February 25th: Poole, Dorset – the end of the tour!

So here we are: the last gig of the tour. I’m currently sat on my sofa with my laptop on my knee thinking about last October when I sent out a tentative email to my mailing list asking them if my arriving at their front door with my guitar was something they’d like. I proposed 8 gigs over all, a mini-tour if you will,  but after a response that I couldn’t quite believe, I found myself embarking on a three and a bit month tour around the UK to play 22 living room gigs! The last of which (but not the least) was on Saturday in Poole, hosted by the lovely Susan Luminati.

You’d think that, it being the final gig on this tour, that there should be some sort of massive finale, like a gig that lasted all night or one that I had to play on someone’s roof; y’know, something mammoth that would sum up three month’s worth of invading people’s living rooms with my guitar… but Saturday wasn’t like that. Instead, I was treated to a very relaxed last gig of the tour: a friendly audience and only a half an hour set at 2 o’clock in the afternoon! Brilliant.

Myself and Sabrina (who’s probably accompanied me on more gigs on this tour that anyone else – she deserves a medal) arrived at about 1.30pm at Susan’s home, a beautiful house that’s only about ten minutes away from the beach. We met Susan at the door and she led us into the living room, which contained all the things you’d expect to see in a living room: sofas, a coffee table and… an indoor swimming pool. Now, I’d like to tell you that I performed the gig floating about on a large inflatable crocodile in the middle of said pool, but sadly I didn’t. Let’s face it, it might not have worked (might not). As it was, there was an incredible buffet of food laid out on the table  and 20 or so of Susan’s friends all gathered there to celebrate her birthday. I perched myself on the ledge next to the swimming pool for the first two songs, but then decided to stand up when it came to ‘Go’ to walk around and teach them their parts, so for the last time, here’s the scores:

Volume: 6/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 8/10

Which leaves them with a very nice 22/30 – they were very tuneful!

After I had played, we stuck around for a bit to have a chat with everyone before saying our goodbyes and heading to Poole beach. Despite it still being really very cold (it is February, after all), I decided that since we were at the beach it would be stupid not to go for a paddle in the sea. I don’t regret it, but I did lose all feeling in my feet for a good ten minutes. Below is my reaction…

On this tour I have had the opportunity to travel the country and see some awe-inspiring and beautiful areas of the world and meet hundreds of fascinating people in the process. I have visited 15 counties, with Buckinghamshire as my most visited  (I played there four times! Thanks, Bucks), and through the kindness of people I had never met before, I was invited to play in their houses, big and small, remote and inner city, to audiences ranging from 11 to 50 strong, all sat on sofas, cushions or garden furniture to experience this thing called a Living Room Gig. Under this banner, I was given the chance to play on a nuclear submarine in Plymouth, which I would never had the opportunity to do otherwise and which has gone down as one the best days I have ever had. As such, it would not right for me to finish the last blog post for this tour without saying a HUGE, HERCULEAN thanks to the following people:

First up, the hosts of every gig – even though they had genuinely no idea what the gig was going to be like, every single one of them welcomed me, a complete stranger, into their home and made each gig completely enjoyable and an unforgettable experience. The hosts of the gigs that were too far away from London even offered to put me up for the night, so in the order that the gigs were in, I want to give the warmest and most heartfelt thanks to…

Jo Rice, Keith and Judith Turland, Anne Tasker, Roger Morgan, Jayne and Sophie Cookson, Sally Garrett, Donald Strachan, Fiona McGregor, Kathy Findlay, Ian and Amanda Slack, Sue North, Stephen Micallef, Lucy Brazier, George Harvey, Karen Rice, Jayne Swallow, Carolyn and Will Arnold, Jon Williams, Andy Kimmings, Maggie Fraser, Cleo Carruthers, Malcolm and Jenny Redman and Susan Luminati. Thank you all for making this tour the success it was!

Secondly, I would like to thank my dedicated and lovely troop of musical guests. They were all completely happy to follow me into the unknown and join me in doing something that, in the beginning, I wasn’t even sure was going to work! I’m very, very lucky to have some brilliant and talented friends who will allow me to utilise their skills for my own means ;), so a massive, massive thank you to….

Sabrina Head (vocals), Nicola Redman (vocals, ukulele, comedy), Andy Chapman (percussion), Phoebe Gardiner (vocals), Anna Stainton (vocals), Charlie Wilkinson (guitar and ukulele), Lauren Carter (vocals) and Jenny Forsyth (vocals). I owe you all dinner and a beverage of your choice.

Last and certainly not least, thank you to every single person on this tour who I’ve met along the way and who bought a CD, signed the mailing list or has subsequently read this blog or visited my website, Facebook or watched any youtube videos that I’ve put up! The whole point of this tour was to meet people on a more personal level, to ‘break down the barrier between the performer and audience’ as I’ve been saying at the beginning of these gigs, and safe to say, I have massively enjoyed meeting and talking to the people who’ve frequented the living rooms that I’ve played in!

One of my favourite things about this tour has been the ‘Go’ sing-a-long competition – at first it was just an excuse to have some fun, but it’s amazing how competitive each group got, especially when I’ve informed them that they’d be scored! It was brilliant teaching people the parts and I loved that most people really got into it, but I was very happy to gleefully force those who weren’t so sure about the whole singing thing to join in anyway. ;)

So which group won? If you’d like to see where your group came over all, here’s the final scoreboard with the host’s name and location:

27/30: Sue North – Prestwood, Buckinghamshire

26/30: Cleo Carruthers – Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire; George Harvey – Aldbury, Hertfordshire; Ian and Amanda Slack – Chesham, Buckinghamshire; Nicola Redman – Haltwhistle, Cumbria

25/30: Keith and Judith Turland – Stokesley, Yorkshire; Andy Kimmings – Huddersfield, Yorkshire

24/30: Jon Williams – Bradninch, Devon; Stephen Micallef – HMS Vigilant, Devon; Fiona McGregor – Reston, Berwickshire

23/30: Jayne and Sophie Cookson – South Warnborough, Hampshire; Malcolm and Jenny Redman – Bush Nook, Cumbria; Maggie Fraser – Pelynt, Cornwall; Jayne Swallow – Ropley, Hampshire

22/30: Karen Rice – Bramley, Hampshire; Lucy Brazier – Martley, Worcestershire; Sally Garrett – Penn, Buckinghamshire; Anne Tasker – Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent; Susan Luminati - Poole, Dorset

21/30: Jo Rice – Ilminster, Somerset; Will and Carolyn Arnold – Chesham, Buckinghamshire

20/30: Roger Morgan – Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire; Kathy Findlay – Kelso, Roxburghshire

Well done to all the groups and thank you for your brilliant participation!

So to the highest scorers were… *drum roll*… Sue North and her audience in Prestwood! CONGRATULATIONS! I should point out that more often than not, the scores for each group had very little to do with the number of people in the room. In fact, the winning group only had 18 people in it, but they made the loudest, most enthusiastic and entertaining sound that I had heard on the whole tour! Sue, something will be coming in the post for you as a small prize. I would post a picture of it up, but I haven’t finished making it yet…

Right, well that’s it! I suppose my very last thanks goes to you for following this blog – I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the tour as much as I’ve enjoyed doing it! If it has, by any chance, inspired you to host a living room gig of your own but you think you’ve missed the boat, never fear because… YOU HAVEN’T! I will, without doubt, be doing another living room tour at some point; possibly later this year, possibly next year, but if you’d like to throw me a line about hosting a gig to lisbee@marionet.co.uk, then I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks again for reading and if you come to a gig, please come and say hello – it would be lovely to meet you. :)

Lisbee x

 

P.S. Below is a little video I’ve thrown together amalgamating loads of the videos and photos that I’ve collected along the way on this tour, plus evidence of some very enthusiastic ‘Go’ sing-a-longs! Enjoy…

February 18th: Bush Nook, Gilsland, Cumbria

I spent most of Saturday day time leaping about public transport: the first task of the day was to get myself to the BBC Radio London studio on Regent Street for a chat and a song on Robert Elms’ show (you can listen to the interview and live track here, 1 hour, 9  min in) before running through London’s tube system with my guitar back to my flat to pick up my ukulele and bag, and then legging it to Euston train station to get a train to Haltwhistle in Cumbria for the penultimate gig on my Living Room Tour! That’s right, it’s almost over (sad face).

When I arrived, the lovely Nicola Redman, who has accompanied me on many a gig on this tour, picked me up in her car and took me to Bush Nook bed & breakfast, which was not only the location for the evening’s gig but also where she lives; the B&B is run by Nicola’s parents, Malcolm, Jenny, and her brother Stephen, and it’s probably the only place on this tour that I’ll have played twice. Remember the post about the impromptu living room gig last November? Well that was there, but this time it definitely wasn’t at all impromptu as Nic’s dad Malcolm seemed to have done a good job promoting it!

The Redman’s had very kindly offered to put me up in one of the B&B’s rooms for two nights, so the first thing I did upon arrival was put my bag in the room I would be staying in. I went in, put down my stuff and turned to go out again, but not without noticing first something mildly odd: on the middle of the bed was… a wrench. I would like to think that this was quite a good joke (the kind of one that Nicola would probably make anyway) playing on the fact that one of my songs on the new album is called ‘Wrench’. Sadly it turned out that the wrench on the bed was actually an accident and had been left there after someone fixed something in the room, which is a bit of an anti-climax, so for the purposes of this blog, the wrench was left there because of the song. Got it? Good.

When everyone was seated, the living room had a good thirty or so people seated or stood. The audience were enthusiastic and very much up for singing when it came to ‘Go’. In fact, group two were possibly a little too enthusiastic… they got into their part so much that group three could not hear me at all to learn their part, so technically it was a two-part sing-a-long, but here’s the scores:

Volume: 9/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 6/10

Giving a total of 23/30, which actually means that they didn’t score quite as well as the last audience in the same location, but it was still a pretty good effort! And fun, to boot. Nicely done, especially to group two. I’m fairly sure I’ve lost a few frequencies in my left ear…

The interval meant that we all got the opportunity to try Nicola’s carefully prepared canapés, and since she has sampled a good many of the foodstuffs on offer with me at these gigs and she is a ridiculously good cook herself, the spread was fairly astounding. Her Twitter account (Irishpickle) in the two days leading up the gig had been awash with descriptions of food preparation, such as, ‘Went to Iceland, 1000 springs rolls & a prawn ring for £5. Bargain’, so as you can imagine, I was fascinated as to what sort of canapé-themed heaven we would be entering on Saturday night, and we weren’t disappointed: there was pineapple and cheese on sticks, mini pasties (obviously, after our desperate search for them in Devon), mini sausages dipped in honey and sesame seeds… the list goes on. It was impressive, to say the least.

Once everyone had happily canapéd themselves, we sat ourselves down in the living room once more and Stephen, Nicola’s talented writer big brother, performed some spoken word in the form of one of his own poems (of which I have shamefully forgotten the title of), followed by Nicola playing two of her comedy songs on the ukulele. The first was about being Irish (‘get over it’) and the second was themed around the subject of breaking it to a mother that her son is going to grow up to be gay; both had us all in stitches. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, check this girl out and go and see her live. She is very funny: www.nicolaredman.com.

Halfway through the evening, something happened that was a bit of a first for me at gigs: two members of the audience became grandparents! A phone rang halfway through a song, followed by the news the little Imogen Elizabeth Rose had just entered the world. Congratulations to Jan and David for your new roles in grandparenthood! Once the gig was over, everyone stuck around to be merry, polish off the canapés and toast the new arrival.

The next morning we were treated to an excellent full Irish breakfast by Malcolm (a full Irish seemed to be very much like a full English, but it contained a lot of different breads, including potato bread, which was very tasty) followed by partaking in Stephen’s suggestion of doing some ‘laughter yoga’, which was not so much ‘yoga’ as standing in a circle and… laughing. It was fun, but we all agreed that perhaps we hadn’t done it properly, as it didn’t really seem to have done anything. Never mind – worth a try!

Sycamore Gap

The rest of the day was spent walking around the incredible countryside that surrounds Hadrian’s wall with Nicola, Stephen and friends, Warren and Dan. We visited Sycamore Gap, also known as the Robin Hood Tree, a section of Hadrian’s Wall with a huge lone Sycamore tree between two crests and named for its use in the film ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’, followed by an old Victorian outside swimming pool in the middle of some woods, which would be a great location for a music video, or possibly a murder. Safe to say, it is no longer a functioning swimming pool, unless you’d like a particularly mossy swim. After exploring the pool and then playing some pool in a nearby hotel bar (see what I did there?), we made our way back to Bush Nook for an amazing roast dinner cooked by Jenny. It was a pretty ideal way to spend a Sunday!

Testing the waters in the old Victorian swimming pool

The next morning, I said goodbye and reluctantly left the lovely Bush Nook and the fresh air to head back to the Big Smoke on the train. I’m a big fan of long train journeys: they’re a great excuse to watch many, many episodes of 30 Rock, ‘I’m a star! I’m on top! Somebody bring me some haaaaam!’ When I grow up, I want to be Liz Lemon.

I’d like to say big big thanks to everyone who came to the gig on Saturday for being so enthusiastic and noisy, and a massive thank you goes to the Redmans: Malcolm, Jenny, Stephen and Nicola, for being such excellent hosts and making me feel so welcome at Bush Nook! If you’d like to explore Hadrian’s Wall or you’d just like to stay somewhere beautiful in the Northern countryside, I cannot recommend Bush Nook B&B enough: www.bushnook.co.uk You never know, you might even get to sample a full Irish Breakfast. :)

Next weekend is the final gig on my Living Room Tour in Poole, Dorset! Feeling rather sad that soon it’ll all be over…

Malcolm Redman (host): Just had a fabulous living room gig with lisbee… thanks for everything .. bush nook was very happy !

February 11th: Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire

On a rather icy Saturday afternoon, Nicola and I pulled up to a drive in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, a picturesque area of the world that I’ve often driven through on my way to my parent’s house in Herefordshire but have rarely had an excuse to stop in. We slipped and slid our way down the path to the front door of Cleo Carruthers, our host for the evening’s gig. When I first received an email from Cleo about playing in her living room last October, she was getting ready to move house from Buckinghamshire (my most visited county on this tour!) to Gloucestershire at the end of December and she had warned me that things may be slightly chaotic, but when we arrived, the house had nothing but a homely feel to it and the odd lack of carpet in places, which seemed acceptable for a house just moved in to. No chaos at all! Nic and I set up in the living room and slowly but surely Cleo’s friends arrived, mainly also from Buckinghamshire, until we had a good house full!

With a myriad of different chairs of shapes and sizes crammed into every available space in the living room and a warm fire crackling happily in the hearth, I sat down with my guitar and got playing! Whilst chatting to a few people beforehand, I had established that there were quite a few members of a choir in the audience but I had also heard murmurings of singers ‘not singing tonight’ batted about here and there, which spurred me on: I was determined that I would get them singing. If I could get the crew of a nuclear submarine singing (who in actual fact didn’t need that much encouragement, in the end), then I would get that room alight with the sounds of ‘Go’! I like a challenge.

When it came to it however, my audience took only a little encouragement to get singing and they actually became very competitive when I introduced to them the idea of scoring! They were very keen to beat the highest mark scored so far (straight 9/10s in Prestwood, Bucks) and made a really impressive sound – as such, they definitely pushed themselves into the high end of the score range, but can they beat 27/30? Let’s see…

Volume: 8/10

Enthusiasm: 9/10

Accuracy: 9/10

So close! They just weren’t quite loud enough to rival Prestwood! However, 26/30 is still pretty damn good, and this group certainly had the accuracy and enthusiasm to get the top marks! Nicely done all – I really enjoyed that ‘Go’ sing-a-long.

During the interval, Cleo laid at an amazing food spread, which included the best ham both Nic and I have ever eaten (which reminds me of Liz Lemon’s ‘Ham’ song in 30 Rock… anyone?). I’m not usually a big meat fan, but this was something else. She gave us the recipe so that we could try it ourselves, but anyone who knows me will know that I am an appalling cook (except for sandwiches: I make mind-blowing sandwiches), so it’s probably best that I don’t try it unless I’m hatching a plot to poison someone I don’t like. Be warned if I ever feed you glazed ham…

After my set, the music wasn’t over! Cleo’s friend Ronnie had brought his keyboard with him and played some great covers like ‘On my way to Georgia’ whilst a friend (who annoyingly I’ve forgotten the name of, even though I’m sure he introduced himself to me – sorry!) played some sort of conga drum (my knowledge of drum names is limited) alongside him. It was a really relaxed and friendly evening! I especially enjoyed coming up with innovative new dance moves with Cleo’s younger son Chris, which were then taught to everyone who passed, whether they wanted to dance or not, before Nic and I had to leave to get to our accommodation for the night.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone there for being so friendly and enthusiastic, to Ronnie for his set and to Serena for her tambourine skills, and to Nicola once again for her backing vocal skills! Massive thanks go to Cleo and her sons, Chris and Keiran for hosting and making us feel so welcome! It was also Cleo’s birthday, so happy birthday again! Glad I could be a part of it.

To finish off, here’s ‘The Archives’ from the evening:

Cleo Carruthers (host): Thank you and Nicola again hugely for entertaining us on Saturday night. I have had fantastic feedback about the party and there have been so many positive comments about your gig. It was a very special and amazing evening.

February 4th: Pelynt, Cornwall

I spent much of last week constantly checking the weather forecast and monitoring the likelihood of snow in preparation for my road trip to Cornwall on Saturday. I had images of us (myself and Sabrina, the living room gig expert that she now is) getting snowed on in scenarios that ranged in intensity, from simply getting stuck in traffic for a very long time to scenes not dissimilar to parts of the film, ‘The Day after Tomorrow’, where we would lose the car completely under 10 feet of ice and have to take shelter in a library somewhere with other stranded motorway drivers, burning books in an attempt to keep warm whilst quietly preparing ourselves for the next ice age… or something. Plus, I’m well aware of how rubbish London (or to be honest, England in general) is at coping with snow, no matter the amount, so I felt the need to be prepared. Nothing was going to stop me getting to Cornwall, not even the imminent approach of the next ice age.

On Saturday morning I checked the BBC weather forecast one last time before packing my car with the inclusion of a large blanket and a bag of ‘emergency’ chocolate and apples (for a balanced diet). When I arrived at Sabrina’s house, it seemed that she had been having a similar thought process and she added two more blankets to our  snow equipment, so in the likelihood that we got stuck in the snow at least we would be able to make a small bivouac out of blankets and live off the nutritious combination of chocolate and apples for a few days. In the event, all that we encountered on our drive to Cornwall was a mildly interesting combination of heavy rain, snow, sleet and fog (not all at once), so that when we arrived in Pelynt everything had just got a bit… damp, which, I won’t lie, was a bit of an anticlimax. However, it being my first time in Cornwall (aside from a holiday when I was 4 months old, though I’m not really sure I was paying attention at the time) I was quite excited and the landscape was pretty stunning, even through the rain. After getting only mildly lost (*cough* Helga *cough*) we finally found our venue for the evening and the home of Maggie and Trevor Fraser, the hosts. The gig would be in their holiday cottage that they were also kindly allowing us to stay in for the night – safe to say, it’s probably the most impressive accommodation that I’ve stayed in on this tour so far!

The evening began in Maggie and Trevor’s kitchen with an impressive vat of chilli in varying degrees of  hotness made by Maggie  - luckily I managed to eat the ‘medium’ hot chilli, otherwise it would have been less of a gig and more of just me wheezing gently at them from the corner. Once everyone was happily full, we changed location and moved to the holiday cottage next door where the space was neatly filled by the 30 or so people in the audience. Having chatted to quite a few people before the gig, it had come to light that there were more than a few singers in the room so when it came to ‘Go’, I made sure that they were well distributed around the groups before getting started – the result was one of the most tuneful audiences I’ve had so far! Here’s what I gave them:

Volume: 6/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 9/10

Giving them a total score of 23/30! Nicely done!

I have been repeatedly surprised on this tour by constant reminders of how small the world actually is: when I mentioned Basingstoke as being the area I grew up in, a small cheer went up on my right and it turned out that there was a group in the room who were from that area of the world. Then, during the break in the middle of my set, I met a couple who told me that their daughter had gone to Goldsmiths College in London and upon further discussion, we realised that not only had I probably met her, but I knew well the people she was friends with, as they had been the year above me on my course. Bizarre, but there you go.

The next morning Sabrina and I decided that we had better try and explore at least a small section of Cornwall before heading back home, so we drove into the nearby town of Looe to get some breakfast and we were met by a pretty sea-side town. However, we did need to get back to London, so reluctantly we left Cornwall and drove the epic drive back home and into what was left of the snow. It was basically brown sludge in London, so no blanket bivouacs needed. Shame.

The group in Pelynt were all lovely so thanks very much to everyone there for being so friendly! Big thanks once more to the lovely Sabrina for her company and harmonising skills, and massive thanks to Maggie and Trevor for making us feel so welcome and hosting such a great evening! Based upon the weekend alone, I definitely intend to return to Cornwall.

To finish, here’s ‘Silence scares me’ from the gig:

Maggie Fraser (host): Everyone enjoyed Saturday night so much, thank you and I hope your return journey was not too snowy!

January 28th: Huddersfield, Yorkshire

I’ve been to Huddersfield once before during my tour of the UK at the end of 2010. I played at a venue called ‘The Parish’ with my band: bassist Pete Randall, and drummer Andy Chapman. I have two very clear memories of that gig: firstly, it was very very cold (it was October). I remember seriously considering attempting to wear gloves whilst playing, which probably wouldn’t have worked, so it’s a good job I didn’t try. Secondly, towards the end of our set and in a gap between songs, a bloke called out, ‘Is that a guitar?’, obviously referring to my 8-string guitar. A slight unusual question, but I told him that yes, it was a guitar… I just put it down as a bizarre sort of heckle.

Anyway, I’ll come back to that in a minute, but for now I was on my way back to Huddersfield! I stopped off at the train station to pick up my company for the evening and backing vocalist, Lauren Carter, who was coming from Manchester, and off we popped to see Andy Kimmings, or Stripey Andy (he told me that the nickname comes from a penchant to wearing stripey jumpers), who would be the host for that evening’s living room gig. The venue was inside a huge old country house that had been split up into 8 or so flats and the whole building had been re-christened as the Punk Palace by its residents – now, you may think that playing in a Punk Palace might have been a bit of an odd location for me to play in, considering that my music tends to lean more in the folk/pop direction, but this potential clash of genre didn’t seem to bother my audience in the slightest. In fact, I’d say they were probably one of my most enthusiastic audiences on this tour! Next stop: Death Metal Mansion.

The living room was probably the most colourfully decorated that I’ve played in so far; each wall and surface seemed to be a different colour and on the front door was a brilliant hand-drawn poster made by one of Andy’s friends (left), which Andy kindly gave me a framed copy of before I left. We managed to get 20 or so people into the room and some people even got to recline on a bed for the evening, since there was one in the corner, so once everyone was comfortably seated (or lying down), Lauren and I got cracking. I should point out here that Lauren and I never actually got rehearse together any of the songs she was singing on, due to her living in Manchester and my living in London. As it was, I’d simply sent her the tracks with the instructions to ‘learn a harmony on these!’ and that was it, so for her to have actually learned the tracks and still agreed to come along without any sense of preparation was testimony to the fact that she was a) a very good harmoniser, and b) brave.

At the beginning of the evening I had told Andy the story above of the guitar question at the Parish and he looked at me for a moment and then said, ‘That was my mate Kips!’ Turns out that he and some friends had been at that gig and the culprit for that question was going to be there that evening! So when the gig began, I managed to locate Kips in the audience and regaled the tale to the audience, who thought it was a great story and poor Kips was immediately ribbed for not knowing what a guitar looked like, except that, he managed to explain, he’d meant to ask if it was an eight string guitar, but had been a bit drunk, so a few of the words got left out. Brilliant. I hope he doesn’t mind me re-telling it again here!

Here’s the scores of the ‘Go’ sing-a-long:

Volume: 9/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 7/10

BUT I’m giving them a bonus point for some impressive vocal improv that came about once all three parts had been learned, which bumps up their score to 25/30!

All in all they were an excellent group to play to and it was great to have a chat with some of them afterwards as well, even though I pretty much managed to fall asleep in the chair I was sat on after the gig (it had been a travel-heavy week). Thanks very much to everyone there for being so friendly and welcoming, Kips for the amazing vat of curry he provided for everyone and Paul for the home made cake (who I at first thought was called ‘Erpol’, due to a misunderstanding when he introduced himself to me as ‘Er… Paul’). Huge thanks to the lovely Lauren for her backing vocals and coping extremely well with the informal and ‘fresh’ method of rehearsal (as in, no rehearsal), and finally massive thanks to Andy for hosting, putting me up for the night and making me a bacon sandwich in the morning!

Stripey Andy (host):  I can’t thank you both enough for coming to play! It was an honour to be part of of Living Room Tour! Everybody I’ve spoken to since Saturday has had nothing but good things to say about the evening!

January 24th/25th: Bradninch, Devon

Last tuesday I travelled down to Devon to play two gigs over two days consecutively: the first was at Bradninch Folk Club and the second was a living room gig in the same town. Coming with me was the lovely Nicola Redman (who’s accompanied me on a few of these gigs now) for our action-packed two-day mini-tour, and it really did turn out to be a bit on the ‘action-packed’ side…

On Tuesday morning, Nicola arrived at my flat and between us we managed to carry all the stuff down the road towards where my car was parked; there’s no parking outside where I live in London so I’ve been parking down a small side street nearby. As we approached the entrance to said side street, we were greeted by a bevy of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks blocking the entrance to the street. This did not bode well. Upon closer inspection it was revealed that a garage next to the area my car was parked in had chosen that morning to be on fire (luckily with no one hurt), which meant that although I could see my car – it was only about 200 feet from where we were stood – there was no way that we’d be able to get to it through the perimeter the Police had created around the fire. Enter Plan B: I reckoned that if we could approach the street from the other direction, we could get to the car and leave via a different route, so off we went. It began to rain heavily, which made things fun, but we managed to find the other end of the street at a point where I was pretty sure I could access the car. I left Nicola with the stuff and approached a Policeman who was busy stopping people from getting near the burning building, and after a small amount of light pleading and promising that I wasn’t going to attempt to drive past/through the fire (I also looked pretty bedraggled by this point, which may have helped), he allowed me to drive my car further down the road to pack it. Excellent: progress! So now we had the car with all the instruments in it we’d be able to happily be on our way to Devon. I drove the car away from the fire, around the estate and down a small road that led us… back to where the fire was. It seemed that there was no alternative way out of that street. I turned the car off and we resigned ourselves to waiting until the Police would let us through, however long that might take, but at least we were not getting rained on and things were greatly improved when Nicola produced a bag of food from her bag (food improves every situation, as does tea. My mum swears by the healing qualities of tea). We sat and ate oranges and oat cakes and played a game that involved guessing how close each passing pedestrian would get to the burning building before a policeman noticed them and leaped up to stop them. One bloke got amazingly close before the Policeman realised he was there. Bizarrely, I’m not sure that he’d actually notice the fire and various emergency services in front of him, but when you need to get to the shop to buy milk…

Anyway, eventually the nice Policeman I’d met earlier knocked on our window with a ‘good luck’ (I assumed for the gig, but possibly for life in general) and finally we were able to leave! It’s a good job that I tend to leave earlier than I need to in order to get places because we still managed to get to Bradninch on time!

When we arrived, the first people we met were Jon and Liz Williams, the hosts for the following night’s living room gig, who took us to the small B&B nearby where we could put our stuff before heading to our venue for the evening, the Bradninch Folk Club. Before the gig we were invited by the promoter, Gerard and his wife Joy, to join them for a brilliant home cooked dinner at their house, which after the long drive from London, plus our fire-based morning, was exactly what we needed! Feeling very well fed, we headed back over to the folk club to get cracking on the gig. There were a few musicians on before I played, one of which was Jerry, the owner of the little B&B that Nicola and I were staying at. He played an instrumental guitar set and there were a few other acts who played folk and one guy who played some great blues stuff with innuendo-based lyrics: something about biscuits…

Here’s ‘It must be love’ from my set that night:

During the interval a raffle was held with the usual raffle-esque array of prizes: chocolates, a hamper, a book… and a tin of Budget baked beans, which Nicola immediately had her eye on. Sadly, despite buying a whole row of raffle tickets, her dreams were not fulfilled and the beans went to someone else. However, as the triumphant winner of the beans walked passed us, they must have glanced at Nicola’s face, which was a picture of woe, because they gave her their hard-won beans! I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so happy.

The next day we had a fair amount of time before the living room gig that evening, so we decided to do a bit of exploring. Jon and Liz had told us about a huge vintage/antique warehouse nearby called Fagins, so we decided to start there. The place itself was enormous and seemed to be packed to the brim with an immense amount of old furniture and other vintage items. In fact, it had so much in it that it seemed to be spilling out of itself and the courtyard was full of old fridges, carts and two life-sized plastic cows. I had a brief chat with one of them, just to get a feel for the area…

It would have been very easy to get lost in that warehouse as the floors seemed to go on forever; every single surface was covered in old TVs, books, pub signs, tables, children’s toys, mannequins and bits of taxidermy. It felt a bit the inanimate object afterlife. The taxidermy section was especially impressive, if not a little unnerving (I like animals, but I prefer them alive), and it was amongst the stuffed weasels and heads of deer and foxes that we discovered a rather ancient and arthritic cat, who was very much alive and keen to say hello, but it did look alarmingly like one of the pieces of taxidermy and I had already been fooled once by a large stuffed dog sat on top of some giant bellows. It’s possible that someone else made the same mistake and put it there as part of the collection.

It wasn’t just us and the cat there, I did also meet this charming man hanging out by a snooker table:

He was a bit quiet, but I think we’ll stay friends.

The sign outside

The rest of the day was spent exploring the surrounding areas before heading back to Bradninch for the evening’s living room gig. We were greeted at the front door by a sign announcing the gig and when we entered the house, preparations were well underway! Two chairs signalled the placement of the stage and a purple gauze and some fairy lights provided an attractive backdrop. I should also mention here the extraordinary lengths that Jon had gone to to make sure that the living room would be big enough to house the entire audience: he had knocked a wall down. I’ve had people move furniture around and bring in extra chairs, but I’ve never had someone remove an whole section of their house for a gig before. Deeply impressive!

Once everyone had filtered in and found a place to sit, there were approximately 40 people in the living room and sat up the stairs. They were a lively and friendly audience and Jon had prepared them well for the ‘Go’ sing-a-long by asking them to learn it before they arrived, so here’s what I gave them:

Volume: 7/10

Enthusiasm: 9/10

Accuracy: 8/10

Giving them a very nice 24/30! Good work!

The first set went fairly smoothly, aside from a highly confusing moment when someone on the stairs activated a Thunderbird 1 toy and I thought the whole house was taking off. At the break in the middle, Nicola and I located a tupperware of mini pasties on the food table, which is something that we had been trying to find all day so we leaped upon the opportunity. However, we couldn’t eat them right then and there because we were about to start singing again and the two things don’t really mix, so we decided to put two of the mini-pasties in the bag containing my CDs to save until after the gig. This was a good, solid plan. Or at least, it would have been, were it not for the very accurate sense of smell that dogs have; Noodle the black labrador had been sat very patiently in front of me for most of the gig, but half way through the second set he caught wind of the pasties and made a beeline for the bag with the CDs in. I was mid-song at the time and both Nicola and I made an sudden and awkward lurch towards the impeding dog to save the pasties, about which the audience had no idea, so all they saw was Noodle head single-mindedly towards the bag next to me and Nicola and I leap out to stop him, thus enabling me to learn an interesting factoid about myself: I will stop whatever I’m doing to save a pasty in peril.

At the end of a highly enjoyable night, Jon and Liz were kind enough to give us some presents of chocolate, flowers… and a tin of baked beans for Nicola. You probably don’t need me to tell you how happy she was, but I think two tins of beans in two days emotionally exhausted her.

Huge thanks go to Jerry and Caroline for looking after us so well in their B&B, Gerard and Joy for the great homemade dinner and for having me to play at Bradninch Folk Club and to both audiences for being so much fun. Massive thanks to Nicola for coming with me for the mini-tour and providing the harmonies and general hilarity, and finally to John, Liz, Joe, Isaac, Laurie, Simon, Gabriel and Noodle the dog for inviting us, hosting a gig, going as far as to knock a whole wall down, looking after us so well!

I’m going to conclude this rather epic post with one of the images that Nicola and I found on a calendar in Jon and Liz’s bathroom entitled, ‘Extraordinary Chickens’. I hope it didn’t seem too odd that we both went in the toilet to laugh at chickens:

Jon Williams (host): Can’t quite believe the gig just happened, but it deffo did and it was FABULOUS – you were AMAZING. Thanks ever so much for coming down here – had a top couple of days.

January 22nd: Chesham, Buckinghamshire

This will have been the second time that I’ve visited Chesham to play on this tour, and the third living room gig in Buckinghamshire! Unlike the others though, this one was an afternoon gig, so it felt a bit odd to be arriving at lunch time to play a gig, and even weirder to leave at 6pm and get home before midnight!

The hosts for the afternoon were Carolyn and Will Arnold, both of whom I met when I played at a venue that I’ve mentioned here before, The Drawingroom in Chesham, last October. I had brought my percussionist, Andy, with me again for this one and once set up with all his percussion-based bits of equipment, we looked around and realised that we had somehow managed to take up most of the living room, so it was lucky that this was also the smallest audience that I’ve played to on this tour! They were 11 strong in number, plus a few very small people (as in children, not dwarves) but this didn’t seem to hamper them much when it came to singing ‘Go’! Here’s their scores:

Olli and Will getting stuck into group one's part in 'Go'

Volume: 6/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 7/10

Totalling to 21/30! Nicely done!

I think one of my favourite parts of this gig was little George’s absolute fascination with my guitars – he was one of the very small members of the audience and as we played he became more and more enraptured by my ukulele, possibly with the thought that it was about the right size to look like a normal sized guitar on him, but it was Andy’s Sponge Bob Squarepants shakers that really hit the mark. As soon as he picked them up, George made a beeline for Andy, pointing excitedly at the shakers in a not dissimilar manner to how E.T. pointed to home… I think I might be able guess what he might be getting in his stocking next Christmas! In case you were wondering, here’s what the Sponge Bob shakers look like:

Judging on the reaction the Sponge Bob shakers have got so far, I think these may have to become a permanent fixture at all future gigs.

Andy and I had a great time so thanks very much to everyone there for making the afternoon so enjoyable! Big thanks to Andy for his percussion-ing (probably not a word, but I’ll run with it) and huge thanks to Carolyn and Will for hosting the gig, the lovely buffet-style food in the middle and the flowers at the end as well – thank you!

Safe to say, what with all the gigs I’ve done in Chesham recently, it’s fast approaching the top of my list of  ’favourite places to play’!

Carolyn Arnold (host): Thanks Lisbee for such a fantastic afternoon, it was a real honour to be able to be a part of your Living Room Tour. One tiny location but huge love for your amazing talent. Look forward to seeing you the next time you’re in Chesham. 

January 21st: Ropley, Hampshire

On Saturday, January 21st, down a very dark lane in Ropley, Phoebe (who also accompanied me onto the submarine) and I  picked our way carefully through the dark, laden with instruments and assorted bags until we came across the venue for my next living room gig and the home of the host for the night, Jayne Swallow. If the sheer pitch-blackness of outside felt at all foreboding, then there was nothing at all of that inside the house, where the party had already got started and drinks were pressed into our hands as we walked through the door. There were approximately 30 people milling about inside and in the kitchen an incredible spread of food was being prepared: fish pie, ratatouille, couscous, salad… more than enough to feed everyone twice over, and some!

Having been very well fed to the point where I could have happily had a small nap before getting to work, I went into the living room to set up camp and prepare to play. This was the first house I’ve performed in that the living room was upstairs, which may seem like an odd place to put it, but later Jayne told me that the house had been designed that way due to some great views of the surrounding landscape, which sadly we couldn’t see at the time, what with it being the night time and all. The room itself was well set-up for the occasion with sofas, chairs and giant cushions scattered about the place, so when everyone was herded in the space was quickly filled and we were ready to start!

I had been told when we arrived that there would be a few singers in the audience so I was looking forward to giving ‘Go’ a… go, and sure enough, when it came to singing along they were very tuneful! Onwards to the scores!

Volume: 7/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 8/10

Totalling to a respectable 23/30!

My audience were a really lovely group to play to and it was surprisingly refreshing to have an audience who knew the area I grew up in. Usually I just say I’m from ‘near Basingstoke’ and that suffices, but with this group I could actually tell them that I grew up in Newnham and they knew that I meant a small village (‘Oh yes! There’s a great pub there – near Hook, right?’) and not a college at Cambridge University. It was also great to have a chat with everyone afterwards – I didn’t realise how late it was until I looked at my watch and saw that it was approaching 1am and I still had to drive back to London. It’s lucky Hampshire is really not too far away; last October I decided that it would be easy to drive home from Worcester after a gig and didn’t manage to leave until midnight… much Lucozade was consumed on the drive home. I got back at 3am, exhausted but also extremely awake and with a strong headache.

A huge thanks goes to everyone at the gig for being really friendly and welcoming, big thanks to the lovely Phoebe for providing the harmonies and a massive thanks to Jayne and family for hosting the night, inviting me in first place, putting out such an impressive food spread and for putting a bottle of bubbly in one of our bags on our way out the door – it was very kind!

I’ll conclude this with a video from the evening: ‘Girl on an Unmade Bed’… enjoy!

January 20th: Bramley, Hampshire

In much of this living room tour thus far I’ve mainly had singers join me, but on Friday I was accompanied by the lovely Andy Chapman, who is the drummer in my band and also the drummer on my album, ‘Go‘. This time he came with me to play percussion instead of the usual full drum kit, which, aside from potentially becoming an interesting spacial puzzle to fit in someone’s living room, would also be a little loud for the completely unplugged vibe that I’ve been going for. His kit therefore, was reduced to a tiny jazz kick drum with a jumper draped over the front to muffle it a little, a snare drum, a tambour-shoe (an invention of mine from a few years ago that involves a tambourine with a wire coat hanger twisted round it so that you can play it with your foot… enter the tambour-shoe), a small cymbal that was to be used once in ‘Harriet’, and two Sponge Bob Squarepants shakers. It was a pretty minimal set up, although bizarrely we still managed to take up a fair amount of space!

When we arrived in Bramley, I left Andy in the car and went to knock on the front door to check that we’d come to the right location. I knocked a couple of times and waited. Nothing. I knocked again. Nothing still. I was pretty sure that we had come to the right place so I decided to wait a minute before knocking again, just in case the hosts were upstairs/somewhere where they couldn’t hear the door, so I sat on the front doorstep and watched as a large cat came across the road to see me. If you’ve read most of my previous posts, you may have noticed a pattern forming: I’ve managed to mention cats a few times now. There is a very simple reason for this: I like cats, and oddly, they like me too, aside from a couple of exceptions, including my producer Mikko’s cat, Mog, who hates everyone with a cross-eyed dementedness. Anyway, it’s as if this cat had seen me coming and it headed my way with a single-mindedness that only cats and children seem to possess, before rubbing round my ankles. As I scratched behind it’s ears, I could have sworn that I could hear Andy’s voice coming from inside the house. I lifted my head to listen. No, he was by the car last time I’d seen him – how could he possibly have got inside when I was still out here? Before I could stand up, the front door opened and there was Andy and the hosts, Karen and Mark, all looking down with slightly puzzled expressions at me, sitting on their front doorstep with a cat. Turns out that Andy had managed to find the back door and had got in that way. Typical.

The living room was all set up and ready for the arrival of the audience and a very homely little wood burner was crackling away in the fireplace. Andy and I tried to take up as little space as possible to make sure that everyone would fit in and happily, everyone was able to find a space to sit for the gig. The crowd was approximately 15 strong and seemed very friendly and very much up for getting involved, which always bodes well for the arrival of ‘Go’ in the proceedings. Their scores are as follows:

Volume: 7/10

Enthusiasm: 8/10

Accuracy: 7/10

Concluding with a good 22/30! Good work.

One of the things that I love about these gigs are that occasionally something happens that will give me new ideas for things to inflict upon the audience at gigs. For example, when it came to ‘Practice Room’ and I mentioned the idea of everyone clicking, out of nowhere a box of children’s percussion instruments appeared and everyone was given a toy. No one was left without something to play in their hand, be it a tiny tambourine, drum, shaker, miscellaneous thing with strings or something with bells on. This meant that we suddenly had gained an unusual and extraordinary percussion section, giving ‘Practice Room’ an interesting vibe that it somehow hadn’t quite managed before. As a result, I’ve decided that I obviously need to start collecting children’s percussion instruments to hand out to the audience at gigs because not only does it make a rather ‘powerful’ sound, but it’s amazing how much fun a group of adults seem to have whilst holding tiny drums with sticks, minuscule tambourines, sponge bob squarepants shakers, etc., so if anyone happens to have any musical toys that they don’t want anymore…

An important aspect of the evening was that it was also Karen, our host for the evening’s birthday! A very tasty cake was brought out in the interval, which meant that the evening could be finished off with cake. There really is no better way to round off an evening. (Please note: this is not a subtle hint to all future living room gig hosts, but it should be noted that I never refuse cake).

Andy and I had a brilliant evening and a massive thank you to everyone who was there! We were made to feel so welcome and it was lovely to meet everyone! Thanks to Andy for his drumming skills and an enormous thanks goes to the hosts, Karen and Mark, for inviting me in the first place and hosting the evening! A massively enjoyable night.

Karen Rice (host): Thanks again for a truly amazing and memorable evening.

January 14th: Aldbury, Hertfordshire

When Sabrina and I pulled up to the driveway of this living room gig, I had the distinct impression that we were in the right place; not because Helga told me that we were, but because I could see through a window into what looked like an office and there, on the wall, were two guitars. We had successfully arrived at the living room location for the evening – our hosts? The Harvey family: George, Barbara, Rachel and Jess.

It became clear upon entering the house that the two guitars I had seen through the window were not the only ones about; there were at least 5 others hung on walls, one of which was a rather lovely 12 string guitar that I was itching to pick up and play, and if this hadn’t been enough proof that we were in a musical household, the guests would have been enough to tell me so, as everyone there seemed to be involved in music somehow. My audience consisted of songwriters, music teachers, managers, guitarists, performers, music students… it could have been a terrifying experience. It could have resulted in a deathly silence after every song followed by some distant coughing, where it not for the fact that my audience were also ridiculously nice people!

The Harveys had laid out their living room unlike any of the one’s I’d previously played; they had made it into a mini venue, with chairs sat neatly in lines and two large sofas pushed against the back wall. The ‘stage’ backed onto two open doors leading into the ‘backstage’, which was basically an office. It was the most thought through set up that I’ve encountered so far!

Once everyone had found a seat and the room was looking promisingly full, Jess, the youngest Harvey, and her friend Harry kickstarted the evening off with a half an hour set. They played a mixture of original songs written by either one of them with a couple of covers thrown in for good measure. ‘Baby steps’, a lyrically clever take on the fairly well-worn story of growing up and falling in love and one of Jess’ own original songs, was probably my favourite track. She started the song by telling us that she couldn’t play the guitar, but then proceeded to ….um, play the guitar. Brilliant.

After a small break, I was up. Since it was apparent that most people in the room were fairly musical, I had high hopes for them when it came to ‘Go’, and I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s how they did:

Volume: 7/10

Enthusiasm: 9/10

Accuracy: 9/10

Which would give them a total of 25/30, BUT I’m going to award them a bonus point for the most in-time clicking on ‘Practice Room’ that I have ever heard, so in actual fact they have a total of 26/30! Lovely.

On the subject of Practice Room, I’ve got a video of it just to prove exactly how good they were at clicking; it was a bit like playing along to a giant metronome. Before you watch this footage, I should clear up just what all the laughing was about in the middle: at the words, ‘There’s a pre-madonna in the room behind me’, the photographer, David, chose that exact moment to appear in the room behind me, which is what everyone found so funny and it’s why I keep looking round. I won’t lie though, there was a moment where I was extremely confused at such an unusual reaction to the lyrics… anyway, check it out:

It was a brilliant evening over all and it was a fantastic way to end the week, so a huge thank you to the audience for being such an awesome crowd and accomplished clickers, thanks very much to Jess and Harry for their great set and getting the evening going, thanks again to the lovely Sabrina for her vocal skills, thanks to David Cobb for the photos, and finally a massive thank you to George, for inviting me in the first place, and also to Barbara, Rachel and Jess for hosting such an enjoyable night.

George Harvey (host): It was fantastic! People loved the vibe you created – interaction and great performances of your songs. Sabrina has a beautiful voice too- wonderful harmonies! Thank you so much for coming and playing. It’s one of those evenings that people will never forget – loads of heartwarming comments.