Haiti gig

I'm exhausted today. I need to somehow get out of this Red Bull loop, yesterday's Haiti gig was a brilliant but long day so I drank a lot of caffeine to get through it - today, slumped at my desk, I'm drinking a lot of Red Bull to get over the fact I drank a lot of Red Bull yesterday so didn't sleep too well. And tonight I'm back in the studio which certainly won't be an early night, ahhh...

Anyway, the Haiti gig itself was a decent little day. My own expectations of raising thousands and every band playing to a heaving room of enthusiastic gig-goers never really happened but then again that'll teach me for having expectations in the first place; I have too many of them and it barely ever works out. But I do appreciate how well it went, we had 15 bands playing over the course of 11 hours and by the end of it we were only over-running by about 10 minutes. This of course is nothing to do with my stage management skills as they're practically non-existent, but it says a lot about the professionalism of those playing. I don't think there was a bad act all day, I enjoyed it - in particular The Travis Waltons (was there a better song than 'Millionaire' played all day? No. In fact, I don't think there would have been a better (original) song played anywhere in Cambridge all weekend than 'Millionaire', it's superb) and The Violet Bones, but it would be unfair to single out individual bands too much because everyone did their bit. As did Pete the soundman who consistently kept the show moving, and Jess and Rachel for doing the door and telling me things were 'okay' on several occasions when I needed to hear it the most. Not a huge crowd to be honest, but it was a Sunday, and it was short notice, but a nice consistent room of people who enjoyed it all a lot. We raised just under £240, not a massive amount - but considering it was only £2 to get in, people were very generous. I like people. I'm too tired to write much more apart from a quick review, purely for the archives, of the 4 gigs I played during yesterdays lonnnnggg day.

ALIGHTING
Set: Baby Lie, Silent Eyes, Here Comes The One, New Beautiful Day, Nothing Left To Rain, Broken Hymn
Notes: First time I've played with Alighting in 8 years, a little unplanned but nice songs and I kept myself in the distance so I didn't impose myself too much. Would have liked to have known the songs a little better so I could have thrown a few tricks in there, but from an audience perspective as a whole it worked very well.

MATT CORRALL BAND
Set: My Babe, Too Tired,Spoonful,I'm Tore Down, The Spider and the Fly, Walking by Myself
Notes: First gig with the Matt Corrall Band. One of those strange gigs where I wasn't comfortable with the material, but I was comfortable enough with the genre (pure, often filthy, blues) to wing it convincingly enough. We need to be much tighter than that for the tour, but 2 rehearsals in and for a Sunday afternoon it was very pleasing.

LOSERS
Set:
Notes: Our first show as a five piece, although only James and I knew the songs. It did show, sadly, and could have looked terrible on stage if it wasn't for James' honesty and humour, which made Losers look very likable, if slightly unprofessional. We went down very well all the same, which goes to show that even if musicians are dropping notes, and even playing in the wrong key, if the songs are good you can get away with most things.

UNDER THE STREETLAMP
Set: Do I Don’t I I Do, Sunny Rainy Tuesday, Anything Nothing, I Never Win, Last Excuses Of Summer, Honest Lullaby
Notes: Our first gig in 18 months. I've never felt more comfortable on stage - like putting on an old pair of socks to find they're still warm and fit a treat. I loved every second of it, I want to do it more, I need to do it more, fortunately the feeling's mutual.