Leper of Faith

Published on Sun 30 Sep 2012

I did a gig at The Leper Chapel in Cambridge last Saturday, which is somewhere I've always wanted to look around having walked past it loads of times on the way to the football. For reasons I can't really remember I decided to play as many songs that I don't normally play as possible. To that end I managed to rope Geoff from the excellent  Jacqui and Geoff in to play keyboard/harmonium and we only practiced new songs. Not that the old songs have many keyboards in anyway I guess.

It really is a cool building, both outside and in. The walls had been adorned with art and the path down from the road was lined with tealights, which made it look nice and cosy as it got dark.

Leanne Moden started things off and very quickly won everyone over with a series of increasingly amusing poems, then acted as compere for the rest of the evening. First musician up was my old mate Lester Allen who did a wonderful set, with some really old stuff I'd not heard before, some of the normal favourites and a couple of well chosen covers. I've gone on about him before, but here's a video of him playing at Buckingham Palace.

Next up were Dave Gerard and the Watchmen. They were originally meant to be "headlining", but their violinist needed to get a train, so we swapped. They played completely unplugged to avoid making the setup too complicated and make a really smooth, cultured sound. Perfect harmonies, great playing.

I hadn't taken the legs for my keyboard to try and avoid carrying extra, but, predictably, it didn't really work replacing them with 2 chairs and the case:

So I went home and got them.

Our set went alright - there were a few cock ups on my part (I forgot how to play the guitar for about a song and a half) but Geoff did a great job and the audience were extremely polite, staying silent the whole time and clapping in the right places. I felt quite detatched - it's stressful playing one song for the first time, let alone 3 or 4 in a set when you've dropped lots of songs that you're confident in. In retrospect it probably wasn't the best choice of gig to try it at because a lot of the audience didn't know the old songs and it was such a cool venue.

Setlist: Muscle Memory, Shelf Life, Wasted on the Young, A Happy Ending, Cold Case, Never Better, Guilt Edged Opportunity, Black Coffee and Bromide, The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Watertight.

Wes who organised it (and a lot of other wonderful things round here) has put some more pictures up on his blog.

I watched the entire last day of the Ryder Cup the day after, which was one of the most intense 6 hour periods I can remember. I wish I'd put some money on a European win because I had a sneaky feeling they would. It felt like destiny the whole time. And the odds were still pretty long even when they'd caught up. When Justin Rose made those long putts on the last two holes it felt completely inevitable. It's weird how often seemingly impossible stories play out in sport.

On Monday I went to Dave Gerard's studio to record some keyboards for Dan Wilde's album, which was a lot of fun. It's sounding really good and I think it's nearly ready. Then he and Dan came over on Thursday to record some real piano because the Nord's piano sound didn't pass muster! It was quite an exposed part, and it is definitely preferable to have an imperfectly recorded real instrument over a sample. I'd do the same thing except I can't ever really be arsed to move the gear downstairs... It's been a musicy couple of weeks what with all the practicing, playing and recording. It's been nice.