I had a feeling that the open mic tonight was pretty much the only way I was going to get a gig in this week, and I'm always happy to oblige so I went down to Katies wondering what to play. I've pretty much got a regular set going now, even if I don't always play them in the same order, so tonight what I thought I would do is get out some of the miserable songs that I often leave out of my set these days, and give them another run:
I kicked off with Believe, still not quite 'believing' that I'm still playing a song I wrote over 5 years ago now. I still remember the words, and I still play all the chords right, probably because it's basically Hurt (Johnny Cash version) crossed with Dark Light by HIM. But it's familiar enough that I can play it without necessarily concentrating on what I am doing. I found myself thinking about the two very specific people that I wrote it about, and how their lives have moved on since then, and what they would be thinking if they knew I was singing about a part of their lives that, to my knowledge, is no longer relevant to either of them...
I didn't play Dear Mr Manager quite so well. It has been a very long time since I last played this one at all, and even though I didn't make any glaring errors when I was playing it, I can play it better than I did and I know it. Still, at least it was better than the time I had to stop to remember what the words were...
On the cards for a while has been a duet between me and Dale singing Wide Open Space by Mansun. I hadn't rehearsed this at all and neither had Dale; illness had put Dale off singing anything for a while and I certainly hadn't played it since the summer, that I can remember. We don't even play it in the Fakes anymore. Consequently I forgot some of the words in the chorus, and what the chords were in the instrumental section. But LC reckoned it sounded good with the two of us singing together. It actually worked quite well; Dale's got a far higher singing voice than his dulcet tones suggest so it was his high voice in unisen with my low one.
I ended with a song that I've actually played quite a lot recently, A Lonely Night. There were significantly more people there tonight than there were the last time I played Katies! I'm there and thereabouts with the accuracy of the song these days, and tonight was no exception. But there was no light relief in the set tonight and by then the downbeat nature of my songs was getting a little old, so this didn't go down quite as well as it might have.
Then again I was never going to change the world with this. The whole point was to play songs that I don't often play, and the two that I played went as well as could be expected so I'm not displeased with anything that went on tonight! The duet with Dale was good as well, maybe I should think about more collaborations? Perhaps with the Staffordshire Sound guys, I've long wondered what might happen if I wrote a song with Sam, or Jamie wrote a song with Elliot...
A Lonely Night
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