For the past couple of months Totally Acoustic has been missing a vital element: Mr S Hewitt, sitting at the front. Thankfully, when I arrived for this month's show, I found Steve already there, sat (as is TRADITIONAL) looking at his phone, halfway through a pint. PHEW! I went upstairs and discovered that not only had Mr R Vince arrived super-early, he had also laid out all the chairs and tables. "I hope that's all right," he said. Note to all future acts: this sort of behaviour is COMPLETELY FINE WITH ME!
Our audience gently gathered and was once again mostly made up with regulars. I almost entirely really LIKE this - our regulars are LOVELY and know EXACTLY how everything is supposed to work, my only worry is that they may notice that I VERY OCCASIONALLY use the same JOKES during my intro.
I kicked off with a couple of OLD songs - Say It With Words (with slightly different middle bit because a) i never liked the original tune there and b) couldn't work it out anyway) and Red And White Sockets - then brought on Royston and his COLLECTIVE, who were GRATE. As previously they did some covers of some songs I didn't know (which led me once again to think that he would have got CLEAN AWAY with it if he hadn't said anything) but also some DELIGHTFUL songs of his own. It was MAGIC!
Next up was Matt Stead and Rob Ash. Matt used to be in one of my FAVOURITE of the Indie Bands, A Fine Day For Sailing, and had thus played Totally Acoustic MANY times in the past. He introduced their set by saying they were going to do Ukelele Instrumentals. I thought this was a JOKE, but no, that is entirely what they did, and very nice it was too! Rob played Acoustic Bass (kindly lent to me for the evening by Mr K Top Of The Pops), which usually sounds a bit QUIET in this environment, but he played it with a Plectrum so that it was entirely audible. A little TIP for all you acoustical bassists out there!
Finally we had The Perfect English Weather who are also 50% of The Popguns. It probably gets a bit boring me saying how all the acts at these nights are GRATE, but the trouble is they are and these were no exception. Highlights for me included a STIRRING version of Johnny Logan's "Just Another Year" (I never thought THAT song would give me goose bumps), and some EXPERT Tambourine playing. I hope to include BOTH in the podcast - this has been delayed slightly by me going on holiday, but will be out soon I promise.
With all that completed all that remained was to retire to the downstairs bar for some WHISKY DRINKS. As I often say, if ALL gigs were like this I would GO to them all!
