September 2015: Wombourne School of Music, Saving Money and a Year with No Questions Asked!

Well, I missed last month’s post, sorry about that. September was something of a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows for me, and that got in the way of having anything remotely resembling the kind of focus I needed to get my thoughts together regarding what to write in a blog. By the time my head was in a clear enough place to write a blog for August, I was also ill and it was nearly October, so I thought I’d just leave it until then and cover both months. The fact that I’m two weeks late with this is not helping matters.

I’m enjoying teaching for Wombourne School of Music, it’s a great team to be a part of. It’s a lot less intense than I’m used to with Dudley, since almost all of the lessons are one-to-one and are a lot easier to pace for that reason. I also had a good gig with them on the second Sunday into September when I played an acoustic set at their ‘Concert in the Courtyard,’ and accidentally started a band with Andy and the other Matt who teaches there. We jammed out a few songs on guitar, bass and drums and nearly ran away with the whole afternoon! It’s also a much wider range of ages and motivations than I’m used to, because I teach a few adults there as well as some children of a younger age than I would normally deal with in Dudley.

I did a lot of gigs over August and no small number of them in September and I’m starting to wonder now whether it would be worth investing in a small P.A. system and doing some gigs for myself. At the moment they’re mostly open mics, and while I usually enjoy doing them, they’re not usually worth any money (except for my PRS claims and I don’t know what that’s going to look like until my first one comes through, hopefully at the end of the month!) and I think I could be doing more to make it worth my while.

Of course, it’s easy enough to say that I should be doing this because I enjoy doing it; it shouldn’t be about the money. I would challenge that; for one thing teaching guitar is my main source of income so to a certain extent it does have to be about the money! But here’s the thing: I don’t very often spend any of the money I get from music. I save it instead.

So, for example, I get £20 from No Questions Asked from doing the Jam Nights in Wombourne on the last Tuesday of every month. That can by me lunch for a few days – or I could save it. I choose the latter, because I’m saving up for a few things – a deposit on a house, fixing my car when it goes wrong (it might) or even just a rainy day. If I put the money I get off making music to one side and save it, then what I’m doing with the band has some mid-long term value for me. The value is always there, don’t get me wrong. I always enjoy playing live and it’s never a bad thing to meet new musicians and make new contacts. But things either happen from it or they don’t. If I save the one reward I know I will receive, there will always be a point to the gigs I’ve done that I’ve been paid for. How much money have I made from doing this? Well, that’s for me to know. It’s never been enough to sustain a living, but over the last few years, the money I’ve been putting aside has run in to quite a significant amount – and has been at least a part of the reason that I still consider this worth my while after doing this on and off for the last 12 years.

Incidentally, it’s been a year since I started my tenure with No Questions Asked, and while we’re not too busy these days as we still don’t have a confirmed singer, it’s nice to be able to say we’ve kept it together all this time.

July 2015: Music Theatre Exams, Wombourne School of Music and Why I Shouldn't Sing After Going Swimming

I was struggling to think about what to write for this one, as I couldn’t think of many things that had happened straight away. Turns out quite a bit, actually:

The first thing that happened was I took a Grade 2 Music Theatre exam. I sang two songs for it: If I Only Had a Brain from The Wizard of Oz, and Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid.

Yes, you read that right. Believe it or not I’m quite a big Disney fan, and The Little Mermaid is probably my favourite Disney film. Part of Your World was about the right level for me, and because I’ve got so much investment in the song already, I managed to sing it really well. I had to change some of the lyrics around in order for it to make sense (the song is sung by Ariel in the film, who is most definitely female) but I really enjoyed doing that one.

If I Only Had a Brain was a little different: I hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz before, and apart from Over The Rainbow and some Family Guy cutaway gags, I’d had very little exposure to it. What that meant was that I could bring something of myself into the three characters: Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, without necessarily being influenced by what I’d seen in the film or on the stage. I did watch it in the end and it did help, but not before I’d got the words down and had my own ideas of what I was going to do for the performance. Plus, characterising three voices in one song is not something I’ve had to do a great many times before; it was a good experience!

It all paid off, as I passed the exam with distinction, 93%. I’m very pleased with that, and I’m hoping to take that a long way in the future! Once again thanks to my Vocal Coach Vie Watson for all her support; couldn’t have done it without you.

The second thing that occurred was that I started doing a bit of work for Wombourne School of Music. This is something that I’m hoping to run alongside my work with DPA, doing an evening and a day in the weekend for them. At the moment I’m teaching guitar for them while their regular guy is on holiday, with the possibility of picking up some more permanent work when term starts again. I’m glad I’ve had my experience with DPA as I’m able to bring a lot of that in to what I’m doing for WSOM, and hopefully that will come across in the future.

I’ve been rocking up at open mics and gigs on and off for about five years now, and I’ve always said that no one’s ever the finished product and I’ve always got something to learn. No more was that the case than the last open mic I did of the month, which was on a Wednesday evening at the Saddler’s Arms in Bloxwich. I played my first two songs and found it very difficult to breathe; it was affecting my voice control and I was exhausted by the end of the set. I couldn’t think of a reason for it, until through speaking to some people in the pub I remembered that I’d been swimming earlier that day. Of course, the chlorine in the water had affected my breathing control. I’ve been absolutely caning it at the gym over the last few weeks, but now I need to remember not to go swimming if it looks like I’m going to be singing afterwards!

I had a jam early with a chap called Jon with a view to getting a band together, but to be honest I wasn’t really feeling it, I don’t think he was either and I haven’t heard from him since. It happens, of course, and it might be best to put that one on the back-burner for now. I’d still like to get a band together to play some original material, but it’s a slow process indeed with everybody wrapped up in their own lives now.

Let’s see what August brings…

June 2015: New Students and an Amazing Food Bank Gig

After the hustle and bustle of May, June was something more of a relaxed affair, though there were still two very important developments:

Firstly I’ve taken on a new private student; the first one I’ve had for a while. I don’t usually do this as I would be in breach of either my Terms and Conditions or Code of Conduct for Dudley Performing Arts. The rule is that I’m not allowed to work in direct competition with DPA. Normally this would mean that I couldn’t do any private lessons for children in the Dudley area, but this person lives in a different area. I won’t be saying anything else about them for legal reasons and respect for people’s privacy, but the experience has been something of a revelation to me in a couple of respects:

 The first is that my friend who put me on to the student’s parents was my friend Leeanne, and I used to be in a band with her sister Hannah. So the seeds of this working relationship were actually sown in April 2010 when we put that band together! Sometimes it’s worth staying friends with people. I hoped to be able to help her in kind by backing her kickstarter project, sadly that didn’t work out.

The second was an indication of how far I’ve come along since I started teaching all that time ago. It’s no surprise really; I’m always learning and no one’s ever the finished product, but my lesson pacing in particular has improved a lot since I first started. Add to that some much-improved lesson content, and a lot more of my students have the potential to do very well indeed. A good thing, since in these situations I’m accountable to whoever’s paying me and they are going to want to see some return on the investment!

The second development for me was a very important gig that I did for my vocal coach Vie…

This came about as a fundraiser event for the Black Country Food Bank. Now, I think in this day and age it is deplorable that people have to rely on food banks. But they are real people, with real problems, and those problems aren’t going to go away just because I don’t like it. I heard, for example, about a family who were referred because the husband had returned from working in the armed forces and was struggling to get a job elsewhere. They’re certainly not what you hear about benefit scroungers, or whatever it happens to be. They’re not going to appear on a Channel 4 Documentary. They are real people.

Vie chose to do it as close to the Summer Holidays as she could, because the food banks really struggle during the summer as people tend to forget about it. It’s not so bad around Christmas – good will to all men, and all that – but during the summer, you can actually see through the shelves. And it’s not just food either; people tend to forget about things like shampoo, nappies, and deodorants and can openers. I’ll put a link to the site here, please give it a look and find out how you can support it – people will continue to need it in the future.

May of Vie’s vocal student performed a short set at the Calvary Church in Kingswinford, and the standard was incredibly high. It’s great to see how well her students are getting on; I might catch the end of someone’s lesson on the off chance I turn up early for mine but other than that I don’t get to see it very often. It was great to do so this time.

My performance was an incredible experience. At this point, I’ve basically been playing in pubs for the last eleven years, where there could be about fifty people in the room and maybe ten of them will be half-listening to you and applaud out of politeness. At the church, there were roughly 140 people there, and every one of them was listening intently. I played Like I Can and A Little Respect, but the one everybody remembered and spoke to me about afterwards was Storm from the North! Giving the song a bit of context helped – it was the song I wrote about Crashpoint – and I’ve made a slight change to it that now means it’s a little more comfortable to sing, which improved my delivery. But unless I’m playing to a gig where the audience consists entirely of musos, it’s rarely the original material that goes down the best. So thanks to everyone for watching me that night; you couldn’t have given me a higher compliment.

Looking forward to a gig with The Fakes next month, and some of my students have exams. So do I, as it happens…

May 2015: Gigs with the Revisted, Singing Improvements and a Ukulele...

May was a busy – and as it turns out rather affluent – month for me in terms of gigs and music. Here’s how it all went down:

As I mentioned last month, I did a couple of gigs with The Revisited Covers Band while they look for a new permanent bass player. We played shows in the Rock and Fountain in Shrewsbury, and The Western in Leicester. They were good gigs and we were reasonably well-received, however I don’t enjoy playing in covers bands enough to want to commit to The Revisited on a mid-long term basis. It was fine with NQA as we’re all friends anyway, but with the Revisited, I barely know them; it’s a lot of the same covers I played with the previous band, and many more songs that I haven’t got enough investment in to want to commit to learning. I’ll be available as dep bass player if they need me, if not, it was a reasonable way of getting some gigs, so thanks to the band for the opportunity.

I've actually been forgetting to do this a lot just lately,
here's my #viewfromthestage at the Newhampton
Inn earlier in the month.

I am aware that I’m shooting myself in the foot a little bit here because it sounds like covers bands aren’t really my thing, which is true. I’m at the point now where I need something else to keep me engaged. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I was friends with the lads in NQA anyway, and there was a certain amount of fun and regularity with the gigs that made me want to stay with the band long after we’ve essentially stopped being one. And as I talked about last month, there is a certain creative element in The Fakes where we have to work the songs we play around our own limitations of gear and musicianship in order to play the songs we want to play; jamming those songs is actually really good fun. So, as long as there is something else going on to keep me engaged, I don’t mind being in covers bands – but I wouldn’t want to be in one for its own sake.

I also mentioned last month that I was doing a gig with Ellie Hawthorne. It was in the interlude of a quiz night and it went reasonably well, if a little rushed in terms of setting up. However, it did give me an insight into how well my voice has improved over the last year. We played I See The Light, which if you remember was the song that inspired me to pick up the singing lessons in the first place. And I was hitting all the high notes with little to no strain on my voice. I was up to a high G at one point; I’d never have been able to do that at this time last year. So, thanks to Ellie for inspiring me to take up the lessons, and thanks to Vie for teaching me. It’s working!

I’ve also started to play the Ukulele…

Now, I’m not fond of the Ukulele sound at all. I prefer deep and powerful sounds to high scratchy ones; probably one of the reasons I developed an intense dislike of indie music circa last decade. However, I attended a staff meeting with DPA at the early part of the month, where we were joined by our colleagues from Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, and there was a representative from Birmingham there as well. During the day, data on the popularity of the instrument was brought to our attention, and I’m pretty sure all the other music services are running Uke groups. When I found out later in the month that a student that I will hopefully be taking on next year wants to play Ukulele, I decided that DPA can ill afford to ignore the demand and bought a Ukulele from Stourbridge. I will teach myself to play it over the summer, and hopefully teach others to play it when I return to work in September.

However, I did find myself thinking that now that I have a Ukulele, what if I did like it? What would that sound like? So that’s something I’m going to develop over the next few months.

See you all again in July!

April 2015: New Gigs, NQA's Last Gig and Developing Songs with The Fakes

This month I’ve had much of my time taken up with quite an intense, whirlwind relationship with somebody. Sadly, it didn’t work out in the end, but we’re all still friends and I managed to fit some music around it as well.

The Old Crown, with one of the I think 20 people I know
called Dave sticking his head round the corner.

I had a couple of new gigs: The first was at The Old Crown in Digbeth. I don’t know what it is about playing in Birmingham, or maybe it was because I had some friends coming who hadn’t seen me before, but it made me feel like the stakes were slightly higher that night. I pulled out all the stops and I think I played very well, I certainly made enough of an impression for a re-booking in June. I did take one piece of advice from one of the friends who had come to see me: I’d played Yesterday Went Too Soon by Feeder, because Feeder are the best band in the world and everybody should listen to them. My friend told me that I was really struggling to hit the high notes on that one, and I had to admit she was right. Since then, I’ve played it with the capo on the second fret rather than the third, and it does feel better. (By the way, I know it’s actually on the fifth fret with the guitar tuned down to D, but as it the capo makes the tuning irrelevant anyway I decided long ago that I couldn’t be arsed to re-tune.)

The other one was The Fox and Anchor in Coven. After driving straight past it and checking my phone for the location, I found it to be a pleasant and friendly place to play, and it does food as well. I wasn’t feeling my best that night but I was glad I was able to come out and perform as it always puts me in a good mood when I do well at a gig. I didn’t do anything I hadn’t done before – it was only arranged that afternoon – but I enjoyed it and it was a good ending to what was for me not a very good weekend.

If we're going to go out, it might as well be to a Hen party.
Wait...

No Questions Asked played what will almost certainly be our last gig at The New Wellington in Brierley Hill, with Rich Sadler on vocals, guitar and bass. It was a good night, we played well and had a really good time. I think I timed my view from the stage picture well, as at one point we were joined by a hen party. Another song later and they’d all have disappeared! I’m still technically with the band but all we’re doing at the moment is a jam night on the last Tuesday of every month. Fred, Luke and Dave are keeping busy with various other projects, and Rich is playing in his band The Rollers.

It’s not very often that The Fakes do anything that I’ll shout about on this blog, but I’m actually quite liking the way the band is developing at the moment. There are certain songs that we would like to do, but because of the limits of the instruments and the capability of the band, we can’t actually do them anything like how they sound on the record. For example, we went through several Kasabian songs before we started doing Fire, and that quickly became one of our favourite songs to play. I play the keyboard melodies on my guitar using as many effects as possible, and we capture the essence of the song while injecting it with the attitude of the band. Given that many covers bands won’t touch Kasabian because they haven’t got a keyboard player, I think we can count that as an achievement.

This time, we’ve managed to re-imagine The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. This didn’t start out too well, and I added the peculiar tuning and finger-picking lick at the start to the ever-growing list of things I can’t be arsed with. But when the rest of the band went out for a cigarette, I tried it again using what I thought was a Rage Against The Machine-style single-note riff, but Steve reckons sounds more bluesey than anything else. This worked, and gave the song a new lease of life. We’re still working through the backing vocals, but it’s done the band a lot of favours, as we’re working through a lot more new songs now than we have done for years. We might not always be able to replicate the records, but we now have the confidence to work around it. Let’s hope we get to play them live soon!

I’ve got a few things coming up next month including depping on the bass for The Revisited Covers Band, and playing a show with my old friend Ellie Hawthorne. Always looking forward to it!

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.

February: A Quick Run of Gigs and the Search for a New Singer

In February I managed to condense most of what I did musically into the last two weeks. After doing nothing for the first two, and for most of January, I seem to remember doing five gigs in one week if you count the Open Mics.

Two of them were with No Questions Asked; one was our last gig with Mike on vocals, and the other was a constantly-changing plan of how we’re going to manage without him. Rich Sadler’s helping us out until April, and I’m happy with that as it’s always a pleasure to work with him. But if we don’t get a singer by then I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen.

Not that we haven’t been trying. We’ve been auditioning people over the last couple of weeks, most notably at a jam night that we do at the Old Bush in Wombourne. We had a few people come through that, sadly the one we were really happy with later told us that she couldn’t commit to it. Some other people have contacted Dave and have been trying, but to be honest I’d rather put off saying anything else about this until there is something to say. In the meantime, I’ll keep playing with NQA as long as they need me.

The others were solo gigs. Some of them happened on the same day as the NQA gigs, as I sometimes support the band with some acoustic songs. When I do this, I generally play covers; we’re being paid for it and that’s what’s expected of us. The other gigs were a learning experience:

The first was an open mic at Katy Fitzgeralds. I deliberately played three new songs: The Cold Side of my Bed, Give Myself Some Time and Denial, Revisited by The Offspring. They are all very much break-up songs. I wasn’t happy with my performance of The Cold Side of my Bed, as I kept forgetting the words. The other two were a little better but I found that these songs packed together made for very poor pacing, so I don’t think I’ll be doing that particular run of songs again. Still, that’s the whole point of Open Mics; try this sort of thing out where the stakes aren’t as high!

Then I had a gig at the Grain Store in Wolverhampton. This was hosted by Sam Draisey, and as it was a both a new gig and a full one, I brought out my A-game for this and played what I thought were my strongest songs. I think I did well; the standard of the night was overall very high, though I was told later by some friends that I should have more confidence in my own material! (I tend to do a 2:1 ratio of covers and originals.) That’s something I’m going to be keeping in mind in the coming weeks.

The next one was a cold night at the open mic at the Plough in Trysull. I started out playing a melancholic set consisting of some of my slower songs including two of the new ones. I had… questions raised about my cheeriness during that, and when it became clear that absolutely no one else was going to turn up, I got up again and played a much lighter set. I enjoyed that one a lot more, funnily enough. Who knew?

Finally, towards the end of the month, I played The Stile in Whitmore Reans. I’d never even been to that part of Wolverhampton before, but I rose to the challenge and once again brought out my A-game. Sadly I didn’t bring out my guitar, since the bridge pin on the bottom E had popped out and nothing short of superglue will get them back in again. Bash was kind enough to let me borrow his, and I think I played well in spite of it!

I’m trying to keep the momentum up with gigs, and I think I need to be taking the idea of a new recording and also Youtube videos more seriously. I could be doing a lot more than I am to promote myself, I’ll consider it for next month. I’ll let you know how it goes.