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...

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

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

1/9/2012: I held Codfest in my arms...

So hang on, haven't I stopped gigging?

Well, yes, for now. But here I found myself ready to take the stage at Codfest once more! What happened was that I went to Sam's open night at the Hartley Arms on Monday Night, partly for something to do but mostly because I needed a word with Sam about one or two different things and this was as good an opportunity as any. He mentioned right at the end that one of the acoustic acts for the Back Porch stage had pulled out and I offered to do the set for him. Sam gladly accepted, gave me the 2.55 slot and at 2.50 on Saturday after getting lost I managed to get on the car park and hurry on to the stage. Here's how I got on:

I'd specifically chosen a set of songs for this that I thought complimented both my current position of semi-retirement and the fact that I'm fortunate enough to get on stage at quite a big festival (in fact, for this level of gig, Codfest is about as good as it gets.) I opened up with You Held The World In Your Arms by Idlewild, one because it's an absolute belter, and two because my interpretation of it is being given one chance to break out of a very boring lifestyle. Not that my life is boring at the moment, far from it, but it was my first gig in over 4 months so I needed to hit this one with everything I had. What a shame then, that I managed to forget the words to the first verse. In my defence they are near enough the same all the way through with only minor variations but there was a definite feeling of [Brian Griffin sarcasm] "Well, we're off to a good start." That affected my performance for the first couple of minutes but I pulled it together after that and I did see one guy singing along to the chorus so that was pretty good.

I dropped the capo after that for my next song, Storm from the North. Of all the songs I recorded with Sam last year that one's his favourite and I owed him for the gig so I played that one and I'm pleased to say that I've lost none of my attack in the time it's been since I've played it last. I noted in the program, by the way, that Sam described my songs as 'observational.' Well, he knows what this one is all about and the metaphor of the ship fits the situation quite well, and this is something I intend to play up to in future songwriting endeavours!

After that I did Get Out Of My Head, because that's Kayla's favourite. I did it with the a'capello first verse and chorus, which might not have been a wise move given the setting - a festival audience is by their very nature largely unfamiliar and it might have been better to give them the "real" version. However, it's not like I had to worry too much about continuity. Besides, taking the Rammstein approach to it, the recorded version is the best I could make of it at the time but since then I've discovered ways of playing it live that make it all the more enjoyable for me. Given the amount of people who've actually listened to the recording, (2 people on my last Myspace count,) I don't think it's wrong to play it the way I enjoy it as audience expectations are pretty much a secondary consideration!

I've got a bad habit of fiddling with the capo between songs. I knew perfectly well that after the first song I didn't needed the capo after that, and after every song I'd pick it up, put it on the mic stand, get half way to putting it on the guitar before remembering I didn't need it; should not be letting that happen!

Because I played it at the last year and it went quite well, I played Colours of the Wind from the Disney film Pocahontas. Granted I can't sing it quite as well as Judy Kuhn, but I think I did an OK enough job of it. I did notice, though, that it went down better last year when I did it at a later hour; everyone was drunk and wanted to hear songs to sing along to. It was great to play it again though. Intrestingly, what I'd actually intended to do at that point was I'll Make A Man Out Of You from Mulan, but because of my guitar, there was no way I could have done it comfortably without putting the capo on halfway through the song. Barre chords are a pain! However, you can all be rest assured that I can't sing it as well as Donny Osmond either. I haven't got enough teeth.

I finished off with pretty much the most appropriate song I could think of in the circumstances: The Boys of Summer by Don Henley. This is quite a good 'rounding off the summer' song, and being the first day of September I could hardly have picked a better time. It's a nice one to play, not so nice to sing because I can never remember the changing line of the chorus. I know what they all are but I keep forgetting what order they all go in, which resulted in a few stumbles. However, a lot of the audience recognised it and I enjoyed playing it!

So ended my Codfest set. Am I back? No. That was a favour to a friend and I wouldn't like to say that I'm back yet as bar the covers I'm still doing what I was doing when I quit. But it was nice to get on the stage again. Given what Sam was saying about observational songwriting I might try getting in to that again and see if I can get something together that I'd be happy to play on stage. I'd like to drop a stone and a half in weight as well. Until then, it's one-offs like this, or perhaps a gig or two with The Fakes if we can organise it.

So, thanks to Sam and the comittee for organising the festival, biggest and best one yet, couldn't have asked for a better end to the Summer Holidays. See you next year, whether I'm playing or not...