For how many times I've played Katies so far, it's nice I think that I can find something different to say about it each time, and each time find new and more adventurous ways to make the gig interesting. In this case, not only did I play in the Marquee, but for the second time I also brought on a guest...
The plan was to do a regular set, no surprises, no going out on a limb, because it was a festival setting and I got the feeling from it that the stakes were higher and I really didn't need to be screwing it up. I needn't have worried because the mid-afternoon turnout was modest, nobody other than the staff had seen me play before and whatever happened was all going to happen for the first time for those guys anyway. Nonetheless I stuck to the plan and kicked off with Bitterness followed by Get Out Of My Head, preceding the latter with a statement that those who had seen me before (by then Stefan had turned up,) wouldn't be surprised by this at all. It's nice that Stefan recognised it was me on hiw way in because I was playing Bitterness!
Next I played Let's Start A Band once again. I wanted to put a cover in there simply because I didn't think it was the right environment to play Prisoner Of My Mind, and to be fair it went quite well! The song's not familiar enough to me yet for me to be 'going through the motions' while I'm playing it, in fact I don't think I've ever actually practiced it at home, but I seemed to play it OK and it's the kind of song that I would expect would go down well at Katies. It's good to be right about that sort of thing.
Then for lack of a better option I played Believe. Not really the right atmosphere for this song either, considering what had gone on before and after I played, I could forgive the audience for thinking I'm taking myself a bit too seriously with this one. Me? Well, I've been playing that song since 2006. It has superceded the many many MANY songs I've written since then and quite a lot of the much smaller number of songs that I've road-tested and don't play live anymore. So quite frankly I don't care if anyone else likes it. I just need to be a bit more careful with it's deployment...
And now for my guest... How this came about was Daniel Mohr - who I'd seen play at Katies a couple of times before and know by sight though up until now had never spoken to him beyond the rudimentary 'Good set, mate' thing you do on open nights - came and sat with with me and asked me to play lead on a couple of his songs. I did this, and it went pretty well considering I'd never played with the guy before. I felt obliged to ask him to play on one of my songs in return, and was then left with the task of choosing which of my songs needed lead guitar. None of them, really... but there was that tin whistle part in Storm from the North. So I asked him to put some lead in to that. How did he get on? Well, on the gig, I honestly don't know. There was no foldback and I could barely hear what he was playing. However we had a quick run through before either of us went on and I know the sort of thing he was likely to have played, he wouldn't have gone wrong. He's got a melodic awareness resemblant of Mark Knopfler (except he uses a plectrum,) and to be perfectly honest any guitarist would thank you for saying something like 'Noodle around E Minor.' So, I gave him appropriate congratulations and I look forward to working with him again, if it ever comes up.
This being Katies I also feel obliged to turn around and play Girl's Names. It's been a while since I played this one and I remember fluffing a chord at some point but other than that it went as well as it ever does. It's funny how this is usually the song I say the least about...
I finished with We Will Survive, my staple 'ending' song. Not really much to say about this one either so instead I'll talk about the position of my leg, which has been giving me some food for thought over my last few gigs. Usually when you play a steel-strung guitar sitting down you have both legs out in front of you and balance your guitar on your right leg (if you're right-handed, of course.) I balance my guitar on my right leg as usual... and then for some reason stick my left leg out behind me as though I'm running. I don't really know why this is but I would imagine it would have something to do with the fact that I'd rather be moving around a lot more than my lakc of a guitar strap allows.
All in all not a bad gig, I enjoyed it. The highlight was the guest spot, definitely. Time to road test some new songs, I think...
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