It’s not often that I get the opportunity to play a gig looking over a valley with the River Wye meandering to itself in the background and buzzards flying overhead, but on Sunday that’s exactly what I did. This one was not so much a living room gig as a ‘patio gig’, seeing as the patio gave the audience a bit more space than the living room, so armed with hats, scarves, gloves and coats, everyone unfolded camping stools and garden chairs of all shapes and sizes and settled themselves outside facing the valley. It’s slightly unorthodox to partake in outside activities in November, but the sun was shining and surprisingly it wasn’t that cold. Anyway, my audience seemed pretty hardcore in that respect: there was a gentleman at the front who was just wearing a suit and he didn’t add a scarf, coat or gloves to the ensemble at any point. Impressive.
Roger Morgan was the host for the gig and he is also the Chairman of the Courtyard Theatre Board in Hereford, which just happens to be where I had my album launch for ‘Go’! He’d found me plugging the tour via the wonderful world of Twitter, which makes me think that maybe the site does have its uses. I often find myself uselessly just telling people how many hot drinks I’ve had in a day, which is probably the reason I don’t have a huge amount of followers. Aside from the odd hot drink enthusiast.
It took me a small while to coax my guitars into accepting the cold and as such, stay in tune, but the gig got into full swing, the audience each had a hot cup of tea in their hands, and combined with the scenery and the general atmosphere of our surroundings, it felt like the perfect place to play.
My audience was wonderful at clicking at the bits that needed clicking in (which is harder said than done when wearing gloves) and also volunteering up their own stories and experiences, such as after I played ‘Underground’, which was written about the use of the tube system as shelters in London in the Second World War, and one member of the audience, Bob, told us that his father had lived in the East end of London during WWII and had often sheltered in Catford tube station during the Blitz, but on one occasion had come up from the underground after an air raid, only to find that his whole street had been annihilated by the bombs. They were also great at joining in with the singing bits, such as ‘It must be love’ and of course, ‘Go’, which leads me to…
…the scores! I should point out here that my audience in Ross-on-Wye were at a slight disadvantage when it came to it being an outside gig, as it was harder for them to make lots of noise, but despite that, they did a good job:
Enthusiasm: 7/10
Volume: 6/10
Accuracy: 7/10
Resulting in a total of 20/30! Lovely stuff.
Finally, here’s ‘We don’t believe in Monsters’…
Enormous thanks go to Roger for not only hosting the gig but for arranging that a group meet for lunch beforehand – it was a great way to meet everyone! I also want to thank the audience for braving the cold and making me feel so welcome!
Roger Morgan (host): Thank you so much for today. It was lovely to have you sing on our patio.
Lovely scenery! Must have been hard playing guitars in the cold.