March 2015: New Open Mics, Song Selections, Symphony Hall and an untimely death.

March was a busy month for me in terms of playing live at open mics. I decided to take a few weeks off from the roleplaying group I’m involved with on Thursdays which meant I was able to get to a few of them that I  wasn’t able to do before. That included The Plough in Trysull, which didn’t last very long, and The Crown in Codsall which I’ve been aware of but rarely get the chance to play. Both times I’ve been up there recently have been very poignant, because of recent deaths that occurred amongst our friends, so playing at the Crown and also watching Sam play there has sometimes been a very emotional experience for me.

The Yard. Great night!

The other one was The Yard in Stafford. Funny story about that: After driving around looking for the place I had to ring the promoter, Steve, who had to come out of the venue to find me. He managed it, but because of the way the road network in Stafford was designed, we had to drive for about another mile and a half before we could find somewhere to park, then walk for ten minutes to get to the venue. When it was finished and it was time to leave, I realised to my horror that I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my car. So there I was at Stafford in the middle of the night, walking around not having a clue where I was or where I was going, thinking “Where’s my car? I’m sure the college was on the right when I passed it. How far did we go? Have I ACTUALLY turned into Ashton Kutcher?”

I found it in the end.

In all seriousness, that night I made a very good song selection. By then I was actively trying to have some more confidence in my own material, and since the audience consisted mainly of other musicians and students, I planned my set accordingly and I think I was very well received.

Complete bait and switch for a couple of weeks later when I found myself playing at The Stile once again. That night, I played mostly covers, but – and I really can put it no plainer than this – that is how the night felt. It was a Friday Night, Wolverhampton Wanderers had just won at home (you can see The Stadium from The Stile) and people were on a night out. They wanted a party, so I thought I’d give them one! I really enjoyed that seconds into my set, I had a lot of people singing along to A Little Respect. I tried to keep it cheery, and I did play Bitterness at some point which was well-received – by the other musicians. Everybody else was happy to hear Oasis, Don Henley, The Offspring… the usual favourites.

But that’s what it’s all about: gauging how the night’s going, understanding your audience and planning your set accordingly. Most of this is done in the half an hour before I’m due to go on stage but it is important to do it.

I don’t write much about what I’m doing with Dudley Performing Arts on this blog because when the kids do well it is every bit as much to do with them as it is to do with me. Plus I’d get Data Protection Acted for it. But there are few times I’ve been so proud to work for them as when with less than three months to turn it around we managed to organise and play three full concerts at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. In 10 years time the kids will realise just what a big deal this was, but for now I can legitimately say I’ve played Symphony Hall, and I’ve seen what we can do under pressure!

Crashpoint before our first gig. We'll miss you Luke (far right.)

I hate to end on a sad note, but unfortunately it doesn’t get much worse than this: On Tuesday 31^st March, my old friend and former Crashpoint band-mate Luke Clarke passed away. I don’t know everything that happened, but as I understand it, he’d been ill with epilepsy most of his life, and would sometimes have violent and dangerous fits. On that Tuesday morning, he didn’t recover from this one. He didn’t have long on this world, but he was always writing and recording music – he had ambitions to write scores for film and TV – and I can’t think of many people who followed their dreams right up until the end. I’m glad I had a chance to listen to some of his music and tell him I thought it was good before it was too late. We could never have known what was going to happen, but there was no unfinished business, so it’s some comfort to know we parted on good terms.

Rest easy mate.

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?

Matt's Songwriting - Stripping it Down

What makes a good song?

Many things, and taking it back to basics and delivering it with one instrument and/or one voice is a good place to start. This isn’t my idea, and I can’t remember who said it, but for me, the acid test for any song is: If you strip it down and have one guitar or piano and one voice, do you still have a good song?

This came up when I was talking to Dave from No Questions Asked a few days ago. I’d posted on Facebook that I was practicing a Queen song for my solo slot; Dave asked what it was and if I would like some accompaniment. I told him privately that it is Who Wants To Live Forever, and I’d rather see how it sounded with one guitar and one voice.[1] That’s how I’ve been doing my acoustic show for years; only rarely do I have someone else playing on stage with me. I try to capture the essence of the song in this format; if it does, then I include it in my set. If not, I move it on.

I love the full-on rock production, but in most cases if you stripped rock songs down to they would still be good. Some of my favourite songs to cover are: Thick as Thieves by Kasabian, Closer To The Edge by 30 Seconds To Mars, A Little Respect by Erasure/Wheatus, and The Boys of Summer by Don Henley. They all sound great in a stripped-down format. And it comes across in my own songs. Bitterness would be a Crashpoint song if we hadn’t broken up soon after I wrote it; originally it was a punk-style rock song and I remember Cj doing a good job on the drums. Get Out Of My Head began in Perception, jamming a Led Zepplin-style riff on my guitar with John on the drums. It didn’t sound anything like how it eventually ended up – but I used the chord progressions from what we jammed out.

I see it in other people’s covers as well. Steve who comes to Sam Draisey’s open mic sometimes does a finger-picked acoustic rendition of Sweet Child ‘o Mine. I think that, in many respects, his version works better than the original. Granted, I will almost always say that about anyone who sounds different to Axl Rose; (I can’t stand his voice,) but the lighter finger-picking and the gently-delivered vocals capture the essence of that song more than the rock song that everybody recognises. I love Slash’s guitar playing, and the riff to Sweet Child ‘o Mine is fantastic. But Axl could have been singing toothpaste; his voice would have sounded just as bad, and the guitars just as good.

So what about bands where this doesn’t work? Two examples: Pendulum and The Prodigy. The latter, as far as I know, haven’t written anything resembling a ‘song’ in the usual sense. And Pendulum relies on the drum and bass sound with the keyboard riffs; without that, the band wouldn’t work. I’m not saying either of those bands bad. I enjoy listening to Pendulum, and I wish I’d seen The Prodigy at Download Festival in 2006. But I will say that those bands have a good sound – not necessarily good songs.

The problem, of course, is with those songs that are great but have extra parts to them that I can’t strip away. I’ve only played Motorcycle Emptiness by the Manic Street Preachers live once, and it functioned – but without the lead guitar, it’s nowhere near as good. I’d love to play Waterfall and This Is The One by the Stone Roses, and Marvellous by the Lightning Seeds, but I think those songs lose something without their backing vocals.

But I don’t think that with Who Wants To Live Forever, despite the arrangement of the original. Taking it down to one guitar and one voice – as long as both are properly managed – can make it as good as the huge amount of production that went into the record. I’m hoping that comes across if I play it at the gig.

What do you guys think? Is this a good benchmark for whether a song is any good or not? Or is the way the record sounds more important? The answer, I suspect, lies somewhere in between, depending on the context of the band. Just remember, the vast majority of songs that we listened to when they first came out and are still sounding good decades later could all be stripped back to their rawest form, and sound every bit as good.

---

[1] At the time of writing I haven’t actually done the gig yet so I have no idea what’s going to happen when I do.

Matt and Ellie Don't Stop Believing at the Hare and Hounds, Lye 4/5/2013

One question that I don't get asked very often at all, but I wish I did, is: Do you miss being in a band?

To clarify the position, it's been nearly a year and a half since I've gigged with a band on anything like a regular basis, and that was a joint effort between Natasha and the 82s and Aki Maera that meant I was doing roughly one gig a month. Contrast this with, say, this time four years ago when I was very busy with Crashpoint to the degree of a couple of gigs a month at least, and before that with Jack's Legacy where we'd try at least one a month to keep the momentum going, and you can see why it's easy enough to forget that I am, actually, still with The Fakes - which averages out about one gig a year in this day and age.

Either way, the answer is: I do and I don't.

What I miss most about being in bands is this: it's basically all I've ever wanted to do with my life. I know that, at 27, I should have left the 'Rock Star' dream behind a long time ago, and I'm aware of others thinking the same about me even if they don't say it. And even though the day I give up on it completely will be a very sad day for me indeed, when I consider what I'm doing with myself these days - guitar teaching, war gaming, role playing, my girlfriend - even I have to admit that it might be a little too late. So, the only thing I've ever really wanted to do with my life is out of my reach, probably forever. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy doing what I'm doing now. It's just that teaching guitar to kids in schools is about as good for me as it is ever going to get. Not what I wanted to be saying at 27. So I do miss being in bands because that was what kept that dream alive.

However, a lot happened during the last week to remind me of some of the things I don't miss about being in a band. Last Sunday (28/4) an old friend Ellie Hawthorne put out a call on Facebook asking if anyone would play guitar for her on Saturday night, which I answered. Over the course of the next few days, the following happened:

• Ellie sent me a list of songs she wanted to play. There were 11 songs on this list. I knew one of them. Of the others, two of them were by Paramore - and I used to be quite vocal about my intense dislike of that band, if I am a little more cryptic about the reasons for it. It's personal. But I was not going to spoil it for her by refusing to play them. It's certainly not the first time I've sold out!
• No problem, I thought. If I learn roughly 3 per day and we can get together for a rehearsal then it should be OK. I had learned all of them except one by Wednesday evening when Ellie messaged me again saying it was off because she had to work. (At least, I think that's what she said, but she left out the word 'work' from the message, which thinking about it could potentially have been any verb conducive to the general effect of not being able to do the gig.)
• Thursday night she messaged me again telling me it was back on and could I do it? Well, I'd lost two days practice by then, since I was busy that evening, but there should be no reason I couldn't give it a go. So I said yes, and we'd have to arrange a time for a rehearsal possibly the following afternoon? Ellie couldn't make it because she was working. Fair enough; I've not forgotten what it was like to have shifts on appallingly unsociable hours. We'd just have to wing it on the day.
• 10 minutes later - count them, 10 - my Mom told me that my brother was coming home for the weekend and we were all supposed to be going out for a meal on Saturday night. Sometimes the word 'bollocks' just doesn't cover it. They did at least say that I could do the gig and I didn't have to worry about the meal, but it wasn't a decision I wanted to have to make.
• Finally learning the songs on Friday Night, I went to the gig and found that when Ellie said we were on at 6pm - and this is perhaps the strangest part of all - we were actually on at 6. The result was that I had finished by 6.45, and even though I'm not in the habit of disappearing straight after a gig, I did that day and managed to go for dinner with my family after all.

It took me straight back to being in bands. I remember being stressed out of my mind having to play gigs we weren't even close to being ready for, having to re-arrange shifts at work in order to be able to do it, and deal with fucking arsehole band-mates who would duck out of it at a moments notice leaving me to either re-arrange it or manage without them. You know who you are. And somehow that responsibility almost always fell on me, especially with Crashpoint and Jack's Legacy. I don't miss that at all.

Now so far this post will have come across to many of you as cynical and negative, so let me make one thing absolutely crystal clear: I have no bad feeling towards Ellie at all for what happened in the week. I am delighted she gave me a chance to play live again, and I really did enjoy the gig when we were doing it, more on that later. In fact, I think the fact that I fought tooth and nail to make it happen is indicative of a) how much I wanted to do it, and b) how much I've missed gigging and not realised. So, on the whole it is good to be back.

One of the things that made the gig for me was my new guitar; a Hofner Electro-Acoustic. I'd been saying for years I needed to retire the old Hondo, and now I can plug in a guitar and save all that tedious mucking about with that pickup. Both are there if I need them, but now I have an electro-acoustic that sounded better than I could have possibly imagined. (I had played it before but never plugged it in.) I think what was conducive do this was the fact that I left the pre-amp alone, and let the sound guys do their thing. Sometimes electro-acoustics don't sound all that good, either woolly or abrasive, but mine sounded OK and that was because I decided I'd leave all my EQ controls at a flat level (which is 5, by the way,) increase the volume of the guitar until sound was coming out of the PA and let the sound guy boost the treble and bass if they needed to, which I'm not sure they did. The result was a sound that as far as I could tell was as clear as it needed to be, without getting in the way of the vocals. I'm not saying I'll never mess with my EQ, but after all, the sound guys know what they're after, and I'm usually happy with a sound...

The set list was:

Journey: Don't Stop Believing
Ally and AJ: Someone To Fall Back On
Paramore: The Only Exception
Taylor Swift: Love Story
Adele: Someone Like You
Demi Lovato: Skyscraper
Miley Cyrus: The Climb
McFly: Love Is Easy
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah
Paramore: Still into you

And then Ellie finished off with an a'capello version of Rolling In The Deep.

It took a couple of songs to pick up momentum, I think, not least because we started with the two I was least sure about, but considering we hadn't practiced any of them before, or even met in person for almost a year and a half, it went as well as I could have expected. There were mistakes, of course - sometimes I'd play the song incorrectly, sometimes Ellie would come in a little sooner than I was expecting - but we managed to pull it back together quickly and we at least ended all the songs together! I think - and I'm not sure, because I wasn't really concentrating on the reaction from the crowd - that The Climb went down the best. Nobody ever went wild for us, but I didn't expect them to. It was what it was - an event in the beer garden of a pub; the crowd only ever half-listens to you and I was prepared for that. I thoroughly enjoyed playing and I could get in to the role as the side-man again; with all the attention on someone else I can do what I want.

So, am I back now? Yeah, I guess so. There were things I wanted to do before this happened. I wanted to lose some weight, but I've been careless and not done it. I wanted to write some new songs but I've not come up with anything particularly memorable yet. But I will try and hit a few open mics in the coming weeks, and see what happens. I might even try one the week I'm in Swindon.

See you all again soon. And thanks for your patience.

Crashpoint to Reform?

Can't sleep, and this is on my mind so...

Earlier this evening Cj who I'm now in Aki Maera with text me to say some mutual friends had enjoyed the Crashpoint stuff and that it was a shame we weren't still together. I wholly agreed with this. When I was at the Just Kroozin fundraising event with Natasha and the 82s last week (blog to come later) and saw a storming set from the band Almost Easy, I considered the music I was playing (Good indie rock from the Fakes with a not-so-busy gigging schedule, quite restrained soul music in the 82s and bass in Aki Maera and who the hell knows what Post Hardcore actually sounds like anyway) and found myself missing the days when I could take the stage with an electric guitar and play rock songs that I'd had a hand in writing. So yeah, I'd quite like the band to still be together as well.

Quick history for the uninitiated - I put Crashpoint together with Cj in late 2007, still hurting from Jack's Legacy and my experience with The Dastards having sucked all the fun out of playing bass. Band members came and went until shortly after our first gig we settled on what became the definitive lineup of me on guitar, Emma on vocals, Jay on bass and Cj on drums. Musically, not the best lineup, and we were never as good as JL was, but it was the most stable lineup and did the most gigs. We recorded a reasonable-sounding demo and kept a steady momentum going on the live circuit for most of 2009. Then Jay and Emma dropped out for their own reasons, we struggled on for a bit with some different people but as it was going nowhere and neither Cj or I could afford to keep the band going indefinitely for its own sake, in May 2010 we sadly stepped down and added Crashpoint to the list of the also-rans.

Since then, amongst everything else we've done, I've tried various different things with Cj and Aki Maera has lasted by far the longest. Now on Facebook Cj's on about putting Crashpoint back together for one final show to go out with a bang. I'm against this, for the following reasons:

1) We've already done our farewell show. That was in February 2010. I made it clear a number of times during the show that this would be our last one, until we could get ourselves sorted out, and we never did. I drove home that night knowing perfectly well it was all over and crying my eyes out to The Poet and The Pendulum. Losing Crashpoint didn't hurt as bad, or for as long, as losing Jack's Legacy - we were nowhere near as good, and I was certainly not as close to the individual members - but putting myself through that again will for me be at best a waste of time that I don't really have, and at worst a desperate attempt to recapture something I lost nearly two years ago which will hardly be conducive to a great self-esteem.

2) Even if that first point didn't apply, we could barely get anyone to come to our shows when we were a band. Who's going to come to see us now, when we haven't been active on the live circuit for nearly two years? I for one find it very difficult to get people to come to gigs, (usually the only way I manage it is if I drive them there myself,) any new 'fans' will be disappointed that there will be no continuity in the band, and everybody else has presumably either forgotten about Crashpoint or weren't there for us the first time, and simply won't care if we do a reunion show.

3) To be fair Cj has picked up on this one already - we're not going to get the definitive lineup back together now. Emma left the band because the strain the style of music was putting on her voice was causing her some damage, and she's busy with In Between Seas now so I can't imagine her wanting to do it again. Jay's busy working as a chef. That just leaves me and Cj, and while we were the only two members of the band to be involved right from the start to the end, we couldn't manage it on our own.

Could we ever get back together and do Crashpoint again as a band? It could be done, I think. We'd need to find a new bass player - one that we can get on with, actually wants to do the band, and can play bass, you'd be surprised how hard they are to find - and that would be the bare minimum. Possibly we'd need a lead guitarist. I wouldn't waste my time looking for a singer when I can sing most of the songs myself anyway. And I'd love to write songs again in that environment (Marcus writes the songs for Aki Maera, and the one song we play that I wrote we did at the end of Crashpoint so it's not like I've written anything new in a band setting since then) and perform them with the same kind of energy that I've been sorely missing these last couple of years.

Unfortunately, I can't see that happening either. Aki Maera's got it's first gig coming up at the end of the month and we've been working very hard over the last few months to make sure it goes OK, we're not going to abandon it now for our old band. It's very easy to get disillusioned with finding band members (of all the people who contacted us off websites for the positions available in Aki Maera, Ian was the only one who got as far as meeting us and lasted more than about a week) and it's not a process I'm keen to repeat now that we've finally got the lineup sorted out. And I honestly have not got time to put Crashpoint back together and do it alongside all my other bands. Maybe, if Marcus ever decided to pull the plug on Aki Maera, we'd have time to give it another go. But we know perfectly well he's not even close to doing any such thing, and quite rightly so for all the work that's gone in to it.

So overall, I think it's a no. And to be honest, I was happier with the dream of rocking out on stage with my either of my old bands than contemplating the practicalities of actually going through with it. But it was interesting to think about for a while.

Got gig blogs coming up, and another gig at the Wharf later today - see some of you there. Maybe.