11/5/2011: Hartley Arms Open Night

Literally a week later...

Sam Draisey was good enough to send me a list of the open nights he was doing this week, and I hadn't played the Hartley Arms so I thought I'd give it a go. After googlemapping it and finding out that, no, Wheaton Aston isn't anywhere near Aston in Birmingham, and blasting it up near enough to Stafford for what turned out to be the first of three times that week, I plugged my guitar in and began...

I'm beginning to notice that gigs in places that I've never been before are actually starting to go better than my old stomping grounds. Maybe this is because the stakes are slightly higher, this being the first time I get to win over this particular audience, or maybe it's because the fact that I can actually play my own songs now makes me deliver a more convincing performance first time. Whatever the reason, I can't seem to go wrong with the venerable opening combo of Get Out Of My Head and Bitterness. I noticed a smile and a nod from Sam where I replaced the naughty word in Bitterness for 'nonsense.' Normally I wouldn't worry too much about minding my Ps and Qs once the promoter has told me that it's OK, but in this case there were some people in the crowd who were quite young. It pays to be concious of that, and to be honest I vent enough venom in that song anyway to make my point!

I told the story to how Storm From The North came about and played that one next. Strange thing, I've lost my tuner. This doesn't give me any problems in tuning, per se - my guitar stays in tune very well, and I can pretty much do it by ear. The trouble is when I eventually get around to using a tuner on it I'll discover that my strings are slightly flat; not flat enough for anyone to notice but since my absolute bottom note is E, trying to sing lower than that can be disastrous. It wasn't too bad tonight but it's getting there. That being said, this I think was the first time I'd played it live without mucking it up at any point, and also Sam said he really liked that one when I'd finished. Not surprising, this is my most folky/storytelling song so people who like that sort of thing tend to like this one.

I finished off with We Will Survive because it had gone really well up to that point and I wanted to end on a high. This one was a wise choice! I think people tend to latch on to this one because of the hook in the chorus and the fact that it's one of the few songs that I play regularly that is in a major key. Other than that, not much to say about this one...

Well as open mic nights go I actually think this one went very well. I picked the right songs and played to the right crowd, on this occasion I couldn't have asked for better. I picked up a card from Open Mic UK, which I believe is a kind of social network for open mic artists, I haven't made a profile on there yet because I've not had time (and I've still got another 3 blogs to do before the end of the week,) but I'm sure I will soon! Well done to Sam for putting it on, it means a lot! See you next time...