Year: 2005

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Richard Herring on the 'Edinburgh Blues'

very interesting post today from Richard Herring – outlining the mental ups and downs that he goes through in an Edinburgh run (and, inexplicably, expressing fear that he might lose money on a show that is drawing 70-100 people MINIMUM a night!! what kind of budgets do these people work to??????)

It’s a fascinating read, and one that I can see happening around me – I’m reticent to compare myself in anyway, in that I’ve never had a review at Edinburgh, let alone a bad one (first one should be out today), but I guess I’m also a performer whose take on the whole thing is supremely self-serving, in that I make music for me, and if other people dig it, that’s great, but ultimately, it’s my music. The talking part of my show is very different, in that it’s all about engaging people, drawing them in to where the music’s coming from, and making them laugh. This is the bit of the show that could ‘fail’ even if I did what I thought was a good show… That’s a new one for me, not something I’ve had to deal with since I was doing sessions, where someone else is the arbiter of good or bad.

So it’ll be interesting to monitor my own reaction to my first Edinburgh review when it appears. The audience’s response has been fantastic so far, crowds are good, word of mouth is working, and I’m having a great time, so I’ve no idea how the press will influence that. I’ll report back tomorrow!

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Best gig yet, and my first two shows seen this year!

So yesterday started with seeing my first show of this year’s fringe – Dan Mayfield – ‘Live Looping’ Musical Experience is how it’s billed, which was at Sweet Ego, a tiny lil’ venue north east of Prince’s Street.

Dan’s loop set-up included an acoustic guitar, two electric violins (one of them seriously drop-tuned to what sounded like almost Cello register) and a glockenspeil. For looping, I think he was using SooperLooper – I forgot to ask.

The music was the perfect antedote to afternoon madness on the fringe, with the layered violin parts being especially effective – Dan’s intonation on the violin was spot on, which is absolutely vital if you’re layering loads of it. A few of the tracks had really heavily filtered vocal parts, the most effective of which was a reading of a poem written by the mother of a resident at the care home where Dan works – the weaving of the stuff that is going on in his life into the music worked beautifully.

All in all, a lovely gig, and a great way to escape the madness of the fringe for an hour.

After that it was back to flyering, before tea with my mum (that’s one of the best things about coming up to this bit of the UK – my mum is only an hour’s drive away and visits regularly, and helps out with flyering.

I then saw my second show of the fest – Subverse – a series of short sketches on a geopolitical theme; there’s a heck of a lot of anti-war-on-terror stuff here this year, and these sketches were a slightly leftfield take on it, with two of them being monologues in verse that were particularly effective. All in all, good quality brain fodder. Recommended stuff.

And then me – my best show of the run so far, the chat and the music both were on top form for me, with some fine improvised banter with the audience (all 31 of them – a very good sized crowd for a thursday, methinks), who were with me all the way through (got another nice 5-star audience review on my Edfringe.com page. The improv track was another pretty leftfield rhythm – the first two nights have been the most coherent thus far, after that we’ve been getting into some very odd time-signatures…! But I was really happy with the show, and so it seems were the audience.

And tonight I’ve got Guy Pratt on the show, so that’s going to be lots of fun. I think I’ll do a version of Highway One with him on – I can leave off the bass part and let him play around with that, and I’m sure he’d take a fantastic solo on it, so that’ll be it. Yes, I’ve decided, thanks for being such good listeners, bloglings.

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The eternal edinburgh quandry

the huge problem with the Fringe is that there are so many great shows going on, and so many lovely people whose shows I’d LOVE to see that there’s no way you can get to do everything. What’s even harder is that when your entire team is two people (me and TSP), any time taken off to go to a show is effectively two person-hours of flyering time lost, which at this stage is pretty vital to the show.

So please allow me to apologise in advance to everyone who has invited me to their show that I don’t make it to – it’s genuinely not through a lack of a desire to see you perform, just a logistical impossibility. I am taking notes of the website addresses of productions that I really want to see, so that hopefully I can catch them at a fringe theatre in London at some point. The wealth of talent on display up here is breathtaking. TSP and I keep reading yet more reviews of shows that sound utterly compelling, but unless we added a week onto the end of the run just to watch shows 10 hours a day, there’s no way we’d get round everything we want to see!

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Still doing fine…

By this time into my run at last year’s festival, my average audience size was less than half what it is this year, and I’d had one fairly duff night when I was just exhausted and wasn’t sparkly at all.

this year audience figures are up (28 in last night), I’ve played well and talked vaguely funny bollocks each night, and things are looking good. I now have three special guests booked – Guy Pratt on Friday, Julie McKee on Saturday, and Ronnie Golden on Sunday – three very fine performers, all with their own excellent shows at the festival, coming to enhance my gig in an entertaining way.

Last night’s gig went well again – some press peoples were in, so we’ll see if they like it, but all in all, it was a fun gig with some laughs, and a particularly bizarre version of MMFSOG (which I’ve started explaining for some reason – just seemed like a funny story, I guess…. maybe I’ll post it here one day.)

The audience looping percussion bit of the show is working really well – the resulting track, which I tend to take down similar lines each night, is a fun little improv thing, and often very strange, but it’s great to hear something coherent emerge out of the random collection of squeaks and utterances from the various volunteers.

My other big acheivement yesterday is that I managed to avoid pissed people for the entire day whilst flyering. I’ve just taken to not even offering flyers to people who look like they might have been near alcohol in the last 12 hours, as a self preservation method… It worked.

However, I did see a rather slow moving chap who was inadvertantly covered in posters by some over zealous theatre company. The second direct marketing fatality of the festival – suffocation under layers of earnest Shakespeare and sellotape.

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First two special guests booked…

One of the things I really want to do this year was get a few people up to guest on a tune or two on my show – Edinburgh is such a cool festival for meeting new artists and launching new projects that it’s great to get a chance to collaborate with people who are here to do their thing too.

My first couple of guests are now booked and as close to confirmed as you can be in Edinburgh – on Friday night this week, Guy Pratt will be sitting in, playing a bit of bass with me – Guy’s an outstanding musician, and has a fantastic show of his own on here at the Fringe.

And on Sunday, Ronnie Golden will be singing a song – Ronnie’s here doing a show with Barry Cryer – their show last year, Men In Beige was without a doubt one of the funniest comedy shows I’ve ever been to – two comedy geniuses at their best. Ronnie’s a ludicrously versatile singer, so I’m looking forward to hearing what he does with What A Wonderful World.

There’ll hopefully be one or two more still to be confirmed…

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Alright, everybody out.

Some dickhead set off the fire alarm at the Carlton Hotel midway through my gig last night! Just as I was getting to the end of ‘What A Wonderful World’, the damn thing went off and we all had to vacate the building!

Other than that, it was another fine gig. The audience was 26 – that’s how many were there, not their combined age – which I was really happy with on a non 2 for 1 Tuesday. i was expecting about half that. And they seemed to really enjoy it too. Seems like word is getting out, finally.

It was especially good to have that many people in, given that I started flyering two hours later than usual, TSP was tied up with friends for a lot of the day (well, she was busy – I’m not sure what kind of kinky stuff they got up to, to be honest), and then it rained so I missed out on another hour or so of flyering later on.

The one bit of flyering that I hate the most is dealing with drunks. It’s particularly tragic when you get someone who is completely shitfaced at 4 in the afternoon, who comes up thinking they are really funny and says something really really stupid. I’m pretty sure that kicking people in the plums when you’re out flyering in Edinburgh is technically illegal, so I’ve refrained from dispensing with them that way. I just back away slowly and try and spin round to talk to someone else…

The other foxing thing when flyering is the nature of people’s verbal responses, ranging for cool gutteral sounds of either acceptance or rejection through to such gems as ‘No, I’m alright thanks’ – well, I’m not trying to sort your life out, just give you a sodding flyer!! even better, ‘No, you’re alright’ – I know I’m alright, what are you my therapist?? Though worst of all is just the withering look, like I’ve just offered them a plate of poo. It’s a flyer, you’re walking down the royal mile in Edinburgh during the festival, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU EXPECTING????

For the most part though, it’s nice that my flyer works – way more people look at it then take one, with one variation on the accepting monosyllabic weirdness sound. This is good news. Having a great flyer that has all the info you need is so vital it’s not funny. I’ve had quite a few people ask great questions like whether or not the concept for the flyer was mine, implying that I told a designer what to do, when if fact I did the whole thing. this year I didn’t also do the photography, which I did last year (well, I did the one on the front – the one on the back was that lovely yellow and black one that Dominic Bentham took at the Troubadour gig). It’s nice to have people assume it was a pro – it’s like the one time (which obviously had now become lots of times in Stevie folklore) when someone asked TSP where she had her hair cut, when in fact it was me that did it. They couldn’t believe it. or something. Maybe it was small-talk, but I like to think they were hoping to go to the same salon.

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Fine digs in Edinburgh

There are a few things that seem to be consistent across most people’s Edfest experience – sore feet from flyering, paranoia about a ‘nil points’ on the ticket sales front, fretting about bad reviews, drinking too much and staying in overpriced horrible accomodation.

Well, sore feet I have – though not too bad, and I do feel myself getting fitter as the days go by, and I’ve lots weight…)

Audience figures have thus far been well up on last year, and I’m reasonably positive about the rest of the run.

Not a single press person has booked a ticket for the show as yet, though I did ring a couple of papers this morning who seemed at least slightly interested in sending someone along. but it does mean I’m only worried about audience reviews, and the one I’ve had so far has been just fine.

Drinking too much? Well, I’m driving in each day, and playing at 11.15, so no drinking for me at all. My Edfest alcohol consumption for 2005 thus far has been one glass of wine in the Jolly Judge on my first day here.

And as for a place to stay – TSP and I are staying with Gareth and Jane, a finer place to lay one’s head is not to be had in all of the Scottish lowlands. It’s warm, spacious, and Gareth’s a geeky pedant who prints off corrections to my blog and brings them up to me. And they say vicar’s are meant to be rushed off their feet. He also has a slightly unnerving fetish for 80s metal, and a their bath is so deep and long that it’s more of a canal than a bath. I’m thinking of installing a lock halfway along it so I can reach the taps in a boat. There’s a tow-path along the side of it, and I stubbed my toes on an old shopping trolley this morning.

It’s a great place to be – and I have to bite my tongue when other peoples are telling their tales of woe regarding paying £400 a week for a hovel.

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Monday night

Another fine gig – I thought the crowd was going to be a bit smaller given that it was a Monday, but once again we were over 35 (36, to be precise). The audience-vocal-percussion-loop track went very odd thanks to the jazzshark starting the loop with a couple of (albeit very accurate) dog barks. The sounds that followed were equally strange, and the whole thing went very odd. But it worked, and went down v. well. I’m getting into a bit of a stride with the show, which feels good (though apparently last night I slipped back into an old habit of twiddling on the bass with the sound off while I was talking – a bit distracting for the audience, and one that I thought I’d got out of… must try harder).

Flyering is becoming more fun, as more people stop to say they’ve had the show recommended to them by friends. Weird flyering moment of the day was when the owner of The Pleasance (huge venue complex on the fringe) came out to ask me not to flyer outside his venue. I was about to get all defensive and tell him it was a public street and I could do what I like, when he said I’m happy for you to go inside and flyer in the bar if you like’! What a nice man. The spirit of the festival, indeed.

Still haven’t got to see any shows. Tonight will be an interesting one in terms of how hard we have to keep working, given that the last two nights have had a ‘two for one’ ticket promotion running, and now we’re back to normal, so we’ll see if the numbers stay up, or if we drop back again.

Met a lovely lady in the Fringe Press office who will hopefully help point press peoples my way. I’ve not had any reviews so far at all, which is odd given how well the show is going. Must work harder to make that happen (if you’re a press peoples reading this, PLEASE COME TO THE SHOW!)

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