The Gig Review: November 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“Thirty days has September,
April, June, and November.”

– quoth Anon. (and no it’s not cheating!)

Remember remember the 5th of November, clarinets piccolos and flutes… And you might as well remember all the other days of the month while you’re at it, because it’s time now for us to put on our memory hats and reminisce about all the wonderful goings-on that kept us occupied in month number 11! I use the term ‘us’ loosely of course. What I really mean is ‘me’.

In many ways, November is a month just like any other, albeit more conducive to cosy indoor performances than al fresco playing. Wedding season has kind of dwindled away and the festivities of Hallowe’en and Oktoberfest are but a distant memory. If only there were something else to look forward to that could justify a little musical accompaniment…

But of course there is such a festival just around the corner, and no matter how firmly in denial you may be, whether you like it or not it’s the time of year to start thinking about the C word: CHRISTMAS! As a matter of fact, for musicians November is quite late in the day to plan for the festive season. Remember that, for performances to be ready in time for the big day, they often have to be prepared weeks or even months in advance. Particularly during my schooldays, I seem to remember it feeling like no sooner had we returned from the summer holidays than all the musical groups would start practising their Christmas repertoire. And there are plenty of early festive-themed events going on throughout the year’s penultimate month too. I remember a couple of years ago I spent 18 near-consecutive days performing at a Christmas market, doing 3 hours of playing a day, and by the time the market finished on November 23rd I was so sick of festive tunes that it seemed perverse that the rest of the world was only just starting to gear up for the season!

Luckily this year I’ve enjoyed a little more variety, so while this month’s Review will feature a few tinsel-bedecked and sleighbell-soundtracked performances there will be plenty of other curveballs to keep you guessing and wondering, “My my, what will that man get up to next?” And with that, it seems the perfect moment to knuckle down to the nitty gritty business of exploring my November adventures.

Look Out, Look Out, Lloyd Webber’s About

I seem to have developed a knack in recent months of booking in an extremely local gig for as soon as I return from a holiday. Back in August I came back from my travels, and the following day I only had to go a mere 2 miles down the road to earn my keep at a wedding reception. And on 2nd November, having returned the previous afternoon from a pleasant few days away, I only had to shift myself 4 miles in order to attend my latest engagement.

The performance in question was an Andrew Lloyd Webber themed concert produced by St. Dunstan’s Amateur Operatic & Dramatic Society, in Manchester. It had been running all week but I was only stepping in to help out with the final two shows on the Saturday. My instruments for this one were flute, clarionet, tenor saxomophone and baritone saxomophone, and as a ‘depping’ gig it was very much a straight-in-at-the-deep-end, no-rehearsal, here’s-the-part-now-play-it-as-though-you-know-what-you’re-doing kind of thing. Fortunately I’ve always been good with the old sight-reading game, and so while I may have fudged the odd tricky bit here and there I managed to play both performances (matinee and evening) without any major disasters. I even acquitted myself well in the 5/8 concentration-fest that is the title song from ‘Sunset Boulevard’, which as anyone who’s ever played it will know, is no mean feat! And what’s more, because it was so close to home I got to go back for a lovely home-cooked meal between shows.

The show as a whole sounded great from my vantage point in the orchestra pit, and it was especially nice to play in such a large band. I seem to recall there were about 15 of us in total, which is rare for theatre shows, and as a result it sounded spectacular. Producers take note: sometimes it actually is worth spending a bit extra to have more musicians!

Whilst both performances did go very smoothly on the whole, there was one little hiccup that is worth recounting as a mildly amusing anecdote. It happened in the matinee – the first time I’d done the show. We played the overture (taken from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ I seem to remember), with the musical director conducting from the front as he wasn’t required to play any piano for that number. Then immediately after that we transitioned into the Prologue from ‘Cats’, which opens in a very minimal fashion with just some isolated solo instruments punctuated by occasional piano chords. Well the MD lowered his hands to play the keyboard… and not a sound came out! His next twenty seconds or so were spent in mild panic trying to work out which switch hadn’t been activated or which cable hadn’t been plugged in or which volume knob had been turned down, whilst frantically continuing to conduct lest the rest of us should lose our places and the whole thing fall to pieces entirely! Luckily he managed to fix the issue very quickly but it was a tense moment (not to mention a bit of a baffling one).

One ‘Beauty-and-the-Beast’, ‘Beauty-and-the-Beast’ in Sale

The morning following my Lloyd Webber shenanigans – or to give it its full title, Sunday 3rd November – I made my way down to Sale in South Manchester for the band call of my next production: ‘Beauty and the Beast’, with Junior Stage 80. This show has always held a special place in my heart as it’s one of the first musicals I ever played in, back when I was a fresh-faced 17-year-old VI Form student. For that production I had played Reed 3 (clarinet, bass clarinet and flute), however due to my limited doubling abilities at the time I did it all on clarinet. I enjoyed it so much, though, that after the end of the run I thought to myself, “Hmm, if I want to do more of these kinds of gigs I should really learn some more instruments.” Consequently, a few months later I bought myself a flute and the rest is history!

See if you can spot me in this photo of the band from the first time I played this show all those years ago… Don’t ask me why we all look like we’re wearing lipstick!

It’s not an easy musical to play, by any means (and if I’m completely honest, that challenge is part of why it appeals to me). Reed 3 is very technically difficult even for a first-study clarinettist like me. And this latest production was set to be even more challenging because I had been booked to play Reed 1, which features only flute and piccolo – instruments I’d never even attempted the last time I did the show! Knowing what a tricky part it would be to play, and wanting to do a good job for the sake of music which I love so well, when I was initially booked to play for this production back in February I immediately set about looking through the part and spent a considerable amount of time over the following nine months practising the fiddly bits and exercising my fingers, in an effort to get into top fluting form in time for November. You may think this a bit excessive for such a small number of performances, however I was very keen to do the music justice and also aware that any time I spent working on this specific music would also be of general benefit to my flute and piccolo playing, so the effort was well worth putting in.

To further improve my chances of doing a half-decent job, I even bought myself a new piccolo! Again, this was something that would benefit my playing in general and so I had been considering it for some time. But this production seemed like as good an excuse as any, and so earlier this year I parted with my trusty old Yamaha 32 after 10 years of loyal service and treated myself to a Guo ‘New Voice’ piccolo. Or, as it has since been christened by my family, a LEGO piccolo – look, it’s made of plastic! Oooooooh…

At some point I may get round to reviewing the Guo and maybe even sharing some comparative audio samples pitting it against the Yamaha. But for now I have more storytelling to be getting on with. Now where was I…

Ah yes, on Sunday 3rd I pootled down to Sale Waterside Arts Centre, armed with my new instrument and many months of preparatory practice, for our first rehearsal. It was great to play through the music as part of a band at last, but what made it extra special was all the familiar faces present. The musical director was the same lady who had done ‘Oliver!’ (the Northwich one back in February), and the bassist and clarinettist had also played for that show so it almost felt like a little family reunion! Further more, playing trumpet with considerable ‘beans’ was a-lady-with-whom-I-share-some-close-acquaintance (and who also makes me sandwiches if I ask nicely), which provided the cherry on the top of an already substantial cake of a week. Oh, and another familiar face turned up in the shape of the sound man, whom I had met back in October 2022 playing a production of (you guessed it) ‘Oliver!’ up in Heywood. What a small world!

There was another rehearsal on the Monday, then performances from Tuesday to Saturday. Unusually there was no Friday evening show or Saturday matinee, which made the schedule feel particularly forgiving and civilised. In some ways it would have been nice to have the extra performances for a production I was enjoying so much, but then it’s probably better not to risk having too much of a good thing, and instead to leave people wanting more.

And want more we did! It was a really excellent production, and I must congratulate the cast for giving superb performances all round. There were some terrific vocal performances, and I was particularly pleased to hear someone do justice to The Beast, a role which in my opinion was sadly deficient on both the original West End and Broadway recordings. The only negative from my perspective was that there were only 6 of us in the band – flute, clarinet, trumpet, piano, bass and drums – when it really needs the full 19-piece orchestration to give it its full impact. But then there are only so many instruments you can squeeze into the corner of a theatre, and besides this gives me a good excuse to do the show again in future when a production comes along with the scope for the full orchestra! Oh, and also I was sat far too close to the drum kit which meant I had to spend the entire week playing with earplugs in…

Although the performances themselves were most enjoyable, travelling to them wasn’t always such a good experience. On the face of it, the show was in a really convenient location for me – less than 9 miles from my front door, which usually took around 20 minutes to drive. But on the Thursday I got caught up in that great destroyer of journeys: football traffic! Oh my, it gives me the shakes even just thinking back to it. I knew things were bad when, after 15 minutes in the car, I could still see my flat! To cut a long story short, in total it took a full hour to get to the theatre that night, at an average speed that didn’t even rise into double figures. At 7:28 pm I made it to my seat, not a little stressed, accompanied by the tannoy announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, the show will begin in two minutes.” Luckily the announcer was being a little optimistic and I did ultimately have time to put my instrument together and have a vague warm-up before the overture began, but still! Football, eh? Too popular for its own good. If only so many people were obsessed with coming to TRAD. JAZZ gigs I’d be able to retire after about a month!

’Elf’ and Safety in Northwich

It was a very theatrical month for me, November, and no sooner had I finished ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (or ‘B&B’ as I like to call it) than I was onto the next show, with a rehearsal for The Zodiac‘s production of ‘Elf’ on Sunday 10th. Fortunately I wasn’t doing the whole week for this one, but instead just covering a couple of dates where the regular Reed 3 player was unavailable. Much as I’d have liked to do the entire run, I’ve learnt from experience that doing 2 musicals back-to-back does end up feeling like a bit of a marathon!

The theatre for this production was over in Northwich, about half an hour’s drive from me. So not too bad in terms of travel, however in terms of instrumentation it was rather less practical! For this one I was required to play the cumbersome combination of flute, clarionet, bass clarionet, baritone saxomophone and bassooooooooon, which meant several trips to and fro between a full car and the theatre merely to get all the equipment in! Then it takes ages to get all five instruments set up, and it’s only then that the real challenges begin. It’s hard enough juggling multiple instruments when they’re little ones like flute and alto saxophone. But try playing for several minutes on a baritone saxophone, then having about 10 seconds to throw it down and pick up a bassoon ready for an important solo, followed by another quick change to the beast that is the bass clari! It’s quite a work-out, and there’s the ever-present worry of a precious delicate instrument crashing to the ground mid-song because you’ve not placed it carefully enough on its stand. Even just keeping the reeds intact becomes a challenge: I noticed that when I was playing bassoon it was very difficult not to keep hitting the reed of the bass clarinet over to my left; then when playing baritone saxophone it was by no means easy not to hit the bassoon reed; and of course there’s not much room to play flute without clashing with the baritone on its stand to my right!

In the end I managed to get through the rehearsal without destroying anything expensive. But then on Wednesday 13th I returned to Northwich to play for an actual performance, and was faced with yet more challenges! Due to the lack of space (the band was laid out in the narrow gap between the back of the stage and the rear wall of the theatre) there was only room for me to sit facing the back wall, with the musical director several metres to my left. Therefore the only way for me to see him and follow his cues was to look out of the far left corner of my eye – and even then I had to lean forwards slightly to see past one of the other keyboard players! That, combined with the logistics of switching between massive instruments and the fact I was still more-or-less sight-reading, made for quite a tricky evening’s work.

Tell you what though, it did sound great! I was pretty happy with my own playing, and the rest of the band was populated with some real first-class musicians. It did occur to me actually while I was playing that it couldn’t have been far off professional touring or West End standard, and as a result I had a great time of it. As for the show itself, my overall impression was that it was fun to play and the arrangements were really well put-together, but musically and dramatically I found it rather shallow. Put it this way: I’ve never seen the film, and after playing the show I still have no desire to! But from the perspective of a woodwind musician it was a challenging and fun experience to play for it.

What’s more, you too can get a small taste of the experience by watching the following video, which features clips of some of my saucy baritone saxomophone playing from the above production:

Loosening My Feet with ‘Footloose’ in London

My final theatrical experience of November – at least, as a performer – took place on Thursday 28th when I travelled all the way down to London for a rehearsal of ‘Footloose’. This is another one of those gigs that spans multiple months, as performances didn’t actually commence until December, and therefore you’ll have to wait until next month to find out how the shows actually went. But for now, here are the facts as we know them…

The venue for this grand spectacular was a private school down in West London, where an old friend of mine from university has recently got a job as head of music. It was really nice to receive his email a few months ago asking if I’d like to be involved in the show – it’s over 4 years since we last crossed paths, and 9 since we last performed together when he conducted me as part of Durham University Symphony Orchestra in Ravel’s ‘Daphnis et Chloé Suite No.2’. So this was to be as much an opportunity for a little catch-up as it was a gig.

This was the second time I’d played ‘Footloose’, the first being a production in Congleton 2 years ago when I’d been brought in to help add some life to the dead-as-a-doornail backing tracks that the company had hired. This time though I was glad to be part of a full 8-piece band made up entirely of actual living humans, so it was a great opportunity to finally do the music justice. In terms of instruments, the part calls for flute, clarinet, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone. So as you can imagine there’s a lot of rocky growly saxomophone in the part to enjoy! Oddly enough though the baritone only plays for about 20 bars in the entire show – really it can be dispensed with entirely, and I didn’t bother bringing it along for this rehearsal. However in my determination to do a nice authentic job in performance I did plan to transport it down for the upcoming show week.

Musically the run-through didn’t pose any real issues, as it’s quite a straightforward show overall and the parts are well-written for each instrument (with the exception of some inexplicable glaring typos). We musicians were placed up on the balcony at the side of the theatre, which meant I would even have the luxury of a partial view of the stage. What did mar the rehearsal though from my point of view was a lack of music stand lights. These are really crucial for theatre gigs when the musicians are required to perform in the dark, and I do in fact have my own at home which I bought many years ago after growing sick of the dreadful cheap-and-nasty options that are all too often provided, and which gradually go from dim to dimmer to useless over the course of a production. I hadn’t brought it to this rehearsal as there were lights available at the school which we’d be using for the performances, however sadly they weren’t brought along to the run-through and so I spent the afternoon with my face inches away from the music stand, peering through the darkness in an attempt to attain some concept of what notes I was meant to be playing. So not the most favourable of circumstances, but looking on the bright side, at least it gave me a good excuse if I played anything wrong!

Following the rehearsal I stayed over in London and headed back up to Manchester via the Peak District the following day. But more about that later. And more about ‘Footloose’ later, too! Tune in next month to find out how I got on with the performances.

TRAD. JAZZ Lives On with The Dixie Beats

It’s been a busy old year for The Dixie Beats, Bolton’s leading (and only) Dixieland jazz band, for whom I am proud to play my clarionet on a regular basis. Unfortunately I had to miss out on one of their gigs this month as it clashed with the Footloose rehearsal, but I thought that justified seeing as it’s the only one of their performances I’ve missed in 2 years. Plus it was Didsbury Cricket Club, who see enough of me as it is.

Despite that one absence, I was still due to give two performances with the band in November. Little did I know that gods of TRAD. JAZZ had other ideas…

Bolton Wanderings
On Saturday 16th we went over to Little Lever, in Bolton, to play something that’s quite a rarity for us: a concert! Most of our gigs are at jazz clubs, and while they invariably have attentive audiences they tend to be reasonably informal, with attendees sitting around tables and getting up to get a pint and some crisps from the bar as they see fit. This booking would see us up on stage, with the audience seated in rows and hanging on our every word (or note).

If this sounds intimidating, don’t worry – it wasn’t really. And it was made even less intimidating by the familiarity of the venue. Because the church we were to perform in is actually the place we use for our weekly rehearsals! Coincidence? Not on your nelly! Part of the deal with us practising there is that they give us a reduction on the hire cost in return for us playing a fundraising concert for them every year, and this, my friends, was that concert.

As usual the band gave a spirited and lively performance, full of fun and energy and SMOKIN’ HOT TRAD. JAZZ! The audience was unfortunately not quite as plentiful as last year, however their quality was beyond reproach and they were very appreciative of our stylish swinging sounds.

Let it Glossop, Let it Glossop, Let it Glossop
Jazz clubs vary quite broadly in their policy for booking bands. Some, like Didsbury, are happy to have groups play on a regular basis and so we musicians get quite used to playing there every few months or so. Others, however, book a wider range of bands but less regularly and don’t tend to have the same group more than once in a year.

One of the latter sort of clubs is Glossop Jazz Club, for whom we do one performance a year in the lead-up to Christmas. This catches the band in a rare festive mood, and we add some extra sparkle to the set with Santa hats, antlers, fairy lights, and a few of our more Christmassy tunes. Last year I even got some Jingle Bells references into my ‘St. Philip Street Breakdown’ solos!

This year’s booking was a little earlier than usual, on Thursday 21st November (a whole month earlier than last year, in fact), but it was set to be our most wintry one yet. So wintry, in fact, that we didn’t get to do it at all…

I set off in the car nice and early that evening, to get there with plenty of time to set up and to account for any lingering rush-hour traffic. Got round the Manchester ring road with no real problems. Then just as I turned off onto the M67 towards Sheffield some white stuff started falling from the sky. No big deal – the show must go on and all that. But then it got heavier. And heavier. And then I realised the road hadn’t been gritted so the snow was starting to lay nice and thick. So thick that I couldn’t see any of the road markings, and had to drive very gingerly with my left wheels on the ‘edge line’ in order to feel where the side of the road was! Fortunately the snowfall slackened after a while and the going became a little easier, but at its worst it felt very much like I was looking out of the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit while entering hyperspace.

Have a look at this video clip to see what I mean… I should add the disclaimer, by the way, that this was taken by my passenger (in case you thought I’d try to simultaneously drive and operate a camera)! Also the beautiful violin solo was added in postproduction. Neither of us was attempting to play awful violin during the journey.

They weren’t the best travelling conditions by any means, and the rest of the journey was similarly fraught. The closer I got to Glossop, the more I longed for nice flat roads and regretted that my destination was so close to the Pennines, that notoriously not-flat part of the country. Some roads were better than others and the actual snowfall abated after a while, but the latter part of the route took me along small residential streets where all the markings were now inconveniently obscured and which often featured a significant incline. The hairiest moment occurred on just one of these uphill slopes, where my car lost grip briefly, and for a second I was rather concerned I might actually get stuck. But no, my trusty jazzmobile and I plodded on inch by inch, tentatively making our way to the venue even when a slippery patch brought us all too close to acquainting ourselves with a bush.

Finally, after almost an hour of travelling, the end was in sight and the sat-nav told me I was five minutes away from the venue. Despite everything I was nearly there, unscathed and still plenty early enough to set up in good time for the performance. Perhaps there would be no audience on account of the weather. Perhaps we’d have to finish early. Perhaps we’d get stuck in Glossop overnight and have to stay on some jazz lovers’ sofas. So many possibilities, but none of it mattered for now because I knew I’d make it to the venue on time!

And then I received a phone call. It was our bandleader. The show was cancelled because of the snow.

So I turned round and went all the way home again. Stopping off at Tesco, by the way, for some much-needed chocolate and alcohol!

The upshot of the story is that the evening’s performance was rearranged for Thursday 16th January. Although I don’t want to hold my breath, considering how much worse the January weather tends to be compared to November!

Jelly Good Fun

It’s a rare thing for me to get through an entire month without at least one gig with the TRADding powerhouse that is The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. Well, November was no exception to this trend and towards the end of the month I enjoyed 3 contrasting bookings where I hooted away on clarionet with our motley trio.

All’s Fair at the South of England Showground
The first Jelly Roll gig of the month actually came quite late, on Saturday 23rd. In my continual efforts to get us more agricultural show gigs (what can I say – I just like sheep!) I emailed the South of England Agricultural Society earlier in the year asking if they like TRAD. JAZZ, and it turns out the answer is ‘yes’ because they subsequently booked us to play at their Winter Fair. This was a two-day event but we were only performing on the first day, which was a bit of a shame seeing as it was such a long way for me to travel, but then one gig is better than no gigs at all! And after all, if they liked us they might even consider us when looking for bands for their big summer show.

The event took place, appropriately enough, at the South of England Showground near Crawley. I of course drove down the previous day and stayed over in a cheap no-frills Airbnb, and while it was a very long journey which involved sitting on the M25 for much longer than I would have liked, I still infinitely preferred it to my drive to Glossop the preceding day! The other band members, however, travelled down from London, and I picked them up from a nearby railway station on the Saturday morning to take them to the venue. And I must say, for someone who rarely travels further south than London (especially by car) it felt really weird indeed to be seeing roadsigns for Brighton.

We weren’t sure exactly what to expect when we arrived, but we had been told there would be a music stage so once we’d parked up and unloaded our stuff we set about searching for that. We usually play more as background entertainment rather than being on stage, however we do perform on the music stage at Bakewell Country Festival every year and were anticipating something similar here. In other words, a big festival-style stage with speakers, microphones and a couple of sound guys to keep everything in order.

Alas, the reality was quite different and when we did eventually locate the stage we found it to be little more than a small platform in a massive barn amongst all the food vendors, decorated with a skating polar bear backdrop and adorned with a simple Christmas tree at either side. In other words, a little more rustic than we had expected!

We played several short sets over the course of the day, but I must say the audiences were atrocious. If you’re reading this and you saw us performing at the South of England Showground Winter Fair, I have a question for you: Why were you so atrocious!?! Don’t you realise that it’s polite to offer at least a light round of applause when a performer you’ve been listening to reaches the end of a song? Unlike the Dixie Beats concert earlier in the month, it’s not like they were short of quantity – there must have been hundreds of people in that massive barn, so many that even we musicians struggled to find a seat at times, and there were plenty sitting in front of the stage listening to the music. It surely wouldn’t have killed them to show some sign of interest. But no, as I commented to my fellow band members at the time, it was like playing to the living dead!

In summary, then, it wasn’t the most receptive of crowds, which meant it wasn’t the most rewarding of performances. However we did play well and, as always, put our full effort into the gig. I can only hope that, somewhere beneath that sea of blank indifferent faces, people were enjoying it more than they appeared!

Once we had finished, I dropped the others back at the railway station and made the long boring journey back up to Manchester, ready for the next day’s Jelly Rolling. But just as a coda to this gig, I’ll mention that I’m very glad we’d been booked for the Saturday rather than the Sunday, because in the end the second day of the fair had to be cancelled anyway due to the inclement weather!

The John Lewis Christmas Jazz Band
The day following the South of England Fair – which if you’ve been paying attention you’ll know was Sunday 24th – saw Jelly Roll undertake a rather more cushy gig (mainly because it was indoors). We had been booked to play in the Leeds branch of John Lewis, to provide some festive entertainment and give their customers a little extra jollity while they embarked on their early Christmas shopping. Or late Hallowe’en shopping – who am I to make assumptions?

It was a really cosy one, this, largely because we were basically placed in a mock living room in the middle of the department store. There were little side tables, ornaments, a Christmas tree, and actually a choice of very nice sofas for us to rest on! We were on the third floor of the shop, playing towards the central void with its escalators going up and down, and it was really fun watching people’s reactions as they spotted us on their way through the levels of the shop.

On the whole it felt like a very classy kind of setting, and the type of gig we’d quite happily do on a regular basis. We did receive some appreciative looks and comments from many of the shoppers as well, and because we were playing out across the centre of the shop it felt like we could be heard over a wide area and several floors despite being a small unamplified group. As usual I played the spoons that day as well as my TRAD. JAZZ CLARIONET, and after every solo it was so tempting to say, “And you can buy your own set of spoons in our cutlery department on level 2.”

As evidence of the sort of quality airwave manipulation you can expect from us, I took my all-seeing all-hearing camera along and got a charming little video of us performing ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’. Not particularly Christmassy I admit, until you realise it’s from ‘SNOW White’! (Apologies to regular followers of the band’s Facebook page, who have heard that joke before.)

The Bell Tolls in Mellor
Skipping merrily forward to Friday 29th takes me to the final Jelly Roll gig of the month, which was also my final gig of the month and furthermore the final gig of this month’s Gig Review! Awwwww. Go on, say it, I know it’s what you’re thinking: Awwwww.

Having been in London the previous day for my Footloose rehearsal, it was on the Friday morning that I drove up, banjo player in tow, to the Peak District village of Mellor. It was one of those irritating journeys that goes perfectly smoothly until you are half a mile from the gig, when you discover the one road leading to the venue is closed and you spend the next half an hour trying to find a suitable diversion round an inscrutable network of narrow country lanes, all the while in danger of getting stuck on a farm track that your sat-nav for some reason thinks is a main road! But not to worry – we got there. But I remain convinced that National Highways are spying on me and continually making a effort to close whichever road is likely to cause me the most irritation.

The venue itself was a very old church on top of a steep hill overlooking the rolling valleys below, and goodness me was it atmospheric! We were there to play for a funeral, giving the traditional New Orleans style procession by leading the hearse from the church to the main road after the service, and you couldn’t have asked for a more picturesque day. Gone were the snows of the previous week (thank goodness!), and in their place was a gentle mist shrouding the hills with a low winter sun bringing a glowing radiance to the landscape. Overlooking the scenery was the village church, surrounded by leafless trees silhouetted against the bright sky, its single bell tolling mournfully. It were proper Heathcliff, I tell ya!

There was quite a lot of waiting around on our part, as we weren’t due to play until the service had ended. Luckily, while it wasn’t exactly summery, the weather was a vast improvement on the previous week so we were able to huddle in the entrance of the church without catching too much of a chill while we waited for the congregation to emerge. Which they did eventually, although the service did overrun by a considerable margin – much to the chagrin of the funeral directors, who were becoming increasingly concerned that the party might miss their time slot at the crematorium!

At that point we began playing and commenced the long walk down the hill to the main road, followed by the chief pallbearer with the hearse directly behind him. It’s an unnerving thing to walk slowly down a hill with several cars following behind, but I’m glad to say all drivers present were sufficiently diligent on their brake pedals! It did seem like a strange format though. Fair enough if it’s a funeral procession walking through a town or a crematorium for example, with crowds of mourners milling around to pay their respects. But we were at the front of the procession, playing forwards, and everyone else was behind in cars. So even though the symbolism may have been appropriate, at the end of the day could anybody actually hear us?

The second part of the gig, however, definitely gave us a chance to be heard as we convened in a local pub to play for the wake. We were soon joined by those from the funeral, many of them having taken part in the crematorium service (which presumably they weren’t too late for in the end). And from that point it felt like any other type of gig really – playing jazz in a corner with guests milling about, enjoying drinks and helping themselves to the provided buffet. If it wasn’t for the outfits it could have been a wedding or a birthday party really, although I’m sure the conversations would have been rather different.

Anyway, once we’d finished playing we said goodbye to the family member who had booked us, and who expressed her gratitude for our performance which had been very well-received. Then we packed up and went our separate ways, and I bid farewell to yet another month of gigging.

All of which brings me to the end of the November 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
It’s going to have to be ‘Beauty and the Beast’, isn’t it? After all, that’s the only one I was looking forward to so much that I started practising for it in February!

What We’ve Learned
Football ruins everything.

November 12, 2024

The Gig Review: October 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance,
With the stars up above in your eyes,
A fantabulous night to make romance,
‘Neath the cover of October skies.”

– quoth Van Morrison, ‘Moondance’

As the days continue to shorten and the nights to lengthen, we yet again find ourselves in the first double-digited month of October. I feel that as a musician, your appreciation for this month varies quite considerably depending on your instrument. For most of us it’s fairly average – not quite the summer rush, not quite the Christmas/New Year frenzy, but somewhere in-between where we can chug along doing various odd engagements, concerts, shows and the like. But if you’re a certain type of brass player the season means one thing in particular: Oktoberfest!

I do count my blessings every year around this time when I don’t have to spend my nights playing Bavarian ‘oom-pah’ music to roomfuls of rowdy drunks, but spare a thought for those of us who aren’t so lucky. I remember I met up with a trumpeter friend around this time in 2016 and his immediate response to my “How are you?” enquiry was, “Urgh… I’m just so sick of wearing lederhosen!”

So that’s what I haven’t been doing this month. And of course we can continue in this fashion, listing every possible gig that I haven’t been involved with of late, until by sheer process of elimination you can deduce what it is I have been doing. Or alternatively I can just tell you. The choice is yours!

Actually, no – the choice is mine. And I’m just going to tell you.

‘Oliver!’ in Southport (Part II)

Regular readers may recall that last month I gave a little tease of my fifth production of the musical ‘Oliver!’, which I was to perform in Southport Little Theatre with BOS Musical Theatre Company. And it therefore seems natural to pick up where I left off and resume this tale of bassooooooooooooooooooooon!

The performances for this show took place from Tuesday 1st to Saturday 5th (plus a couple on 28th September for which I was elsewhere). So quite a long run for an amateur production, but of course with such a bafflingly popular show it is worthwhile, for they are virtually guaranteed to sell plenty of tickets. From my perspective it was a challenging week, as the bassoon part is pretty intense and it is also a fair hike travelling every day from Manchester to Southport. Furthermore I don’t mind admitting to growing ever more weary of those same old tunes, especially considering I’d already done the show twice in the preceding 8 months.

On the plus side, though, it was nice to be huddled down in a proper orchestra pit. You see, different productions have different approaches to the question of where to put the musicians. Sometimes we are visible down at the corner of the stage or spread out in a thin row in front of it. Other times we are placed at the back of the stage, hidden behind some backdrop or piece of set. Occasionally we are even positioned above the stage, perched precariously on some scaffolding that is only accessible by a rickety makeshift staircase. Then there are the occasions when the band is split in two and distributed between the balconies at either side of the stage – at times like those, technology really comes into its own to enable us to play as a vaguely cohesive unit! And sometimes we aren’t even in the theatre itself, but hidden away in some back room with only a selection of microphones and cables to link us with the rest of the production.

The classic orchestra pit, though, is definitely one of my favourites. You’re in the same space as the rest of the production, nice and close to the audience so you still feel appreciated (especially when people pop their heads over at the end to say hello and thank you). But crucially, you’re not in full view, which means you can relax a bit. You don’t feel under as much scrutiny as when you’re completely visible, and you needn’t worry so much about looking presentable and sitting up straight. Depending on the show, you may even be able to get some reading done during long dialogue scenes…

If all this talk about hiding under stages has whetted your appetite for orchestra pit insights, you may well enjoy this little video which I captured during the week, and which showcases some of my more competent bassooooooooning:

On the whole, although I’m not a massive fan of the musical itself, I did have a jolly time doing my Southport ‘Oliver!’. Nice to give the bassooooooooon a good workout, plus I was working with a lovely bunch of very skillful musicians on what was by all accounts a successful production indeed. Congratulations to all involved – just please don’t make me do it again!

On the Beat with the Dixie Beats

Normally in the Gig Review I seem to leave Bolton’s leading (and only) Dixieland jazz band ‘The Dixie Beats’ to the very end, so this month to prove they are no mere afterthought I’m getting them in early.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with the band, it is a 6-piece traditional/New Orleans/Dixieland ensemble consisting of trumpet, trombone, guitar/banjo, double bass, drums and clarinet (courtesy of yours truly). I’ve been playing with them since I moved to Manchester in 2019 and they continue to be an ongoing delight, not just as a group of extremely dedicated and skilled musicians but more importantly as a thoroughly decent bunch of people! We travel around the Greater Manchester area and occasionally further afield, spreading fun and joy wherever we go with our lively uplifting music.

Playing Eagerly at Eagley
Our first gig of October was at our regular venue of Eagley Jazz Club in Bolton, and it was on Friday 4th which meant it gave me a nice little break from ‘Oliver!’. I say it was at the jazz club, but perhaps I should just say it was at the same venue because technically the evening wasn’t affiliated with the club itself. This was a charity gala to raise money for prostate cancer organisations, and while we were the main act there was also a singer, some bingo and a particularly hefty raffle to keep everyone entertained!

Although our performance largely followed its regular format, it was interesting playing in a different context and for a different crowd to our usual. Normally in the jazz clubs there’s quite a distinct performer-audience relationship, in that our listeners tend to sit quietly and listen for the most part, applauding between songs and generally being very attentive. This event, however, had more of a party atmosphere, so as we were playing there was still a continual hubbub of conversation and activity. The different vibe took a little getting used to, but nevertheless we gave a successful performance which was greatly enjoyed by all. We even managed to convert a few people into jazz fans – I remember one particular gentleman spoke to me during the interval, praising us effusively despite his usually preferring heavy metal to jazz!

As for the charity, I can’t remember the exact figure but if memory serves me correctly the event raised approximately £1300 in total. Pretty good going if you ask me!

Re-Forming at the Reform Club
Tuesday 15th saw us return yet again to Chadderton’s ‘Reform Club’, to play for Rochdale Jazz Club and its clientele. It feels strange to have done so many gigs at this venue in recent months – I’d never performed there before until April, and now here I was doing my third performance there in 6 months. Just goes to show, jazz club gigs really are like buses!

I must confess it felt like a particularly dark and dreary night, and one which certainly wasn’t conducive to leaving the house and going to play high-energy clarionet for 2 hours. But at least it was a nice local gig, and of course my spirits soon lifted when I arrived and got into the swing of things. We were also fortunate to once again draw a pretty decent-sized audience which was most heartening. It’s one thing forcing yourself out of the house when you are a performer committed to a booking and therefore don’t have any other choice. It’s quite another for an audience member, who could just elect to stay in and not bother. So on nights like those it is particularly flattering that people make the effort to come along and listen to live music when they could be at home watching telly. It’s a sign that we must be doing something right!

Jamming with Jelly Roll

October has been a comparatively quiet month for The Jelly Roll Jazz Band, however that doesn’t mean it was completely fallow. We did have a few chances to get out and spread the good news of TRAD. JAZZ far and wide, as you will shortly discover…

Return to Kelso
You may well recall that back in March we had an especially challenging booking, performing at Kelso Racecourse up in Scotland while being pelted from all directions by freezing cold wind and rain. So when they asked if we’d come back and do it all again in the equally summery month of October, we jumped at the opportunity! Sort of.

This gig was for their family raceday on Sunday 6th, which made it pretty tiring for myself having done 2 performances of ‘Oliver!’ in Southport the day before. Nevertheless I managed to get up early and transport myself, with the help of my trusty jazzmobile, all the way up to the requisite racecourse in plenty of time for a midday start.

I made a special note this time to bring ample warm (and waterproof) clothes, but luckily the weather was rather more favourable this time. Not particularly bright or warm, but perfectly tolerable and at least dry. As usual I very much enjoyed performing, despite the long journey and associated fatigue, and the punters didn’t seem to mind us either! We did a spot at the entrance first, while people were coming in, and then several shorter sets between races as everyone placed their bets and suchlike.

Once we’d finished, I hopped back into my mechanical horse and toddled alllllllll the way back down to Manchester, stopping only to retrieve a healthy nutritious meal (McDonald’s) on the way.

Bury-ing the Hatchet
Our second Jelly Roll of October was thankfully rather more local for me, as it took place in the town of Bury in north Manchester, on Saturday 12th. This was an evening ‘do’, and we’d been booked to play in the upstairs room of a small restaurant and bar for a 90th birthday party. Which, by the way, is by far the most common birthday age we get asked to play for! What can I say – clearly the older generations have the best taste in TRAD. JAZZ.

The occasion went without a hitch, and we even got to help ourselves to some free pizza which is always a good thing. The only disappointment was the acoustic, which is something we obviously have no control over but which can really make or break the overall sound of a performance. It was a small crowded room with low ceilings and hard surfaces all around, so all the sounds just combined into one big mush. As such we struggled somewhat to be heard – not because we weren’t loud enough, but because our sound just got swallowed up in the general melee. I remember remarking to our bass player at one point that I felt it didn’t make any difference what notes I played, so long as they were in tempo.

So it wasn’t really a gig for subtlety or intricate melodic invention, however we did help add a party atmosphere and people seemed to enjoy it (including the newly crowned nonagenarian). Oh, and one more thing: for the third time in recent months, I was performing in a venue with a grand piano which I had to neglect completely! I hope it didn’t feel too left-out, sitting there silently in the corner while we had all the fun.

Late Night Revelry in Harrogate
Jelly Roll is an unusual band in many ways, but one of our key quirks is that we do comparatively few evening gigs. Most of our stuff is mid-afternoon – think weddings, country fairs, Christmas markets – and as a result we’ve got very used to clocking off early and getting to bed at a reasonable hour (travel permitting). So it came as a real shock to the system when, on Tuesday 22nd, we did a performance in Harrogate that didn’t even start until 9 pm!

If you would care to cast your mind back yet again, you might remember that at the beginning of July we had a gig cancelled on account of the general election, and re-scheduled for later in the year. Well, dear reader, this was that gig! I’m still not exactly sure what it was, to be honest, but I gathered it was a big get-together for lots of local councillors. They went out for a slap-up meal and then proceeded on to the beautiful Sun Pavilion for further chat and entertainment (the latter courtesy of ourselves, the former most certainly not).

It was another tricky acoustic, as we were inside a massive hall with no soft furnishings and lots of guests milling around and talking animatedly. So we did have to give it some ‘oomph’ to be heard, and even broke with tradition by employing a little light amplification for an extra boost. Unfortunately all this did make an already-tiring gig even harder, and consequently by the time we finished at midnight we were all very much ready for bed. To keep ourselves motivated, we even chose our final 4 songs to fit with the theme: ‘Midnight, the Stars and You’, ‘Midnight in Moscow’, ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’ and ‘Mister Sandman’!

Although the playing felt a bit arduous on account of the late hour, there were some additional perks to help make up for it. Notably, every table was virtually overflowing with Lindor, and there was also an ice cream cart which provided me with a delicious Biscoff cone. Felt a bit weird to be eating ice cream at 11 pm, but hey – I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth!

Little Shop of Horrors in St. Helens

Month number 10 ended up being a busy one for musicals, and on Sunday 20th I found myself in St. Helens for the band rehearsal of a local school production of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. This is a show I was slightly acquainted with, as I ‘sat in’ on the UK touring production many years ago and also orchestrated several of the songs from it for the Welsh Musical Theatre Orchestra. However this was the first time I’d actually played it, and as a big Alan Menken fan I was really looking forward to getting my teeth stuck in (much like a certain plant)…

I wasn’t disappointed at all, and had a really enjoyable week hooting away on all sorts of instruments. Apart from the band call, I played for performances from Wednesday 23rd to Saturday 26th, tackling the Reed 2 part (flute, clarinet, bass clarinet and baritone saxophone). It’s a great fun show in many ways, combining comedy with B-movie horror tropes in a gloriously daft way, and the instrumental parts are challenging enough to be interesting without being unnecessarily difficult. Plus the tunes are so catchy – I genuinely struggled to sleep the following week because I had ‘Grow for Me’ going round and round my head! We musicians couldn’t see the stage from where we were (secreted behind the set this time rather than in a pit), however from what I heard the young cast did a terrific job. And what’s more, the show is very concise, so we finished not long after 9:30 every night! What’s not to love?

As usual I got a few little clips of me hooting away, so I hope you enjoy these assorted honkings:

Oh, and by the way – I really want one of these plant puppets, which I spotted lurking menacingly behind the set before the start of the show:

All of which brings me to the end of the October 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
A musical about a man-eating plant called ‘Audrey II’, soundtracked with pastiche 1950s doo-wop songs, in which I got to emit all sorts of beautiful low frequencies? Yes please! It’s got to be ‘Little Shop of Horrors’.

What We’ve Learned
Kelso isn’t always freezing and wet – sometimes it’s merely cold.

October 19, 2024

The Gig Review: September 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“The leaves of brown came tumblin’ down, remember,
In September in the rain.”

– quoth Al Dubin, ‘September in the Rain’

As we progress into the ninth month of the year it always feels to me as though things begin to slow down a bit. The summer holidays are over, party and festival season is dwindling, the days are getting shorter and generally people start to calm down slightly. What parties there are gradually move to indoor venues, and I notice myself becoming more and more reluctant to do evening gigs which require me to leave the house in the cold and dark.

But it’s not all bad, and while peak summer season may be drawing to a close there is still much fun and festivity to be had. Many people take advantage of the quieter period (and often correspondingly cheaper venue costs) to hold weddings while there is still a reasonable chance of decent weather, and the start of a new term means there is much musical theatre to be enjoyed as the amateur dramatics groups get into gear once again. Even such pursuits as busking can be quite lucrative at this time of year. I remember some of the best stints we had with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band occurred in Septembers over our university holidays, when we benefitted from the larger budgets associated with the older holidaymaker demographic visiting our hometown.

You didn’t come here for generalisations though, did you? No, you came for specifics! And in that spirit, it is specifics I will now provide as we enter into a detailed exploration of the month’s musical adventures.

Peanut Butter Jelly Roll Time

There was plenty of improvisation, experimentation and inspiration to be had this month with my most regular of trios, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. And happily for me, many of the month’s bookings turned out to be conveniently local! Many, but not quite all…

Are You Going to Scarborough Fair?
No! But I did find myself going to Scarborough Spa on Friday 6th, to perform in the beautiful ‘Sun Court’ for a wedding reception. It was nice to be back in my seaside home for a bit and to revisit a venue that has become particularly familiar over the years.

The Spa Complex is a huge place and most bits hold some sort of music-related memory for me, many of them performance-related (although I have been in the audience many a time as well). When I was at school I would play in the Grand Hall once or twice a year as part of the local music centre gala concerts. The Ocean Room was the site of my school prom, and since then I have played for the odd party there with Jelly Roll. The restaurant, Farrers, was the site of many Jelly Roll performances in our early days, when we held a residency there every month or two from the start of 2016 to the end of 2018. As for the Sun Court, we played in it back in August 2016 (again for a wedding), having previously performed there in our alternative capacity as members of Scarborough Concert Band as far back as 2013 – see if you can spot me in the picture below!

And here’s Jelly Roll, the last time we did a Sun Court wedding:

So we very much felt we were on home turf with this one, and it did turn out to be an enjoyable occasion. I had forgotten what a pleasant acoustic The Sun Court has until we started playing, but it really did manage to give us a nice thick sound without being echo-y or boomy. We played on the stage and were occasionally joined by wedding guests trotting round the dancefloor before us. This was an early-evening booking, and it was particularly nice to play as the sun went down and the twilight settled in, with the bulbs strung across the courtyard providing some very pretty illumination. Also, we were only required to play for an hour so it felt like an especially gentle evening’s work.

Clitheroe By Jingo
Two days later, on Sunday 8th, we crossed the Pennines to Clitheroe, and this time we were back in our favourite mid-afternoon slot for a wedding reception. Now you may not think that Clitheroe and Scarborough can both be local gigs for me, but when you consider my usual base is in Manchester things become a bit clearer.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t conducive to outdoor playing (i.e. it was absolutely bucketing it down) but this did mean we got to perform in a lovely large lounge/bar area, right in front of a beautiful grand piano! It almost seemed a shame not to make use of it, but alas our hands were busily occupied with other instruments at the time so it had to remain silent.

The venue for this booking was Holmes Mill, and it was great to see it because it is the home of Bowland Brewery – a company we have become quite familiar with over the years due to their presence at the Royal Lancashire Show, where we sample their wares on an annual basis. It was also interesting talking to the bride and groom, because it turns out they have a relative in Scarborough who became quite animated when they mentioned our band name! It seems we still hold some influence over our hometown, even if we now only perform there sporadically.

Dunham All
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more local, on Saturday 14th we were booked in to hoot and strum and pluck for our supper at a party in Altrincham, a mere 20 minutes drive from my residence! This was for a wedding anniversary in someone’s garden near Dunham Massey, and it was nice to be out in the fresh air of the countryside.

Like the earlier Scarborough gig, this was an outdoor evening performance, and although we were set up in a large open-fronted barn in case of inclement weather, I’m pleased to say it turned out to be a dry and balmy evening. The clients treated us particularly nicely, offering us crisps, drinks and pizza within minutes of our arrival, so thanks to them for that! Furthermore, there was a selfie camera thing set up in a nearby shed which we used to get some stunning promo shots while we were there:

As if that wasn’t enough, I even took my video camera along to get some audio-visual evidence of our performance. I hope you enjoy this, our rendition of ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’:

Waltzing to Walsham
I was really getting into the swing of not having to go very far for gigs – including a few more that you’ll read about later in this Review. But on Saturday 21st that all changed with our next Jelly Roll booking, near North Walsham (north of Norwich).

Luckily I have some friends who have recently moved to north Norfolk and have a lovely spare room that they were happy for me to occupy, and consequently I was able to travel down the previous day and stay in the vicinity, sneaking in a visit and a catch-up in the process. If it hadn’t been for them I think it would have been a case for Airbnb, as a 9-hour round trip is really something I try to avoid doing in a single day. Not that you’d guess it from reading this blog!

Overall I didn’t have any major problems in reaching the gig, except for an alarming moment when, 10 minutes away from the gig, my sat-nav decided to completely die and refuse to function. It seems it has developed a bit of a quirk where it plugs in, that I had heretofore not picked up on! Once it was back in action I was back on the road and made it to the venue in plenty of time, although it did make me appreciate even more what a supremely convenient invention the sat-nav is. I honestly can’t imagine how travelling musicians managed in the past without them.

We were fortunate with the weather for this gig, enjoying a nice sunny afternoon in the courtyard of a country estate where we added some much-needed TRAD. JAZZ to the otherwise peaceful atmosphere. Also, having recently read about modern jazz techniques such as ‘tritone substitutions’ and playing up or down a semitone, we had some fun trying to incorporate them into our performance that day. We soon concluded though that they really do just sound like wrong notes, and promptly returned to the ‘circle of 5ths’ that has served us so well for so many years. LONG LIVE TRAD.!

Shuffling to Sheffield
The following week I was back on home turf, more or less, with our final September Jelly Roll in the city of Sheffield. Yet again the location played nicely into my hands, as I was able to visit a friend for lunch and a catch-up before the gig. That is one of the nice things about travelling around so much for work – it does often enable me to drop in on people I would seldom otherwise see. And of course if I play my cards right I can sometimes get free accommodation!

‘Twas an afternoon wedding reception again, this one, but a slight variation to what we’re used to. From what we would gather, the couple got married over the summer in New Orleans, so this was presumably something of a ‘catch up’ party for those who couldn’t make it to America. I guess this was where we came in as well – if you can’t make it to New Orleans, we’ll bring New Orleans to you!

The venue was a cricket club (I seem to have a thing for those) and we were performing at the front of the club house, playing out across the pitch to the park beyond. It was rather a pretty view, and once again we were lucky enough to enjoy a dry sunny day, even if it did start to get a little chilly towards the end. I even treated myself to a bit of a blow on my Eb clarionet, which doesn’t get many outings these days but is a fun way to incorporate some extra-high-pitched squeaks into proceedings.

Saxomophoning in Crewe

Sandwiched neatly between Jelly Roll gigs, I had myself a little solo booking on Saturday 7th at Crewe Hall. Again, not too far from me in Manchester, but things were complicated by the fact I’d been in Scarborough the previous day and complicated further by M62 weekend closures messing up my route. However I got there in the end, and had a splendid time playing all sorts of pop songs and ballads for the assembled guests, accompanied by my trusty backing tracks.

The event was a 60th birthday, and I was very taken with the imposing venue. The room I performed in was an incredible several-storey-high hall, wood-panelled with balconies running around the walls further up. There was also another grand piano, which once again was sadly neglected on this occasion. The lighting made it challenging to get a decent photo, but this will hopefully give the overall impression:

It was a fun Hollywood-themed celebration, this one, with a red carpet for people to walk down and photographers dressed as old-time paparazzi. This also gave me a chance to dress up in black tie, which is always appreciated. And I particularly liked the ‘living statue’, which would occasionally elicit shrieks from guests who weren’t expecting it to start moving. It’s not every gig that you hear random screams from nearby audience members!

To give you a feel for how it went, and make your day a little more musical than it otherwise would have been, here’s a clip of me playing ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues’:

The one thing I wasn’t too happy about was being placed in exactly the same spot where the photos were to be taken. It’s quite tricky to perform at your best when you’re engulfed by a massive groups of guests posing for pictures – pictures which presumably will all feature me in the background looking mildly perplexed!

‘Annie’, Featuring the Emergency Reed Player

I’ve had some last-minute gigs in my time, notably when I was required to play bassoon for Rachmaninov’s First Symphony with less than 6 hours notice. This gig wasn’t quite as urgent, but nevertheless it was only on the evening of Monday 16th that I had a message asking if I’d be able to perform ‘Annie’ at Stockport Plaza the following evening.

Of course I said yes – as you’ll have realised, I’m just a reed player who cain’t say ‘no’. And to be honest it was very convenient, being nicely local and certainly within my comfort zone as it only required me to play clarionet, bass clarionet and tenor saxomophone. It’s not a musical I’d done before too, so it was good to add yet another show to the repertoire.

This was only the second time I’d played in Stockport Plaza, but my what a beautiful theatre it is. Plenty of space in the orchestra pit too, which isn’t always the case, and a huge stage to house what looked to me like a very slick and polished production. I had a lovely evening, but honestly was quite happy not to do the rest of the week as it’s not exactly my favourite show. ‘Annie’, ‘Oliver!’… There’s clearly something about orphan musicals that just doesn’t do it for me!

‘Oliver!’ in Southport (Part I)

Speaking of orphan musicals…

Bright and early on Sunday 22nd I made my way over to Southport – a little weary after my return trip from Norfolk the night before – for the initial rehearsal of ‘Oliver!’ with BOS Musical Theatre Company. If all this is sounding a bit familiar, that’s because this is the third production of said musical I’ve been involved with this year, and my fifth overall! Crikey, once was enough. I didn’t even ask for ‘more’!

What was unfamiliar, though, was the instrumental part. For the first time I was to play this show on bassooooooooooooon, whereas in the past I’ve always been on the flute and piccolo part. So I did at least get to appreciate a different perspective of ‘Consider Yourself Part 1’ and ‘Consider Yourself Part 2’ and ‘Consider Yourself Part 3’ and ‘Consider Yourself Reprise’ and ‘Bows Part 1’ and ‘Bows Part 3’ (both of which are versions of ‘Consider Yourself’). It was an interesting part, to be fair. I feel it’s one of those where they’ve shrunk down the orchestration and put all the missing bits on bassoon, resulting in quite a full-on playing experience. And then there are things like this, which is certainly not the octave I intended to be playing in when I took up the instrument:

So yes, it was a challenge on the lips and fingers but I made it through the rehearsal without falling to pieces. And then on Friday 27th I tootled off to Southport Little Theatre itself for the dress run. But seeing as the actual performances weren’t until October, I feel I should say no more for now and instead leave the further details for next month’s edition!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Didsbury with the Dixie Beats

While we’re on the topic of familiar situations, I shall tell you about my performance on Thursday 26th at Didsbury Cricket Club with Bolton’s leading and only Dixieland jazz band, The Dixie Beats. This was our third gig this year at that venue, and our first since the summer break. It was a particularly successful one if I say so myself, and was further enhanced by a few of my own loyal supporters and groupies who had come along specially to watch. In short, a good time was had by all.

All of which brings me to the end of the September 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
Yet again it is difficult to choose, but I think I will go with the Jelly Roll gig in Clitheroe on Sunday 8th. It wasn’t too far, it was a nice venue, I got to take some arty photos with a piano, I enjoyed playing, and we were greatly appreciated.

What We’ve Learned
I need to plug my sat-nav in in a particular way for it to work properly.

September 18, 2024

‘Windy Friends’, by Ellen Tsai

As a long-time supporter of knitted, crocheted and otherwise hand-crafted musicians, it gives me great joy to share with you the cover of Ellen Tsai’s new EP ‘Windy Friends’!

But to quote a phrase, “A cover is not the book so open it up and take a look,” or in this case, “A cover is not the EP so go to Bandcamp and have a listen.” Because ‘Windy Friends’ is a set of four charming pieces for varying ensembles of wind instruments (and the occasional piano). I was lucky enough to record the clarionet, bass clarionet and bassoooooooooon parts for this release, and would particularly recommend ‘Last Chime’ as maybe my favourite of the compositions.

Click here to give it a listen and support the cause of fabric musicians everywhere:

https://ellentsai.bandcamp.com/album/windy-friends

Also, more exciting news… The first piece – ‘Paradise Bird Theme & Variations’ – has been given the full YouTube music video treatment, where you can not only hear but also see us musicians hooting away on our various blowpipes. Here it is, and I hope it makes your day nice:

September 13, 2024

The Gig Review: August 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop!
The great, big, greedy nincompoop!”

– quoth The Oompa Loompas, ‘Augustus Gloop’

Sure as eggs is eggs, August follows July, and thus it was no surprise for me to awake on the day after 31st July to find that I was yet again firmly entrenched in the month of (you guessed it) August! I find it interesting talking to other musicians about this particular month, because it seems that people have widely differing experiences depending precisely what type of music they play. For example, musical theatre work tends to dwindle as all of the amateur societies have a break over the holidays. The same is true of a lot of orchestral playing. And you’ll be saddened I’m sure to find that unusually there is no mention of Bolton’s leading and only Dixieland jazz band The Dixie Beats in this month’s review, as they too take a break from performing over the summer holidays.

On the other hand, the onset of the holidays always inspires a significant peak in other types of work. Outdoor events especially abound, with people holding weddings, parties and village shows while the weather is (hopefully) better than average. It’s also, of course, a busy time of year for events because more people are off work and available to attend. So for people like me who do those sorts of function gigs, it really is a time to get the instruments polished up and to head out on the road, ready to earn my keep as a wandering minstrel.

And what a lot of wandering! I’ve certainly added a diverse selection of new locations to my ‘places I’ve been since 2019’ map this past month. So allow me to take you on a tour of England, Scotland and even Wales as I guide you through my latest batch of adventures…

Jubilant Jamming with Jelly Roll

As is often the case, the bulk of my performances this month were with my regular TRAD. JAZZ trio The Jelly Roll Jazz Band, in which I play my specially-adapted metal-clarionet-with-cymbal attachment. By the way, it’s now 14 years since I started playing in this particular group – how time flies! And much of our repertoire hasn’t changed since those early days. The beauty of playing jazz though, is that because of the improvisational element even the most commonplace of tunes is different every time, which explains how I have made it this far without descending completely into madness.

A Very Goole-ish Gig
We’ve had some pretty ghoulish gigs in our time as a band, notably the wedding reception themed around “The Haunted House Celebrates Mardi Gras in November” and our Hallowe’en gig in Rhyl last year (on the 30th October, perversely). The photos from these events are especially worth sharing, as we made the most of the opportunities to dress up:

But there was no need for us to put on fancy dress for our gig on Friday 2nd August, because the only remotely ghoulish thing about it was the location: Goole!

To be more specific, we were playing for a wedding reception in the incredible setting of Carlton Towers. It’s the first time I’ve been to that specific venue, however I did pass very close to it while walking the Trans Pennine Trail a couple of years ago. And so, on the way there, it was satisfying to pass by some familiar scenery that I had last seen on foot after a full day of walking, but this time from the comfort of a vehicle.

Carlton Towers really is an impressive building, and I took full advantage of the bright sunny weather to document it photographically. Our performance took place outside, in the large gravelled area in front of the house, and we did feel a bit distant from our audience on this occasion. That’s because they all sat at the tables on the opposite side of the courtyard, where they were shaded by the accompanying parasols. However we were reliably informed that the music was still perfectly audible from such a distance, and greatly appreciated by the guests.

Shuffling to Sheffield
There are certain things that give you a particularly warm glow as a band. Obviously general compliments are always heartening, especially when people tell you that you’ve brightened up an otherwise miserable day. But there’s nothing quite as flattering as when a client goes out of their way to rearrange their plans in order to have you perform.

This has happened to us a couple of times in the past – for example, one client postponed their 90th birthday party by a week so that we’d be able to attend. And our second customer of August 2024 was similarly accommodating. When they heard that we would be unavailable on the afternoon of Friday 2nd, they re-jigged their wedding day so that we could play for them in the evening instead!

Consequently, having completed our duties in Goole, we immediately set off to a village near Sheffield to give another couple a jazzy start to their marriage. This one had a more intimate vibe to it, largely because we were playing in a private garden with the audience less than 20 metres away! And there was a really warm informal atmosphere in general, with the bride even inviting us to partake of the outstanding homemade wedding cake. Plus there were clearly many there with a deep knowledge and appreciation of jazz music – not least the couple themselves, who told us they had considered many other bands but none quite matched up to us! Here comes that warm glow again…

The only traumatic event was when the band mascot, Clarence the Clarinet-Playing Cat, was taken hostage by an over-enthusiastic dog. Fortunately he was later discovered unharmed, passed out on the cake table:

London Calling
The first weekend of August truly was a bumper one for gigs, and most of them were even within a reasonable distance of my Manchester home. However the exception was Saturday 3rd, when I had to travel all the way down to London to do a Jelly Roll gig at a 30th birthday party. Fortunately though our banjo player lives in Finsbury Park so we were able to travel together and stay overnight at his. This excursion also provided my first ever experience of driving in the capital, and I’m delighted to report that my jazzmobile and I managed to navigate the streets of north London without either getting beeped at or squashing a single cyclist. Quite the victory!

It was early on the Saturday that we drove down, arriving at Mister Banjo’s residence early in the afternoon. We then had an hour or two to wind down and organise ourselves before taking the tube to Kennington, and locating the latest in a series of back gardens that we’d be playing in.

You may be a little confused at this point, wondering why there were only two of us when the band is usually a trio. Well that’s because our regular bass players couldn’t make it to this performance, so we enlisted the services of a London-based double bass player (also called Michael), whom we met when we got to the venue. This was the first time we’d played with Bass Michael as a band, and in fact I’d never even met him before the gig! It’s usually best not to mention these things to a client, who may get nervous at the fact they’ve booked musicians who haven’t played together before. But the process of finding ‘deputies’ to fill in for regular players is very common, and if you’re careful to choose the right musician they’ll be able to slot into the band as though they’ve been playing in it for years, even with no rehearsal.

I’m pleased to say that, in Bass Michael, we did indeed choose the right musician. The performance went perfectly smoothly, and in fact it was refreshing to play with a slightly different combination of musicians, which inevitably varies the feel of the music. It was a bit of a squeeze fitting into the corner of a small terrace back garden, but well worth the effort for all the sausage sandwiches that we were treated to from the ongoing barbecue!

A Rhyl-ly Good Gig
Our final performance of the weekend was on Sunday 4th, in the north Wales coastal town of Rhyl. Quite convenient from Manchester, but unfortunately not so much from London! Therefore once again it was an early start, to drive the many miles to our next engagement.

We’ve grown quite familiar with Rhyl in recent times, because at the tail end of last year we had a regular series of bookings playing it its town centre (first for Hallowe’en then for Christmas). So it felt strangely nice to be back on familiar ground and especially to re-acquaint ourselves with our favourite cafe that seems to be the focal point of the entire town:

The actual gig was in the local ‘Pavilion Theatre’ on the seafront, and we weren’t quite sure what to expect when we arrived. To be honest, even after we’d finished we weren’t quite sure what the occasion had been. All we knew was that we’d been booked to play for a couple of hours, between 2:30 and 6:30 in the afternoon, at some sort of community festival-themed event.

As far as we could gather, there was a show going on in the main theatre over the course of the afternoon, and it seemed that we had been booked to play in the foyer during the intervals to keep the crowd entertained. Along with a Punch & Judy show…

Our first spot seemed quite conventional – I think we did around half an hour while people milled around, and it appeared to go down well. Then we had a break of about an hour while everyone went in to watch the show (during which time we popped over to our favourite cafe for a bit). Then for our second spot we were placed in a totally different part of the foyer, almost tucked out of the way so that our music didn’t interfere with the Punch & Judy show. We played for about 15 minutes to a very small number of theatre-goers, getting a photo with the town’s mayor in the process. And then everyone went back into the show, and we were told we could go home!

Like I say, a perplexing afternoon. But the clients were happy and we got to leave early after less than an hour of playing, so I’m not going to complain!

Cockleburghs and Musselburghs
Having asserted our dominance over England and Wales, our next duty as a band was to claim Scotland once more. So on Thursday 8th we travelled up, ready for a stint the next day at Musselburgh Races! Of course the various Edinburgh festivals were going on at the time, which normally would have made finding accommodation in the area virtually impossible. Luckily, however, I have a cousin in the city and our banjo player has friends round there, meaning we were able to stay overnight with little to no hassle.

The following morning we made the short journey over to Musselburgh and assembled at the racecourse. We had been booked to play for Ladies Day – the largest fixture of the racecourse’s calendar, which attracts over 8000 visitors and this year would be featuring special guest Rylan Clark hosting the after-party. At the request of the client, we had even obtained straw boaters and stripy outfits for the occasion (the latter being the original waistcoasts we wore when we first started busking as a band all those years ago, and which had been lovingly crafted out of a set of tea towels by one of the band members’ mums).

You may recall from March’s Gig Review that our last experience playing at a racecourse wasn’t the most pleasant, with freezing cold temperatures and horizontal rain rather putting a damper on our enjoyment. The Musselburgh gig was made considerably easier by the fact we had a specific spot to play in which was also reasonably sheltered, in a corner of the ‘Pommery Champagne Garden’. Unfortunately however the weather was once again a little challenging, as it simply couldn’t make its mind up whether to go for clear blue sky and sunshine, torrential downpour, or howling gale. All three styles seemed to take it in turns, with a particularly strong gust of wind even carrying off one of our straw boaters at one point.

Despite this, I did find it a fun gig. We did a set at the start of the day to welcome people as they were coming in, and then played short 15-minute sets between each of the afternoon’s races. It was particularly interesting to keep an eye on the crowds as well, and notice them getting progressively drunker over the course of the day!

Such revelry was not available to me however. As well as having to be professional, I also needed to be prepared for the 230-mile drive back to Manchester after the gig! Tiring, yes, but it did provide some gorgeous scenery as I drove the three of us through the Scottish borders on what turned out to be a glowing summer’s evening.

Carefree in Caernarfon
On the subject of beautiful scenery, my next gig with Jelly Roll was especially spectacular as it took us into the wilds of Snowdonia, not far from Caernarfon. This was a wedding reception that we performed at on Saturday 24th, and it was another bright summer’s day which showed the incredible views at their finest. Furthermore, our eminent sousamaphonist was on chauffeur duty so I was able to gaze dreamily out of the windows without fear of driving over a ledge.

The setting for the wedding itself was properly out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forests and mountains, at a set of barns that at other times appear to provide accommodation for ramblers and holidaymakers. It was so remote that there wasn’t even the tiniest glimmer of phone reception – something that I tried to appreciate as far as possible while it lasted!

The gig itself wasn’t particularly eventful, and all went smoothly as we tootled away with our charming background TRAD. JAZZ while the guests enjoyed some mingling time (punctuated by group photos and trips up to the buffet). Then afterwards it was another journey back through the cascading hills, arriving home in time for tea. That’s one of the great things about afternoon performances – you’re often home in time for tea. It’s quite civilised really.

A Fine Day in Farndale
Speaking of places with no telephone reception, two days later on Monday 26th we found ourselves performing once again for the good people of Farndale Show. I believe this is the third year we’ve played at this specific show, and we all agree it has a particular charm that sets it apart from the others. Part of the appeal is that it’s a bit smaller than some of the others we do, which makes it feel more personal somehow. There’s also the craft marquee (our favourite section), which we always enjoy looking around for its range of entries that vary from incredibly skilled to downright peculiar. Let’s be honest, there’s a particular British eccentricity inherent in the concept of a vegetable competition! And one more extremely appealing aspect is the colossal buffet that is always laid out in the village hall for staff and exhibitors, which never fails to bring us great joy.

It’s another fantastic location as well, with incredible views both on the journey there and at the show itself. I wasn’t in the best state to appreciate them this year unfortunately, being a little weary after having driven over from Manchester the previous night, but still there are few better locations in which to ply one’s trade.

As usual at these sorts of events, we kept the crowds entertained with our jolly walkaround tunes and all was well in Farndale.

Déjà Vu at the Golf Club
The final Jelly Roll gig of the month (except for a special one that I’ll get to in a minute) took us back to a venue we first explored back in May – a golf club up in north Manchester. You may recall reading about a wake that we performed at in that venue, and in fact it was one of the attendees from that wake who had booked us to play there once again on 30th August, to help celebrate his 90th birthday.

One of the more stressful things about doing gigs is having to travel to lots of unfamiliar locations and find venues that aren’t always in the most obvious of places. So it does make life noticeably easier when you’re playing in a familiar location, even if you’ve only been there once before. You know where it is, you know how to get there, you know how long it’ll take etc. Just takes a bit of the worry out of it. And that was indeed the case with this booking – just a simple tram journey followed by a short walk and we were there.

Unusually, we opted to sit down for this performance. Normally we stand where possible as it feels more formal, takes up less space and probably makes our playing a little more energetic. But our banjo player had been a bit ill over the preceding few days and it would have looked odd for just one of us to sit, so all three of us played sitting down for this one.

It was a bit strange being back in the same venue for a completely different occasion – I instinctively felt I had to act quite solemn, and had to remind myself that this time it was a birthday rather than a funeral! I’m pleased to report also that, as it was a celebratory meal, there was plenty of spare food so we were each able to help ourselves to a large fortifying plate of curry during our break, to spur us on through the second set.

Songs Played on a Solo Saxomohpone

It’s not unheard of for me to be unleashed on the world without the restraining influence of a band to keep me in check. And usually it goes rather well. This month I had a couple of gigs where it was just me, my saxomophone and my trusty backing tracks, as follows:

A Local Gig for Local People
As someone who regularly clocks up hundreds of miles in a day to get to gigs, it was a real treat on Saturday 17th to have a booking virtually within walking distance of my front door. In fact I would have happily walked it if I didn’t have my various bits of equipment to carry. To put it in perspective, my previous gig had been Musselburgh Races with Jelly Roll – a cool 400-mile round trip. Whereas on 17th I only had to travel a grand total of 4 miles!

The booking in question was a wedding, but unusually for me I would be playing as part of the evening party where things tend to be a bit more lively than at the afternoon drinks reception. The venue was a local bar/restaurant, with my first set in their outdoor area and my second indoors, in the bar itself (to avoid upsetting the neighbours). It’s at times like those that I feel especially glad of my compact, self-contained, battery-powered setup for my backing tracks – it really is just a laptop plugged into a speaker, and so can be placed pretty much anywhere and moved with equal ease.

The repertoire for the evening was a varied selection of pop songs chosen by the bride and groom themselves from my extensive list. I always appreciate it when clients pick their own set lists for these kind of occasions, because it saves me having to try and predict what sort of thing they’ll like to hear. The more specific people are about what they want, the easier it is to fulfil their wishes (as long as their wishes aren’t too off-the-wall).

So anyway, I hooted my way through a jolly evening of entertainment, much to the delight of the assembled guests who at various points enjoyed a good singalong and a boogie or two. And then when it was time to leave I packed up my things and was home within about 15 minutes. Living the dream!

A Brate Brunch
The atmosphere was rather different for my next saxomohpone gig, which took place on Sunday 25th in Worcester (thus sandwiched between Jelly Roll gigs in Caernarfon on 24th and Farndale on 26th). This time I was to be performing some classy background swing tunes, for a regular ‘jazz brunch’ event held in the city’s branch of Côte Brasserie. I must confess I was a little perturbed by the timings: I was to begin playing at midday, by which time surely ‘brunch’ has been pushed late enough to become ‘lunch’? But such deep philosophy is not for me to indulge in. I’m just there to play the tunes.

Normally for solo saxomophone gigs I play my alto, as it’s compact while still packing a considerable amount of volume. Plus it’s in the right key for my backing tracks! But for this gig I chose to branch out and take along the larger instrument that is a tenor saxomophone. Partly for practical reasons – I would be improvising over a selection of jazz standards, and the tenor is built in the same key as clarinet so I would be able to play them in the keys I’m accustomed to. But also I’ve always preferred the tenor over the alto for jazz. Its larger construction gives it a deeper, more sultry tone that I find rather more nuanced and a bit less ‘in-your-face’. Don’t believe me? Have a listen to this clip of me playing ‘I Got Rhythm’ from that very gig:

It was a bit quiet in the restaurant that day – according to the staff they normally have more customers when the jazz brunch is on. I hope it wasn’t me that put people off! But those present did seem appreciative and I had some very positive comments from people who clearly know the genre. I also enjoyed jazzing on a different instrument to my usual clarionet, and thought it would be nice to try and find some similar restaurant gigs that are maybe a bit more local. Plus I got a free lunch! Or was it brunch?

Sinning with Annie’s Saints and Sinners

Thursday 29th saw me returning to my local venue of Didsbury Cricket Club, although this time for once I wasn’t to be playing with The Dixie Beats! No, the band was Annie’s Saints and Sinners, whom you may recall I last performed with on a fateful Sunday morning back in February. This is a seven-piece ensemble, but unfortunately three of those pieces were unavailable that evening. Which is where I came in, along with a deputy bass player and a trombonist that may look eerily familiar to Dixie Beats followers…

As well as fulfilling my duties on the TRAD. JAZZ CLARIONET, I also managed to help out when the pianist (Annie herself, no less) realised on arriving that she had forgotten to bring her keyboard stand. Luckily I, living nearby, was able to pop home and fetch mine, thus saving the day yet again. There must be something about Didsbury and forgetting equipment – remember when I played there in January and our drummer forgot to bring a snare drum?

It was admittedly quite a challenging evening, this one, as many of the tunes were unfamiliar and there were even one or two curveballs thrown in of which I hadn’t been forewarned. Plus there was a bit of adjusting to be done, to accommodate the various idiosyncracies of the other players. But the good news is it all managed to hold together overall, despite the occasional unevenness, and provided a jolly evening for the appreciative assembled crowd!

‘90s Classics with The Jelly Roll Boyz

My final gig of the month was squeezed in right at the end of August, on Saturday 31st, and took me all the way down to the village of Erlestoke, in Wiltshire. This was a post-wedding party, which took the form of a mini music festival in a big field with tipis and tents and barbecues and all those sorts of things. I was to be joining my Jelly Roll colleagues for two sets, in two different guises. First, from midday until 1:00 we would be playing our regular stuff as The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. Then later, from 7:30 to 8:30, we would be taking on our (thankfully) rarely-seen persona of ‘90s tribute band The Jelly Roll Boyz.

This would be our third gig as The Jelly Roll Boyz, the first being back in 2021 for a bit of a laugh at a friend’s 30th birthday party. It’s all good fun, with each member of Jelly Roll taking on a different role to their usual – our sousaphone player becomes the lead singer, our banjo player moves on to electric guitar and keyboard, I shift from clarinet to ukulele, saxophones and (extremely dodgy) violin, and our double bass player moves on to electric bass. You may notice that in that line-up we are missing the key component of a drummer, however we have that base covered by an authentic ‘90s drum machine which keeps us rigidly in time (on the occasions when we can actually all hear it). It’s all rather surreal, to be honest.

It was actually a surreal afternoon overall, thinking about it. An hour of jazz, followed by 6 hours sitting around while other bands of varying descriptions did spots on the makeshift stage, followed by an hour of hastily assembled and extremely shaky ‘90s bangers. Adding to the weirdness was a family of six swans that lived on the nearby lake, which would occasionally go for a wander around the field, no doubt lamenting the lack of Saint-Saëns on the entertainment programme.

The only thing missing from the day was any energy on my part. This was because I, along with two of the other Jelly Rolls, had set off at 6:30 in the morning to get to the gig, having only got to bed well after midnight following the previous evening’s 90th birthday party. So in the end it was something of a blessing to have such a large gap between sets, as it meant we each had time for a substantial nap in the car to give us some chance of making it through the evening! There was also no chance of me doing the four-hour drive back to Manchester that night, and so it was that I saw out August from the comfort of my trusty tent, tucked up in my sleeping bag with the distant sounds of the remaining partygoers to soothe me to sleep.

My, what a month!

All of which brings me to the end of the August 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
I think I’m going to have to give it to Farndale Show, for the beautiful setting, beautiful buffet, and beautiful creations in the craft marquee.

What We’ve Learned
Brunch can be anything you want it to be.

August 24, 2024

The Gig Review: July 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“True love blooms for the world to see,
Blooms high upon the July tree.”

– quoth Nina Simone, ‘July Tree’

With the summer months now well and truly upon us and the academic year drawing to an end, July represents for many a period of winding down as work tails off and they look forward to a bit of rest and some time away from the daily grind. We musicians, however, are contrary creatures, and while much of the population calms down we are only just gearing up for what is usually one of the busiest periods of the year! It is now peak time for weddings, country shows, parties, and other grand events where the buzz of live music can add a thick layer of icing onto an already sizeable cake.

Part of me wishes there wasn’t such a seasonal nature to the music business, and that I could spread my gigs out evenly over the course of the year rather than being bored in January and run off my feet in July. But that’s the way of it, and as with all such things it is important to make hay while the sun doth shine. So as I promised last month, here for you is a bumper edition reflecting on the jolly jamboree that was July!

The July Roll Jazz Band

As ever, I was pleased this month to spend plenty of time playing TRAD. JAZZ CLARIONET with my pals in the endearingly eccentric Jelly Roll Jazz Band. But funnily enough, the month began with two gigs that never were…

The Incredible Vanishing Gigs
Our first performance of July was to be in Harrogate on Tuesday 2nd, and its unfortunate cancellation was directly the fault of then-prime-minister Rishi Sunak. No, seriously! We had been asked to play at a corporate event for an organisation that works closely with the government, and all was looking positive until the general election was announced for July 4th. At that point they realised that they would be far too busy that week for socialising, and thus our booking was lost! I’m still wondering if we can legitimately sue the Conservative government for loss of earnings. The worse news is that we hadn’t quite completed the contract when it was called off, and therefore were not entitled to any cancellation fees. However I’m pleased to say that this tale does have a happy ending, because the organisation in question has since re-organised the event for October and booked us in for that date instead. Let’s hope there aren’t any massive political upheavals in the autumn!

But this wasn’t the only booking to fall through that week. You see, on 3rd July we were due to perform in our usual capacity as background entertainment for a wedding reception up near Darlington, however just under a month in advance we received an email from the relevant agency informing us the gig had been cancelled! For some things this wouldn’t have been a surprise, but this one did seem mysterious seeing as the clients had up until then been very enthusiastic and hands-on, even having a telephone conversation with me a few days earlier when everything had sounded extremely positive. So for it to suddenly fall through with no explanation did seem rather unusual.

But then these things do happen, and fortunately for us we were still entitled to 60% of the fee (as we were unlikely to find alternative work for that date at such short notice). Even more fortunately, if they had cancelled a few days earlier it would have been over a month in advance and we would only have received 10% – so if anything we were a little relieved at the client’s timing! I must say, going straight from 10% to 60% after a particular cutoff date does seem to me a bit of a big jump. But as this gig was booked via an agency, theirs are very much the rules we must play by.

Switching it Up in Ipswich
Although it was disheartening to lose out on a couple of gigs, we did still have plenty in the bag and soon found ourselves embarking on a three-gigs-in-three-days weekend. Which may sound like a lot until I tell you what we did in August… These were to once again take us the length and breadth of the country (or at least, a portion of it), from a wedding near Ipswich on Friday 12th, to a birthday party near Loughborough on 13th, to our regular spot at Bakewell Country Festival on 14th.

It was to be a travel-filled weekend, and to try and minimise expenses I had arranged to get the train to Doncaster on the Friday morning, where I would be met by our sousaphone player extraordinaire who would then act as chauffeur for the weekend. This did mean rather an early start, with me catching the train at 5:41 in the morning to arrive in Donny bleary-eyed at 7:35. So if you’ve ever indulged in the stereotype of musicians as layabouts who don’t get out of bed until 2 o’clock in the afternoon, this may give you cause to think again!

From there we chugged down to the town of Woodbridge, and – having a bit of spare time on our hands – had a look round the local charity shops before meeting our esteemed banjo player, fresh off the train from London, and continuing on to the gig. This was at a large country house, where we would be doing our usual thing of playing outside on the terrace while people enjoyed their post-wedding glasses of bubbly.

It’s always interesting hearing people’s reactions to the sousaphone. It’s such an imposing (dare I say ridiculous-looking) instrument, and one you don’t see every day, which is prone to spark curiosity and even confusion among onlookers. By far the most common audience interaction we have in Jelly Roll at the moment goes as follows:

“Excuse me, what’s that instrument called?”

“It’s a sousaphone.”

“A what?”

“A sousaphone.”

“A Caesarphone?”

“No, a sousaphone!”

Seriously, it’s almost creepy the regularity with which that exact script is replayed. But you do get occasional variations, and at the Woodbridge wedding I overheard a particularly fine one. The guests were walking past on the way to the ceremony while we were setting up, and in passing one gentleman said to his friend: “Wow! Now that’s what I call a… erm… er… a, er… French horn…?” I just enjoyed how boldly he began the sentence, only to realise he had no idea how to finish it!

Our performance went perfectly smoothly, even if we weren’t allowed to do any singing. Seriously, the client had gone to great pains to emphasise that they didn’t want any vocals! How rude. Then at the end, we were asked by the wedding planner if we could walk off while playing, in order to lead the guests through to the meal. It was with a little trepidation that we agreed, having had poor experiences with such schemes in the past. The issue is, if the audience doesn’t know that they’re meant to follow the band then they probably won’t! Understandably, they’re more likely to just stay put and wonder why the musicians have suddenly walked off. This time, though, our fears were misplaced and the guests did follow along, while we played the world’s longest rendition of ‘When the Saints’, until every last one of them had disappeared into the marquee for the wedding breakfast.

To give you an idea though of the occasion as a whole, here we are from earlier in the set giving a rendition of ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’:

Following the gig, Mister Banjo caught the train back to London while Mister Sousaphone and myself carried on towards our overnight accommodation. Now may be a good time to dispel another stereotype of the touring musician, which envisages us as inhabiting lavish hotel rooms with big TVs that we can throw out of the window (much to our manager’s dismay). No, we were booked in to stay at Billing Aquadrome, sleeping in a van and a tent respectively. It may not be glamorous, but hey – at £7 per person we’re not going to complain!

The other great thing about this accommodation was that it had a Greene King pub on-site, with a plentiful supply of beer mats that allowed me to construct this gargantuan architectural feat the following morning:

If you like that, wait until you see the slow-motion video of it falling down:

Laughing in Loughborough
The following day’s booking wasn’t until the evening, in the village of Wymeswold. This meant we could have a leisurely morning at the Aquadrome then head off to Loughborough for a look round the town before heading off to our latest performance. It was a bit of a shame having to spend the afternoon mooching round a town centre, but I did manage to pick up some DVDs at the market which I was pretty pleased with: ‘The League of Gentlemen: Live Again!’ and ‘JAWS: The Revenge’. Also, I found the world’s most threatening garden ornament:

The gig that night was a 78th birthday party, but it was held in a pub so kind of bridged the gap between pub gig and event booking. We were due to start at 8 o’clock, but decided to begin early and play an extra half hour of music when one of the guests offered us a generous tip for doing so!

These kinds of gigs in small enclosed spaces can often be quite challenging acoustically because all the sound just mushes into one loud cacophony. People start talking louder, so we have to play louder to be heard, so conversations get even louder, etc. It’s a problem you don’t get outdoors when all the sound disappears off into the ether. I’m glad to report that this one was actually pretty good though in that respect – there were a decent number in attendance but it wasn’t too crowded, and therefore we didn’t have to fight to be heard. Don’t believe me? Listen for yourself, to this recording of us playing ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’:

It was a good gig with a highly appreciative audience, but personally I struggled a bit as I was beginning to feel decidedly rough. Perhaps I was just a little worn out with all the travelling and performing (and sleeping in a tent), but I think that evening I would have benefitted from curling up under a blanket with a hot chocolate rather than playing two hours of jazz! This is one of the classic downsides of self-employment though, especially if you’re a performer: there’s no such thing as sick pay. The show must go on, and I would have to wait for the following week for some time to recuperate.

Before then though, we had to get to our next accommodation. This came in the form of another campsite, about an hour’s drive away, where we assembled our tents in the darkness of midnight and settled down to sleep in advance of another early start.

Baking Well in Bakewell
Our final performance of the week’s mini tour took us to Bakewell, where we were to do our annual stint at the town’s ‘Country Festival’. This is the third year we’ve played at the show, and the first year that I’ve succeeded in getting a photo of this surreal contraption before its disassembly:

Bakewell Show (as it’s known to cool people like me) is an unusual one for us, because instead of doing our usual freestyle walkaround playing we are actually contained to a stage! With microphones and everything! And, if it’s going well, an audience sitting before us on hay bales!

It’s quite different having to play to a captive crowd, as there is some obligation to interact with them and tell them about the band and what you’re playing. This duty usually falls to me, and I usually end up wittering inanely while trying to give some sort of impression that I vaguely know what I’m talking about. Even then, it’s not unheard of for an audience member to question my supreme wisdom. This year, for example, I spent some time introducing all the instruments – for as you know, we often get asked about them. According to my spy in the audience, when I introduced the banjo one of the onlookers said insistently to his companion, “It’s not a banjo, it’s a banjolele. It’s only got four strings.” If that person’s reading, I’d like to point out two things:

There is such thing as a four-string banjo.
I think we know what instruments we play, thank you very much!

Having said that, we did hear some encouraging evidence that day that our efforts to educate the general public seem to be filtering through. As we walked into the showground at the start of the day, one of the staff looked up and said, “Wow, I like the sousaphone!” We were too taken aback by the fact they knew what it was called to offer much in the way of response!

Bakewell Show was an enjoyable end to a tiring weekend, and was by far the busiest we’ve seen it in the three years we’ve been attending. Once we had played our final set we bid farewell to the sound guy and headed home for a well-deserved rest and a night in an actual bed. What luxury!

Drifting to Driffield
Our next Jelly Roll gig came a mere three days later, in the form of our debut performance at Driffield Show. I was a little tired for this particular gig, as I had been performing in Manchester the previous evening which had necessitated doing the three-hour drive to Scarborough in the middle of the night so I could stay over with ‘the folks’ and be ready for Driffield the following morning.

In total we did two hours of playing for this gig, but it was spread over a six-hour window and consequently there was rather a lot of waiting around in between times. I don’t mind this so much personally, as I have become adept over the years at sitting around doing nothing particular. But there was also so much to see at the event itself that it was easy to fill the time looking round all the stalls, marquees and demonstrations on what was a gloriously sunny day. My only disappointment was that I couldn’t find any camel racing (which I promise you they had five years ago when I last attended)! Here’s a photo I got back in 2019 in case you don’t believe me:

Once again we weren’t doing any walkaround, but were instead confined to the members’ area. Annoyingly this was right next to the main ring, which meant at some points we had to curtail songs when other loud music and announcements were blasted out over the tannoy. But overall it worked well, and the organisers commented on how pleased they were and how much positive feedback they received.

But the main news from that day is that we made it on the telly! For the second time this year! Yet again it was only for a split second, but ITV Calendar South did use a couple of clips of our performance for their coverage of the show on their evening bulletin. FAME! : D

Living it Up in Lancashire
It was an extremely agricultural week for us, this one. For no sooner had we finished at Driffield Show on the Wednesday than we were preparing to head to Ribchester on Thursday 18th, in advance of a three-day stint performing at the Royal Lancashire Show!

Of all the regular gigs we do, somehow the Lancashire Show is the one that to me feels most like a holiday. Normally we head to the showground on the Thursday and set up our tents, before performing for three hours each day on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The site is out in the middle of the countryside, just next to the River Ribble and surrounded by trees with the nearest village nearly a half-hour walk away. It’s become tradition for the three of us, weather permitting, to make that trip into Ribchester at least once in the evenings after we finish playing, where we re-acquaint ourselves with the three pubs (plus the working men’s club) at which we have become regulars over the years. Regulars, albeit on an annual basis!

The biggest downside of the Lancashire Show tends to be the weather. I always joke that whatever the forecast says and whatever the weather has been doing in the lead-up, it is 100% guaranteed that it will be chucking it down for the show. And this largely turns out to be true. Back in 2022 we had a record-breaking summer heatwave, with 40 degree temperatures recorded on the Tuesday before the show. Three days later, and the weather at the show itself was freezing cold and rainy! Last year they even had to close early because it was so wet – people were being towed out of the showground by tractors in the middle of the Sunday afternoon!

Well what can I say – this year was an exception! Hooray! It was lovely weather. Dry and sunny, and it really brought the crowds out as well. It truly was a bumper year, which I think has more than made up for the wet ones we’ve experienced over the past two years.

As usual we did a mixture of walkaround and static performances (the latter based mainly in the members’ and VIP marquees). But there was an extra something to keep me on my toes this year… Remember back in May when, at the Royal Bath & West Show, I road-tested my idea to make an entire album by recording our walkaround performances? Well now it was crunch time, as the nine hours of playing we’d do over Lancashire weekend would be the perfect opportunity to gather ample material for such a project.

On the Friday morning I set up all the required technology. Three microphones (one attached to each instrument), each connected to a portable recorder to go in the musician’s various pockets. Plus my famous ‘hat microphone’ to capture the overall sound, which this time was fixed in with elastic for ease of adjustment and removal.

Every time we did a walkaround set we would press the red button on all four recording devices to capture each instrument, ready to be reassembled at a later date into the sound of the complete band. I was a little nervous because there were so many little things that could go wrong and ruin an entire 30-minute set’s worth of recording time. What if one of the recorders ran out of battery or storage space, or one of the files got corrupted, or one of the volume levels was set too high and gave a distorted recording?

Well I’m delighted to report that actually, everything went very much according to plan! I haven’t yet assembled the separate recordings, but I can confirm that I managed to capture the sound of clarinet, banjo, sousaphone and hat for every single note of our walkaround sets, in crystal clear quality. It’ll be a while before I’m able to sift through everything and produce the album itself, but in the meantime here are some little clips to give you an idea of how the individual elements sound:

Hat: Clarinet: Banjo: Sousaphone:
But the main news from that weekend is that we made it on the telly! For the second time that week! Yet again it was only for a split second, but ITV Granada did use a couple of clips of our performance for their coverage of the show on their evening bulletin. MORE FAME! : D

Loxley
After such a busy period, it felt like a real treat to have a full five days of rest before my next gig! But I made up for the downtime by squeezing two performances into Saturday 27th, the first of which was a Jelly Roll wedding reception in Lower Loxley, Staffordshire.

By most measures this was a standard type of Jelly Roll occasion. We were playing outside on a farm (the happy couple being from farming backgrounds), in the mingling period before the guests processed into the marquee to dine. At the request of the bride we did more walkaround playing than usual, but otherwise it was very much our usual sort of thing. Having said that, there was one interesting quirk. You see, the bride was related to another lady whose wedding we had played at back in 2017 – which is how she knew of our band. And on talking to the photographer during our breaks we learned that he’d been hired for that previous wedding as well, and taken some of the pictures that we still use in our publicity (notably including the Lancashire Show souvenir programme)! It was weirdly nice to have a seven-year catch-up with someone to whom you’re quite closely connected despite only having met peripherally. And here is one of the photos in question, so you can see how little we have aged since 2017:

A-BAND-ON THE BOAT!
My burst of capitalisation there reflects not just the attention I want to draw to that particular joke, but also my enthusiasm for July’s final Jelly Roll gig, which took place… on a boat!

I was already looking forward to our booking on Monday 29th when it was first confirmed, but only in the way I generally look forward to playing. I knew it would be a private event in Shrewsbury, however apart from that it could have been anything as far as I knew. Then when I received a detailed email from the client, explaining that we would be playing on a two-hour boat cruise along the River Severn for his retirement party, I was cockahoop!

Unfortunately the drive down to Shrewsbury that afternoon wasn’t the most enjoyable, on account of a 45-minute delay on the M6 and all the lunatics in creation having been apparently let loose on the public highways in one go. But despite the delays I still had a good hour or two between parking up and starting the gig, which I spent doing guess what? That’s right: writing the June Gig Review! You see, it all comes full circle! All of which meant that by the time the gig came around I was feeling much more relaxed and positive.

That positivity only grew over the duration of the event. The novelty of playing on a river boat was one thing – it’s the first time we’ve done that as a band, even though it is traditionally a common type of performance for New Orleans jazz ensembles. But the early evening sunshine setting the stunning scenery of Shrewsbury all aglow made it really special indeed. As our banjo player commented to me shortly after we started, it would be so nice to have a regular gig doing just that sort of thing – playing on a boat for a couple of hours every month or so. Then again, perhaps we’d reconsider once the winter rolled around!

Anyway, here’s a video of us at said gig, playing the eminently appropriate ‘My Heart Will Go On’:

Three’s a Crowd, but What’s Two?

Although July technically began with two non-existent gigs, the first chance I got to do some actual playing came on Friday 5th and Saturday 6th. For I was drafted in at the last minute to play clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon and baritone saxophone for a particular musical with Southport Spotlights Musical Theatre Society. Can you guess which musical, from my above cryptic title? If not, here’s another clue:

Still not got it? O.K., here’s a slightly more obvious clue:

That’s right, it’s Steven Sondheim’s seminal work, ‘Company’!

This is a musical that I am very fond of, regularly singing along to the Raul Esparza cast recording in my car. I have played it before actually, back in Shoreditch in 2015 in a pared-back arrangement, but this time it was fantastic to be part of the full three-piece woodwind section. It was also great to once again tackle the whole bassoon / bass clari / baritone saxomophone combination, which I used to do quite regularly at one point but hasn’t been required of me since I deputised on the original West End production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory back in 2016. And yes I do mention that West End gig at every opportunity!

I was actually asked to play for the entire week of performances (starting on Tuesday 2nd) when the original Reed 3 player had to drop out very late in the day due to illness. However, unfortunately I wasn’t available for the first few dates so could only join for the last two. It’s not an easy thing to just turn up and play for a performance without any rehearsal, especially when it’s in an unfamiliar setting with an unfamiliar ensemble. But it’s something that’s commonly expected of us musicians, especially in professional musical theatre work, and the sheer difficulty of the task – especially when it involves switching between multiple instruments – is part of why we all get paid so much money.

Excuse me for a second…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes. I was going to say that overall I was very pleased with how it went, and I really enjoyed getting to play on this show that isn’t often done, especially by amateur groups. Furthermore, I managed to get a few clips of me playing bassoooooooooon and baritone saxomophone, just as proof that I can actually do it for any of the doubters out there:

Tradding in Chadderton with The Dixie Beats

Remember I said that I had to drive through the night to get to Yorkshire in time for Driffield Show on 17th? Well that’s because on 16th I was out boogie-ing with the Dixieland jazz band that is still Bolton’s leading (and only): The Dixie Beats!

In our final performance before the summer break (because it seems some bands do have summer breaks) we returned to Rochdale Jazz Club in Chadderton, to once again serenade the sparkly walls and Marilyn Monroe portraits. The last time we were there was on the significant date of 16th April, and I must confess this month’s gig was somewhat more… oh, what’s the word… erm… let me think… oh yes, somewhat more forgetful than the previous one!

There must have been something in the air, because even in some of the pieces that we’ve played a million times there were sections that went awry or were even missed out entirely! At one hilarious moment, our trombonist was introducing some of the other band members and completely forgot the banjo player’s name! Just one of those days, clearly. For my part, I was alright, but I can’t really criticise because when we were there back in April I completely forgot to set up my flute until absolutely the last minute. There’s clearly something about Chadderton that… Hang on, what was I saying again?

Despite these minor mishaps, I must point out that we still put on a very good show even if the arrangements were a little more flexible than… OH CRIKEY, IT’S BIN DAY TODAY!

Saxomo-Phone the Neighbours ‘Cos I’m In Liverpool!

I have one more gig to report on in this mega edition of The Gig Review, and then I’ll leave you alone for a bit! If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know exactly when this particular booking occurred as well, for it’s the other gig I did on 27th (after the Jelly Roll wedding in Lower Loxley).

It was quite a simple performance, this one – a pub gig in Liverpool, as part of a 60th birthday celebration. It was only an hour of playing, doing a selection of popular pop songs (#deliberatetautology) on saxomophone along with my trusty backing tracks. It wasn’t so much my sort of vibe to be completely honest, however it seemed to be well-received.

The main excitement from this booking, believe it or not, was the parking situation. The venue was in Anfield, you see, and just round the corner there was loads of ‘residents only’ on-street parking. However, the ‘residents only’ specification only applies from 1st August through to 30th June – so I can’t tell you how smug I was that my gig was in July! Ha!

Now to play us out, here’s a clip I got at that performance of my very own rendition of Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’:

All of which brings me to the end of the July 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
It’s a tricky one this, but I’m going to pick my last-minute performances of ‘Company’ in Southport. It was a rare opportunity to play a favourite combination of instruments on a favourite show!

What We’ve Learned
It’s a sousaphone.

August 18, 2024

‘Miniatures’ Sheet Music – Out Now!

Calling all pianists! The full score of my solo piano album ‘Miniatures’ is now available to order!

For those not already in-the-know, ‘Miniatures’ is a set of 12 solo piano pieces that I composed between 2017 and 2020, and released last year in album form. Until now this music has only been performed by one man, but all that is about to change as you too can now have a go at tinkling your own ivories in my specifically prescribed fashion.

Each solo is available individually as a downloadable PDF, or why not treat yourself to a beautifully bound book containing the full set? And if you haven’t already, make sure you have a listen to the full album to find out what all this fuss is about.

Happy playing!

Click here to learn more about ‘Miniatures’, the album, and the sheet music collection.

July 30, 2024

The Gig Review: June 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“June is bustin’ out all over!
All over the meadow and the hill”

– quoth Oscar Hammerstein II, ‘June Is Bustin’ Out All Over’

This month’s Gig Review takes us all the way through to June – halfway through the year already, and I still haven’t finished my to-do list from January! : / It’s a month of sunglasses, outdoor cider, and trying to answer that perennial question, “Who even is June, and why does she not invest in some better-fitting clothing?”

I’ve remarked more than once in the past that the problem with this whole blogging lark is that the times when you have lots to write about are precisely those when you’re really busy, so have no free time to write! Now that it’s getting to the summer months this is becoming especially apparent – as I write this, it’s now actually the end of July, and I’m sitting in the back of my car in Shrewsbury manically typing before I have to go and play my clari again in 2 hours. To say more would be a spoiler for next month’s edition, but let’s just say I can promise you July’s will be a bumper issue indeed!

Before I get into the nitty and the gritty though, I have a story that should really have made it into last month’s Review but somehow didn’t make it. This event occurred when I was playing in Leeds for that 40th birthday party (after spending 3 hours trying to negotiate the road closures occasioned by the marathon). After we’d played a couple of sets, one of the guests came up to me and, holding out her phone, asked, “Excuse me – is this you?” I looked down and saw that the displayed picture did indeed show me posing at an 80th birthday party, which I had played at nearly 7 years ago in – of all places – Billericay! That’s 170 miles away from Leeds! I remember it well, not least because I had been required to play ‘60s and ‘70s soul music on solo clarinet (an unusual combination that I have not had cause to repeat since). As it turns out, the lady in question was (I think) the granddaughter of the man whose birthday it had been. What a coincidence to bump into her again!

This reminded me of another similar occasion from 2022, when I was up in Scotland with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. Having completed our official gig, we went to a pub in the evening and ended up playing a few tunes to entertain the locals and attempt to get a free drink or two. Once we’d finished, someone approached and – just like that lady last month – showed us a photo accompanied by the phrase, “Excuse me – is this you?” I wish I could remember which gig it was they’d seen us at previously, but it was definitely us in the picture and we were more than a little taken aback to be recognised in – of all places – Ullapool! That’s 10,000,000,000,000 miles away from anywhere!

Things like that do give you a little glow of satisfaction as you feel like a minor celebrity. And they just go to show what a small world it must be that we live in!

O.K., that’s enough philosophisizationing for now. Let’s get to the reason we’re all here: the buffet! What, there’s no buffet…? Oh. If I’d known that I would have brought some sandwiches or something, but no, that’s fine. I’ll just eat later. In that case, in the absence of a buffet, we’ll just have to get to the secondary reason we’re all here: the gigs!

The Jelly Rolls of June

Feeding the Ducks at Duxford Air Show
If you’re a regular reader, you may recall that last month’s edition ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. I had just spent 2 days performing at the Royal Bath and West Show with my biggest slice of pie, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band, and we were about to head off to our next mystery engagement. But what could it be? Well I can now reveal that it was another 2-day-er, playing for the flying machines and the walking machines (i.e. people) of Duxford Air Show!

Things didn’t quite work out as conveniently as usual this year, with Bath and Duxford. The Bath Show is always Thursday to Saturday, over the first weekend of June (or the last of May). Duxford takes place over a Saturday and Sunday, usually on the last weekend of June. Which is great, because it means I get 5 days of work! Unfortunately for us though, this year marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and as part of the celebrations Duxford Air Show was brought forward to the same weekend as Bath. I still haven’t perfected a technique of being in 2 places at once, and therefore we were forced to abandon Bath after only 2 days and head all the way to Cambridgeshire. To be fair, 4 days of gigs is not to be sniffed at, but it’s not quite as good as 5!

One of the challenges of doing Duxford is working out accommodation. It’s possible to stay over at the airfield on a patch of grass earmarked as a suppliers’ campsite – and in fact that’s what I’ve done in previous years with our sousaphone player. But it’s a bit grim that, because we finish playing at 1 pm each day so there’s an awful lot of hanging around to be done, and the nearest village is a substantial walk away. Plus the camping facilities are hardly the most glamorous, consisting as they do of just a portaloo and… Actually no, that’s it. Just a portaloo.

This year I chose to try a different method. Our banjo player lives in London, which is easily commutable from Duxford, so I thought I’d try staying over with him and getting the train in each day. It had its upsides and its downsides I must admit, and I’m still not sure which tactic I prefer. It did mean getting up REALLY early on each day (as in, 5:30/6:00). It added a bit to the travel expenses too. But it did at least mean I had access to a kitchen, a sofa and a bathroom on the Saturday afternoon. At the end of the day I suppose it all comes down to preference. Would you rather have sleep, or a hot meal and a shower?

Hmm, I wonder how often people with ‘proper’ jobs are faced with these quandaries…?

The performing side of things went well that weekend, thank you very much. Our regular routine is to play from 10am to 1pm (with a couple of short breaks), which is kind of intense but at the very least is more fun than writing emails! It’s our usual brand of wandering around, adding a tuneful atmosphere to proceedings without getting too in-the-way. How enjoyable it is does vary though depending on the weather, I must admit. We were lucky this year to have 2 nice calm sunny mornings, but in previous years wind has been a bit of an issue. Try walking around the open expanse of an airfield in a howling gale whilst playing a sousaphone (which is basically a sail), and you’ll know the kind of challenges we face! But anyway, after our 3-hour shift is finished all the flying displays begin in earnest, so the three of us run away and hide to avoid being bonked on the head by falling aircraft.

I say it’s intense, but it’s not as bad as the first year we did it. Back in 2022 we somehow promised to do 3 hours of playing, starting at 10:00 and finishing at 12:45. Hmm, challenging! That reminds me as well of a recent client who proposed the following schedule: Start at 19:30. Play for an hour. Then have a half-hour break, play for another hour, and finish at 21:30.

As a great man once said, “I’ll see what I can do but I’m no time-traveller sir!”

It’s a Long Way to Tipperary… But Also to Thetford!
After a few days respite, it was time for my next Jelly Roll gig, which involved me making a day trip all the way to Thetford! That’s 135 miles away from Manchester!

In fairness, under other circumstances I would have arranged overnight accommodation rather than going all the way there and back in a day, but this gig was on 8th June and I wanted to be back home for 9th because that’s my birthday! : D I’m telling you this for a reason, by the way. If I’m not inundated with cards, gifts and warm wishes this time next year then I’ll have stern words for the lot of ya.

To make the most of the trip, in traditional fashion I travelled down a bit earlier than necessary and met our banjoist in Peterborough for a little busking in the afternoon. As there were only 2 of us it didn’t quite have the impact you get with a full trio, and there was a massive ‘Pride’ parade going on as well that rather stole our thunder, so consequently we didn’t play for long in the end. But it was a beautiful sunny day and a nice chance to see the city centre – which I had always erroneously assumed to be rather grotty, but is in fact distinctly pleasant!

The other highlight was a conversation we had with an eccentric old lady (who was quirkily dressed with a miniature Union Jack flag sticking out of the back of her baseball cap). She heard us playing ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ and stopped for a chat, telling us all about her musical tastes and how she enjoyed what we were playing. After a while she had a look at the front of our music stand and, seeing the band name pegged there on our laminated sign, turned to us in surprise and said, “Oh it’s jazz, is it?!” Good to know we’re giving the right impression! Then before she left we asked if she had any requests, to which she responded (after some thought), “Do you know ‘Bring Me Sunshine’?” Nothing like a bit of deja vu to brighten up the afternoon!

Having aborted our attempted busking, we headed off to Thetford for the gig itself. It was a bit of a mystery one, this, as we had been given no details as to what the occasion was – all we knew was the location and our playing times! Clients do vary a bit in terms of how much information they give you, but this was quite an extreme example. I think sometimes if people book musicians through an online platform or agency there’s a certain distance and anonymity which lends itself to being scant with the details. To be honest, I was quite happy about this – it’s kind of fun if you don’t know what the gig is until you arrive!

As it transpired, it wasn’t particularly weird – in fact, it was one of our staple ‘wedding reception background music’ bookings. Performing in the back garden of a beautiful cottage in a picturesque village, on a bright sunny summer’s day. What could be finer? I’ll tell you what: not having to do as much work as you expected! We soon discovered that the timings we’d been given were those for the entire ceremony and drinks reception, whereas in fact we were only required for a portion of that. What a fortuitous day indeed.

Following the gig, it was time for the looooooooooong drive back to Manchester, where I ushered out my 31st year to the depressing sounds of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ (as read by Tom Hollander), and ushered in my 32nd to the cheerier sounds of the Shipping Forecast and the 1am airing of the National Anthem that they do on Radio 4.

Honley Show? I Don’t Even Know Her!
As it turned out, June was a fairly quiet month for Jelly Roll – at least compared to how the rest of the summer is shaping up – and so I only have one more tale of intrigue to share with you from this particular band. You may have gathered by now that one of our main outlets for our honks and squeaks is the agricultural shows of Great Britain, and on 29th June we added a new one to our repertoire when we went to perform at Honley Show (near Huddersfield).

Unusually, we weren’t booked to do any walkaround sets at this one, instead doing a few static spots over the course of the day. This worked reasonably well, but I think if we get to do it again next year we’ll suggest some walking. It is of course nice being able to have a seat and not have to be up and about traversing the showground, but if the area we’re playing in is a bit quiet then we can feel like a bit of a spare part, which is a shame. If we’re mobile then not only can we cover a greater area but we can also move to where the crowds are, thus making the most of our day and giving better value to the clients.

The other nice thing about being mobile is we can hide under marquees and gazebos if it starts raining! We were a bit concerned on arriving at Honley to find that our sets were all due to be played in uncovered areas, which wasn’t ideal seeing as the weather that day was looking decidedly British (rainy). “I think it’s meant to stop raining this afternoon,” the organiser informed us with confidence when we first got there. “But our first set is at quarter past eleven!” responded our banjo player with a look of dismay.

Fortunately we were alright in the end, as some hasty gazebo-related arrangements were made to keep us (and the other musicians) dry. But it just goes to show, even in our unpredictable English climate it’s still possible for people to be a little over-confident about the weather!

Overall we had a lovely time at Honley Show. As well as getting to play some TRAD. JAZZ, I was given a lollipop by the Samaritans and enjoyed looking round the various craft tents and marquees. I had a go at guessing the weight of a cake but sadly didn’t win it : ( , and also saw a marvellous tombola stocked with beautiful handmade wooden things that I didn’t win (although in fairness I didn’t even enter that one). Here is a particular favourite creation I stumbled upon:

Furthermore, we came up with a new band slogan (“The Jelly Roll Jazz Band: You Can’t Un-Hear It”), and invented a new driving game on the way back home: If you see someone ahead of you wearing a hat, you have to guess what type of hat it is before you pass them. If you get it right you win 5 points, then when you get to 1000 points you win a free hat. A lot of effort to obtain a hat really, when you think about it…

The Dixie Beats Ride Again

It surely wouldn’t be a proper Gig Review without mention of Bolton’s leading (only) Dixieland jazz band, The Dixie Beats! And I’m glad to say I once again have a performance to report upon this month.

20th June saw us return once again to Didsbury Cricket Club – my most local gig venue, being but a short walk from my front door – for a night of raucousness and jollity. It was our second time there this year, and once again we delighted the crowd and left them with many springs in their steps. Also, now that summer is here we got to see the tail end of a cricket match through the club house window (although in these situations we’re always a bit nervous of a stray ball crashing through and embedding itself in a trombone or something).

By the way, if you fancy coming along to see us in Didsbury Cricket Club here’s a key date for your diary: Thursday 26th September, 8pm. See you then!

All of which brings me to the end of the June 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
Even though it was a long way, I think the Thetford wedding has to get the award this time, for being a complete surprise and an overall jolly occasion.

What We’ve Learned
There is no right or wrong way to obtain accommodation for Duxford Air Show.

June 25, 2024

The Gig Review: May 2024

GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!

“May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.”

– quoth an unknown wellwisher from Ireland, ‘An Irish Blessing’

Well in case you hadn’t realised by all the references to May in the above quote, and the fact that there are calendars and things to tell you what month it is, it’s May! Wahey! Or at least it was, a little while ago. And I know you’ve all been sitting on the edges of your seats for a whole 25 days wondering how I kept myself busy over the year’s fifth month, so I’ll now put you out of your misery by clearing up this mystery.

Jelly Rolling Along

It is a truth universally acknowledged that gigs have a habit of coming along in pairs – especially where weekends and bank holidays are involved. This was yet again demonstrated over Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th May, when I had the pleasure of playing for a wedding near Stafford and then a birthday party near Leeds with everyone’s friendly local neighbourhood Dixieland trio, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band.

A Day At the Stafford
The wedding reception on 11th was quite a late one for us as we weren’t due to start until 5:45, and therefore in typical style we travelled early and popped into Stafford to do some preliminary busking and make the most of the day. It was beautifully sunny and the town centre was packed, which was in sharp contrast to our previous visit last February! It also became clear after a while precisely why it was so busy. Just along from where we’d set up was the town’s main square, and before long the crowds were gathering to watch what it turned out was the official induction ceremony of the new mayor. This point was further driven home to us a little later, when our thunder was somewhat stolen by a series of marching bands parading past and rather overwhelming the sound of our quiet little jazz band!

Once we’d finished earning our pennies in the town centre, it was time to head off to the nearby village of Ingestre to earn our pounds at the wedding. I always say one of the great things about playing weddings is that you get to enjoy some beautiful venues out in the middle of nowhere in the rolling British countryside. The flipside of that particular coin, though, is that you’ve got to find the venues in the first place! And while sat-navs have become thoroughly invaluable tools for us travelling minstrels, they are far from infallible. On this occasion, our bass player’s didn’t have a problem and took him straight to the location with no fuss. Mine, however, mis-cued a little and tried to take me through some back road through a load of fields and agricultural buildings. In theory I’m sure this would have worked fine, but what the sat-nav clearly wasn’t aware of was the locked farm gate blocking one of the paths! Cue a significant detour which eventually resulted in me finding the actual official route to our venue – where I found the bassist waiting for me, wondering what had taken so long!

Wedding clients, as with all people in general, do vary in terms of their organisational skills. Usually a certain degree of flexibility is required from us, as speeches overrun, people arrive late, photographers take longer than expected etc. But this one was an exception, being the single most organised and smoothly-executed wedding we have ever encountered! We knew in advance that it was thoroughly well-planned from the fact that, several weeks before the event, the bride sent us a comprehensive document containing every possible detail we could need. It even had a photo of the person we should talk to on the day, so we knew what to look for! And the rest of the occasion ran with a similar level of clockwork precision – everything timed to the exact second, with no margin of error whatsoever. All I can say is it made our lives very easy, and if anyone reading is thinking of booking us for a future event, if they can be even half as detailed and organised as that couple then we will be very satisfied musicians indeed.

All Roads Lead To Leeds (But None Lead Out Again)
The following day I had a reasonably early start, as I needed to make the journey from Manchester to the outskirts of Leeds to perform another Jelly Roll gig, this one for a 40th birthday party. It is always crucially important to leave extra contingency time when travelling to gigs, because unless there are some sort of exceptional circumstances there is absolutely no excuse for being late. In this case we were due to start playing at 12:15, so I departed just after 9 o’clock. My sat-nav’s ETA was 10:30, and I felt satisfied that even if I hit a bit of traffic I should still have a leisurely 90 minutes to set up and relax once I got to the venue.

Do you want to know my actual arrival time? 1:30. I’ll say that again: When I left, my ETA was 10:30. I actually arrived at 1:30. 3 hours later than planned.

And actually most of the journey went very smoothly – it was only when I tried to get through Leeds that things went pear-shaped. Because what nobody had considered (including those planning the party) was that it was the same day as Leeds Marathon, and therefore it was absolutely impossible to get through the city. There was no warning of this on the roads leading up to it, so it was only when it was too late that I realised the problem. And from that point on it felt like I was in some kind of horror film, where every single road I tried to take to get me out of the city led to a dead end. There were diversion signs everywhere but none of them seemed to make any sense or point anywhere useful. To give you an idea of the prevailing chaos, at 11:30 my sat-nav claimed I was 9 minutes from the venue, and tried to lead me down a country lane that would cut through away from the main roads. But I soon discovered this lane was completely blocked with cars, to the point where we each had to reverse back out again and seek yet another alternative route!

Much as I hate to be late for anything (especially a professional engagement), there really wasn’t anything to be done except keep going and hope to get there eventually. So it wasn’t as stressful a journey as you might think, however it wasn’t half tiring sitting in the car for 4 hours straight when you’d only planned for 1.5. I did eventually reach the golf club though, with a cry of ‘Hallelujah!’, and even though we had to start the gig late it still went well in the end. And actually, we weren’t the only ones to be caught in the traffic – many of the guests were running several hours late on account of the marathon, with people still rolling in as late as 4 o’clock and some even having to turn back and go home. All things considered, we were lucky to get there at all, and ultimately the client really appreciated our perseverance and the positive atmosphere we brought to a party that hadn’t quite gone according to plan!

As I said to our banjo player when I arrived, it’s a testament to how much we enjoy these gigs that we’re still happy to keep going even under such difficult circumstances. If it were any other job I would have handed in my notice the following day, but in this case the enjoyment of playing the gig still managed to outweigh the trauma of getting to it.

Wakey Wakey
Our next jazzy excursion saw us performing at a wake on 20th. Regular readers of this blog will recall that I’ve had a few funeral gigs in recent months and may expect this one to be in a similar vein, however there is a distinct difference between playing at the funeral ceremony and playing at the following wake. The atmosphere of the wake is of course usually less solemn and formal, and therefore feels less intimidating and awkward for a performer. In this case we were playing background music, so if anything we helped lighten the mood and bring an element of cheer to the family get-together.

There were a few interesting quirks to this particular occasion as well, which helped keep us entertained as we kept the guests entertained. For one thing, we were joined by a guest spoons player as one of the mourners came up to join us for an impromptu solo. There was also a disembodied pair of legs, fully clothed and sitting cross-legged on a chair in the corner throughout proceedings. It was only when we were about to leave that I noticed these out of the corner of my eye, and did one heck of a double take!

I’m relieved to say that travel was a lot easier than the previous gig as well. This performance was actually in Manchester, and therefore I didn’t even have to drive – I could just hop on the tram and let it do all the work! Ah, the joys of a local gig!

Bath Time
The Royal Bath & West Show is quite a thing. It’s one of the biggest agricultural shows in the country, spanning a whopping 3 days at the end of May, and featuring everything you could possibly imagine related to farming (plus quite a few things that aren’t). It’s got food stalls, it’s got a music tent, it’s got a craft marquee, an art gallery, a tractor shop, dancing sheep demonstrations, a petting zoo, a miniature railway, a bandstand, a poultry marquee, wood carving, wassailing, traction engines, classic cars, a carousel… Oh, and most importantly, it’s got The Jelly Roll Jazz Band!

We always feel like we’re coming home when we arrive at the showground for our annual stint at the Bath Show. We first played there back in 2018, and have been back every year since (except the aborted 2020 show). We’re usually there for 2 or 3 days depending on our other commitments, and bring tents so we can camp overnight between times. It’s always great fun, and we enjoy seeing the many exhibits and demonstrations as much as we enjoy the actual playing.

This year we were booked to play over 30th and 31st May, as we had to head off elsewhere once June came knocking (stay tuned for next month’s Gig Review for more on that). Our basic job is to do 3 hours of playing over the course of each day, but other than that it’s up to us how we arrange it. Usually we divide it between walkaround sets (where we wander all over the showground entertaining the general crowds and the stallholders) and cider tent sets (where we join our friends in the cider marquee and entertain them in return for a tipple or two). On a nice sunny day such as we were lucky to get this year, there’s really nothing finer.

I had a special little experiment up my sleeve this year as well – or should I say, it was ‘under my hat’! You see, I’ve long thought it would be fun and innovative to try recording a live walkaround album from one of our agricultural show weekends. It’d be great to capture the atmosphere of these events as well as giving a showcase for all the great playing we do which people only ever hear snapshots of at the time. But how to go about it? After all, we need to be completely mobile and can’t have a crew of sound engineers following us round with microphones on sticks.

My solution – which I experimented with at this year’s Bath Show – is to utilise the power of portable digital recorders such as those made by Zoom. These have the option of plugging in an external microphone, and therefore it occurred to me that each musician could have one of those in their pocket, with a microphone attached to their instrument. Then afterwards, I could edit together the three recordings to get the sound of the complete band. And as one more detail, I thought it would be nice to have a general microphone to pick up the overall ambience of the show, which could be concealed under a reasonably-sized hat.

It sounds absurd I know, but actually my initial investigations at the Bath Show proved very promising! I was especially pleased with the sound I got from the hat mic, which picked up a surprisingly clear overview of the music despite just being a microphone stuck on top of my head! If you don’t believe me, have a listen to this little clip, which I’d say sounds pretty darn good for what it is:

Stay tuned for more on this ridiculous project, as I’m hoping to bring it to completion in July by recording a full album at the Royal Lancashire Show!

One more thing I’d like to tell you about is my new sunglasses! This is another one of the perks you sometimes get from doing these shows, when stallholders offer you some free merchandise for playing a few songs outside their shop. In this case, we were walking past a stall selling some very nice sunglasses and one of the owners came out and asked, “How many pairs of ‘sunnies’ would we have to give you to play outside our stall?” Naturally we asked for a pair each, and that’s how I came to own these bad boys:

Not bad, wouldn’t you agree? I can also confirm from my own researches that they are polarising (in terms of their effect on light, not the opinions of onlookers). Of course, you may be wondering what tunes we played in order to earn these beauties? Well obviously, we did “Bring Me Sunglasses”, “You Are My Sunglasses” and “On the Sunglasses Side of the Street”!

The Beats of Dixie @ The Jazz Club of Leeds

What blog post would be complete without a mention of Bolton’s leading (and only) Dixieland jazz band, The Dixie Beats? Not this one, I tell you! (Incidentally, it’s one of my life’s ambitions to form a second Bolton-based band and refer to it as ‘Bolton’s following Dixieland jazz band’. I would then book it into all the same venues as The Dixie Beats, but in each case exactly one week after they’d played.)

This month’s outing for The Dixies took us to Leeds Jazz Club once again, on 14th. We played there a couple of times last year but this was our first appearance of 2024. In fact I remember sharing a video at the time from one of last year’s performances but it hasn’t had many views so I’ll post it here again. And I will keep posting it until you all take notice!!!

There are several things I like in particular about this jazz club. For a start, they have a proper stage so it feels like a real performance (and I can look down on the audience which gives me a feeling of superiority). They usually get a few swing dancers coming along, who delight us all with their Charlestons and their Black Bottoms (it’s a dance – look it up) all night long. There’s a McDonald’s just across the road, where I and some of the other band members habitually pick up a now-traditional post-performance snack. And best of all, there’s a superb selection of signs around the venue, of the type you only really find in northern working-men’s clubs:

Our performance was great, as always. That’s because we’re a really good band. I seem to recall the hall wasn’t quite as full as we would have liked, however the audience was appreciative and all present had a jolly old time of it. The only thing that marred the evening was my pre-show trip to Subway, where I tried out one of their Saver Subs and was disappointed to discover how little food it actually contains. :’ (

Saxomohpone in Northomowihc

Now, by this point you may have got the impression that I spent the entirety of May just playing jazz, Jazz and yet more JAZZ! And while you could be forgiven for such ponderings, you would be entirely wrong. For I did a wedding in Northwich on 27th where I played all sorts of cool trendy songs like:

Titanium (David Guetta)
A Thousand Years (Christina Perry)
Rule the World (Take That)
Viva La Vida (Coldplay)

This was a saxomophone job, and I was to be playing with my trusty (ish) backing tracks in a big marquee while people milled around before taking their seats for the meal. At least, that’s what I thought – there seemed to be some confusion when I arrived at the venue. I tried speaking to someone who looked like they knew what was going on (a catering manager or wedding planner or something) and he was convinced I should be playing from 7 till 8, whereas I’d been told 6 till 7. He consulted his sheet, which wasn’t much help as it told him I started at 6:30. So I went and chatted to the bride, who I thought was the person that had booked me but it turns out wasn’t (and I still don’t know who did). She at least confirmed the plan though – at 6 o’clock I was to play one song out on the terrace where people were enjoying the drinks reception, and as I was playing I should lead everyone through to the marquee. I then tried to explain this to the catering manager or wedding planner or something, which took an inordinately long time for such a simple concept, and he still seemed rather perplexed. In the end he just said, “Well if that’s what they’ve asked for, that’s what they’re getting,” and went off in a huff, leaving me to it! Which didn’t fill me with a huge amount of confidence. Then as I continued to set up, the evening’s DJ arrived and asked me what he was meant to be doing – dare I say that in this particular setup, the right hand perhaps wasn’t as aware as it should have been of what the left was doing!

All of this confusion did worry me a little, to the point where I double-checked my emails to make sure I hadn’t got the plan wrong. A small part of me even worried that I’d turned up to the wrong wedding – believe it or not, it wouldn’t have been the first time! I had that happen at a Jelly Roll gig a couple of years ago, on a large country estate that was holding two weddings simultaneously.

But no, all was in fact well. At 6 I went out on to the terrace and – admittedly feeling mildly self-conscious – broke into a belting rendition of The Scissor Sisters’ ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’’, which I used to process the wedding party into the marquee. From there it all ran perfectly smoothly, and I managed to play my set without incident. A kind gentleman even bought me a lemonade at one point to keep me fresh! Thanks kind gentleman!

All of which brings me to the end of the May 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.

Gig of the Month
The Royal Bath & West Show is always a highlight of my calendar, and this year was no exception. The free sunglasses were the cherry on top of an already well-iced cake!

What We’ve Learned
Never never NEVER go anywhere near Leeds when the marathon is on. In fact, while trying to get through it for that Jelly Roll gig I did find myself wondering, “Would it be possible for me never to come to Leeds ever again…?” That is, until I remembered I’d have to be there 2 days later with the Dixie Beats!

June 24, 2024

‘A Lens To Find A Trace’, from ‘Present Paradox’

If you’re reading this, you probably have an interest in the noises I make through my various wooden, plastic and metal tubes! Yes? Well in that case you’ll also have an interest in a song called ‘A Lens To Find A Trace’.

This is the latest release from Dortmund-based musician David Kleinekottmann and is part of his ongoing project ‘Present Paradox’. Back in August 2023 I sat down to record some bluesy bass clarionet for this song, and it gives me a warm glow of satisfaction to inform you that it’s now finished and available to listen to. : D It’s all part of Kleinekottmann’s new album, ‘A Trace To Keep Control’, which you can learn more about here:

https://linktr.ee/presentparadox

So give it all a listen, mull it over, collect your thoughts, but before you do that you can treat your ears to the following fantastical feast…