I got emergency-booked to play Katies again the other night, which is really good because I managed to get on the bill to play Katyfest in May, I'll keep you posted on that!
A big night for me, this one, because I wanted to play Storm from the North live for the first time. I'd been putting it off for a while because I hadn't really rehearsed it well enough. This is also the first one for a while where I've felt my set was consistent enough to make it all my own material rather than throw in a cover. Was it worth the wait? Read on...
I kicked off as ever with my usual combo of Bitterness and Get Out Of My Head. I can um and ar as much as I like about putting most of my heavyweights in at the start of the set but I've got a precedent of three months worth of gigs to suggest to me that this works very well indeed; tonight was no exception. Bitterness contains the usual element of surprise about the acoustic guy playing rock songs, and I think Get Out Of My Head is finally reaching a place where I can play it confidently enough to compensate for it's unfamiliarity and vase switch in styles.
Believe was next; of my two desolate wrist-slashers this is the "Early 00's Goth"-type, why I keep choosing this over the other one (Prisoner of my Mind, the mid-90's shoegazer) I don't know because I actually think Prisoner's the more effective song, but I've pretty much stopped writing set lists these days and make it up as I go along; I know what's supposed to happen at the start of each gig and I can go with the flow from there. This was followed by Dear Mr Manager; not sure how well this one went down because with such a small audience it's difficult to guauge, but this is one of my less enjoyable (if more interesting!) songs, and I think it's no coincidence the applause I was getting from this very modest crowd was noticably quieter. Then again, I could also put it down to the significant reduction in pace, speaking of which...
After advising Sam that I'm 'going loud again,' I played Storm from the North for the first time. Any new song I'll mess up the first couple of times I play it, thankfully in this case it was a matter of a couple of lyrics I was able to bluff. The changin time singatures and the lyrics about 17th century pirate ships (analogy of Crashpoint, as I've explained before) arguably makes this song about as pretentious as I get, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing it and the audience seemed to like it too!
After this I played my two set closers, Girls Names, which never fails to go down well at Katies, and We Will Survive. I happened to mention to the people in the crowd (the number of wich had grown a bit by then) that I'm patiently waiting for the time when people will sing the chorus back to me after I hit the first chord (if you haven't heard it, I start the song with an a'cappello rendition of the first couple of lines of the chorus,) after which Sam affirmed that she and Stefan always do. This being one of my more pacey songs, it's rare that I don't end the show with it, and when I do I can usually leave the stage in a good mood. This was one of those times!
I really enjoyed playing the show tonight, and I think it went really well; the environment is I think more suitable for what I play with my acoustic guitar than at the Wharf Bar (the other place where I do full gigs.) I also played Sam's Open Night at the Woodman the following day, more on that to come later...
No comments:
Post a Comment