Gig report: Trevor Jones Band @ The Bowery, London

Band: Trevor Jones Band
Venue: The Bowery, London
Date: 25/02/2012
Audience: 3
Set: All I Am, Bad Man, Alive, Roll On The Rain, Old Fashioned Woman, Falling, Solid Ground
Notes: This was certainly a gig that may have tested our patience a little. A couple days back, when we asked why we weren't on the venue's website, we were informed that they weren't plugging us until we confirmed that we could bring a certain amount of people to London to watch us. It's an age old argument with unsigned bands, and to be honest I feel we've grown out of this - we're not naive teenagers anymore desperate to play in the smoke, we play London on merit not on how many friends we can drag down. It looked like the gig was off then, but then late yesterday it seemed to be back on. Turning up at the venue this evening we still wasn't sure if we were actually playing or not because the 'promoter' hasn't been answering his phone. I was in a bad mood about this, I think we all were; the promoter clearly doesn't care at all about music and has done nothing in regards to actually promoting - he is merely a businessman who is after door numbers for his venue. He wasn't even there tonight, although that might have been a good thing in retrospect. I felt sorry for the poor guy who was there running the event as he clearly meant well but was put in a tricky position - we weren't on the billing as far as he was aware, and we were stuck with two options; 1) go on stage at 6.45pm and be the extra band tagged onto the billing or 2) go back to Cambridge, having not played a single note. Sorry for swearing, but it's fucking bullshit. Don't get me wrong - the venue is nice, the soundman was excellent. It's just all of the other bollocks that goes with it sometimes - we're musicians, we play music, we hope people will like it, we work hard in rehearsals, we entertain people. It's just sometimes, in particular with London gigs, you find yourself in this situation. I mean - we're the band, we play music, if you're a promoter what do you actually do if you don't promote? Had a couple issues with the house kit - the bass drum was very worn and if you tried to attach your bass pedal to it there was a sense it was going to crumble, the hi-hat stand was too thick for my clutch, the cymbal stands were wobbling when hit. It was hardly going to be my most accomplished performance, but as I say - the sound was actually excellent. For most of the gig we played to three people - because we were on at such a ridiculously early time. At one point it was one person, she was there the whole time and even seemed to be enjoying it. By the end of the set the room felt busy, mostly in anticipation of the band that were about to follow us. But positives...we played really well for most of it, 'Solid Ground' went a little odd at the end and all of us seemed to lose our way a bit, but under difficult circumstances I thought we were actually pretty tight this evening. Other positives - it's nice to hang out with Trevor, Tony and Bill and have a drink after the show, grab some food, and generally make light of the whole slightly ridiculous situation we found ourselves in. You've got to really, haven't you?

The obligatory post about being busy

Perhaps you know life is getting too busy when 'relax' is on your to-list and is the only thing you haven't ticked off on a list of 20 tasks. But then again, that does mean I have done 19 other things, which can't be bad. Most of them fairly standard stuff ('learn the new set by Monday', 'book venue for preview dates' etc) and some of them slightly more time consuming, but 2012 has gone reasonably to plan so far; I reckon as it stands I'm about 2 weeks behind schedule, which isn't the end of the world. At the moment my most recent project has been the murder mystery script - we decided to put on one of these events as an Edinburgh Fringe fundraiser and it takes place in a couple weeks time. We have lovely cast confirmed for it (Izzy, Grace, Alan, Vaughan), and tickets are slightly more expensive than our usual offering - but then again that does include food, so I just wanted this to be a bit special. I've gone through various drafts and ideas, mostly shite, but I'm now confident that 'My Unfunny Valentine: Death Of A Comedienne' (originally 'Death Of A Bimbo' but Izzy didn't like the word 'bimbo' in the title) is nice and lively. I was kindly lent a box-set of Miss Marple DVD's by the awesome Julia from marketing as a way to inspire me - I've watched and actually enjoyed them, but then when I carried on working on my own script it's very much a Paul Richards piece and not at all traditional, but you know...it had a murder, there's plenty of mystery about it, I think we'll be alright.

As with all these projects though there comes a lot of admin, and I'm struggling to keep up with it all at times - talking to fringe venues, sponsorship, venues for fundraisers...just about on top of it as of this evening, as much as I'm currently a bit rubbish at replying to emails from friends about social things. But I mustn't forget - it's all very exciting really, so as long as I remember to enjoy these projects (after all I take them on for a reason) it'll be a good year. One of the most exciting things is the forthcoming Dowsing For Sound gig, more details on that soon but as a band we started rehearsing again last week for the first time in September, and next Sunday we'll be back with the full choir...the idea of 60-odd singers singing songs by the likes of Divine Comedy, Guillemots and Rufas Wainwright excites me a great deal, Dowsing is a very wonderful thing indeed and I'm thrilled we're doing it all again.

I spent pretty much the whole weekend in the studio with Aidy, Dave and Bugs for further work on the British IBM album - it's sounding completely awesome. In between that I popped down to catch the Twelve Clay Feet album launch (with Aidy, studio/techie wizard Phil, acting chum Steve, Julia from marketing and her mate Fran) last night which was really very good, and this morning Grace came over to go through some of the new Oscar Pike material - I'm excited about Oscar again now, it just seems to have turned out really nicely. Next week I'm with the Dowsing For Sound dudes a couple times, meeting a director, editing content for LoveSongwriting, playing in London with Trevor and trying to finish three plays. Yeah, relaxing is for wimps anyway...

Currently watching: Human Remains (DVD), Miss Marple (DVD box-set), Match Of The Day
Currently listening to: Broken Family Band - Hello Love, Broken Family Band - Please And Thank You, Paul Heaton - Acid Country, Carole King - Tapestry
Currently reading: Paul Watson - 'Up Pohnpei' (yes, I know - I'm a slow reader)
Currently eating: pies

Gig report: Louise Hamilton @ The Fountain, Cambridge

Band: Louise Hamilton (Flaming June)
Venue: The Fountain, Cambridge
Date: 12/02/12
Audience: Busy enough, chatting
Set: Two sets, pretty much covering most of the highlights of the Flaming June set with a few new tracks
Notes: Played a gig earlier for my mate Julia's birthday, she likes Flaming June a lot and although Clare and Steve were unavailable, Louise and I played this a duo. Slightly strange gig, incredibly stripped down, without a PA so completely acoustic - I did this one without my conga stand so sat down the whole time adding to the relaxed vibe of it all. The audience, of Julia's friends (I pretty much knew everyone there as a majority of them were from WriteOn) were nice enough and applauded at the right time, acoustics a bit suspect but you know - a good song is a good song at the end of the day and Louise has stacks of those, as the two short sets proved.

Gig report: Trevor Jones Band @ The Cornerhouse, Cambridge

Band: The Trevor Jones Band
Venue: The Cornerhouse, Cambridge
Date: 03/02/12
Audience: Packed, enthusiastic
Set: All I Am, Shine A Light, Alive, Old Fashioned Woman, Roll On The Rain, Can't Take This Anymore, Falling
Notes: Sandwiched in between two really, really good bands (The Familiar Strangers and Jacqui & Geoff) we played to a pretty packed crowd on Friday at the intimate Cornerhouse. I'm not going to go on about my snare sound, but it's still not right - and for the second gig in a row it's blighted my performance a little I feel, it just doesn't suit the band I was playing for - too sharp, too snappy, and I feel as a result my own playing must have sounded a bit 'bashy'. Not that anyone would have noticed, of course. I've not actually got a gig for ages now (a few weeks) so some time to get a new head on it and spend a bit of time rectifying this situation. Trev, Tony and Bill all played brilliantly I thought, and the crowd seemed really into it, so mustn't grumble.

Writing stuff

Things are falling into shape, just about, I think. There's a few niggles at the moment, like the fact that I've somehow ended up with 48 Penguin bars (they were on offer, but I don't and never have liked them, what WAS I thinking?), and also my right eye seems to be playing up at the moment - it does this about every six months. My left eye is awesome though, never lets me down.

It's been a decent and productive start to the year so far, but lots to be done. One of them is our YouTube series, 'The Oscar Pike Diaries', which I have now written. 6 lovely episodes, which I managed to 'bash out' in 12 hours, whilst listening to 'Please And Thank You' by The Broken Family Band on repeat. I'm really happy with the first drafts - it goes a bit sitcom at times (naturally), but the title character is so easy to write for (you could argue this is because he's basically a loser version of me, or you could argue it is indeed just me, either way you're probably right) and it was lovely to write for 'Maddy' again. It's a bit like a character I wrote for Vaughan Allanson a few years back called Buddy - we managed to keep it going for a few years because I was enjoying writing the dialogue so much. Maddy (played by Izzy Nicolson in the first Oscar show so brilliantly last year) develops during the series, but is completely nuts throughout as much as we see her vulnerable side - yeah, get me, genuine character development and all that. Oscar struggles, because he's supposed to - he needs to learn that sometimes it isn't always about him, but he means well and he'll get there, somehow. Tonight I met up with Izzy for a quick catch up and glance over the scripts and she's really happy with what she'll be working with, typically it's a little overwritten, but there's some nice stuff there and the characters are so clear we'll enjoy this. I'd even say it's some of my best work, but I'm bound to say that, aren't I?

Next up, I need to write a murder mystery this weekend, with a performance on 4th March now booked in. It'll be set in a jazz bar, and will probably feature a death at some point. That's as far as I've got so far, though.

Currently watching: Human Remains (TV series, DVD), 2012 (Sitcom, BBC), Match Of The Day
Currently listening to: Broken Family Band - 'Please And Thank You', Guillemots - 'Red'
Currently reading: Paul Watson - 'Up Pohnpei', although Stuart Murdoch - 'The Celestial Cafe' arrived in the post the other day and I'm desperate to read that.