One small gig for man, one giant leap for Dan kind...

In preparation for this show I made a few pretty critical changes to the way I usually work when getting ready to do a show.
First off I actually practiced, a lot, in the shed. This isn't something I had done much of before purely on the basis that I play each song individually a lot and it hadn't actually occurred to me to try a proper rehearsal.  This also helped the fact that I have been getting pretty lazy with my playing and wasn't quite up to playing 30 mins straight when I started rehearsing.
Secondly of course was my new shiny ever so goddamned beautiful new guitar. I have never owned something quite so fantastic as it so the love and attention I have given it now means I have cared a lot more how everything coming out of it sounds, rather than just seeing a guitar as a necessary accompaniment to what I'm doing.

So show day occurred and I thought it best to get to the venue a little early just to make sure I was sound checked on time and in an orderly manner. This seemed like a good idea until I got there and was reminded that I was performing with various assorted groups of other musicians and of course no one was ready or set up for anything in the slightest when I arrived. So a trip back down the road and a KFC later and I was ready to still sit around doing bugger all for a while. I think some of the newer gigging types assume that artists, whether professional or struggling start ups, just turn up at whatever time they feel like and bust out a banging set but unfortunately there is a lot more tedium to it all than that! Of course I wasn't complaining, as it gave me time to mentally prepare myself for the longest (to date) amount of time I have had to stand on stage alone. Getting a sound check out the way helped clear a few straggling nerves I had and then I met with friends to help pass the time.

  The crowd at the show was sparse to say the least, but I had a few great friends around to cheer me on and that was all that mattered to me. So this time I stepped up on stage with a hell of a lot more confidence than last time and set right to it.
Now when I was in my little dark shed I thought that if I can handle playing in the dark with hands going numb from cold then I can play anywhere, except I didn't think about the fact I was playing in the completely opposite environment. So with that familiar sting of sweat pouring into my eyes and my left hand cramping to buggery because it was slick with sweat and I was having to hold on to the neck for dear life, all the whilst being constantly flash blinded by over enthusiastic stage lighting  I kained my way through my set. Apart from a couple of hiccups of the lyric/chord brain fart variety here and there (of which I hope no body noticed/remembers) I was pretty freaking triumphant. Finishing the set in carefully timed precision (honed for weeks playing to a stopwatch) I was super stoked to have gotten to the end of things and have cheers, even from the odd few other people in the room.

So even though there were scant few people there to see it happen, the fact that I valued those who did make it and the few strangers who witnessed my London gigging induction shook my hand and told me it was great has pretty much made my year already. Now it'll be a case of onward and upward as I see how far I can get before anything starts going awry!!

Also special mention to the sound guy who gave me my favorite compliement, just after the sound check he said "you're all done, nice voice mate" in an offhand way which said to me "I listen to some goddamn shit doing this job and I find you tolerable"........ awesome!

I have a few more shows this month so any thoughts of other projects such as recordings and uber multi-band mashups will have to go on a back burner for now. I'm next playing tomorrow so I'll give another gig round up next week.