It’s good to restart this blog on a high note. The other day I managed to cram two gigs in one day – amazing, really, considering one was actually in the morning and it was a Monday too! The first was for a Strandlines event at King’s College for community groups in the area. For my contribution I played two songs inspired by stories that have emerged during the project so far: one was an arrangement of an old ballad about flower girls and the other about the underground shelter that used to be in Aldwych tube station.
For both songs I used a loop pedal, which I’ve never used on my own in a performance before. It turned out well, but had been a bit touch and go beforehand. A few weeks back, I’d borrowed a pedal from my guitarist friend Patrick, only to try my friend Sara’s pedal last week and realised it was so much better for the purpose. Of course when I tried to get one there were none available, so after persuading the lovely Sara to lend me hers (actually she was more than happy to lend it – I have very generous friends!), I found out the day before the event that I had the wrong cable – aaarrrggh! Fortunately with a combination of good advice from another friend, and husbandly trickery, I managed to get it working by using my mixer. Phew. The only thing to deal with after that was keeping the little emperor from jumping all over my delicate set-up, twiddling dials and making us all go deaf from feedback. Easy peasy. Ahem.
So, in the end, overall the two songs worked, and I think we can safely say I’ll be pursuing the looping and solo songs a little more now, if I can get my own flippin’ pedal one of these days!
After that, I hotfooted it to the Brady Arts Centre for a jazz dance gig with trombonist Graham and his band. We played songs in just about every possible dance style you can think of: tango, cha cha, rumba, samba, waltz, quickstep, foxtrot. I wish all jazz gigs were like this one – loads of people dancing, the band sounding great, and just generally really good fun to sing. Ahh.
