October 2015: Recording a Christmas Song and gigging with The Miner Birds

I always like to talk about how I develop as a musician on my blog. Thankfully, the opportunities to do so just keep on coming:

October heralded my first recording project for a long time, and it was a Christmas song of all things! The song was written by Mark Hunter and is called See His Light Is Shining. There’s been a lot of Christmas songs over the years, some good, some bad, some of which I wrote, and I have to say that this one’s actually quite good. It’s very much ‘worship music,’ but there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s nice to hear a Christmas song about Christmas!

So what am I doing on the record? Backing vocals on the chorus, as it happens. As far as I can tell, the idea was to have a ‘choir’-like harmony section on the chorus sections, and so my singing teacher Vie who is in contact with Mark got a few people together, (there were about 9 of us in the end,) and I did the lower part with two other ladies, though we recorded our parts separately. This was an experience for me, because it’s the first time I’ve recorded my vocals since I’ve really been able to sing. I was therefore a lot more disciplined about it than I have been in the past. When I’ve recorded things with Sam Draisey, for example, I’d do one take of the vocals, think that it was probably as good as it was going to get and leave it at that. But with more at stake this time than just my pride, and with a relatively unknown (to me!) producer and engineer at the helm who probably take themselves quite seriously, I had to be ready to say: “No, I can do that better, can we go for another take?” I haven’t heard the result yet, but I’m told Mark is pleased and there’s talk of getting this on a compilation album to be sold in America.

I hope they forgive my cynicism when I say that I’ll believe that when I see it. I’m not being funny but I’ve heard of a lot of musicians being burned by over-promises. If nothing else, it was a great experience for me, and I really enjoyed doing it. So thanks to Vie, Mark and Chris for involving me in that, and also well done to the other ladies singing on it as well (I was the only male voice.)

My #viewfromthestage at the Miner Birds gig.

The other significant development for this month is that I have started playing in a trio called The Miner Birds. The name of the group refers specifically to the two decidedly ‘Black Country’ girls who sing, Nicole and Roz; if you’re reading this from overseas and don’t know the connotations, ‘Bird’ is a colloquial and rather crude word for ‘girl’ or ‘woman,’ and the Black Country area of the UK that we grew up in was so named for its industry and mines, now a forgotten past. As far as I know, neither Nic nor Roz have worked down a mine!

What kind of music is it? Well, it’s somewhere in the middle of Country, Folk and Pop with me doing the guitars and the girls doing vocal harmonies together. They’ve already sang at the wedding of one of their friends, and they appreciate having a live guitarist with them. I’m much easier to work with than backing tracks, apparently! We did one gig at the Newhampton Inn on the last full weekend of October, and I’d love to take it in to the mid-long term. While some acoustic artists and groups are very good indeed, doing a group based on vocal harmonies is not something I see too often these days and I think that’s a great angle to come from.

We haven’t done anything since, but The Miner Birds is something I hope I can take in to the future, so I should probably get in touch with them quite soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing open mics and writing when it’s convenient; there’s also the possibility of another full band on the horizon so I’ll let you know about that. Take care!

November: Rehearsing, Reflecting, Jamming and getting Crashpoint back together

November’s been an interesting one…

Back when I was thinner. Anyone seen the bass player lately?

I’ve been talking to Cj about the possibility of getting Crashpoint back together. I’ve been against this for a while, but we’ve been away long enough for me to not mind too much about my previous misgivings about it. It won’t happen this side of Christmas; I’m committed to gigs almost every weekend up to that point, and with Cj now living in Crewe it would be a logistical nightmare to even get as far as one gig. And it’s unlikely that you’ll see the definitive line-up; we’ve spoken to Emma and she doesn’t think she’ll can do it, and nobody’s seen or heard from Jay since he originally left the band. But it’s on the radar for next year, so we’ll see what happens.

Sam Draisey is producing another Christmas album; it should be on sale soon at his gigs so look out for it. Sadly I’ve made the decision to sit out of it for this year. I remember doing The First Footprint for the Christmas album four years ago in 2010, and I was as surprised as anybody that it was actually quite good. I wrote what I felt the most strongly about Christmas – the entire song could be summed up with “Stop trying so hard to get it right, and actually enjoy it” – and somehow it’s never been as good when I’ve tried to write a Christmas song since then. For the last two years, nothing has come, so rather than force one out for its own sake and it almost certainly being rubbish, I’ll leave the album to the other guys.

 

It’s been a quiet month for gigs with No Questions Asked, but as expected we did manage to use the time to learn some new songs. As ever, most of them are by Queen, but there are some others as well so if you’ve seen us before chances are we’ll be playing something new for you!

We do a number of jam nights around the area; at the Old Bush in Wombourne and the River Rooms in Stourbridge. I usually enjoy these, in fact I reckon it’s at least partly because I turned up to them that I remained on Dave and Richard’s radar long enough to be in the band now. However, the last couple have felt flat in terms of their attendance. No one turned up to the last time we did the Bush and it was basically the band playing to ourselves. The last one at the River Rooms, the only people to turn up to play other than the band was the people depping for various members who will be missing in the coming weeks (myself included) due to other commitments.

I try not to take it too hard; it’s not like we wasted the time. We practiced some of the newer songs and it’s always a pleasure to play with the band. Also this is a very tricky time of year; around Christmas people tend to be so busy that it’s hard to be bothered with things like jam nights when you can just catch the next one. But I remember going to the jam nights at the much-missed Broadway with Jack’s Legacy. We’d get there at 8pm, and often at 10:30 we’d still be waiting to go on because there were so many people there. I know it was nine years ago, but I do wonder what happened to that music scene!

Ending on a positive note, the last gig we did in November at the Lamp Tavern was absolutely brilliant; the best one I think we’ve done with this line-up. A lot of it was because around 40 minutes into it we ignored the set list and just played whatever we thought the night needed. And what that particular night needed was high-energy popular songs. I think we did a fine job of making sure everybody was having a good time, all of the time. This is why I do gigs!

So, some things to learn, some to consider and some to reflect upon. I really hope that both the band and I can build on these experiences and make ourselves better.

I couldn't find a 'definitive line-up' picture with CJ in it
so here he is at our first gig. How young does he look?

Christmas Time in Coven: 18/12/2012

It's Christmas Time...

Hi there, it's been a long while! I wanted to talk to you today about a gig I did last week, again for mygood friend Sam Draisey. See, I've been involved again in the production of this year's Christmas Album, and what with Sam promoting it at his open mic at the Rainbow Inn in Coven and I wanted to go and support it myself, by playing my song and generally contributing to the night. As it was over 3 months since my last performance, I was coming at this one with a little trepidation. However, given my track record, this was probably to do with the fact that I hadn't practiced enough; something I avoided mentioning on the night simply because having to apologise for the way you're playing your songs - particularly your own - gets old and lame after the third or fourth time you've heard it. This is pretty much the only gig I've ever done where I've read the majority of my set from a music stand, a fact I'm not particularly proud of but I guess a lot of people do it. So here's what happened:

I opened up with Once In Royal David's City. This is a song I don't remember singing since I was in primary school, singing Christmas Carols off the same tatty carol sheets they used to hand out every year. My last Christmas there was 1996 so I doubt they survive now, and I don't usually go in churches or anything like that so I have no occasion to sing those songs any more. Which is a shame, 'cause I kind of miss doing it. I sang the first verse unaccompanied, and then brought in the guitar after; I had a capo on the 1st fret and played it in E flat so my voice was just about high enough to hit the top notes. The guitar could have done with a bit more rehearsal; the accompaniment for that song was originally done on piano or organ, and while translating it note for note onto guitar is all but impossible, I should at least have paid more attention to the unusual timing of the chord changes, but I managed without any monumental disasters so that was OK.

I then sang what I'm tentatively calling my classic: The First Footprint. This one will always be special to me because it proves a point that I've long tried to stick to while writing songs - write about what you know. This came from Adam Levine from Maroon 5, if you want to know. It was nice to sing it again and since a lot of the people there had heard it there was a nice sense of familiarity about it. It's something of a running joke that I can't seem to play it live without forgetting the words at some point, and tonight was no exception, although at least this time it happened between verses.

After that, I played my contribution to this year's Christmas Album, which funnily enough is called Next Year. I wrote it as a sort of sequel to All I Want For Christmas Is You, relating it to my current situation with Amy, where we're looking forward to moving in together but until then the distance between us pretty much forces us to spend Christmas apart. There was no small amount of Feeder in the melody and chord progressions, but you know what, they're my favourite band so that's inevitable. It went OK, Sam likes the song and I can see myself playing that in years to come which can be no bad thing.

I wrapped it up with another Christmas Carol Silent Night. This is one that's always been a staple Christmas song and there have been some appalling versions of it recorded in the past, so I really tried to capture the essence of what I feel the song is about. When I try to describe it, words escape me, but it is a beautiful song and I think I compensated for the fact that I find it hard to hit the high notes while singing quietly well.

So, not a bad night at all, I was very pleased with how it went.

Have I put a date on returning to gigging yet?

Well, I have and I haven't. To a certain extent it's going to depend on whether or not I'm still in the Midlands by the time I get back into it. If I'm not then I'll be far too busy trying to sort myself out to worry too much about gigging. But I'm looking at maybe April for what I'm pretentiously calling a 'Comeback.' That will mean I've had a year out and hopefully will have achieved what I wanted to achieve from taking it out in the first place.

Time will tell, but until then, see you all soon...

November Gigs

Once again I find myself behind in my blogs, and I've got a whole months worth of gigs to talk about and another two to go. Trying to blog them all individually would of course be more work than fun, apart from anything else some of it was weeks ago and I literally can't remember what happened, so I'm just going to give a quick run down of each one:

5/11/11: The Royal Oak, Amblecote: Another Prickly gig, thanks to Joy for booking me for this one! My guitar actually doesn't sound too bad through an amp. Didn't play so well, unfortunately. I think probably I was distracted with the thought of the fireworks display that I was going to afterwards, and I was on first which would never be my, ahem, 'first' choice. It wasn't bad... but by no stretch of the imagination was it my best one. I said to Amy afterwards, I think I was mistaken in my assumtion that I can play a reasonable show (I did Katies a couple of weeks before,) not play my guitar for a week and a half and expect to be able to play just as good a show when I get it out again. Something to remember for the future, though it will be a while before my next scheduled acoustic gig.

6/11/11: 82s at Just Kroozin Fundraising Event, Four Ashes: Nearly forgot about this one! This was the time where we were trying out our new bass player West. He seems to fit the bill OK and having the keyboards there does fill out the sound quite a bit. We played OK, as ever I did make some mistakes but I was rather more concerned about being upstaged by Almost Easy who were on before! Terrific fundrasing event to raise money for research into Lukemeia, so I was glad to have been a part of it, though it was freezing cold!

12/11/11: The Wharf Bar, Walsall: Regular readers of my blog will know that it is a rare time indeed when I speak kindly of The Wharf Bar. There's never usually anyone there, the whole place smells of sick (which comes from the canal, by the way; it's not actually their fault) and the only people to watch me tend to be the other bands who are either leaving the venue or counting down the minutes until it's their turn to go on. Quite often, the best I can say about it is that at least they do still book me for gigs. So imagine how pleased I was when not only were the modest audience actually listening to me and, as they told me afterwards, enjoying it, but I actually found myself enjoying it as well! That was certainly the best I'd ever played at the Wharf Bar, I've got another one there on the 10th so I'm actually looking forward to it. That's almost unheard of!

16/11/11: 82s: Cover Band Showcase in Cannock: We have - not a deal - but a good working relationship with some booking agents in the area, who invited us to play this showcase to several booking agents who may or may not want us for gigs in the future. We got all our big guns out, which were Word Up, Trick Me and Sound of the Underground. Quite far removed from what we orignally put the band together to do, and I think there is a concern that it's not representative of the set, so you may see some changes with this in the future.

22/11/11 Recording Christmas Song with Sam Draisey: Sam's putting together another Christmas album of original material and I went up today to record mine. I hadn't rehearsed it nearly enough and I know it, the guitar took a few goes, but my vocals I did pretty much in one take. I don't know whether I like the song or not; it's hardly full of Chirstmas Cheer and lyrically it's very lazy, there isn't a single line I haven't copied off someone, not least of whom myself! Still, it will hopefully work for the album, and it will be interesting to see what the other guys come up with this time.

So, there you have it! Aki Maera's first gig is coming up next Wednesday, which will be... interesting. See you all there!