Life Begins

On Friday we had the final Freedom of Expression show of 2009 at Christ Church. I played at it, as I had done during Tuesday’s show at The Green Dragon. I asked some of my favourite acts to be on the bill as a birthday present to myself so in addition to me there was Ben Sommers, Trombone Poetry and Miriam Jones. For some unknown reason I also decided that I wouldn’t be nervous enough playing to both those great performers and also an audience mostly made up of my friends, so I performed two under-rehearsed covers (Ben Sommers’ Baby Stella and Miriam Jones’ Chase Me) on the piano with Simon playing bass for the latter.

If I’ve been as nervous in the past then it was so long ago that I can’t recall it now. When I looked down at the keyboard to start playing Baby Stella my hands were shaking so violently that I wasn’t sure which note I’d be playing out of the two that my fingers were wobbling over. I think I got away with it and Ben and Miriam were very kind afterwards. Other people who haven’t seen me perform in a long time were complimentary about Simon and my overall performance so things are clearly going in the right direction.

After I’d been on I was privileged to sit back and watch three masters of their craft (four, because Jez was playing piano with Miriam). It was one of the best gigs I’ve been to, even thought I booked it myself. Martin from The Sound Of The Ladies generously agreed to host the show so that I could concentrate on playing and turned up with balloons, streamers, annoying trumpety things and cake. Mark came to the church for the first time to do the sound and Tom’s taken lots of gorgeous pictures which will be available soon on his website (I hope).

Saturday was a proper day off, and I don’t have many of them (out of choice: I’m not complaining!) so I cleared up my room a bit. It still looks like a bomb’s hit it, but at least it’s a slightly smaller bomb than it looked like previously. In the evening Jenny and I went out for a meal with one of my friends who travelled a gratifyingly long distance to see me during my birthday week. We finished off with a few games of slightly inebriated pool in the pub and then home. Lovely.

Saturday was a fairly simple story. Bit of a lie in. Go to the office. Rain. Get some work done. Have some dinner. Back to bed. It wasn’t particularly exciting but it does give me an excuse to catch one day up on this blog and tell you about Sunday in the same posting.

Having said that, the majority of Sunday was remarkably similar to Saturday. Bit of a lie in. Got to the office. Rain. Get some work done. I don’t want you to think that my life is regimented in any way, but I do mostly work, play gigs and run Freedom of Expression shows. I like it that way.

In the evening Jenny drove me over to Lewisham to The Fox to play a half hour-ish set for The Hangover Sessions. Carl runs these evenings and they’re great. There’s always a good few people there and this week there were lots of people, all of whom appeared to be happy to listen to Simon and I play the same set we did on Thursday (Impatience, Perfect, Friends, Manual, Select and Hidden), not that they knew it. The songs are coming together nicely with the new bass lines and it was definitely the best of the three gigs we’ve done together. If I hadn’t stuttered badly at the end of Manual it might have appeared to those not in the know to have been an error-free performance.

I’m still working on my positioning on the stage now that Simon’s there as well. I’ve got used to playing on my own and haven’t remembered to arrange myself during the sound checks so that we can see each other and the audience. Consequently I’ve played three gigs with my back to him, which I imagine must be fairly unpleasant. Tomorrow life really does begin (apparently) and we’ll be at my ‘home’ gig in The Green Dragon so I’m going to try and remember to arrange myself properly onstage. I’ll report back on Wednesday. Tomorrow I’ll write about today, the day after that I’ll write about tomorrow. I hope that makes things clear.