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!

January 2015: Break-ups, cancellations, and we've got to find a new singer from somewhere.

It’s funny how the worst situations can bring out the best in people. Although, I guess, it pays to look at it positively.

On New Years Eve, my girlfriend and I broke up after being together for four and a half years. I’m going to keep the reasons for this to myself, as it’s not for me to post the inner workings of our relationship online, but the breakup did affect me quite profoundly. There was a lot of sadness, a lot of tears, and a lot of wondering whether or not we’d done the right thing.

The Fakes. We're alright, really.

I tried to keep it quiet from most people who didn’t have a lot of investment in the situation, since I didn’t want them to feel awkward when talking to me. But there was one group of people for whom this would never have remained a secret, and that is The Fakes. On our first band practise after the Christmas break, we were talking about our holidays, and the story came out. After the obligatory “Sorry to hear that,” the band decided to cheer me up by running though our version of She Hates Me (not actually the case, I hasten to add!) by Puddle of Mudd. And it worked! It was quite nice, having my most consistent group of friends for the last eleven years around me and just getting on with what we do, which is playing indie songs not very well and taking the piss out of each other. That sort of thing can’t be bought or looked for, and the fact that I have it makes me feel a lot better.

It’s also given me a lot of material to write songs about, so you might be hearing some new songs from me later!

I was hoping to be able to tell you about some gigs I’ve been doing. I’d had two of them booked and they were both cancelled. One was a solo gig, and one was with No Questions Asked. Where I was given the reasons, it seems that a lot of the pubs were looking at their January budget and deciding that they can’t afford to pay for the shows, so they cancel them.

Now here’s where I feel inclined to go off on one about how live music often gets the roughest part of the deal. It’s true that I felt let down by the cancellations. I’m blaming nobody I’m in contact with for this; they were invariably the middle-men having to deliver the bad news and had nothing to do with the decision, but I actually quite like playing live and was disappointed not to be able to do it.

Still, it’s not a significant problem for me. All it means is that I didn’t get to do a gig. I haven’t lost much. I rarely got paid for gigs up until NQA, and have not touched any of the money that they’ve paid me so far. Relying on a pub band for income is a dangerous game indeed – NQA is a walking case in point for this – so I’ve saved all the money they’ve paid me for a rainy day. It’s there if I need it.

But I wonder what might happen to those people who are counting on their live work for income. If live acts can be cancelled as easily as that, it’s hard to see how one is supposed to make a living from playing music. It makes me glad I have a reasonably steady day job, since at least I’m sorted for the year.

That being said, I try to understand the pubs that have to cancel us. *My opinion* is that live music isn’t a great draw anymore. It might have been at one point but entertainment is not hard to find now, in fact rarely involves moving. I’ve said it before but not for nothing: The only way I can usually get anybody to come to a gig is if I drive them there myself. So it won’t necessarily help the pubs to have a live band that they have to pay because there’s no guarantee of extra footfall. When the budget comes through for the last quarter and some things have to go, why shouldn’t they choose the live bands that aren’t making a difference anyway?

Finally, I’ve been told that Mike is leaving No Questions Asked, and we’re currently looking for a new singer. We’re doing our next gig with Rich Sadler, and Mike will do the one after that. We’re looking into some people and I’m going to try to learn as much of the set as I can so I can help out on vocals if need be.

At least I’ll have one gig to talk about next month…

*edit*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The set list was:

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

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

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

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

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

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!

The Fakes: 29/7/2011 The Earl of Dudley Arms

Two gigs with the Fakes in the space of a few months is rare to the point where I actually think it’s unprecedented, nonetheless we were delighted to have the chance to play the Baseline at the Earl of Dudley Arms in July once again. It had gone well last time, we learned from our mistakes, and we were ready to give this gig a really good go. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way…

Being honest, this wasn’t one of our better ones. The problem was we went on far too late; we were last on a bill of 4 acts, and things were taking a long time to work through, so by the time we took the stage, the alcohol had been flowing, we were tired, and to be quite frank we weren’t concentrating. It didn’t start off too bad, our usual combo of set openers worked quite well and even though it wasn’t the best we’d played them, it was good enough. The problems began, I think, when I left the stage to go to the toilet. Reason I did this was because the rest of the band were playing Come As You Are, which I don’t actually play on. (I turn up late for near enough every band practice so the lads usually play this one while they wait for me.) By the time I’d come back, it had all one to pieces, we were making mistakes in the songs that we knew far better than to make, and it generally wasn’t working very well at all. I don’t know if leaving the stage had anything to do with it but by this precedent it’s not something I wish to repeat.

Not that there was nothing good about the show; the audience enjoyed it and the one person who was causing problems got thrown out just before we went on so I was able to be a lot more relaxed. The biggest thing I was pleased about, though, was the fact that we called it a day when we did. The original plan was to go back on stage after we’d finished our main set and do another 6 songs, but we decided not to. We finished once again with Dakota by Stereophonics, which to be fair we always play well no matter how badly the rest of the show went. We got off the stage, and the gig felt like it was over; there was no reason to go back on. Compare this to last time, where we over-extended our welcome by at least a few songs, and I think that was a mature decision and a noticeable progression from last time.

So, not so great this time. But in the Fakes we’ll never let something like that get us down, we’ll get back into the practice room next Monday, have a run through some songs, and look forward to the next gig, whenever that may be. There’s no plans for another Fakes gig yet, however I’m playing tonight at the Victoria Inn in Cradely Heath; it’s an acoustic gig, come and have a look!

See you soon.

29/5/2011 The Fakes: Baseline Venue, The Earl of Dudley Arms

For those of you who don't know, The Fakes are my indie-rock covers band that keep quite a low profile but always do great shows. We've known Frank and James literally since they started the Basement studios and it's a pleasure to play in their venue.

For the uninitiated, a quick history of the band and my involvement with it: I was asked to join on bass guitar back in 2004 when I answered an ad in what I believe was the Dudley Chronicle. It turned out Drewey on the drums and Harvey the singer had been in bands before, they pulled Matt on guitar in from Drewey's work and Steve on guitar from... somewhere, I never found out where. We spent the following couple of years putting together a set of different popular songs, basically choosing them on the basis of what we enjoyed playing. Gigs were not regular because of various other bits and pieces the band were involved with (they're all a bit older than me and were getting married, having kids, etc.) Steve had to leave in 07 when he hurt his hand to the point that posed a significant risk to him should he continue to play guitar, and after floundering around for a while, we eventually recruited Steve (different Steve) on bass and I switched to lead guitar. 6 gigs in 7 years is not great, but you know what, we've kept it together for that long which is more than you can say for any of my other bands...

So this was our first gig in a while! I'm not going to do a track-by-track review of our own gig here. We knew it was going to go well because it always does; we play the right kind of music for the right kind of people. Yes, there were mistakes, there always are, and sometimes I joke that we trade on the idea that everyone's hammered and can't tell if we're mucking it up. Being far less cynical about it, it's more likely that we like to make sure that EVERYBODY in the room is having a good time, all of the time.

The original plan was 10 songs, because of the way things work at the Baseline. So we chose 10 of our heavyweights and got ready to play them, to discover that one of the bands had pulled the gig and it was actually 14-15 songs we could play. Highlights of the set... Opening with She Sells Sanctuary is something every cover band should do at least once, and is not a moment any of us are likely to forget. I was very pleased with myself when we nailed She Bangs The Drums. Our ska version of 7 Nation Army wasn't as well-received as I'd have liked, perhaps we need to work on that a bit more with more references to the style of music. Set closer Dakota was by far the best one we did that night, and possibly ever.

Criticisms? Well, the crowd were reluctant to let us leave the stage - which, for all the gigs I've been doing this year, is a rare and pleasant feeling - but we stuck around for far too long playing songs that we hadn't really rehearsed, and it showed. We know the songs well enough to get all the way through them, but the cracks were there and were getting ever larger. Kudos to Frank for calling a halt to proceedings when he did. Being drunk (as a band) and high as a kite on adrenaline is not a good combination and we need to be a bit more disciplined about that in the future.

For now, though, let's take a moment to remember the mot enjoyable gig I have done for a long, long time...