You can give this concert the thumbs-up from your couch.
A Brooklyn singer and composer will offer a free video-stream of the release party for his new album “Rudder Songs” at Union Hall on Aug. 21. Despite the potential to reach millions of people the neo-soul musician is staying humble about his World Wide Web-wide debut — though he does have some ideas for how to get more eyes and ears on the show.
“Other than reaching interested friends or family, I’m not really counting on some fluke traffic flowing to the streaming page,” said Michael Chinworth. “I suppose I could include keywords like ‘Bono fights Bonobo — live’ as tags to get more traffic.”
Vaccuum tubes have long been responsible for amplifying musicians, but the advent of the Internet — something former Alaskan senator Ted Stevens once described as “a series of tubes” — and video sharing sites like YouTube have vastly increased working musicians’ volume. Chinworth wanted to seize on the voyeuristic zeitgeist, he said.
“The whole idea of a YouTube culture concerned with watching videos of people doing things makes this feel relevant,” Chinworth said.
Chinworth is not the first to share an album release concert live on the web — the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince took his act on the information superhighway to fete his 2014 releases “Art Official Age” and “PlectrumElectrum,” and country musician Luke Bryan did much the same earlier this month.
And if you do opt to mosh from your living room, there are some upsides, Chinworth said.
“You don’t have to feel self-conscious about not clapping or ‘Wooo’-ing,” he said.
But there are also some drawbacks to a couch-potato concert, said Chinworth. For one thing, showing up to Union Hall will net you a free copy of his album — a mellow collection of groovy piano and organ tunes accompanied by Chinworth’s velvety voice.
And nothing beats a finely tuned live sound system — though he will not lose too much sleep if your first exposure to his music comes from a home speaker the size of a cigarette pack, Chinworth said.
“People should be free to choose,” he said. “If that’s the kind of life you want to live, one in which laptop speakers ‘work fine, it’s actually pretty good quality,’ I’m not going to police that.”
Michael Chinworth and the Rudder Band at Union Hall [702 Union St. between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Park Slope, www.union
Stream the show at www.conce
