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.

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.
 

November: Rehearsing, Reflecting, Jamming and getting Crashpoint back together

November’s been an interesting one…

Back when I was thinner. Anyone seen the bass player lately?

I’ve been talking to Cj about the possibility of getting Crashpoint back together. I’ve been against this for a while, but we’ve been away long enough for me to not mind too much about my previous misgivings about it. It won’t happen this side of Christmas; I’m committed to gigs almost every weekend up to that point, and with Cj now living in Crewe it would be a logistical nightmare to even get as far as one gig. And it’s unlikely that you’ll see the definitive line-up; we’ve spoken to Emma and she doesn’t think she’ll can do it, and nobody’s seen or heard from Jay since he originally left the band. But it’s on the radar for next year, so we’ll see what happens.

Sam Draisey is producing another Christmas album; it should be on sale soon at his gigs so look out for it. Sadly I’ve made the decision to sit out of it for this year. I remember doing The First Footprint for the Christmas album four years ago in 2010, and I was as surprised as anybody that it was actually quite good. I wrote what I felt the most strongly about Christmas – the entire song could be summed up with “Stop trying so hard to get it right, and actually enjoy it” – and somehow it’s never been as good when I’ve tried to write a Christmas song since then. For the last two years, nothing has come, so rather than force one out for its own sake and it almost certainly being rubbish, I’ll leave the album to the other guys.

 

It’s been a quiet month for gigs with No Questions Asked, but as expected we did manage to use the time to learn some new songs. As ever, most of them are by Queen, but there are some others as well so if you’ve seen us before chances are we’ll be playing something new for you!

We do a number of jam nights around the area; at the Old Bush in Wombourne and the River Rooms in Stourbridge. I usually enjoy these, in fact I reckon it’s at least partly because I turned up to them that I remained on Dave and Richard’s radar long enough to be in the band now. However, the last couple have felt flat in terms of their attendance. No one turned up to the last time we did the Bush and it was basically the band playing to ourselves. The last one at the River Rooms, the only people to turn up to play other than the band was the people depping for various members who will be missing in the coming weeks (myself included) due to other commitments.

I try not to take it too hard; it’s not like we wasted the time. We practiced some of the newer songs and it’s always a pleasure to play with the band. Also this is a very tricky time of year; around Christmas people tend to be so busy that it’s hard to be bothered with things like jam nights when you can just catch the next one. But I remember going to the jam nights at the much-missed Broadway with Jack’s Legacy. We’d get there at 8pm, and often at 10:30 we’d still be waiting to go on because there were so many people there. I know it was nine years ago, but I do wonder what happened to that music scene!

Ending on a positive note, the last gig we did in November at the Lamp Tavern was absolutely brilliant; the best one I think we’ve done with this line-up. A lot of it was because around 40 minutes into it we ignored the set list and just played whatever we thought the night needed. And what that particular night needed was high-energy popular songs. I think we did a fine job of making sure everybody was having a good time, all of the time. This is why I do gigs!

So, some things to learn, some to consider and some to reflect upon. I really hope that both the band and I can build on these experiences and make ourselves better.

I couldn't find a 'definitive line-up' picture with CJ in it
so here he is at our first gig. How young does he look?