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.

Open Mic Douchebags

It's been a long time...

I’m rarely one to criticise anybody’s performance at an open mic night. If it’s reasonably well-attended, you’ll have a wide range of skills, talents and musical taste that can make for a varied and entertaining mix. Some people are better than others, of course, and this is usually due to experience, commitment to developing their performance, or the quality of their songs; probably a combination of those three factors. I don’t do gig reviews any more, but even when I did, I was rarely nasty about bands. I made no secret of it if I thought their performance was below the standard I would expect from a gigging band, but it was not usually the band’s fault and I would always try to write my reviews in a way that came across as constructive criticism, rather than slating them. I don’t review open mic nights (apart from assessing my own performance) because there aren’t really any standards by which to judge such a varied group of performers. Experienced singer-songwriters are always going to perform better than a 14 year-old kid with a guitar just starting out and it would be unfair for me to compare the two when they both appear at the same open mic. So, apart from a not-always-kind reflection of my own performance,[1] I tend to keep my thoughts on everybody else’s performance away from the tender mercies of the internet.

Until now.

The other night (Tuesday 27^th) I was at the open mic night at The Victoria Inn in Swindon, commonly referred to as The Vic, with my girlfriend Amy and our friend Tom. I’d been there once before in October, and the standard was actually quite high; as ever some people were better than others but the overall there were some very good performances that night. I expected much of the same but I was a little more relaxed about it tonight as I had a better idea of what to expect. I was third on, and up until that point, the standard had been pretty good.

The fifth guy to go on was a tall guy in a ‘night out’ kind of suit, a Les Paul-style electric guitar and a haircut that reminded me of Phil from The Thick Of It (google it.) I say that just so you can picture him. I’m not going to give him any dignity by using his name; he will hereafter be referred to as ‘The Douchebag.’ Alarm bells started ringing when one of the lads he’d bought with him shouted at him to fuck off as soon as he was announced. Things didn’t get much better when he got on the stage, where he was clearly drunk, every second word was ‘fuck’ and he made far too big a business of turning the distortion off the amplifier he was using and announcing his songs.

Oh dear, his songs. People can write songs about what they like and I haven’t usually got a problem with it, but this Douchebag appeared to have written them to sound as much like a pillock as possible. In so far as I actually listened to the lyrics he was spewing over clattering open chords, his first song appeared to be about having sex in a taxi, and his second was about a young wannabe porn star being told to lean on a sofa, take her pants down and spread her arse cheeks. I only know the latter in so much detail because in between the two songs, he horrendously over-explained it amid several more ‘fucks,’ during which his microphone cut out several times. Now, I would be prepared to believe that this was down to a technical fault. But as the sound guy was obviously familiar with this Douchebag, and this happened to absolutely NO ONE ELSE, I’m making an educated guess here that the sound guy was deliberately cutting him off to make him sound like even more of a plonker than he already did.[2]

Not that the Douchebag needed any assistance with this. Even if the songs weren’t appalling, his delivery was; the guitar work seemed to consist entirely of whacking open chords as hard as possible, and the singing, well, I would barely even call it singing. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was slightly more rhythmic than regular speech, I wouldn’t know what to call it. The best part of his performance was the part where after trying out loud to decide whether to play a cover or not, punctuated with his usual colourful language, he made a start on in then appeared to decide it wasn’t worth it and left the stage. He got a raucous applause from the four or five lads he’d bought with him, and a grudgingly polite applause from everybody else.

Well, that is quite honestly the worst performance I’ve ever seen at an open mic in my entire life. Amy found it insulting and degrading towards women, and I just thought it was pathetic. Tom made an accurate and concise summary of the Douchebag: “A talentless, pretentious, ego centric ****bag[3] trying to be funny.” We’ve finally found somebody more ridiculous than those two lads at the Yardbird a few years ago whose two songs were about running over a cat and threesomes, because at least those guys could play. With this Douchebag, it would have been less of a mistake for him to contract laryngitis and try to get through the set with the guitar still in its case.

 

‘But hang on Matt,’ I hear you cry. ‘What gives you the right to say all this? You make jokes in your set as well, don’t you? And you certainly swear; I’ve heard you. You swear in Bitterness, that’s your most popular song! And you use the f-word loads of times in A Lonely Night, that one that sounds so much like Dani California by the Red Hot Chili Peppers you actually sing the chorus to it during your own song sometimes. Not to mention I Don’t Care, that one you wrote about Blast Off in Wolverhampton, you swear loads in that one as well.’

Yes, yes, alright. My hands aren’t entirely clean here, but let me explain:

First, and this might sound counter-intuitive but bear with me, I don’t make jokes lightly when I’m on stage. Being funny is hard. Even trying to be funny is hard. Look at Will Ferrel. I do make snarky and usually self-deprecating comments between my songs, but always in context, and always with a decent-enough song to back it up. And if it looks spontaneous, it isn’t; it takes me ages to think through how I’m going to deliver a joke in a way that won’t derail the entire thing. I try to say at least something in between my songs to keep the audience engaged. I am very well aware that using humour is a common way of deflecting nervousness, and I’m not so confident when I haven’t got a guitar to hide behind That’s why I plan out a set list before I go on stage, that’s why I take so long to decide what I’m going to say when I get there.

Second, with regard to swearing in my songs, I don’t do that lightly either. Sometimes it adds to the song, sometimes it makes people roll their eyes, sometimes it makes people feel uncomfortable, and it appears to depend entirely on who I’m playing to. I Don’t Care, for example, went down very well when I played it at Sam Draisey’s open mic at The Rainbow in Coven, because Sam and his friends live in and around Wolverhampton and knew exactly what I was singing about. I’ve not played it live anywhere else so I don’t know if I’d get even close to the same reaction. And I do not swear when I’m playing live, unless I know it’s OK for me to do so. How do I know? Well, often if it’s an unfamiliar crowd – as was the case on Tuesday Night, for example – I’ll see if anybody else is swearing first. Other times I ask the promoter; it’s not hard. I always try to introduce myself if I can, or say hello if I already know them, and ask them how we are with Ps and Qs. They’ll either tell me to play what I like, or keep it civil, but they do appreciate being asked. And I absolutely never swear if I know there are kids around. I was originally thinking of playing A Lonely Night on Tuesday but I chose not to because I didn’t want to play a too-offensive song in front of a largely unfamiliar audience. Turns out I needn’t have worried after all, because I could have gone up there and played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and done a better job than the Douchebag. And that’s a guarantee.

And in case anybody who hasn’t yet seen me live, or is on Spotted: Dudley,[4] is thinking of suggesting that I should have called the Douchebag on his performance on the night, rather than waiting two days and ranting about it on the internet, I’d like to pre-emptively put a stop to that right away. And here’s why: In the open mics that I’ve been to, and there have been a fair few, there is kind of an unwritten rule. That rule is: Don’t heckle people, and if you do, keep it in context and good-natured. I’ve never heckled anyone on stage in my life. I’ve taken some good-natured heckling and responded in kind. But there’s nothing good-natured about anything I’ve got to say about the Douchebag, or his entourage of friends he had with him. Plus, as it was an unfamiliar crowd in an unfamiliar town (Yes, I know Swindon quite well now, but not it’s gigging scene) I couldn’t really count on anyone for support if it got ugly. It might have done; the Douchebag was clearly wasted, as were some of his friends. It was not hard to imagine them kicking off some trouble with the right kind of provocation. And it was certainly nothing I wanted to instigate.

But the worst thing about it is that I’m struggling to think of the point to all of this, or even if there is one. It’s not going to change anything. The Douchebag might have been, well, a Douchebag, but he bought by far the largest number of people with him that night. He was definitely familiar to the promoter. Plus, it’s an open mic; short of deliberately damaging the venue’s equipment he can go up there and play what he likes without fear of reprisal. It’s not like anybody’s going to turn around to him and say ‘Sorry mate, you’re rubbish. I don’t want you back here.’ It’s also ironic, of course, that in my first blog in months, it’s the Douchebag I’ve chosen to write about, rather than the people who actually did really well that night. They include Sunita, whose piano-based quirky songs were nothing if not enthralling, Rob, whose finger-style guitar with a powerful voice to back it up was excellent and, well, me I suppose.

So to close, a quick summary of my own performance:

I began with continuing my quest to play a Feeder song in every venue I play, because Feeder are the best band in the world and everybody should listen to them. I played High, simply because the last time Amy came to see me I played Yesterday Went Too Soon and I can’t really sing any of the others that well. It went down OK, but not amazingly so.

I then played We Will Survive, a song I haven’t played since Vagabonds in 2012. Mark that: I haven’t even played the song since then, never mind playing it live. I’d certainly never played it on my electro-acoustic before, so I really had to concentrate for this one. Funnily enough I made it all the way through without any glaring errors, Amy was happy to hear it again and Tom enjoyed it as well.

The song everybody else remembered was the one I played at the end: The Mingulay Boat Song. I’m really enjoying playing this at the moment. It was a bit of a risk because one thing I hadn’t heard at The Vic so far was any kind of traditional folk music, but I had some of the other performers ask me about it afterwards and it seemed to go down the best judging by the applause.

I chose those three songs because they all have the capo at the third fret, but I think one thing I am very good at is dynamics. I’ve got better at playing moderately when I’m carrying most of the song. I can go loud when I need to lift it, and I can reduce the volume almost to a whisper which, contrary to what you might expect, has the effect of making everybody in the room go quiet when used sparingly. It certainly helped during Mingulay – you could have heard a pin drop.

So, I was pleased with my own performance – my first in a couple of months – and was certainly pleased that I did better than The Douchebag. To be fair, that wouldn’t have been difficult. But it’s nice to, if not set the bar, at least be able to play to a good standard. It’s taken me a long time to feel confident enough about my own performance to say that without irony. That’s got to be a good thing, right?

See you next time.

---

[1] When I can be bothered, which is not often these days,

[2] That is a GUESS, not an accusation. I can’t prove a thing. I’m just saying what I saw.

[3] Oh yeah, it’s that bad. Not on my blog.

[4] An absolute cesspit of nastiness where the slightest complaint about anything or anyone is followed up by seven or eight comments suggesting they should take their complaints to the person concerned, rather than posting it online. I don’t know why I’m on it, to tell you the truth.

A Lonely Night for my G String at the Robin 2, 25/6/2013

While some run-of-the-mill rapper and his wife who is famous but I really don't know why name their child North West, (Jesus wept,) some real musicians were getting it done at The Robin 2 on Tuesday Night. So I just want to say before I get started on my own performance what a great night it was and how well the other musicians did; I didn't catch all your names but it was a great night from all of you and long may it continue.

I've played The Robin 2 a few times now and I've always managed to feel like I'm punching a little above my weight, playing to a large and therefore not very densely packed room. The audience has always been polite enough, and were quite friendly tonight, but there's always been a feeling like there's a little more at stake here than there were at some other venues.

The set list was:

The Boys of Summer
Zephyr Song
A Lonely Night
Bitterness
Morning Glory
Never Forget You

I have to say I've been doing quite well for songs at some of these open mics! I'm used to getting 3, maybe 4 songs, and the last few I've been doing 5 or 6 at a time. Not bad!

Didn't get off to a flying start tonight though, as I broke my G string (it would have to be) not 2 minutes into the first song. After the obligatory growl of 'Bollocks' to the audience, pulling the string out of the way of the guitar and skewering my hand on it, I struggled through the rest of the song with 5 strings. Thankfully it didn't stop me playing the bit in the middle of The Boys of Summer where I rely on an octave in the 'C' chord shape to try and emulate the keyboard part in the song, but I know from checking my tuning afterwards that my guitar wasn't well in tune.

Thankfully Sam had a spare guitar and I got through the rest of the set with a decent if unfamiliar Takamine (I think.) I needed a few minutes to adjust the strap, and because there was no strap button on the top of the guitar it was secured on with a piece of string around the headstock. This is one of my pet hates of acoustic guitars, and why I did most acoustic gigs prior to last April sitting down. The problem I found with it was the balance of the guitar, I couldn't hold the guitar in a comfortable enough position to play it as well as my own. I did OK with it though.

When it came to playing my own songs I decided not to put the 'Dani California' bit into A Lonely Night. (If you haven't heard the song, after I realised that I blatantly copied the tune in the verse off Dani California from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I decided to be even more cheeky with it and put the chorus to their song just before the last chorus to mine.) Tonight it was because I'd only just played Zephyr Song, and I didn't want to put 2 Red Hot Chili Peppers songs next to each other. But thinking about it, as I'm doing mainly covers at the moment, putting another cover into one of my own songs... I don't know, the tongue-in-cheek humour intended might actually come across more like I'm taking the piss out of myself. I do far too much of that already!

I'm not sure if Sam appreciated me banging on his guitar during Bitterness, but he was clapping along to the appropriate part so that was good as well.

I'm still not too sure about Morning Glory; I played it solidly enough but I don't know whether Oasis has been done to death, or it's just the way I'm playing it because it isn't within my comfortable singing range (actually, very few things are!) I'll play it another few times to try and gauge it; it's a good enough song good and I need to give it a chance. Thankfully Never Forget You never fails to raise a smile, if not from the audience then from me and that's always a good thing!

So all things considered it wasn't a bad set, let down by my string breaking. I shouldn't have let that happen, but because I had some problems with the bridge pins afterwards, if I'd tried to change the strings before I came out then I wouldn't have come out at all. The audience... well, there were about as many people there as I might expect for an acoustic gig, and certainly more of them than some of the audiences I've played to when I've actually been booked to play, but because of the layout of the room, their reaction was difficult to gauge. I did get a couple of guys afterwards though, telling me that I do the 'Angry Young Man' thing very well! As they weren't actually playing themselves, it meant a lot to hear that for people who were just there to see the open mic!

What's next? I think Rich Sadler's doing an jam night for the first time at the Blue Brick in Brierley Hill next Tuesday, so I'm going to go along to that and see what he's got going on down there. I've played there before with The Fakes, and on my own as well if you count the time when the Fakes had actually finished and I got my acoustic guitar out and played a couple of Oasis songs I didn't really know the words to to a few people who's last one should have been about an hour and a half ago, who were only too happy to fill in the words for me.

Let's hope this one stays a little more sober!

Matt

Fly Away On The Pied Piper, 21/6/2013

Having developed a very good working relationship with Sam Draisey over the time I’ve been gigging acoustically, it was always a matter of when, not if, I would turn up to one of his open mics. It seems a lot of the regular ones I used to do had moved on, and for this reason I found myself playing in Cannock for the first time at the Pied Piper…

The crowd wasn’t huge; there were I think about 9 people in the room all night including Sam, but that isn’t exactly unknown and I’ve played to smaller crowds than that with a full band! This being the 21^st of June and with the weather being reasonably nice, Sam surmised a lot of people who would normally come to the pub and listen to some music have got all their barbeques out and stayed at home, and why not? It’s not like we’ve had all that much sun this year. Plus, smaller crowds give me the opportunity to mess around with the set a little bit, since I have a presumption in those cases that there is less at stake.

Speaking of which, here was the set:

• Morning Glory
• Zephyr Song
• Go Mr Sunshine
• Storm from the North
• Hall of Mirrors

The first three were the three songs I learned for when I started gigging again, and what I found was that playing them in my bedroom and playing them in front of a microphone are two very different experiences. Given how low my voice needs to be to effectively sing all three songs, I’m not convinced I was cutting through too well; what sounded good at home I think sounded rather weak. That having been said, I got through them all well enough and with few mistakes.

I think, of the three, I probably played Zephyr song the best. That’s an interesting one to cover, since the Red Hot Chili Peppers lyrics that I’ve heard tend to be quite abstract, that is to say the songs appear to be about everything and nothing at the same time. So, because I can’t say for definite what I think the song is about, I find it harder to remember the words because I’ve got nothing to give context to the song! I ended up doing it in the end by looking at each individual line, picking out the noun from it and picturing the image in my mind, that would help me remember the words. E.g:

“Can I get your hand to write on,

Just a piece of lead to bite on,

What a night to fly my kite on

Do you want to flash your light on?”

I picture a hand, a lead rod, a kite and a flashlight. That helps me to remember what’s supposed to be in each line, so even though the song appears to be somewhere between an acid trip and complete bollocks, I can at least sing it!

Following it up with Storm from the North was a wise move, because I found for the first time that night I actually sounded like I meant it. I’d never even played that song on my new guitar so I had no idea what was going to happen. I remembered all the words OK, although I fluffed the chords at some point and made horrendous error of calling myself on the mistake straight away. But of all the songs I played that night that was probably the best one. Funny how I learned a bunch of cover songs, but it’s my own stuff that’s arguably going down better, simply because I’m playing it better!

After some good-natured Britain’s Got Talent-style piss-taking from the friends of one of the other lads who played that night, I played Hall of Mirrors by the Distillers. I love the song, but it is my thing to try to capture the essence of the song on an acoustic guitar and with that particular song I reckon I’ve always fallen short of the mark. Then again I don’t think I’ve played it at all for two and a half years, which probably had a lot to do it.

Now I might come across as a little hard on myself at this point, and I don’t think it was exclusively because I was playing covers because thinking about it, the covers I played a couple of weeks ago at the Copcut Elm actually went reasonably well. But as I’d known how to play both Boys of Summer and Never Forget You for 1-2 years by then, it was a different matter entirely. And both of those songs were new once as well. My point is while I don’t think I played Morning Glory, Zephyr Song or Go Mr Sunshine particularly effectively this time, that doesn’t mean I never will. I’ve just got to keep playing them because I’m going to learn more from doing that than I ever will from playing those songs in my bedroom.

This is with the possible exception of Go Mr Sunshine, which I think will lose something without the backing vocals no matter how well I play it.

So it was a valuable experience, if not my best performance. I probably won’t experiment that much again in front of anyone other than Sam, and even then it would only be in a smaller setting like that, because at all other times I need it to work

Not sure what’s coming next, I’ll see what’s going down next week…

 

(Copyright to the Lyrics to Zephyr Song belongs to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and are published on this blog with no permission whatsoever.)

Hardly A Lonely Night at the Copcut Elm, 9/6/2013

So after a long break that I made no secret about, I decided to make the first night I played live for myself again at the Open Mic Night at the Copcut Elm. I've been to the place before and did a 'battle of the acoustic artists' style gig there, I didn't get through but it's probably the fairest I've ever had one decided. That was a couple of years ago. Quite why I felt I had to go all the way to Droitwich to start gigging again was a matter of timing rather than design, but it was a largely unfamiliar crowd - I'd only met the promoter Ben Vickers before - so it was a good a place as any to see how it got on. The people were a bit thin on the ground to begin with, but by the time I went on there were about 40 people in the room so that was good.

The setlist (quite long for an open mic!) was:

• Boys of Summer
• Get Out Of My Head
• Bitterness
• Never Forget You
• A Lonely Night

However that was not the original plan. I had wanted to go down there and play three songs I've never played live before, all covers. I spent the entire car journey singing all three songs to practice them, but I hadn't even got halfway through the first verse to the first song when I forgot the words. More practice needed on that one, I think!

I played the rest of the songs well though, and pulled it back. One or two people were singing along to Boys of Summer, which is always a nice feeling. I'm still in debate about whether or not to sing the first verse of Get Out Of My Head without the guitar, tonight I chose to do exactly that and it was quite an experience when I got to near enough the end of the verse and the entire bar had fallen silent listening to me. That's what I've missed about playing live!

Other highlights? Getting to play A Lonely Night was a welcome but unexpected bonus, and someone out one of the other bands that was on after me told me that she thought Bitterness was hilarious. I told the story before I played the song about the profile I found on the dating site which inspired the song, and I think giving it a bit of context helps, though I should be careful how often I do this. I'll only get away with it as long as people are listening to me.

It's a balance, thinking about it. On one hand, when I have the audience engaged, it can really work to give my songs context, to give the audience some idea of what I'm singing about. On the other hand if I do it too many times I'll deprive the set and therefore the audience of any momentum, so I should probably do it only once every couple of songs. It would be worth planning in advance what I'm going to say about what song, and at what point in the set they are going to come up.

Anyway, after a shaky start, that was not a bad return at all, and I am going to check out a new Open Mic at the Pied Piper in Cannock on Friday so we'll see how that goes down.

See you all there!

Matt

Heading for the End part 1: A Stormy Misdirection at the Hartley Arms. 23/4/2012

Hi there.

Not done a blog in a while; I'm afraid being obliged to write down the details of every single show I do can feel a little overwhelming at times, and I don't always get time to do it. I did a gig at Four Ashes a couple of weeks ago for example, and headed down to Amy's straight after. While it would not be literally true that I didn't have time to write a blog while I was there, she certainly wouldn't have thanked me for it. Which is a shame because that show influenced a lot of what it coming here:

I'm going to be taking an indefinite break from playing live. I can think of a few reasons for it but they basically come down to the fact that I've had enough. I gigged every week all of last year, and I've not done much less than that this year so far. Some shows I've enjoyed more than others, and what I've got out of it is refining my set to the point where I can put on a far more convincing show than I ever could before.

What else does that get me? Not a fat lot. I have very rarely been paid for playing a solo gig, (thanks to Sam Draisey for being the only one who has so far,) I couldn't sell a CD to my own mother (she's heard it all!) and usually the only way I can get anybody to come to a gig is if I drive them there myself.

Now I know that perhaps I should be doing more to change that. Burning off some CDs would be a nice start; getting a proper Facebook page, really promoting those gigs, get a decent contract on my phone so I can actually afford to send mass texts to people who might want to come. But the way it's been going so far hasn't put me in particularly high spirits and offering much incentive for me to do that. Plus I've been doing a lot of other stuff as well; I'm more in to my games now than ever before and it's taking up a lot of my time, and in many cases proving a lot more enjoyable. I think I need a few months off, give me some time to miss gigging and actually want to get back to it, during which I need the following things to happen:

• Get a proper Facebook music page
• Get a Twitter account to use with the Music page,
• Get some CDs printed off properly with a cover and everything
• Sort my PRS stuff out - I'm nearly there, I just need my birth certificate
• Write some new songs. Seriously, I've been playing most of the regulars for nearly two years now, and apart from the new one that I wrote at the Robin 2 that I've completely forgotten the name of, my most recent one is A Lonely Night and that's about 8 months.
• Get some sort of mailing list system going when I'm doing gigs so I can actually keep in contact with the people I talk to. Fair enough by now that would be some 20 people but it's 20 people I don't have now.

Now in true Matt style ducking out for a few months is out of bitterness, spite and disillusionment with music and its current state, and we'll find out if it's all worth it or whether I've been shooting myself in the foot when I come back to potentially find that all my old contacts and venues have moved on and I'll have to start all over again. Then again, that won't necessarily be a bad thing...

I'll pick this up another time, it's probably about now that I should talk about the gig I'm posting this blog for in the first place...

Ok given all this recent development I wasn't intending on being any good tonight, thankfully it was at  at the Hartley Arms and in the company of Sam and his friends with whom I enjoy a friendly familiarity to the point where I could get away with it. The first song I did was Fall Back Down by Rancid. I've know the song vaguely for a while, the chords are easy enough. I've only got a basic grasp of the words, but then listening to the record I'm not conviced Tim Armstrong knows it all that well either... Sam recognised it and everybody else seemed to enjoy it so there are worse songs to play!

I then played something I'd barely played before in my life and was a bit risque, Dark Heart Silhouette by Vendetta Red, who I'll happily tell anyone who'll listen that they are the best band you've never heard. That's probably the most offence I've ever caused in one song, with the lyric 'And I watched him take her, beat her and rape her, and he said if you tell anyone I'll have God kill your Mommy...' so I need to be careful where I'm playing that! It seemed to go down OK but no one really knows the band so I was playing it to enterain myself as much as anybody else.

Feeling that I should probably get some of my own material in there I decided to play Bitterness. It went down reasonably well athough I was at that point suffering from the coke and pizza I'd had earlier, and singing so hard I felt like I was going to be sick. I don't know what was worse, that or telling everybody about it afterwards.

I finished up with a false start - and subsequent retry - of Storm from the North. Once I'd got it, it was fine, though I shouldn't let that happen a great many times. Only last Friday I managed to get the giggles half way into it. I was conscious of the fact that Sam was filming this one and I wanted to give as good a performance as I can. If what Sam filmed comes out barely passable, I'll put it on the blog and see where it goes from there.

So I probably won't be at the Hartley Arms again too soon. I might go to the Robin when Sam puts it on but Wheaton Aston is a little far for me to go just to watch. Still, it's been good to me and has given me a nice platform to spring some new material from so I'm grateful for that!

Might see you Thursday, might see you Sunday...

A run of gigs in Feb/March

Once again I've done it where I've done loads of gigs and haven't blogged them. And since I've forgotten almost everything that's happened since the first one, I'll write them up as one entry...

23/2/2012: The Quality Hotel

This was a charity gig for the St John's Church Preservation Group. Here, I played some of my songs and a couple of covers for good measure. I think the set list was probably Get Out Of My Head, A Little Respect, We Will Survive for the first set and Storm From The North, Do The Strand and Bitterness for the second. Not sure what the audience made of my spiteful aggression, if I'm honest! I do remember messing up rather badly in Do The Strand, forgetting the words is something I really shouldn't be doing and indicative of the fact that I hadn't really practiced enough. A Little Respect was probably the best song in terms of audience reception. Given that it was a family event and I had to keep the language to a minimum, it blunted Bitterness's usual fury, and I didn't even try to play A Lonely Night. I compered for some of the night as well and it went quite well. It was a nice night, and I was very pleased to have been a part of it, but I can play better than that...

27/2/2012: The Hartley Arms

It was a very quiet night again at the Hartley Arms; just me, Sam and this other fellow called Sam to play the entire night. I did a longer set therefore than I would usually do, although I can't quite remember what I played. I was tired that night! I played Believe at some point I know I did Into The West for the first time there, and it seemed to go down quite well although for how loud the rest of my set is, it's quite hard to know where to put it!

7/3/2012: Katy Fitzgeralds

This was another emergency booking from Sam, with what turned out to be a disappointingly small audience. Fair enough I was on first, but there were 5 people in the room when I started playing, and by the time I'd finished there were two people left. And that was the next act and his Dad. Conseqently my energy suffered; there's no point coming out all guns blazing when there's nothing to shoot at. I think this is the first time for a long time that I've done a full gig at Katies and not played Bitterness; instead of that I played a softer version of We Will Survive which, for Alex Young and his Dad, is a privilage because that's probably the only time I will ever play it.

8/3/2012: Newhampton Arts Centre

This was a new venture for me, brought on by George who runs some open mics with Dan Skillern. Georges plan for this open mic is potentially quite huge so I had a feeling that the stakes were slightly higher than usual tonight; I thought I'd better make it a good one.

Kicking off as usual with Get Out Of My Head, I opened my set with a steady performance, if a little predictable. New venue it may have been, but most of the people there were at the Four Ashes a few weeks before or had seen me before anyway, so it wasn't exactly a surprise to hear me play this song first. If it was, I didn't feel it. The novelty, then, was hearing me fluff up one of the chords. We're off to a good start...

I had a feeling my set was going to be shorter than it was so I played Storm From The North next, telling the 'Crashpoint' story as I went in to it. I'm not sure I need to do that anymore as the song seems to have taken a life of its own, and I think I played it quite well, though I did decide to experiment by leaving the gaps between the separate sections of the songs just a little bit too long.

The song I really wanted to get out there tonight was A Lonely Night; George is talking about doing some recording in the future and this is the one regular song in my set that I haven't yet recorded, so I wanted him to hear it to find out what it was like. I'm not sure what he thought of all the swearing but I played the song steadily enough. I need to calm down when I'm kicking it off though; I come on a little strong on the opening chords which doesn't do wonders for the dynamic of the song.

I did the fast version of We Will Survive, after making the Battle Royale reference (incidentally, I'm reading the book at the moment; it's good stuff!) I think picking up the pace a bit helped, but usually by now at an open mic I'd be thinking about wrapping it up and I think the audience was of the same mind; some of them wanted their turn, some of them were fed up. It was probably good then, that I played one of my faster songs to try and kick it up the derrier!

And then for some reason I turned around and played Into The West again, offering 10 points the first person to tell me what film it was from. Nobody got it, although Dan told me afterwards he thought it was Lord of the Rings and couldn't quite remember where he'd heard it before. Then again I don't sound much like Annie Lennox! I think building up the pace in the previous song and dropping it straight back down again with this song wasn't one of my better ideas, but I'll know not to do it again and pick a more opportune moment to put that song in my set in future.

I wanted to go out with a bang so I ended with Bitterness, and you really got a feel for the sound in the room when the 'Bang Bang Bang' bit was carrying across the hall! The song will surprise no one who's heard me before but they seemed to like it, and I could have picked worse songs to end the gig with.

It probably sounds, from the way I've been writing, that I was none too pleased with how this all went down. It's true that I've been feeling a little flat on the gigging front, perhaps I'm running out of steam, I don't know. I know I've done better than this in the past, and after that run of good gigs at the start of the year it seems like it's all going a bit downhill now. Still, not to worry, I keep on doing it and hopefully something will come of it, and now that I'm aware of this maybe I'll be able to pick up a bit more pace for my next few gigs.

Because The Night belongs to the Robin 2... That was terrible. 22/2/2012

So there I was minding my own business when Sam put out a call to arms for everybody he knows to come down to the Robin 2 once again for his open mic night. Well, I can't turn down an offer like that...

I got four songs this time, rather than three, so I began with Get Out Of My Head. This didn't go too badly at all, I made one daft mistake with the chords playing Em when it should have been E, but if that's the worst thing I did all gig then I'm not doing too badly at all. The rest of it was note perfect, and I'm beginning to appreciate the value of this song as a 'warm-up' piece, if I haven't been playing any substantial amount of guitar all day it's useful to play this one before all the fast strumming of my other songs kick in.

Sam had earlier told me that he'd compiled a CD of songs that he'd recorded from the sessions he'd done, and that the song he'd used from my session was Storm from the North, so naturally I felt compelled to play it! One of the regulars from the Woodman who hadn't seen me for a while said that it was the first time he'd actually been able to listen to the lyrics, and that he thought it was really good and that was the best he'd ever seen me. Well, as far as compliments go, that's about as good as it gets, so thanks! I do enjoy playing that one actually, the different verse structures makes it a bit different from my usual songs and feels less like I'm going through the motions. Impossible to think that about a song when you write it, but I think I struck gold with that one!

Then I had a go at Because The Night by Patti Smith, preceded by an explaination to having to drop £800 on reparing my car over the last few weeks which was loosely relevant to Bruce Springsteen, who sings about cars, and also did a version of Because The Night so it's a long way round but I did move in the direction of relevance in the end. I'm playing this a lot better these days, though I still have to concentrate. It's another of the songs I do that's popular but not covered all that often, so when people hear it they think 'Wow, I haven't heard this for ages!' and if they grew up with that style of music - which in many cases they did - then so much the better. This one's a keeper!

I ended of course with Bitterness, expecting and in fact fully intending to break my G-string along the way, much to the amusement of the crowd. It's always the G string for some reason. What's actually happening is that the brass winding around the string is coming off at around about the second fret of my guitar. Any day now... The string survived, and I put the ever-increasing amount of venom into that song to make the required amount of impact.

All in all, I think I did quite well here! A really good night and I enjoyed it, tired though I was!

The Monday Night Blues at Katy Fitzgeralds, 23/1/2012

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

There's A New Sensation... in Bilston. 17/1/2012: Open Mic at the Robin 2

This is Sam Draisey's latest venture, bringing his ever-brilliant Open Mic nights to Bilston. It felt very different to the ones he's done before in various different places, not least because the Robin 2 is huge. The sound system was really good; never before had I actually been happy with the sound I was getting out of the monitors! (I have this thing about not complaining about my sound, because it probably doesn't sound anything like that at the front, and telling a sound engineer 'can you make the monitors sound any less shit?' probably won't go down well at all.) But with such an eclectic mix of personality and styles tonight, it was all about the songs...

The first of mine was Storm from the North. I picked this one because I'd actually gone on quite late and I had seen that the audience took music and themselves seriously enough to appreciate a track like this. Sam also got a video of it for your enjoyment! I think I did quite well, although if you look at the start where I was about to start the song and I didn't... it wasn't because I'd forgotten the words, it's because I literally couldn't remember what I was doing. I don't know, it's a sort of mental state where I completely blank out and think about nothing but I'm still capable of idly jamming on guitar. It's probably not something I should try again when I'm on a stage, especially not one of this prestiege!

Next was a cover of Do The Strand by Roxy Music. This went very well, I'm getting better at playing it. That guitar part is exhausting and that top F is a little higher than I can comfortably reach, but I'm building up the stamina now, it all comes with practice! I need to be careful who I play this song to, though. If the audience is old enough to remember Roxy Music, they'll be like 'Oh yeah, Roxy Music! I haven't heard this for ages!' and really enjoy it. If they're not old enough, but mature enough to appreciate the style, or at least the challenge of a song that let's face it pisses all over any semblance of song structure, they'll enjoy it as well. Thankfully, the room tonight appeared to consist of both of those things. But I wouldn't necessarily play it at a Prickly gig. Except perhaps in a sound check.

To finish off I played A Lonely Night, giving what I described as a rare performance of the un-edited version of it. This one went well, in fact I think tonight was the least I've messed any gig up for quite a long time now. This is one of those times where the audience helped by being attentive; pretty nearly everyone had been on by then and some people had left, but the people who remained behind were as interested in everybody elses performance as they were in their own, which is really pleasing to see. When I got off the stage, one of the guys who'd been on before told me they really like my lyrics. Well, compared to my contemporaries, I'm not much of a guitar player, and I rely on the quality of my songs to carry the gig, so thanks, you couldn't give me a higher compliment.

All in all tonight went very well. The next one won't be for a while but it's nice to come home from my second gig in a row where the feedback that I've given myself has been mostly positive. Compare that to where I was this time last year and I've not done too badly, have I?

See you next time.

6/12/2011: Open Mic at the Hartley Arms

The open mic at the Hartley Arms that Sam runs has now been moved to Mondays for various reasons, most of which pertaining to the pub's domino team. Since then, the turnout has been modest, at best. That doesn't mean we can't have a laugh with it though...

As I did the last time I did an open mic with Sam, I decided to do a set of mainly covers. I told the people in the pub that I reckoned that some of my covers need a bit of practice; no time like the present. I began with Linger by The Cranberries, where I was once again reminded of how silly I feel singing the 7 syllables in the word 'finger.' I played it OK but to make that song work I really need to get that A6 chord in the right place. One to keep in mind for next time I'm playing with a girl singer though!

Next I did a Christmas song, The Power of Love, after a not-so-quick scramble to tune my guitar up. I fudged the E11 chord a couple of times, and I know I'm missing some chords because I'm pretty sure there's a Bm in there somewhere and I didn't play it once. It's also a little too high for me to sing, but that didn't stop me trying!

I followed that up with my one original song for the evening - The First Footprint, which I wrote for the Christmas album last year. Given the fact that it's been near enough that long since I last played it, I was surprised that I remembered all the words, though I did mess up a couple of chords. I certainly enjoy playing it more than my new one, which I haven't learned properly yet and doesn't really capture that same Christmassy spirit...

I explained to the audience that despite my intentions to enjoy Christmas last year when I wrote that song, I found it very difficult owing to the onion in my basement, and spilling oil over the engine of my car. Realising that I was moaning far too much, I decided to cheer up a little bit with A Little Respect, the one cover I do that I can play near enough perfectly because I play it so much. Need to be careful with those Bflats, other than that I'm there.

When I went up for my second set, I began by playing a song that I hadn't played for years and certainly never played live, Let Robeson Sing by the Manic Street Preachers. It's one of the ones I learned to play when I was just starting to learn to play guitar, and for that reason I think has stuck with me since then; I'm still getting most of it right including the words. Not bad, not bad!

I then reduced the volume to barely even a whisper and played Mad World, closer to the Gary Jules version as much as anything else. I have to be careful when I'm doing this, and I certainly don't do it much, but in this case it really worked because the room went quiet and you could hear a pin drop. I'll certainly break this one out again for a suitably morbid gig!

Then I decided to play some Feeder, settling on Yesterday Went Too Soon, which I'm enjoying playing more than High at the moment. I should probably learn some of the songs of their more recent albums to cover their later career; people barely recognise Feeder songs anyway so it's not as though it will make much difference to the impact of the show. In any case, Yesterday proved a little too high for my voice tonight, and I could feel it breaking in some places. Still love playing it though!

I finished off with probably my favourite Stone Roses tune, She Bangs The Drums. That one always goes down well no matter who I play it to, which says something given what a 'scene' band the Stone Roses were. One I think I shall keep and do again in the future.

Not a bad show, all in all, though it was a case of experimenting with some different songs to a small but familiar audience. It's certainly been useful for finding out what covers work and what don't, so I know which to break out in the future!

29/9/2011: Open Mic at The Woodman

Because I've joined the Roleplay Club in Blackheath that takes up most of my Thursdays, I haven't been able to come down to the Woodman for a while. That's a shame because I've really enjoyed playing the open nights there in the past, and I've made some good friends out of it! However, I took a couple of nights off Roleplay and decided to make the journey up to Bilbrook to see what happened:

Coming up on the end of the month when no one's got any money, there wasn't all that many people there, and those that were I knew most of them at least by sight. However, they haven't heard me play Always Remember Me yet, so I thought I'd give them that. I played it slightly better tonight, and I think it went down OK, though I'm not sure how to guauge how well-known that song is in an environment like that.

One song that did seem to go down well at the Woodman when I played there in the past was Dear Mr Manager, so I gave that another go. The quiet and morbid nature of the song, along with it's apparent popularity, meant that it was deathly quiet in the pub while I was playing. A high complement indeed, and it is nice to get through it without making any mistakes...

At this point I found myself quite incapable of remembering what I was doing or why, so I launched in to Bitterness. This goes down as well as it ever does but - and I really do take no pleasure at all from saying this - is getting to be a bit old hat now; the one that I feel obliged to play at every gig I do. Of all the songs I did tonight, this one was the most predictable, if the best played.

I gave the Foggy Dew a run through as well. This is a song that I like to play but haven't played too many times in recent months, simply because I've not found the right atmosphere to do it in (Katies is the best bet, but even that depends on the age and demographic of the audience.) For that reason I think I fluffed up a couple of chords, though none of the lyrics; mistakes I would have preferred not to have made but I doubt it did too much damage.

I recognised that there weren't all that many of us playing tonight so I asked Sam if it was OK if I could do one more. At his request, I played Storm From The North, which thinking about it I don't think I've actually played at the Woodman before. It's a flattering feeling to have one of your own songs requested! Sam described it as 'The Crashpoint Song' and it took me a few seconds to realise which one he meant. I thought I would be clever and try to put a Crashpoint song in the middle of it, I injected a bit of Keep Your Distance to ramp it down to the quiet bit, and fell flat on my face as I forgot the words. To my own song, not Emma's lyrics...

Later on I went up and did another few songs. I tried Buck Rogers by Feeder but I find this very difficult to do on acoustic because of the barre chords involved. I'm fine on electric but the performance of this one suffered for that.

Then I played a song I hadn't played for literally years: Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. It was a good feeling to hear cries of 'Tune!' as I hit the opening chords. This song I really made an effort to learn how to play when I was 17, and I still remember all the words and chords which makes it quite something, even if Radiohead aren't a band I make a habit of listening to.

I finished up with Halelujah, closer to the Jeff Buckley version but I'm not quite that good! I was as surprised as anyone that I managed to make it all the way through without forgetting any of the words, and I was reliably informed by Sam afterwards that considering he hates that song with a passion, it was one of the most pallatable versions he'd heard. That's not nothing!

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable night at The Woodman. It will be a long time before I come to another one but it's nice to know that it's a musical venture that has remained reasonably solid for Sam over the last year or so...

6/7/2011: Open Mic at the Hartley Arms

I'm behind again! Good lord...

I actually came to the Hartley Arms tonight because I needed to talk to Sam about something, but while I was there I figured I might actually play some guitar as well. This not being a conventional gig, nor one that I was taking too seriously, I decided to break out from my usual conventions...

I sound-checked - and thereafter played - my rendition of an old Dastards song Shoot From The Hip. What Wake would think of me playing his songs I don't know, and it seems strange to play a song from a relatively unknown band I haven't actually been in for nearly 4 years, but do you know what, I like playing it, and it stuck a very poignant chord with me that to be honest resonates with me to this very day. Plus it's simple, enjoyable, and judging by the reaction I got, people like to hear it. I don't know whether they necessarily wanted to know that it wasn't my song, but I wasn't going to play this song without giving the writer some credit.

I followed that up with Dear Mr Manager, which I haven't played for ages because it doesn't really have much  of a place in the gigs I've been doing over the last couple of months. I had to concentrate because the guitar work, while easy as pie to any halfway-decent fingerpicker, is still unexplored territory for me. However, it was I think at this point that I realised how attentive my audience actually was. They weren't being loud and giving me standing oviations at the end of every song, no. They were paying me the far more appreciated compliment of being absolutely silent for the time I was playing and showing a real intensity in their listening. I might attribute some of this to the fact that a few people there had seen me play before and to start playing quiet songs all of a sudden was a new experience for them...

Next came One More Show, I've been waiting to do this for a while because of Sam's off-hand comment about me looking like Boyzone when I play guitar sat on a stool and writing a song in what I consider to be in the style of the aforementioned boy-band of the 90's. Laugh if you will, I grew up in the 1990's, and if you listened to the radio or TV at all during that time at some point you'll have heard No Matter What, which is where I got the idea for the key-change from. I don't think it's one of my best songs, and I rarely get more than polite applause from it, but I definitely wanted to play this one for Sam. Inspiration can come from the strangest of places!

I wrapped it up with something a little more familiar to the venue which was Storm From The North. Not much to say about this, other than I avoided putting in the 'Nothing Else Matters' bit in at the end. I've said before that I'd need a somewhat familiar audience to make it work, and I stand by that. But I also believe that said familiar audience will only find it funny once. I may do it again at some point but not for a while!

All in all I think the gig was a little more interesting for me in that I changed the set list around from what has now become the norm. And I'm fortunate to be in a position where I can go and change things like that in a venue like The Hartley Arms where I can get away with it. It wouldn't necessarily work around the so-called 'big' venues, because the stakes are higher and I need to be on form. But I think tonight, I couldn't have done it better. Cheers Sam, and well done for passing your driving test, see you again soon!

13/6/2011: Katy Fitzgeralds Open Night

I came tonight with the intention of airing a new song that I like to call One More Show. I think I might have blogged the actual song itself up ages ago but I've not had chance to play it live yet simply because I haven't practiced it enough. I've had enough of playing songs before they're ready and forgetting the words, and did not want that to happen the first time I played it so I went to some lengths to make sure that I'd got it right. All things considered, I doubt it would have made much difference. Due to the running order I'd actually gone on quite late, and most of the clientele were out the back, so I was playing to near enough an empty room, and the people who remained behind were paying very little attention. Here's what happened:

I began with Storm From The North; a break from the norm but as Katies Open Night attracts a lot of the local musos I figured they might appreciate  me playing this one tonight. I played it well, though I left out the Metallica bit; not the right atmosphere, and the pounding verses and the choruses attracted some glances, but other than that what was left of the audience remainded largely impassive.

One More Show was next. I was pleased with the fact that after all that I actually DID manage to play it all the way through without any mistakes. Unfortunately my confidence had been knocked by the way the night had been going so far and I didn't feel right introducing the song as new, or even introducing myself. I think what we had here was the nature of the night having a knock-on effect on the way I was conducting myself, and because I lacked that connection with the audience I was what I was; a guy on a stage playing a guitar and singing something. So whether the song went down well or not, I couldn't honestly say.

I finished off with Right Where It Belongs by Nine Inch Nails, inspired by one of the other guys who was playing Hurt earlier. This is one I've known how to play for a while but never really played before; it needs a bleak and melancholic atmosphere to make it work I think. Sam commented on it when I'd finished, saying it was really nice. The rest of the people in the room had to be reminded to clap.

All in all, not one of my better ones, I think! I don't expect too much from Katies Open Night anymore but this was a disappointment. However it's not something I think any amount of planning and preperation (and for what it's worth, I don't do a great deal of either) could have effected; it just wasn't my night tonight. Let's hope the next one works a little better.

8/6/2011: The Hartley Arms Open Mic Night

Sometimes when I'm doing gigs, it all seems to come together. This was one of those nights...

I kicked off with Get Out Of My Head again as usual, but this time I decided to start it with the 'drum' beat on my guitar while singing the first verse and chorus. I didn't hit the first chord quite as well as I should have done, but for those who have heard me play that song before (and there were at least 6 of you there!) it should have been a refreshing change to keep things interesting. It did seem to go down very well!

Bitterness was next, and I was told by Amy afterwards that this one was very good indeed. Apart from fluffing up one of the chords I didn't notice anything different, but I don't expect I had to; this one's a crowd pleaser that I really ought to do at every show. I interrupted the song with the quiet part by telling the audience of my fears of my hand going through the guitar when I do the 'bang bang bang' bit; it will be as good an excuse as any to get a new one, but it will be a shame if that happens to my Dad's old Hondo! This is one of the songs that lends itself well to a band environment, and I remember jamming it with Cj in the latter days of Crashpoint; that part would have been done by the kick drum. Funnily enough Elliot turned up later and when he asked me what I played, he identified this song by singing the 'Hey now' bit... catchy!

Then, fulfilling it's role as the mid-set epic, I played Storm from the North, after explaining briefly to the audience of how the song came about, and that writing about how I'll never be a band with my former bandmates again is kind of ironic since I'm now in a new band with Cj and another band with Rich. But, we'll never be Crashpoint again, that's my point... and I also decided to have a bit of fun with it and go into the introduction to Nothing Else Matters when the song goes slow again. Sam thought it was really funny once he realised what I was doing, this could have taken longer than it was supposed to because I didn't play it very well. I won't do that too often; it has to be the right kind of demographic to get the joke and it would only really work if I'd played my own song to the same crowd enough times for them to realise that I AM only joking and not trying to rip off Metallica. But it was good fun when I did.

While I was 'finishing off' with We Will Survive I had a bit of a think about what to do afterwards; people seemed to be playing 5 songs tonight rather than the usual 4 so not wanting to be left out I wanted to play something else at the end of the set. I'm happy to say that the fact that my mind wandered did not hinder my performance at all; I'm finally in a position where I can play this song all the way through!

The song I finished with was Just A Day by Feeder, because after playing a set like that I was in far too good a mood to play anything else! I hadn't practiced this for a while, certainly not with the intention of playing it live; the mistakes were there and I know it. But it's good fun and I delivered it with the conviction that it needs to make it a good performance nonetheless.

All in all very pleased with how it went tonight. If only all gigs went this good...

17/5/2011: The Yardbird Open Night

I was a bit cheeky with this one; I knew the open part of the night didn't start until 10pm so I went to the city, couldn't park my car, turned up at around 10:15 and asked for a slot. There were some other guys on so time was tight, but I did at least manage to get a couple of songs in so big thanks to Jason for that.

It was a bit tougher this time; I played Storm From The North first considering how well it went down last time and I actually played it significantly better. Partly because I know the song so much better now. Mostly because I got all the way thorugh it without forgetting the words or breaking a string. It seemed to go down OK but considering I went down a, er, Storm, last time I played the Yardbird, somehow the same magic just didn't seem to be there.

I had one more song and because it had gone down so well when I did Full Volume the Friday before, I elected to play We Will Survive. I don't think this was the right decision to be honest, I'd have been better off with Get Out Of My Head. There's usually a substantial divide between audiences; people looking to be 'entertained' tend to prefer the fast rocky songs like We Will Survive, and people looking for a bit more depth in their songs - and this tends to coincide with the audience being a bit older, though not necessarily at the Yardbird - prefer my 'arty' songs like Get Out Of My Head. In hindsight, I'd suggest that the Yardbird falls under the latter category, and I abstained from playing one of my more complex songs in front of an audience that would really appreciate it. That being said, I played it OK, got a cheer from someone when I said I'd played it at Stafford University, and I saw Amy singing along to the chorus as well so that's always a nice feeling.

All in all not my best, but given the circumstances I don't think I can be blamed for that. At least I was better than the two lads who were on before me singing about having threesomes...

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...

7/4/2011 Jam Night at the Samson and Lion

Hi there. I happened across this one on the way back to the Music Centre from Netherton, and I noticed that there was a jam night there on Thursdays so I thought I'd check it out. I found that it wasn't on the night I went, but when I told the lady at the bar that I'd brought my guitar, she said that by all means I could play it!

I'm not going to go through each and every song I played because it was pretty much making it all up as I go along and I've forgotten most of them now. I remember A Little Respect going down very well indeed, that never fails to raise a smile! This was also the first time that I played On A Day Like This live (not counting the Plastic Pantomime gig, of course,) and as a sing-along chorus I actually think the song is better than Hey Jude (which Ken the keyboard player and owner of the whole gaff put in at some point) but it didn't work so well here because, unless you know the song, you're not going to sing along to it! And with at the very most eight regulars down there that night, not many people knew it. Teenage Kicks went down well, as did Summer of '69, you cannot go wrong with that. And there's a lot of stuff from the '60s that I'd probably better learn as well.

All in all I had a terrific time that night and I'm very glad I went; I don't think it's going to work miracles for me in terms of my own material because the guys seem to prefer covers but maybe there's a gig in it for the Fakes at some point?

Until next time...

Open Mic at the Woodman 31/3/2011

Hi there. As promised...

I said I'd be at Sam's open night when I saw him on his birthday, and I'm not one to go back on my word; this was the night I hoped to play Storm From The North for the first time. I did play it... but actually debuted it at Katies the previous night, as I've already explained.

At open mics like this, especially this one where I hae a certain level of friendly familiarity with the regulars, I can afford to chop and change my set around a little bit so I started with Girl's Names. I played it fine and it went down as well as ever; a little uninspired for a set opener but to be honest I really didn't feel like playing We Will Survive tonight so I went for a way to leave it out of the 4 songs I've got in the time frame.

Next was Get Out Of My Head. I introduced it as the "I forgot my capo" song (a cheeky reference to when I've gone to Sam's open night before and forgot my capo, this song being the only one of my own songs I could therefore play) but I actually played it because I didn't get around to playing it at Sam's birthday last week and I hadn't gorgotten Kayla asking for it! So that one was for her, though to be fair I like playing it too.

Then I played Storm from the North. I announced that I had a new song and went straight in to it, and it went down really well. I know this because Sam confirmed it at the end of my set, Glenn from Under the Banner was trying to figure out my time signatures in the quiet parts (for the record it's one bar of 9/8 and one bar of 12/8) and some of the regular guys told me afterwards that 'That Sea Shanty One' was reallly good. I'm very pleased with this, I put a lot of work in to making sure that song was perfect before I played it live and I'm delighted it went down so well.

I went straight into Bitterness after that, reasoning that I might as well go out with a bang! I played it well enough, however I've played that song so many times now to these guys that I guess the real novelty of it was when I break it down into the bassline and make a joke while I'm playing. In this case, I mentioned that it's always easy to tell who plays drums in the audience because they're tapping along to the songs that I'm playing...

I got talking to Ed and some of the regulars afterwards who seem to think I've got something special going on. Ed in particular likes Dear Mr Manager, a generous thing to say considering I hadn't played it there in a month! And the whole acoustic thing seems to be working for me right now. Thinking about why that is, I guess it's because I'm basically playing rock songs on an acoustic guitar. That's not actually as common as it sounds. Some guys might do acoustic covers of rock songs, I seem to be writing rock songs specifically to play them on acoustic guitar.

Why? Well, to be honest, the only reason I'm playing the acoustic guitar so much these days is because I can't seem to hold it together with a band. Given the choice, I'd much rather be rocking out with the band, it's just that getting one together seems to be almost impossible for me at this point! And I don't listen to a lot of acoustic music either. But these things work to my benefit, because a fondness for modern rock and no pre-conceived idea of how acoustic music is supposed to sound means that what I come up with sits somewhere between the two, which for a great many people I guess is a refreshing change.

Which is good because things aren't looking all that great for either of my bands right now; The Fakes have kept it together for 7 years but with only 5 gigs to show for it one could hardly accuse us of taking it seriously. Perception... it's hard to keep up the enthusiasm for that band when we've never had a complete lineup we've been able to hold on to for more than a couple of weeks in the year we've been together. I did actually think about getting Crashpoint back together, but as that would only count for me and Cj in this day and age, we'd hardly be the band we quit a year ago.

But the momentum's rolling, and for now at least, I'm enjoying it...

Open Mic at the Woodman 18/3/2011

Few are the times that I don't have something to say for myself these days...

Capos are funny things. Considering it's as simple as putting an extra nut on to the guitar so you can play higher notes, it's astonishing how you can come to rely on them, not only as a tool to keep your voice level with the music, but also as a songwriting aid, as sometimes chords sound more melodically suggestive when played higher up the neck. You also come to rely on them to always be in your guitar case, and it's a bit of a let down when you get three quarters of the way to Codsall before you remember that, actually, no, it's in your OTHER guitar case, and you've got to go ahead and do an acoustic gig without your capo. Well done. Sometimes I wonder how seriously I'm taking all of this...

Now there were plenty of people at The Woodman tonight who would happily have lent me a capo but I had a bee in my bonnet and thought no, if I can't even bring a capo to a night like this then I need to face the consequences. So I founf myself playing a load of songs that I hadn't played for a while, some for literally years, that I can do without the capo. I kicked off with Just The Way I'm Feeling by Feeder, and I found it quite startling considering that they're my favourite band that I couldn't remember what order the lyrics appear! I don't think it particularly matters with that song as they all sound near enough the same anyway, and Sam's Mom was singing along to it so that was cool!

Next I played Epiphany by Staind, I haven't played that for almost a year since the gig at the City Tavern in Birmingham. As I was trying to sing it I was struck by how low it actually is, I can barely manage it. As this isn't one of the band's singles, as far as I know, nobody really knew it, but it's the only one I can really manage because if I'm going to do Outside I really need to be in Eflat tuning. All things considered, I played it quite well, though I won't be too quick to put it in any future set lists...

After explaining the situation with my capo to quite a large audience, I launched in to the only one of my songs that I don't really need it for - Get Out Of My Head. For some reason I was a lot less accurate with the plectrum than I normally am, although this may be because that was the first time I'd played it in the week it's been since the last time I played one of Sam's open nights. Nonetheless I was pleased with my performance, I can put quite a bit of drama in to that song which is probably why I like playing it so much!

Last, I went for a performance of Walking On The Sun by Smash Mouth. I like playing that song so I play it to myself sometimes but it's been some months since I last played it at a live show; whether there were enough '90s kids' in the room to know the song I don't know but Sam came up to me afterwards and said it was really good and that he hadn't heard it for ages. I think I'll be keeping that one as an emergency trump card in the future!

It was nice hanging around with Elliot, Kayla and Mike afterwards as well, Sam's open nights always attract a really nice crowd. Looking forward to the next one!