “I could sleep in somebody’s house,” she says, “or I could do secret shows in somebody’s living room.” The very flexibility of the idea is what appeals to her, and she hopes that people will be willing to take up her offer. — BM, GMA News
Get in touch with April Hernandez about where to take TheSunManager via the project’s website.
