What a Weekend!

Last weekend was without a doubt the best Easter weekend I’ve ever had. Was it the quantity of chocolate eggs? – No. the quality? – No (though thank you Heggy – green and blacks – yum!) Let me tell you it was the gigs, the glorious gigs, all three of them lined up in a delicious melodious row.

It all started with Bar Sonic, our most local of venues and a definite favorite of ours, just down the road, with the luxury of Ron driving, nice! We had the whole evening to ourselves so I had the opportunity to try out some new songs. It’s been a little while since I played alone with an acoustic, and it’s been quite a while since I tested out some new material so nerves on the outside I got up and proceeded to get down. Three new tracks, “Little Victories” “Lucky” and “Stranger in You”. There’s something about a new song, you can’t tell if it works until you’ve gigged it, so I was really pleased when all three got a foot stomping cheer from the crowd. And there was a crowd, the place was nicely loaded with friendly faces all giving me the big thumbs up, hurrah!

Jim and Bob joined me onstage and we whipped through the remains of the first set with joyful energy and control. The bar was filling up by the minute; known and unknown were poking their heads round the door and sidling up to the bar. All was storming until it got to “Nobody Else” when I had some nasty semi-tone anomaly and couldn’t get it together, so we finished on “Mr Rat” and I spent the break having a quick gasper and working out what the bleedin’ problem was with my tuning.

Sorted out we dived into the second set. I’d turned the amp up a bit and was feeling absolutely swept off my feet by the sound of the band, that’s an amazing feeling, the audio equivalent of riding a huge wave. The place was already full to bursting, girls were dancing, bar staff grooving and by the time we got to the last song, nobody had had enough, so we encored with “Excuse Me” and still there were cries for more so in good circular fashion I ended with “Stranger in You” on acoustic with Jim on BV’s. Sigh, loveleeee!

A special mench for Richard from Folkstone, Dave from Essex, Bob and dear Katy, Ron and Hazel and all who showed up – what a night.

After forgetting our guitars down at the venue and getting Ron to whiz me back there to pick them up, and a long and lovely wind down in good company Jim and I faced the next day feeling a little the worse for wear. Still when the nasty bright sun dipped below the horizon we ventured out for a gentle nights acoustic music at Oliviers in Greenwich. I really liked this, after being so high and rowdy it was sweet contrast to play some of the gentlest songs in our repertoire.
Don’t make Me Wait
Someone Else’s Garden
Alright
Morning Morgantown
Nobody Else

Monday night we were down in Brick Lane for the Scary Gotcha Club at the Vibe Bar. This was an acoustic gig so no Bob, but Jim and I were stoked to be back there. The more we’ve played that venue the more we like it, it was full of boisterous boozers but once we got playing there were enough people dancing and rowdy applause to know that we were making an impact. We played the traditional 40 mins but after we got offstage pretty much everybody was saying “Why did you stop?” even Jim actually. Then a posse from Stansted arrived, followed by friends from Bow and their friends from Brazil. They had missed us so we HAD to play some more. The PA had been packed up so we all sat outside and Jim and I played unamplified until our fingers froze. There are a couple of clips on Youtube

Try these links, the sound could be better but you’ll get the idea…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66Y0L4WQWUM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilp2yL_br5Q&feature=related


Thanks everyone who played a part.

Love and luck

Isobelx

St Annes Castle

So we had the car written off, the night of the Mother 333 gig, did I tell you about that? Just hours before sound check a big grey van rear-ended us, we had to cancel the gig as we were strapped to back boards and head braces in Lewisham Hospital. It’s not important, the point is we played out in Essex on the 13th March and our friend Ron lent us his car, without which this remarkable evening would not have been possible.

Just a bit south of Chelmsford, in classic old Essex country St Annes Castle is a very old pub and a very friendly pub. The combination of a pre-tudor building with an indie edge was totally compelling. Have you ever walked into a place and just felt euphoric? It felt like each person who’d had a good time there had left just a trace of that pleasure with the building, and as the building is HUNDREDS of years old it is overflowing with good times.

We played an acoustic night normally hosted by Lizzie B, for this one night Lyz LeFay was hosting. We stepped up to the bar and made our orders, 2 pints of various bitters, the barman was sharp as an arrow, sample this bitter, try that bitter, I love it when that happens – I’m a bitter fan and I do appreciate an appreciator. Before Jim had had chance to get his wallet out our host Lyz was there with Dave buying our drinks, as they did ALL night. There’s a lot of detail here which I’m not going to go into, but believe me that night we experienced open hearted generosity all evening, and those locals blew us away.

The gig then… Andy McKay opened the night with some solid songwriting and impressive, experimental vocals. And then came us, a short set of 25 mins

Excuse Me
Emilie
Don’t Make Me Wait - At about this stage one of the chaps at the bar, took his hat off and started getting people to empty their wallets into it. This was totally unprompted, we hadn’t been introduced to this man, he’d just decided this was the right thing to do! This was a free night as far as we were concerned; we were doing it for music’s sake and for the kind invitation and here was a stranger making sure we went home financially better off (thank you Clive)
Nobody Else
Alright
And Silvertown - Dave Le Fay made a request for this, and my heart melted to see the two of them hugging each other throughout the song, Dave leaning on Lyz, Lyz leaning on Dave, arms so tightly wrapped you just know there’s something very right there.

And we were done, aaaahhhh.

Jim had to catch a flight out early the next day (a drum session in San Fransisco (you curious minds) so we had to go, though we couldn’t help but stay for half a pint and half of Strider’s Led Zep set. We did not want to leave, we were singing along. Lyz was due to play next and that is always beautiful, but we did have to bale. I got the chance to shake hands with Dave the landlord and driving force behind St Annes. And now I’d like to thank, Lyz & Dave, Andy on sound and anyone who’s ever had a good time at St Annes Castle X