Fine first gig on the tour with Muriel. Nearly didn’t happen, as my car almost overheated on the way down, but some water and a half hour cool-off for the engine seems to have fixed that…
The gig itself was at the Eastney Cellars, a lovely pub with a landlord who’s massively pro-live-music, and has spent a small fortune converting it into an even better live music venue. He’s also generated a fab listening environment.
Most fun for me was having Linda and Geoff there – they’re my step-aunt and uncle (I think that’s right…), and we at my first ever gig! (well, I’d played one school show before that, but they were at the first one in a venue – The Galleon in Spittal, for anyone keeping score).
At that gig I was playing with my band EARS (Eric Adam Robert and Steve – we could have been ARSE but wouldn’t have got to play at school if we had been). And we were rubbish. Largely. We had one good song at that point called ‘Through The Tunnel’ which I could probably still play on bass and guitar (I wrote the guitar part too!) Can’t remember much else of what we played, other than doing Foxy Lady despite only knowing the first chord (or thinking we knew the first chord, we might even have got that wrong…) and Venus by Bananarama. Oh yes, we were that hip. I think we got paid about a tenner between us, by a very very drunk landlord called Keith. Who claimed to be ‘tired’ when he was clearly inebriated beyond the ability to string a sentence together. And we were opening for Faldstool – Berwick legends, formed from the ashes of my first non-gigging band, Mother’s Legs. Maybe I’ll tell the rest of the story of my early bands at another point, when it’s not 1am…
That was 18 years ago! So G and L were back for more, and got to hear the slight improvement I’ve made since those days.
Was lovely to hear Muriel play again – she’s a fab guitar player, and write great tunes. I’m looking forward to the rest of the dates – Colchester Wednesday, Petersfield Thursday and St Ive’s in Cambridgeshire on Friday.
See you there!