Last Thursday I played an opening set for Simon Godfrey at The Bedford in Balham. I have now finally found time to write a bit more about it.
Getting to the gig was not the most fun I’ve ever had. A couple of minutes befores I got to the train station, someone jumped in front of a train. Two minutes after that a month’s worth of rain decided to fall on me as I walked back home.
So I ended up getting a long cab ride into that London to find the nearest tube station and what should have been a one hour journey ended up taking the best part of three hours.
Once there I had time for a quick sound check before doors opened. My guitar worked. Gareth and I quickly ran through the song we were playing together. No need to check all of those guitar pedals, right?
The usual nervous wait and saying hello to all the lovely people who came along, and then I was finally on stage.
After opening with an absurd lie about Simon, I began with Some of the Creatures which went down well. That was a nice warm-up before the potentially disastrous second song, West Wind. This is on my sixth album, Demon. It’s a bugger to sing, with a load of high F sharps (though to be fair these days those are less trouble because I’ve been working on them). It also has bars of 7/8, 6/8, 5/8 and 4/4 and a middle 8 with some very twisty chord shapes.
I decided to play it anyway, and throw in the use of a looping pedal in the middle so I could play a little solo.
I am shocked that it worked as well as it did!
After telling an absurd lie about Simon, I launched into two Ashfeathers tracks, Nothing You Can’t Buy and Mirrorworld. Mirrorworld is always tricky, which is why it’s in the set – i like a challenge. I obviously made it more of a challenge by including a looper pedal assisted solo at the end. And yes, I discovered I really should have checked those guitar pedals. The delay pedal, it turned out, was set completely wrong. What should have been a subtle delay for a bit of colour turned out to be an over the top psychedelic echo that I wasn’t expecting at all. I made it work, I don’t think anyone noticed, but that solo was not what I was planning at all.
After the obligatory Wizards of this Town – which I introduced with the words ‘I f**king hate progressive rock. This next song is in 7/8 and it’s about wizards’, I invited Gareth onto stage to play Flow My Tears. The first time we’d played as a duo for quite a few years.
I really enjoyed this gig. It was great to see so many of my loyal tormentors, I mean bandcamp subscribers, and seeing Simon’s set afterwards was fantastic too. He has a phenomenal voice and some great songs. What’s more the comradery and sheer joy of seeing him and his band onstage was just fantastic. As I try to do for most gigs, I’ll put up a ‘bootleg’ recording on bandcamp so you can hear all my lies, of which there were many.