Hitting Stride.

Way back in the mists of time, before digital photos were a common thing, there existed a bunch of out of focus teenagers that started a band based on the fact they wished they were Blink-182. They had one or two gigs and the biggest show they played was at the Trinity bar in Harrow. They even had to sneak in their 15 year old drummer in. That was around 12 years ago. Last Friday led me back there for my next swing at playing a show in their upstairs bar.

There were a number of things that led this to be one of my favorite ever live experiences and I'll go through them in no particular order:

The first thing that springs to mind is the guy who supported me. When playing entry level shows like this it's incredibly rare to be paired with other artists who are even in the same high level genre as you. Because of this it was awesome to meet Andrew McLaughlin, who not only shared half my greatest bands list, but also played similar covers to the ones that I play these days and started off playing when the continuation of Red Rag Front was just a idea floating around in my head.

Andrew was new to the gigging game but is already a much better guitarist than me (not that it's too hard) and had a voice that perfectly complimented acoustic versions of some blinding songs like Bad Religions "You" and Rise Againsts "Savior", which was my favorite of his set. He already sounds great and I think with a little coaching from an old punk who dropped out of a music performance degree then he will be one to watch out for pretty soon.

The next best thing was having an awesome turn out from my friends and family. Nobody can make it in this business without support and to have a whole bunch of people make it down, several of which had already seen me this month, really inspires confidence and helps blow away memories of empty rooms. Of special mention of course is that Shelley my wife also came along, which is nice because half my songs are about her and Summer. She thought I was great, which is pretty much as good as a platinum album to me. I'm truly grateful for any person who takes time out of their lives to support me and if someone happens to like a tune I play along the way then hell that's all the better!

My actual set was a balancing act of positives and negatives. On the one hand I still seem to manage to fuck up and forget lyrics all over the place, however on the plus side I am ready for these moments now and I'm fairly certain I managed to hide the majority of mistakes without crowd members noticing too much. I made a small mistake in buying a set of metal picks to play with too and found that metal picks + sweaty palms do not go together particularly well. The biggest positive though came from having friends, family and my wife there, meaning I had the confidence to really go all out, which I did, and it was quite easily one of the most satisfying and rewarding shows I think I've ever played, even if little things like getting paid for a show are still a far distant milestone for me.

So now I'm on gigging hiatus until I have an EP/the weather cheers up a bit. As far as re-igniting a musical career goes I have achieved even more than I ever thought I would. Not only do I have songs that I and others like, I have also managed to get my gigging mojo back and more importantly have gained friends along the way. I couldn't have asked for a better start to all of this and I look forward to what the future will hold.