Friday, April 3, 2009

Thursday Night-The Prom- Bristol




We played in the cool university town of Bristol tonight. We arrived in the late afternoon to do the drive time BBC network show. We did a 10min interview or so and then played the song, “People like Me” live. We were laughing afterward about being asked if any of our songs had offensive language in them or not (I guess the show was live and not bleeper friendly). We of course said “no” and then totally forgot about the prominent “hell” in every chorus of our song. To me cuss words had to have at least two syllables in them don’t they? - Unless of course, they have a “u” in them. Well, we didn’t fall through any trap doors and no one said anything about it so I guess it was ok!

We headed down to the venue for some early dinner and waited on sound check. The venue has been around, hosting music since 1980 and has a great reputation. It’s more of a bar/restaurant than a pub (more fitting of the downtown, urban environment it was in). It was two stories, with TV monitors all over the place that broadcast the performance – pretty cool. We sound checked around 7:30 or so with Martin Moss. He turned out to be a very good mixer. In fact, most of the sound people on this tour have been excellent. That has been one of the nice surprises of the trip. Martin is a musician himself (loves Bluegrass in particular) which made him better with the sound I think. Martin gave me a copy of his CD, “Hometown” – I look forward to hearing it once I’m back in my
hometown.

In typical fashion, the crowd didn’t really materialize until about show time. We had a good crowd however, 45 or so. They were enthusiastic but very much a listening audience (about what you want in an audience). We had a good show – did 2- 45 min sets. My voice seemed in the same shape as the previous few days, but I was able to eek out a few tunes of my own – enough to sell a handful of CD’s. We got several encores, (which was nice) but had they asked for 1 more it surely would have looked like a scene from the TB Sanitarium night club show. The later the night got tonight, the harder it was to control my cough.

We had a two hour drive back to Basingstoke tonight – getting in about 1:30am our time.
Tomorrow we head to Lewes (I think) to play a venue called “The Pelham Arms”.
I believe it is an old hotel.

Thanks for staying interested in the saga.

Peace,

Mark

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