Semitone Studios Gig, Marple

This was a gig postponed after Lockdown, and a bit of an orphan gig: I'd intended to add a few dates around it to make sense of the travel, but hadn't banked on suddenly (and very fortunately) becoming an artist in residence for the first three months of the year.

However, I wanted a music adventure and decided to travel up for the night so I hopped on a train to Stockport, and from there got a local bus to Marple.

Taylor and Pete run the studio both as a recording facility and as a gig night. Both the venue and Taylor are decked out in red, white and black, and it's a very unusual place: it's basically a shop window facing a Texaco petrol station (also red, black and white), so you play not only to the very respectful and listening audience, but also to a further layer of people outside the window, local cheeky teens, which adds to the fun.

I was the featured artist of the evening and after a quick sound check, got to it all. A lovely woman called Elaine filmed the night and I'll post links to the songs when she has edited them.

The rest of the night was open mic; there was lot of very beautiful acapella singing, both traditional Irish songs, self-composed songs (including a lovely one about a woman's mother), readings from Alan Rusbridger's book, Schubert and Vaughan Williams, poetry from Elaine, and a gorgeous song from Taylor at the piano. I finished the night with a couple more songs.

I love this sort of gig. People chatting from the audience! It's like being part of an event rather than being apart from it. Such friendliness made it well worth the journey.

I stayed in the world's most odd Bed and Breakfast. Actually, that's probably all of them, isn't it? Anyway, when I got back after the gig, the landing was in darkness. I thought I'd found the door to the room that I was staying in, put the key into the lock, turned it, and walked in on a woman reading in bed. Did all the bedrooms have the same key? I'll never know!

Anyway, next morning I sang the praises of the venue to the breakfast waitress, who had told me she was a song writer. I hope she goes there. Good place for you too Rowen, if you still read this blog, and also Maria from Glasgow. Great Grand Piano, and you could record there too!