Day 435

Day 435

Tuesday March 14

Last time we thought we were off to the Middle East we ceased all activity then found it hard to pick things up again when we realised it was dragging on a bit too long. I’m sure we missed out on a lot of December bookings because of that. We’re not going to make the same mistake again so back to it.

The first thing I wake up to is a gig offer at a venue in Watford in mid May. I confirm that and it goes in the diary.

And now it’s time to head off to a meeting about the care home project. That was arranged last week and, despite possible changing events, I’ve got to keep on this.

It’s a really positive meeting in the middle of a mildly busy canteen on a high street just a little north of the centre. After the lady has heard a little more about our plans, and possibly got a slight measure of what I’m about and, by extension, The Insiders, she says it all sounds great and that she will coordinate with her two other centres and get balls rolling with them. She’s also sure more can come of this as she confirms my thoughts that a lot of these people and organisations are connected. ‘Once you reach out and start being positive about things and offering to help, it can be amazing what comes back,’ she says. On the reaching out aspect of it, I tell her that we’d be happy to play a free show or two for her organisation, irrespective of funding. Let’s just get this thing started. ‘Well I have an idea on that,’ she says. ‘We’re going to be having a fair in one of the parks nearby here in June. Would you like to play at that?’ It’s part of a wider weekend commemoration event to Jo Cox, a young London MP who was murdered last year. Yep. Put us down. Paid or not, that’s another show in the book. She adds, ‘Bring plenty of cards. You don’t know who you could meet or what it could lead to.’ Yes we’ve all heard that plenty of times before. Come play a free show. It will be great for your exposure. But for once, I think this one really will be.

I return home to a couple of emails, the first offering us a gig in Watford at a venue called The Round Bush. That gets confirmed. The next one is from a care home coordinator wanting to put me in touch with a few of the bosses of their centres.

Not long after I get a really positive and appreciative email from a massive organisation asking how they can get involved in what we’re doing. They represent programmes in over 20 London boroughs which they think would be keen to come on board with this. They want to know what the next steps will be. I suggest a meeting and we get that booked.

A few more interested emails on the project pop in, most emanating from one organisation. This is from a lady I met back in February last year when we first started thinking about it. She’s really pulling for us now and has asked if we could start doing free gigs before being funded to which I replied yes. Then another gig comes in as the Clapham venue settles on a date in July which I confirm we can do

This sets off a whole flurry of emails with enquiries from more interested centres and yet more emails as they reply to my replies. I don’t keep figures on this kind of thing but I can tell you definitively that this is the single busiest day The Insiders’ email account has ever seen. By some distance.

After so long of trying to make things happen for The Insiders, something really seems to be building here. If anything, I should now be thinking even more about not pursuing the Middle East option and continuing to just carry on pushing this. But like you saw yesterday, I’m now keeping all options open.

Day 436

Wednesday March 15

We’ve decided that we’ll play a few requested free shows as long as we can get to them easily enough. I speak to Dan on the phone and he thinks I should just say yes to everything. We have a few reasons for this and some of them are purely charitable and benevolent. However, we also think it will help when it comes to the grant application should we get that far without other events overtaking us. Hopefully by then we’ll have some recommendations and we can also show a track record of providing the service. And the more we play, the more we’ll be heard about which could bring other people in. Talking about this, we come to the conclusion that it can’t be that different from the pub game or any other business. When working at The Oxford, we knew a lot of what was happening in other pubs across London, even those outside the company. And we knew a lot of other bar staff from other places too. Surely the care home industry is very similar in that respect which means that if we do well, word will spread.

In other news, our street party date gets confirmed for mid June, another centre says they’re interested in getting involved, a bar in Clapham books us for a date in July, and I take a free show with a centre that says they would like to have us every three to four weeks. And we have our audition with an agency coming up on Sunday. Once again, things are really happening here.

Day 437

Thursday March 16

With our little project having moved past the gently blowing on kindling stage and with other things standing by to overtake it, I don’t think I should push it too much right now. We have the people who are interested and that’s fine for now. Especially considering the upcoming meeting on Tuesday with the major player in care home world.

So the focus for today is rehearsal which we start by playing all the songs we’ve not been playing live recently to keep them in the game. We follow that by adding two new songs, one of which I’ll be singing – My Girl by Madness. That takes my songs up to three now. And 20 songs played so far today. The other is our first full song with the loop pedal which is a massive success. We record after quite a bit of practice with it on other songs as Dan pounds out the rhythms on his guitar to set us off. We’re also able to work this into the intros to songs so there’s no protracted period as he gets the loop going. We also discover that if it doesn’t quite work which, to be fair it does most of the time, we can just carry on almost uninterrupted while he deletes that effort and sets another loop up. We find this is all giving us a much bigger sound. Our first effort at a full song like that gets recorded. Here it is.

Looping done and we try another experiment. I’ve been telling the care home people we can take requests of songs we’ve never played, call them up on an ipad and put together pretty decent versions of them on the spot. This has been more confidence than anything else. Now I suggest to Dan we actually try it out to see it in practice. I throw out a couple of random songs we might realistically be asked to do which are way out of our normal repertoire. And yes. Chords and lyrics up and we’re able to play them to a standard we’re happy with. Right. I can keep saying it then.

Not a bad bit of progress for one rehearsal. Now our thoughts can turn to Sunday and the agent audition.