It Burns, Burns, Burns at St Marys School, 6/7/13

This one has been overdue for a bit...

This was actually my first booked gig for a while; Joy from the Insight group put out a message about 6 weeks running up to this asking for acoustic acts to play this charity event they'd got going on in St Mary's School in Brierley Hill. I'd been there before to do some teaching, but this was the first time I'd got farther than the conference room, and it was an outdoor gig in some really nice weather so I was always going to try to make it a good one.

What with it being a week and a half between playing the gig and writing the blog for it, during which I had other things on my mind, I can barely remember the set list. I THINK it was:

• The Boys of Summer
• Yesterday Went Too Soon
• Morning Glory
• Zephyr Song
• A Little Respect
• Never Forget You
• Ring of Fire







This would have been during A Little Respect...
 

I might have the order slightly wrong with the middle songs but that is essentially what I played. You'll notice they were all covers this time; it was entirely deliberate. This being a summer fete at a school, I couldn't imagine a great many people giving even the merest hint of a shit about my own songs, and the few people who would (Cal and Joy!) have heard them all before anyway. So I decoded to forget about my own songs and have some fun with a few covers.

A lot of these songs have come up quite frequently in my set in the last few weeks, but there were a few new ones. I played Yesterday Went Too Soon as I've made it my unofficial mission to play a Feeder song in every place I play, because Feeder are of course the best band in the world and their songs need to be heard. And my word, what a difference standing up makes when singing the high bits! I think this is the first time I've played that song where I've got it right with the octaves; I usually end up singing the first verse low, realise it's too low and then try and sing the rest of it high. Today, I sung it all high, and it worked really well.

 

A Little Respect I put in there because it never goes down badly no matter how well I play it. Today was no exception. I should point out at this juncture that nobody was going mad for any of this, but that was never going to be the case. There were a few people sitting under the shade of the gazebos listening to what I was playing, which given the circumstances was as good as it was going to get and I should be damn grateful for the opportunity! I realised halfway through playing it that I might have done better singing Go Mr Sunshine, given the setting and, well, the weather. But how many songs do you need to pay about summer in one set? Probably not too many. And as I've said before, without the backing vocals that song loses something.

 

I finished off with Ring of Fire, which was pretty much the first time I'd ever played the song on my acoustic guitar. Sounds odd to go in to it without rehearsal, but I've known the sequence for a while, read the lyrics off my phone and I knew the Bowling for Soup version was in a more comfortable key for me (D). It actually worked really well and I had a ton of fun playing it. I might have to be careful where and when I play it because if I'm going to play that, it sounds like a 'Party in full swing' kind of song, which would only really work if everyone was having a good time anyway. Not always the case! But today, I couldn't have chosen a better song to finish off with.

 

All in all I was pleased with the gig; it's the best I've played for a while. No plans for another one yet, though I have heard that Revolution have swapped the night of their jam nights to the second Tuesday of the month to prevent them clashing with another local night, so I might be able to play that one when I come back from Holland.

 

Now, about that photo...

 

Joy took that one, cheers Joy! You'll probably get an idea of just how hot it was by the fact that I'd caked myself in Factor 40 before I'd left the house that day and spent the rest of it looking like Marilyn Manson. Strong stuff too; I didn't go on until 12:30 so that was nearly 4 hours later, and I didn't burn in the 2 hours I stayed afterwards. Still, as I'll happily tell anybody who'll listen, it's better to start the day looking like The Joker than end it looking like Sebastian off the Little Mermaid.

 

See you next time!

What's the Story at the Blue Brick? 2/7/2013

As promised, I played the Jam Nite at the Blue Brick on Tuesday Night...

My set list was much the same as ever it is these days, however there were a couple of things worth talking up. First, right before I went on I went on with the band to play Summer of '69 on bass, something I don't think I've done since the Jack's Legacy days. It has been a while since I've picked up a bass guitar, my own having been in its case basically since Aki Maera called it a day, but I have a kind of affinity with it and I remembered the song pretty well. Thanks for letting me play with you guys!

Then when I went on, my set list was:

The Boys of Summer
Zephyr Song
Bitterness
Never Forget You
Morning Glory.

I think with Boys of Summer the first few minutes may not have come across all that well because of some sound balancing issues that it took a change of microphone to sort out. I really should try putting that later on in the set, or last, as that has a bigger impact I think and I don't want it to be blunted by sound issues.

Bitterness was unplanned; I made a joke about forgetting my capo and somebody lent me one! That was very kind of them, I'd have done Storm from the North otherwise, but I was hardly going to say no once they'd lent it to me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was this song I enjoyed playing most tonight.

Morning Glory was something of an encore, and my old friend Rich Sadler got up and sang the chorus with me and played tambourine. Rich has developed quite a powerful voice over the years and it was cutting right over my gravelly tones; a bit of light and shade never hurt anyone! I enjoyed playing the song and it was great to get a guest musician up with me.

A very good night in all, and it had a lot of support from a local following that Dave and Rich have obviously worked very hard to nurture. They're doing it on the first Tuesday of every month so it would be worth popping down, especially if you like playing blues-rock, they love it!

Tomorrow I'm playing St Mary's school in Brierley Hill for the Insight group, I'll be on at roughly 12:30 if anyone wants to come and have a look. It will be mostly, if not all, covers; as it's a summer fayre it would probably be better to mind my Ps and Qs, so don't be expecting Bitterness, and I certainly won't be playing A Lonely Night, otherwise it will be a lonely car journey home.

See what I did there...

3/12/2011: The Fakes: The Blue Brick, Brierly Hill

What's this, you say? 3 Fakes gigs in one year? Are you sure?

Yes, I am, although to be fair this was our first 'full' gig in over two years, the previous 2 gigs were at the Baseline and we can play for a lot longer than time constraints usually allow with those guys. Long-term blog readers will remember we completely bombed the last time we did a gig, and I won't lie there has been talk of "If we do a gig that shit again, let's call it a day." I won't go into the reasons why that gig went the way it did, but suffice to say the stakes were quite high for this one.

And we very nearly had to pull it! During the soundcheck it became apparent that our PA was cutting out every 2-3 minutes. We reckon it was because a capacitator had blown in the circuitry; how that could have happened on a PA that I think we've only used 3 times so far I don't know, but it had certainly been a long time since we last used it. Thankfully we knew someone in Wall Heath we could hire a PA mixer from and we went through that. Close call though.

What was different about this gig is that we had our own sound engineer (we usually do it ourselves) called Ryan helping us out. What he was basically doing all the way through the gig, fair play to him, was boosting the vocals when we needed them, so if he could see either me or Matt was about to sing he'd turn up our mics and back down again afterwards to stop them feeding back. The result, we were reliably informed by Bob Drew, was the best vocal mix we'd ever had. The same could not be said for the guitars, though. Ryan had told me to turn mine down, which from where he was standing was probably the right thing to do as I was overpowering the other instruments. However the sound was not carrying across the whole room, which meant for the first half of the gig no one could hear my guitar solos. I turned it up again for the next half of the show, but there was a huge variation of volume I needed for some of the songs and it's a difficult call to make. Seemed to work OK though, everyone enjoyed it...

Highlights? I think that was the best I ever played She Bangs The Drums, and I really like that song anyway so it was good to see people enjoy it. Steve running off the stage to go to the toilet before playing I Wanna Be Adored was amusing, if nothing else. Fire by Kasabian was a good one as well, I think I got an overall better sound by stroking the strings gently with my fingers. Probably shouldn't rule out the whammy bar though. And the gig overall felt better than the last one we did, we really enjoyed it and can't wait to be there again!

Development points: With the levels, I'm just going to have to be really aware of what I'm doing with the lead guitar. The easy option is to buy a boost pedal, but to be honest I'd only really use it in the Fakes (There's rarely a need to boost my sound in the 82s, and I play bass in Aki Maera) and that's a lot of money to spend on a pedal just to use on a few songs in a covers band that at the most does 3 gigs a year. I'd like to get some new songs rolling out for the next gig but that's going to be a little tricky. Things are going to slow down for The Fakes now in terms of rehearsals because Drewey's going to be working away for the next couple of months, and we'll only really have Friday to rehearse - if we can all make it. That's by no means a guarantee, given that I'm off to see Amy every couple of weeks, or she comes up to me, and Steve's shifts not being conducive to a regular practicing pattern! But I'll see what I can do with getting them to play some new songs, or at least some songs we've never played live before. We should get Acquiesce by Oasis out by next gig, I think.

Looking forward to it, whatever happens!