Gig report: Trevor Jones @ The Royal Oak, St Ives

Band: Trevor Jones (duo set)
Venue: The Royal Oak, St Ives
Date: 22/07/12
Audience: Rowdy, friendly in a loud way
Set: Not sure, loads of songs
Notes: Enjoyed this one, wasn't sure if I was going to but I did. A 2 hour gig with Trevor, with myself on percussion, playing mostly originally music but with the odd cover thrown in. The Royal Oak has a lot of character to it - I'm good friends with the landlady Lindsey and she's done well with this place, great vibe. The locals are lively and loud but always supportive and they really took to Trevor's music - to the extent they were learning the words to his original songs, and between us we had a nice groove going on. Another gig which hurt my hands - that's a lot of conga playing, but it's always nice to play in front of a cheery audience and we certainly had that, not a bad way to spend a Sunday evening at all. 

The Sound Of The Musicals in Ipswich

Last week was spent pretty much wrapped up in a show in Ipswich - drumming for The Sound Of Musicals at the stunning New Wolsey Theatre. It was my second musical of year, following on from The Wedding Singer a few months back, but the thing is - I really don't consider myself to be the kind of drummer that is suitable for musicals. For starters, I don't read music - which for this particular session looked like it might cause a real problem because some of those songs are bloody complex...and there's 27 of them. They were proper 'show tunes', with music from The Lion King, Company, Avenue Q, Wicked etc - a departure from the usual stuff I play but then again that's why I love being a drummer, picking up new grooves, new inspirations. It could have easily been a real mess, what with the band meeting for the first time on the Monday, and three (nervy, shaky) rehearsals later the show opened at the 400-capacity venue, with us behind the 18-strong cast of singers. For the first couple of performances we 'got away with it', by the end of the four night run it was clear that we had virtually nailed it and were even starting to enjoy ourselves.

It was a really tiring week - learning 27 songs (with some radical tempo changes and time signatures) by ear in just a few days and then having to perform them on a relatively big scale was a challenge I enjoyed, and it was great fun to work with the band - Paul, Lewis and Emma as we fought to make this show work. The audiences seem to enjoy it too. Have to admit, on the Tuesday I really didn't think I would work out, but it did, and it's another interesting notch on my drumming CV.

For the record, the songs we played were...
LION KING - Shadowland
CITY OF ANGELS: Opening, The Tennis Song, Ev'rybody's Gotta Be Somewhere
THE SOUND OF MUSIC: The Lonely Goatherd
EVITA: Don't Cry For Me Argentina
AVENUE Q: The Theme, What Do You Do With A BA In English, It Sucks To Be Me, There's A Fine Line, If You Were Gay
SISTER ACT: How I Got The Calling
THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK: Dirty Laundry
WICKED: No One Mourns The Wicked, What Is This Feeling, One Short Day
SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD: A New World, Just One Step, I'd Give It All For You, River Won't Flow, Stars And The Moon, Flagmakers, Hear My Song

As much as I enjoyed it, these songs are now stuck in my head, which is a little annoying. Need to focus on fringe stuff for the next few days now - writing a new scene for 'Greatest Goal' and back in rehearsals for Oscar Pike as we have our next preview this Friday. On Saturday I head off on tour with The British IBM. These are lovely times.

London preview of the shows

After the lively buzz of Friday's hometown performance, we took our fringe shows to London today for a matinee performance at The Wilmington Arms. Really nice space, run by friendly people (and the food was lovely), and despite having to carry the set on the train/bus (the Olympic route opened today, which buggered up our plans to drive there) we felt comfortable enough. Distinct lack of audience - okay, let's cut to the chase, there was five people there. I knew three of them. But they laughed - a lot, in all the right places. Greatest Goal looked lovely today, it just felt good to watch, I enjoyed it a lot. The performance of Oscar felt like it was missing a little energy, I'm blaming it on the fact it was an afternoon performance in front of a tiny (if brilliant) audience, I just never really hit top gear. Messed up the first scene again but recovered smoothly, nobody would have noticed...not a bad performance at all, and probably better than the Bristol one, we're clearly on the right tracks with this show but I just felt today on a personal level wasn't my finest. I know how good this show can be, and it will be. Spent a couple hours after the show catching up with my mate Ade who made the trip down (which is partner Nicola) and hanging out with our brilliant production team, I'm really loving all of this. I have a week off from the show now as I'm drumming for a musical in Ipswich next week, I'm really unprepared for this one, even by my own often unprepared standards. Must get some sleep, and then nail these songs or else it could be a bit messy...

First Cambridge previews of the new shows

Having opened in Bristol last week, 6 days later we were back in Cambridge for our first of two nights in our home town. This was a completely different kettle of fish as we had already sold out (and at one stage oversold) before the event, and I personally knew everyone in the audience apart from Marcus' new lady friend. It's slightly daunting doing the play in front of so many friends - seriously, if I was to ever hold a party a majority of these people would be invited, I like them a lot. Had a brief look/discussion about the Oscar script on Monday night with Izzy, and then a speed run-through of most of it with the full team on Thursday night but such is my own lack of confidence/experience I was still really worried about last night during the day. In fact, I sat at my desk in the office, staring at a spreadsheet, swearing to myself about the fact that in a couple hours time I would be on stage, possibly stranded, in front of people I really like, wearing my pyjamas. It's nice to be out of your comfort zone sometimes though, it's what keeps life interesting...

I was too worried about Oscar stuff to really watch 'Probably The Greatest Goal' properly but from what I saw it looked great again - the audience seemed really taken in by it, it's a lot of words for Grace but she's so composed, her/Izzy/Michelle are doing a great job with it.

Oscar started well because it was an audience who found it funny that I was wearing pyjamas and eating Hula Hoops - to be honest, if they're laughing before any lines have been said, you know it's going to be a lively one. But then I messed up the first scene totally (well, I assume it was me because Grace isn't the type to get things wrong, but somewhere along the line we lost some of the dialogue) - nobody seemed to notice off stage (apart from Izzy, who was looking very worried) and my heart was sinking dramatically inside. But we recovered, and then after that it was a very well spirited performance, better than the Bristol one I think - but then again so it should be, if things were getting worse that would be something to worry about! The odd line or two was scuffed, a couple missed, but it flowed well with bags of (at times manic) energy and felt like yet another victory. And the audience does count for a lot - they were amazing to us last night, a couple of them are already discussing coming to see it again on the 27th, that's a huge compliment.

It's far from perfect, but it's looking more and more like a show every time, it's coming to life nicely, and these previews are serving their purpose - lots of useful feedback, we're hitting our stride, and we're entertaining along the way. By Edinburgh, both shows will be beautiful. Izzy, Grace, Michelle and Alan are the best production team ever, and I'll probably be saying this every time I blog about these shows.

In the meantime I am feeling slightly frustrated by lack of time at the moment to write new material, I'm bursting to work on new stuff but in between the previews and the fringe I have the UK tour, and straight after I have Lodestar and then a tour of Poland. There's so much I want to do though - so many projects that need to be out of my head and into the real world. We're two performances in of the new shows and so far seven people have told me that I should be considering a move into stand-up (Oscar Pike verges on that quite often in the performance with the rants to the audience). I'm flattered, but that certainly isn't on my to-do list. No. No...

First preview performances of new shows @ The Little Black Box Theatre, Bristol

Yesterday we made the trip down to Bristol for the first performances of our two Edinburgh Fringe shows - Probably The Greatest Goal Ever Scored and There's Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Oscar Pike. When we agreed this performance a few months back there was a general feeling that it was probably a week too soon looking at our fairly tight rehearsal schedule, but we were keen to perform at this venue having done our research so we accepted the contract and went for it anyway. Since then we've had some sad and unfortunate off-stage issues meaning our rehearsal time has been extremely limited, but we still approached this one in a positive frame of mind. A week before the show I didn't know my lines for the Oscar show - literally, none of them. It shouldn't have worked really. But...

Running the script with Izzy and Alan-the-soundman on the way whilst driving was fun, car trips are fun, and there we met up with Grace and Michelle to grab lunch and look at the venue on arrival in the early afternoon. Despite some initial technical problems (something to do with lights, I wasn't really paying attention) we all loved the venue - it's a great little space, it's called The Little Black Box Theatre and that's exactly what it is - a little black box. Absolutely perfect for what we do - great size, and because we're from out of town and unlikely to attract a huge crowd it wouldn't take much to make it feel busy. Rehearsals in the space in the afternoon felt a little stressful - but that's because we care so much, and a decision was made to only perform the title piece from 'Greatest Goal...' and not the other two short pieces that go alongside it, along with the Oscar piece. That was because Michelle is all about the quality, and I trust her judgement completely, it's nice to do things to the right standard.

It later emerged that the posters/flyers never reached the venue, and were probably sat in a sorting office somewhere, so it was a miracle we had any audience at all. Luckily, one of my best friends Matt lives in Bristol and managed to drag a few friends with him, other people we didn't know showed up (not sure how they heard of it, but grateful they did), and suddenly the venue was half-full and given the tiny size of it, it felt busy.

Probably The Greatest Goal Ever Scored, a piece I wrote last year (and the show where I first met Grace - she's now taking the starring role in it again) was first up. It's just so lovely you know, and that's nothing to do with the writing. Grace is so easy to watch - it's effectively a long monologue, but she never gets boring, it's just so comfortable and Michelle's direction matches it completely. Yeah, it's a bit gentle perhaps, but that's the point of it - because the bits where it's not are really effective. Grace, Michelle and Izzy are brilliant, I can't wait to see what they've done to the other two pieces in this show as they just have this knack of bringing everything to life.

After a quick change of set, allowing the audience to grab a beer from downstairs, it was time for Oscar Pike to return for the first performance of the new show. This is obviously the second time I've played Oscar, following 'Is It Too Late To Save Oscar Pike?' last year, and there's no denying the character is an extension of myself anyway so it's not really 'acting' as such, but that still didn't mean it wasn't going to be hard work. 47 pages of hard work, to be precise. Before Saturday evening, such is the way things have been, we have not run the play in it's entirety with music cues, the set, costume, props...it really could have gone either way. Yeah, it was a little messy at times, the odd line was scuffed, but there was an energy throughout the whole piece. Perhaps slightly too much energy when (not wishing to give away too much of the plot here) one of Izzy's characters, Belinda, pushes me away - last night I was pushed a little too forcefully and as a result flung across the stage, banging into a table and knocking a can of beer over everything. It threw me (literally) and I messed up the next line but the audience seemed to appreciate my honesty, if anything it relaxed them even more, it seemed to break any boundaries between performer and audience. Last year, if I had dried up on stage, I would have been a wreck. A year later, I just laughed it off...maybe I'm getting the hang of this. All of us seemed to be really enjoying ourselves up there, even when the lines weren't perfect we knew where it was going. And luckily for us that audience last night were fantastic - we felt welcome, they enjoyed it, everyone came away happy. On paper, there was no way this show should have happened - it could have been an absolute on-stage car crash, but we just about got away with it. In Cambridge on Friday it's going to be a bit special, I think, we're rehearsing a lot next week.

I've really enjoyed this weekend, the beers afterwards, the banter post-show, all the socialising after all the very hard work. Izzy said later on that we're the 'best team to work with ever' - and I agree, completely. It's a bit like being in a band, sometimes things just really work. I'd be happy to work with Izzy, Grace, Michelle and Alan forever - there's never a cross word between us, we all move in the same direction, we work extremely hard and we laugh along the way. I'm bloody loving this, you know, long may it continue.

Gig report: Eureka Stockade @ The Black Bull, Godmanchester

Band: Eureka Stockade
Venue: The Black Bull, Godmanchester
Date: 06/07/12
Audience: Enough of them there to make it work, very nice
Set: All Alone, Been There Before, Without You, Goodbye You've Gone, Caught In A Fire, Violence, Through Every Darkness
Notes: Lovely little gig this one actually. We were the opening act, on early - 8pm, on a bill of five acts, and with a busy day ahead of me the next day I was happy about this. Despite me accidentally sending Andy to the wrong venue (The Black Bull in Brampton instead of Godmanchester) it all worked out nicely in the end. It was a no-pressure kind of gig, mix of old and new 'Stockade songs, and with a really enthusiastic audience - which considering the time of evening was very surprising but welcome. It was a sweaty one, but a good little workout, we were all happy enough.