GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW!
“You bettah
Stick to the plan and get me planted by
March
‘Cos
They call me Iron Man – y’know,
Tony
Starch?
[woof!]”
Well, we were dragged kicking and screaming into January, we staggered blindly into February, but then the time came to hold our heads high and boldly march right into March! I always find myself getting overly optimistic at this time of year. Something in me believes that as soon as spring arrives I can pack away the thermal undergarments and the fingerless gloves, and enjoy a full six months of outdoor gigs in the glorious sunshine. Which is silly really, because I know full well that last March saw me perform at an outdoor wedding reception in the snow (although in fairness that was a surprisingly warm day). But no, as you’ll find out later, just because the nights are getting shorter it doesn’t mean we musicians can completely abandon our Big Coats.
March is also a funny month for us wandering minstrels (and for the self-employed in general), because it feels like something of a home stretch as the end of the tax year approaches. It’s the final sprint to the finish, one last chance to boost the year’s earnings with last-minute bookings, or conversely to buy some expensive instruments in an effort to reduce your taxable income!
So many challenges to overcome, I’m sure you’ll agree. From being a bit cold to maybe earning slightly too much money, it’s clear I actually have a really hard life don’t you know. Nevertheless it’s now time to gather round and look a little deeper, as we delve into this month’s catalogue of adventures DOT DOT DOT DOT DOT DOT…
At the Races
You know I was saying how March can be quite cold? Yeah well I learnt this the hard way on the 2nd of the month when I travelled up to Kelso to play TRAD. JAZZ CLARIONET at the horse races with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. It didn’t look like too bad a day at first – a bit overcast maybe, but reasonable – and we even had time to do the local charity shops and grab a bit to eat in a nice café before heading to the gig. Indeed our first set was pleasant enough, as we performed at the racecourse entrance in the open air to welcome the punters to a day of exquisite equestrian excitement.
I’ll tell you what though, that weather didn’t half take a turn for the worse. What would have been a fairly easy gig soon turned into one of the most challenging I’ve ever done as all of a sudden the temperature plummeted and the heavens opened, pelting us periodically with precipitation for the remainder of our performances. Usually when it rains at gigs it’s natural for us to find shelter to play under, because that’s where all the audience members have gone to hide anyway. But these horse-racing types must be made of sterner stuff because they appeared quite impervious to the onslaught of horizontal ice-cold water, and so we weedy musicians just had to brave it as well and do the best we could.
One of our selling points as a band is that we are pretty waterproof (within reason). I, for example, have my trademark metal clarinet, which I’m fairly sure will be the last thing remaining even when the rest of the world has succumbed to its eventual apocalypse. But even with a robust instrument, there comes a point when the feeble flesh of the musician himself begins to reach its limit and merely getting a note out of the thing can become a challenge. The problem of stiff fingers is significant, however with jazz you can at least mitigate it by adapting your playing style accordingly (i.e. don’t play as many notes)! But the more substantial problem which can ruin your performance entirely is seizing up of the lip muscles. On the clarinet, the bottom lip doesn’t tend to suffer too badly as it is shielded by the mouthpiece and is constantly having warm air blown over it. But the top lip just rests on the mouthpiece, completely exposed to the elements. On a cold, wet, windy day, those muscles can begin to lose flexibility, making it impossible to even get a sound out of the instrument, let alone a tune! And it’d take a moustache considerably grander than mine to be in with a chance of alleviating the problem. So to anyone listening at Kelso Races who wondered why I kept stopping for breaks towards the end of our set, I apologise but hopefully you now understand why.
Overall, then, it was a challenging day, but we made it work and were glad to add yet another type of gig to the band’s portfolio (this being the first horse race we’ve been involved with). Plus, we got on national TV! A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance, but the good news is that if you did blink, then I have the clip here to give you another chance. And keep your eyes open this time, you cheeky little so-and-so!
Oh by the way, when I got home I looked up the temperature at Kelso that day. 5 °C apparently (although I’m telling you it felt significantly colder)!
Busking All Over
Our next official gig wasn’t until 7th, but to capitalise on the three of us all being together we opted to do a bit of busking in the meantime. This practice is rooted deep in the band’s DNA, as busking in our home town of Scarborough was what kept us all occupied during our long holidays from VI Form College and later university, and helped us get our feet in the door of professional gigging back in those early days.
It’s a funny old ball game, busking, and it comes with its own unique set of highs and lows. The lows tend to come when you play your hearts out and get little to no interest (or money) in return. Heck, we’ve even had people try to take money from us in the past! Or worse, when you keep being asked to move by moody shopkeepers who don’t appreciate good music. But the highs can range from the financial (either collecting a lot of cash on the day or handing out business cards that later lead to bookings) to the social (having people tell you how much you’ve brightened their day, or seeing a toddler who has never heard live jazz before and who can’t stop themselves dancing) to the comical (you meet some VERY odd people sometimes when you’re busking). And at the end of the day, it’s often just a nice way to have fun with your mates without the usual gig-related pressures of having to be in a certain place at a certain time and perform to a certain standard! Quite often, if nobody’s listening too closely, we end up just messing about for a bit and reducing each other to uncontrollable fits of giggles.
We decided to stay close to home for our March busking, and made excursions into Scarborough and the nearby market town of Beverley, both of which had been good to us in the past. And what a nice time we had. The weather was a significant improvement on Kelso, and really made us appreciate how much easier it is to play when you’re not wet and frozen to the core. We managed to give out some business cards, sell some CDs, have some laughs and even say hello to some old acquaintances who stopped in passing to have a chat. But what I’m sure you’re wondering is how we did in terms of takings. Well we played for a couple of hours or so in both locations, and (after expenses) came away with approximately £31 each from Beverley and £29 from Scarborough. Not the best we’ve ever done, but respectable figures nonetheless for that sort of performance.
Singing Sappy Songs in Carlisle
Not long after taking the streets of Yorkshire by storm, we were back on the road again and heading to a rather different performance in a rather different location. This was Thursday 7th March, which was to see us make our debut at Carlisle Jazz Club.
It’s a bit of a trek from Scarborough to Carlisle – about 3 hours drive each way – but we’re kind of used to these epic long journeys as a band and at any rate it gave us a good opportunity for a deep dive into the back catalogue of The Jeremy Vine Show. Incidentally, people sometimes ask us how it works economically when we have to travel to these far-flung locations. Doesn’t it eat into the profits? Do you add expenses onto the fee? Does the driver lose out by having to fund the petrol?
To take each question in turn, yes of course it diminishes the profits a little (what expense doesn’t?) but not as much as you may think. We’ve become very efficient as a band when it comes to car sharing and the like, and we know all the tricks of the trade for those occasions when we need to take trains or buses. Usually when these costs are spread between the three of us there is still ample money left over for us to all take a reasonable fee.
Adding expenses onto the fee when booking a gig is a perfectly valid and common approach, however it’s not one that would really work for us. The problem is estimating expenses in the first place. We don’t usually all travel from the same location, so it’s often not until a few weeks before the gig that we settle on the optimal combination of car sharing, public transport and (occasionally) overnight accommodation. Add to that the inherent variability of train ticket prices etc., and it quickly becomes more faff than it’s worth. Easier by far to just have a standard fee and accept that some gigs will cost us a bit more in travel than others.
As for the question of which band member funds the travel, this is another thing that varies from group to group but in Jelly Roll I’m proud to say we’ve developed an incredibly fair system that in general is virtually bomb-proof. Essentially, we take the total fee from the gig and each take out our own travel costs before dividing the remainder equally. Not only does this mean everybody makes exactly the same profit from each gig (rather than the driver losing out despite having done the most work), but it also encourages us all to be as efficient as possible. After all, if one person is able to save money, that increases the take-home pay for all three of us!
The travel arrangements to Carlisle were pretty simple, as we were all together in Scarborough at the time so could just take one car. What’s more challenging in these situations is spending over three hours travelling, then doing a performance without looking like you’ve just spent over three hours travelling! The remedy on this occasion was to fortify ourselves with a hearty meal (courtesy of one of Carlisle’s Wetherspoonses) and look forward to the promise of a homemade slice of cake afterwards (courtesy of my mum – thanks Mum)! Even then though, it was a very late gig by our usual mid-afternoon-wedding-reception standards – our second set didn’t begin until 10 pm, and therefore it took some solid self-motivation to keep the energy levels going that late into the evening.
On the whole I think the performance went well, and the audience seemed both supportive and appreciative. It was quite disorientating, however, for a band that usually performs in the background with nobody listening too closely, to be back in the spotlight. We got a round of applause after every song, which felt weird – it’s a rare occasion indeed that you get that kind of reception while busking, for instance!
As we were playing for a jazz audience this time, we selected our repertoire carefully to suit. Someone attending a TRAD. JAZZ club will typically be more than happy to hear perennial favourites such as ‘Margie’, ‘All Of Me’ (NOT BY JOHN LEGEND!!!) and ‘Five Foot Two’, so we were sure to include plenty of those classics. But it would be a sad world in which every TRAD. JAZZ band sounded the same, and consequently during our second set we introduced the audience to some less conventional gems that they’re unlikely to hear elsewhere. These included an original song entitled ‘Castle Cannonball Nose Ring’, ‘Size Ten Shuffle’ (which was used as the theme for the original Paddington TV series) and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 as the great man would have originally intended. And luckily for you, I was able to capture a video of this latter piece through the miracle of modern technology, and it is available for you to watch right here, right now:
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the month’s Jelly Rolling! But there was plenty of other music to be enjoyed before the month was out…
If you’ve just read that sub-heading and are expecting an account of some crazy road trip across America, then ha! Gotcha! In the words of Nick Nack from ‘The Man With the Golden Gun’, “I fooled you!” You have just been taken in by another of Michael A. Grant’s patent word traps! For I’m not referring here specifically to the place of New Orleans, but to the music, as played by Bolton’s leading (only) Dixieland jazz band, The Dixie Beats. And I’m not referring to Boston Massachusetts, but to the Yorkshire village of Boston Spa. So maybe a more appropriate title for this segment would have been ‘Bolton to Leeds’. But where’s the fun in that, eh?
This was our first visit to Boston Spa Jazz Club as a band and therefore we made sure to programme all our favourite big-hitters. This made for quite a relaxing gig I thought, playing all the tunes we already know back-to-front and can launch into full throttle without having to worry. It was a great night, very well-attended, and we received a fantastic welcome both from the audience and the organisers. And what’s more, I got some new drinks mats out of it:
Sadly, though, they were given to me so I wasn’t able to steal them after all.
Drawing Another Big Triangle With My Saxomophone
I mentioned earlier in this post that March can be a bit of a scramble to squeeze in extra earnings before the end of the tax year. Well this was especially apparent over 22nd and 23rd March, when I found myself committing to two gigs which were maybe not the most practical geographically. Remember in January when my car and I drew a massive triangle connecting Manchester, Great Yarmouth and Exeter? Well this one wasn’t quite as extreme, but not far off.
The first gig, at which I played my saxomophone for a wedding reception on 22nd, was down near Bury St. Edmunds. Quite a way, but I must admit that it didn’t feel that far compared to the Gt. Yarmouth trip! The event itself was a delight, where I was required to play out on the terrace of a big old mansion in the sunshine while the guests enjoyed the music and the associated drinks reception. That’s the great thing about wedding gigs, I find – the whole point is that it’s a celebration, and as a result you get to perform in some gorgeous locations for people who are generally in high spirits, often getting some superb food thrown in to boot. Sadly I wasn’t included in the wedding breakfast on this occasion, but that was probably for the best because I needed to head off to my next gig in…
Maesteg! Near Port Talbot! In South Wales!
See what I mean about impractical geography?
It was an interesting gig, Maesteg. I travelled there on the afternoon of 23rd, having stayed overnight with a friend in Bristol on the way. For some reason I had it in my head that it was another wedding, but I realised my error when I pulled up to the venue and saw it was a house with number-shaped helium balloons clearly displayed in the window. Any doubts I had as to the nature of the event were dispelled when I rang the doorbell, and was promptly ushered into the back kitchen to set up before being asked if I’d be able to march into the living room at six o’clock playing ‘Happy Birthday’. “Hmm…” thinks I, “If this is a wedding it’s a bit of an odd one…”
Sure enough, it wasn’t a wedding but a joint 60th/70th birthday party, celebrated by a group of ten or so ladies who had hired out the house via Airbnb for the weekend. My job was to provide an hour of pre-dinner entertainment as the surprise saxophonist, serenading them with a selection of jazz and pop tunes in the living room. Which I did, once the impromptu ‘Happy Birthday’ had been dispensed with, and we all had a lovely time. The guests were all highly appreciative and friendly (some overly so, if I’m completely honest!!!) and afterwards they sent me away with a hearty thank-you, a lovingly prepared packed dinner, and a promise that they would spread my name through South Wales! I felt like suggesting it might be more useful if they could spread it around the Manchester area, but I didn’t want to be rude.
It was a good laugh that Maesteg gig. But I must confess that it’s at times like those, when you find yourself in the living room of a random Airbnb in a town in South Wales you’ve never even heard of, blasting out ‘Dance Monkey’ on the saxophone while a group of women twice your age boogie on the rug in front of you, that you do begin to wonder: “How the heck did I end up here?”
Oh also, you may be interested to hear that I’m reasonably sure Satan himself was stalking me that weekend. I know this because when I got back to Manchester that night I checked the weekend’s mileage to note down for my expenses calculations, and what did it total? 666 miles! But that’s not all. When I got in the house I had a quick check of my business bank account and how much was in it? That’s right: £666!
Oooooooooooooh…
Spooky.
Solemn Vespers in Solemn Macclesfield
As the end of March drew near, there was just time to fit in one more gig. And so in a final push to cram as many contrasting styles as possible into the year’s third month, I made my merry way to Macclesfield on 29th to play in a Good Friday performance of Mozart’s Solemn Vespers.
This was an annual charity fundraiser with one of the local choirs, combined with a short church service to mark this significant point on the liturgical journey towards Easter Sunday. It was my second time playing clarinet in the accompanying orchestra, having joined for a performance of Mozart’s Requiem last year. I have to say the choir did a superb job, punching far above their weight for an amateur ensemble, and the professional soloists were outstanding. For my part, I think I did a decent job, except for one moment when I opted to insert a jazzy ‘flattened 7th’ without Wolfgang’s express permission. Bum note or creative improvisation? You decide!
Having said that, if you look further back in this post you’ll find that that note was hardly the greatest crime I committed against W.A.M. this past month!
All of which brings me to the end of the March 2024 gig review! See you next month for more retrospective fun.
Gig of the Month
For sheer fun and memorability, it has to be that joint 60th/70th birthday party in Maesteg. Thanks ladies for a surreal evening I’m sure I’ll never forget!
What We’ve Learned
March can be REALLY REALLY REALLY cold!
