So tonight I have agreed to do a last minute acoustic gig at Verve in Leeds. I like doing acoustic gigs, I usually enjoy the Verve gigs a little more. They are always last minute for me. Hayley who runs the night is a good friend of mine, we’ve known each other a lot of years, and when we party, we party hard. Normally she asks her mailing list well in advance who would like to play and when, I never respond. I usually wait until I have something important coming up. I never treat ANY gig as a rehearsal, but the Verve gigs are usually my rehearsal. It’s hard practising songs as a solo artist. You can write a new song at home and think it’s great but then you go to play it live, you find yourself cringing at the lyrics and re-writing them onstage. Sunday nights at Verve have seen many of those nights from me. Every time I play there I usually stick in a new song or two and gauge the reaction from the audience. Hayley has a good ear for a song also, she usually has a few words for me afterwards.
Tonight I am thinking about my upcoming tour with The Yalla Yallas. I’m conscious that I need to keep my voice gig fit. I was pleased with my voice for last weeks Yallas gigs, and I looked at the calendar and noticed that my next gig was 8th November, that’s a long time to not sing properly. So I thought If I can play Verve on the 23rd October and then maybe find somewhere for the 30th October and maybe book a band rehearsal for the 5th or 6th November then that’ll do just nicely.
I am also toying with the idea of playing some new songs. That is all down to confidence. What I usually do when I’m thinking of playing new songs is to write two set lists. The first is the set list that I am planning on playing. The second is the set list I play when the fear sets in. The fear. It visits me every show. Whether it’s a Yallas gig, a solo gig, small crowd, big crowd, drunk, sober, the fear visits me at every single one in some capacity. The fear is different to nerves. I will discuss nerves another time. The fear hits me on stage. It’s random. Everything will be going smooth and then boom it hits me. I start thinking everyone in the room hates me. This gig is dying. Maybe I should retire. I’m not playing the next song. I need to play something else. My acoustic gigs usually end up with different set lists to the ones I walk on stage with. It’s rare we change the set list with The Yallas, we might have to do an encore sometimes but maybe it’s easier to overcome the fear with a band. Or maybe I deal with the fear a different way. With The Yallas I can climb on tables, or dance with someone in the crowd, I can move about, and if I move maybe they can’t see me. Acoustic shows I am pretty much tied to the stage with my guitar and a mic stand. I feel like people can see me, I feel naked, not naked in the usual sense. I feel like people can see my heart and soul, my blood and bones. I sing a lot of deeply personal lyrics. With the Yallas sometimes the lyrics are hidden by the loudness of the band. Acoustically you can hear every word. I feel vulnerable. And I guess if I am feeling vulnerable I will change the set around and maybe play less personal songs, or songs I can detach from, songs that I have sung a thousand times before.
Another factor in last minute changes to the set list is the audience. My latest album is an acoustic album and it’s mainly made up of gentle love songs. My aim is to do more of these songs live. However I do still like to play a couple of songs by The Yallas. I can’t ignore songs like Retaliation or Credit Card Crunch, they also make brilliant acoustic songs. Every now and then I see some familiar faces in the crowd who come to The Yallas shows. This can distract me and exaggerate the fear. Naturally I start thinking that they want to hear more Yallas songs. So the new songs can often go ignored. The opening track off my album ‘For No Good Reason’ is probably the biggest victim. Ironically It’s probably one of the most Yallas-like songs on the record but I’m not sure if I’ve ever played it live. It’s been written on many set lists but I never end up playing it.’The Girl I’m Dreaming Of’ is often written down and then left out on stage. This is usually down to confidence. It’s quite a complex guitar pattern for me to play – as you’ll know I’m not the worlds greatest guitar player. Sitting down it’s piss easy to play but to stand in front of a room full of people there is too much that can go wrong.
So anyway I’d like to play one or two new songs tonight. ‘Medusa’ is still new and I want to bed that into my set as a regular song. It feels good playing that song live, Joel the Yallas drummer wants us to do it full band, and a band from Bradford called Hoodoo Operators wish to cover it. There’s song called ‘A Place to Fall’ which I wrote in The Netherlands in the summer, I did play it one night in Nijmegen, and maybe once when I came back. ‘Something Strange’ is a song I’m still figuring out, I’m not sure who it’s about, I think I do but I’m not certain. This one has the potential to be re-written on stage.
“I look up to the stars tonight and all I can see,
is a thousand pictures that remind me of you,
and I know you are here with an eye over me,
guiding me in some kind of way.
I told her, I wish I could love her with every beat of my heart
but there’s something here holding me back
my mother, she told me that I should love her and leave her
she’s always right and that is a fact”
I’m not sure when or how I wrote this but I think it’s a conversation with a dead relative about a girl I’m in love with and I’m telling her what my mother thinks. It comes clearer in the next verse that I’m obviously in love with some that I shouldn’t be, I’ve been in some destructive relationships. There’s one or two candidates for who this lyric is about.
“You are my ruin, my weakness within,
some kind of curse of that I am sure
some kind of addiction, or is affliction
I’ll work it our some day I suppose
but right now I’m tortured, tormented and scarred
tears on my page, a shot through the heart
they say you’re not open until you’ve been broken
but that don’t mean you can tear me apart”
Hopefully I will wrestle with the fear tonight and have a bash at this song … Let’s see how it turns out.
Rob
