A decent part of this morning was spent emailing venues and contacts of venues from yesterday. Just before I set off for the jam, I get a reply from one of them. It’s the cafe bar near The Good Mixer. He wants me to come in and see him tomorrow. Cool.

Now for the jam. This is shaping up to be something of a showcase event for us. Two bar managers have said they’ll come and the band manager I’ve mentioned a few times has also promised his presence.

Diego comes first with a couple of friends. It’s early on and we’re nicely warmed up after a two hour rehearsal and an introductory few songs for the scattering of people who’ve already arrived. Five or six. Downstairs is dead. We’re not long out of mid January. Everywhere is still pretty much dead. But we tear into it and Diego and his mates seem to be having a great time and are really into it. Diego gets his phone out and starts filming. After about half an hour, he goes downstairs and says we should come and join him when we get the chance.

We don’t get the chance. Ten minutes or so after he’s left, the other bar manager who said he’d come comes. He also films a good portion of what we do. Then, twenty minutes or so after he comes, the band manager turns up. Not only that but he ends up joining us on stage for a very well received song. A few other guys get up and sing with varying degrees of ability but that’s all in the spirit of the night. And Chris, one of the guitarists who came to the last session, makes a very welcome return.

When we finally take a break after well over two hours of playing, we go and have a chat with Tom, the second bar manager, band manager dude having retired downstairs to have a pint with his mates. Tom is very positive and says he will definitely be onto us to play in his place once things start to busy up a bit. As for our audience during the night, it’s pretty much totally turned over three times. At no point has the room been really busy, but, like a local festival, if everyone who came had stayed, the place would have been full and rocking. This is not lost on Callum who, for the first time, is very pleased with our attendance, saying it’s been a good night.

Downstairs, I have a few words with the band manager. We’re nowhere near what he does as he manages famous artists but music’s music and there’s plenty of cross pollination. He gives us a few pointers of people and organisations we should talk to. This will help with the cold calling there as I can say who directed me to them. And he says that now he’s seen us, he can bear us in mind should he come across anyone who can help the cause. As far as The Jam Jar Jam goes, I think you can say third time lucky.

 

Day 22

Friday January 22

I’ve had business cards on order for a few days now and they’ve still not arrived. I call the company and for once get excellent customer service. They’ll dispatch a fresh lot which should be with me in two working days and they’ll refund what I’d paid for postage. Not a great deal but all simply done with no obstacles and all apologies. I wonder what I could compare that experience to.

With the lack of business cards and knowing they’re on their way, I decide to forgo venue hunting for today. I’ve not liked going to places without them and, seeing as my next expedition is planned for central London, I think it’s worth waiting. So today sees a massive diary catchup.

Later, I have a meeting with a guy called Mac at Cafe Bayou, part of Undersolo in Camden, the place next to The Good Mixer. Just as I’m about to leave, I get an email from him putting it back an hour as he’s running late. No problem at all. I get there around the time and he’s still not there I don’t want to just sit there and wait so I go and have a wander around Camden, two times being offered cocaine. By the same person. In Madrid it was prostitutes. Here it’s drug dealers. I’m not at all put out by it though but I am put out by this extra thinking time I have. All kinds of anxieties build up. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling them but as I’m walking about late night Camden in full flow, they come out in full force.

By the time I get back to Bayou, Mac’s there and is aware I was around earlier so apologises for being late. Again, no biggie. For him, it was more of an, ‘I’ll be there at 8 O’Clock so come round,’ rather than, ‘We will have a meeting at 8 O’Clock.’ Straight away he says he saw the video we did in rehearsal and really liked it. Not only that, but he loves the idea of two guys not making too big a noise. I thought he would have then started talking about putting us on a three or four band bill, the kind of thing they have going tonight. I don’t know how they do it here, but these kind of shows are generally unpaid and ‘all about the exposure.’ But no. He’s got no thoughts of that at all. He tells me the restaurant is booked up solid for weekend nights for quite a while and each night he wants to get an act in to entertain them. He assures me there will be a budget to work with but that, along with dates, has yet to be finalised. It’s been a quick meeting but one well worth coming along for. There’s been none of this,

‘Let’s see how many people you bring,’ or, ‘We want to see how it goes.’ Instead, it’s the first venue that’s guaranteed payment for a booking. We play, we get paid there and then on the night. I walk home elated, feeling like I’ve just scored a goal.

 

Day 23

Saturday January 23

I think I’m in the minority of people for whom Monday morning is something to be welcomed. This is when I can get started again after the weekend. When I have a project and ideas and I’m not able to work on it, I get very frustrated. If all goes well, weekends will be when most of the business actually happens. But for now, it’s the time when everything stops. Just for the hell of it, I go and check out The Vine on my way home after a walk out and I can see it’s relatively quiet. Diego’s there and seems very pleased to see me. There’s also a guy I know having a drink so I’m able to go and chat to him for a while, while Diego’s doing Saturday stuff. When we get the chance to chat a little, I don’t push anything and what he says was to be expected. ‘Why don’t you come in Monday afternoon and we can have a look at where we are. Four O’Clock OK?’ Perfect. See. Told you.

 

Day 25

Monday January 25

Tricky one today. I have a meeting at 4 O’Clock at The Vine. Getting out to see venues is all about timing. Hell, the way I got the job at The Oxford was all about timing and I didn’t even know it. I walked in when the place wasn’t busy and the manager happened to be there. Having worked in the place for over a year, I now have an idea of how the rhythm works. 11am to 1pm is one sweet spot. At 1, lunch starts so forget anything until quite a while after 2 when lunch has not only finished but the staff has also finished cleaning it all up. Approaching 3, you’re in pretty good shape. Work lets out between 5 and 6 so that’s when places start getting busy again. So there are your two target times to catch places cold when people who haven’t a clue who you are and care less might have a little time for you. In fact, you might even be giving them something to do. But considering a lot of places aren’t open for the morning trade and start to come awake at sometime mid afternoon, if you want to go to an area and hit every bar, or at least have a chance to, there’s no point going until after lunch, catching as many places as you can in that spot between 3 and six. If it’s a slow night for bars in the area, your window can be extended. So there you go. If I have a meeting at 4pm, there’s not much street hustling to be had. But besides, I have the places I hit Thursday so I concentrate on getting back to them. Then at 4pm I have the meeting then straight from there it’s onto Dan’s for rehearsal.

So I start making the calls and checking the emails and it’s all still on. Nothing’s confirmed but everything that was a possibility is still a possibility. Just got to keep sitting tight on it all until things get confirmed. This is one of those days when I can’t really push stuff. I’m going to get plenty of those.

Then, just before I head off to The Vine, I decide to try O’Neils in Muswell Hill again. I played there with The Punching Preachers. An old church converted to a bar, it’s a huge venue with a massive stage. Going against everything I’ve been doing, I’m going to call this bar. First, because I know the number works and second, because I’ve got the name of the guy who does the booking. It’s one of the venues I called on my first day of doing the rounds. The guy I want to speak to answers the phone. A very quick chat and he says I should email him a video of a show we’ve done. I have a little video of The Jam Jar Jam but I don’t really like it as the place looks empty so I stick with the rehearsal video we have. Half an hour later he replies offering a trial show at the end of February with a view to continued bookings at full price if that goes well. However, even the trial price pays me and Dan each what we would earn for a double shift at The Oxford. Why can’t they all be that straight forward?

As well as being part of a massive chain of bars offering music and so throwing up a lot of potential, this particular O’Neills is by far the biggest north London cover band venue I’ve seen. It’s also the most prestigious that I’m aware of. Back when I was with The Punching Preachers you may remember I got talking to Tre about an upcoming gig there. When I told him where it was, he recoiled a little, his eyes grew wide and he said, ‘Damn, you guys must be good.’ Now, for The Insiders, thanks to our rehearsal video, this is the first place I’ve fully booked us into. And with that, I’m no longer a guy going to venues saying they should book some new duo on the scene. Instead, I can tell them they’re booking an act playing O’Neills in Muswell Hill. We have a marker on our calling card.

The meeting at The Vine is also positive. Diego says he likes what he saw but wants a bit more punch so a few more big songs. But considering the fact that we gave him a cross section of what we do, that’s not a problem. He’s also looking at budgets and exactly how he wants to go with it but he assures me we’re in the mix so that works.

After the meeting I go straight to Dan’s for rehearsal. We consolidate a lot of the set, getting ourselves more confident with a few tracks, and then finally get the rock ‘n’ roll medley together that we’ve been threatening to do for a while. We check out some new songs and consider the dilemma of whether to prioritise concentrating on harmonies for existing songs or adding more new ones. In the end, adding more new ones gets it. That just means we’ll work on that first in a session and then, once we’ve done that for a while, the harmonies will get some love. The thinking behind this is that we may not have a great deal of time before we have to pull out a show of more or less all big numbers. This is what The Vine wants, I know it will be needed in O’Neills, and the restaurant venue in Camden will probably want it too. We already have a good amount of middle of the road to smaller, gentler numbers so putting a bit more meat on the bones so to speak really couldn’t hurt.

 

Day 26

Tuesday January 26

The cards I ordered for the second time come today. So do the cards I ordered the first time. So that’s two for the price of one. Not a bad start to the day.

This gets mildly cancelled out by a call from Sonny B Walker’s guitarist who tells me the venue’s put the date back so it won’t be this Friday now. Not enough time to promote apparently. What? This was confirmed at least two weeks ago. I don’t understand. But I’m just the hired hand here, right.

With the O’neills booking, I’m rethinking this going out versus calling from home thing. There’s no doubt in my mind that actually turning up to a place and meeting the guy or girl responsible is better. But calling does allow more places to be hit in a given time. Maybe split it up and do a little of each? I am starting to get better at finding suitable venues on the internet. I think. But ultimately, I think this whole thing is going to be about working smarter, not harder. Just that, when you’ve found the smart way, work hard at it. Today I work hard at finding the smart way and a few interesting ideas and avenues come up. I’m going to have to see how they pan out before writing about them, if at all. This new thinking, or hopping from one foot to another, means I don’t take the trip into the centre I had mildly pencilled in for today.

But I do still manage to hit a few venues, concentrating on the area between Kentish Town and Camden. This includes visiting Camden Brewery direct. There you go. There’s one idea and it needs a little more thinking about and research but one will have to do for now. Camden brewery has venues all over the place. This leads me to think they may have a single musical/entertainment co-ordinator or at least have a single policy. It proves a good call but not for reasons I was expecting. I manage to get into the office and speak to the girl who knows about this stuff. She tells me that none of their bars do live music but here, in the brewery’s own venue, they do. And she gives me the contact for that. So now I’ve saved any time, energy and motivation sapping knock backs I might have spent in pursuing different Camden brewery venues. At the same time, I see how only good can come of playing in a brewery’s home base bar on quite a few levels.

Pavement hitting work done, I bump into Dan who’s running bar errands. He invites me for a drink on him which I’m more than happy to take him up on. I go into the bar and there’s Sam, he of The Sofa Sessions. It’s been a while since I just casually hung out with him so I take the opportunity now. Yes, there is a cynical, networking power at play here but I also genuinely like the guy. Neither of us mention the sessions once. I know he knows where I am when the time is right.

Back to that smarter, not harder thing. Now we’ve got a gig in the diary and a good one at that, I think it’s time to get some press moving. Camden and Kentish Town both have their own papers and they’re better read than your average local rag and generally entertaining, informal and informative. I start to put together a press pack and work on who best to contact. But as I’m doing that, I realise I have something on tomorrow that might just get this rolling in a much more organic way.

 

Day 27

Wednesday January 27

I can’t believe it. I’m becoming a singer. I truly never saw this coming. It’s a long time since I felt as out of my comfort zone as I do today. Rehearsal with Dan begins a little after noon. We have a little agenda. Some new song we want to add. Some existing ones we want to consolidate. I’ve said that with the gigs we have and may have coming up, we need to start adding a fair bit so the pressure’s slightly on but it can’t begin to match New Year’s so that’s fine. But what I’m really intrigued about is how we’re going to manage with becoming a harmony duo. How difficult is that going to be and how are we going to sound? So I suggest, in the name of curiosity, that we give that a go before we do anything else. So we do. Then we do again. Then we do a little more. Until we finish the session. For more than three hours, but for a tiny bit of new song learning and playing, we do nothing but practice harmonies. Even in the new songs we do, we still concentrate on building them up with harmonies. So make that the entire time. I’m not going to begin to make any claims that we sound amazing this or amazing that. It’s just enough that we were able to do it.

Oh it was hard. And heartbreaking. And, at times, sounding oh so horrible. At one point two cats being strangled came in and asked us to give it a break. I think anyone who’s ever tried to learn to play violin will know how we feel. This thing sounds horrible right now, but I know that once I learn to catch the strings in just the right way, it will sound amazing.

I won’t go through the whole process, but it’s enough to say that we begin by taking advice Scott gave us last week. Well, not before we attempt The Beatles’ She Loves You and discover we’re trying to do manipulate chemistry in space before we know what water is. So, training wheels fully attached this time, we take about a million steps back.

We start again by looking at an Everly Brothers’ song and just studying and copying their harmonies. Dan does a great job here by bringing up a few websites that are to singing what SBL is to bass players. Well, probably not that good but you get the picture. One particular site has two guys going through the parts for Cathy’s Clown. Now, that’s not a song we would begin to think about doing but it looks great to start with. And we have a full on broken down tutorial to go with it so why not? I think here we show something of the dedication and determination required that will hopefully see us becoming halfway decent. I actually lose track of time but for between half an hour and an hour we do nothing but sing and harmonise a single chorus. This means we sometimes loop parts of the song from a single note, experimenting around that, to part of a line to eventually a whole line. Lots of other bands do whole lines when they’re playing but that’s quite a different story. It’s quite something when we feel we’re ready to tackle the whole chorus but even then it takes a while to get it together. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t. And still the parts develop and change. When we think we have it, we do it again. And then many more agains.

When this is finished, it’s cup of tea time before we think about doing anything else. Here, I give Dan my theory on rehearsal. What we’ve just done is absolutely right but you don’t get better at playing a song by doing it over and over again. You get better at playing a song by getting better at being a band. Think about it. Your first band. Maybe you’re in it right now. Maybe you’ve never been in one and never will. In which case, here’s something new to think about. That first song ever that you played. Wasn’t it horrendous? Now, imagine you’d never played that song again after the very first attempt. Fast forward a few years being in that band, maybe even six months. Now go and learn and play that very first song again. Just imagine it. Quite different no? And not at all achieved by playing that one song over and over again. Simply, by being better, you get better at being better. And so I think it will be with harmonies. I think that once we’ve got through the painful birth of actually being able to do them, in time, songs that would be just as difficult to do as what we did today, will start to come together in no time. I don’t know if this is a case in point or not, but at the end of the session, we do a new song. Just for the hell of it we try to harmonise. Does it sound amazing? Hell no. But we sing two distinctly different parts that do a good impression of working.

Rehearsal done, Dan goes one way and I go for a brief spot of venue hunting, to a place that was recommended to me at The Jam Jar Jam. Nothing doing there. Shame. It’s a fine venue and I’m sure it does great gigs. But it’s really only for original bands. They work on a ticket basis and the bands get a share of the tickets. I’m straight up with the guy and tell him that people are going to be able to see us free down the road. They’re not going to pay a tenner to see us in here. Fair enough. We’re not right for them, they’re not right for us. Keep going soldier.

When I get home, I don’t have time to do much else than drop my bass off. I’ve signed up for a community event that brings the businesses and people of Kentish Town together. Let me take you into the world that is The Kentish Town Cluster.

On my first day of journalism college, in the first minutes actually, we were all given a piece of paper each and told to go into the meeting room where food and drinks were laid out. The paper said things like: ‘Find someone who speaks Italian,’ or ‘Find someone who likes skiing,’ that sort of thing. The idea was for us to mingle and, well, find out things about each other. As well as identifying the precise person we wanted to talk to. It was also a pretty cool ice breaker. This was more than an introduction to each other. It was an introduction to the kind of situation you can often find yourself in as a journalist and I often did. There are many networking events where people who don’t know each other are thrown into rooms and just left to fend for themselves. In some cultures, they’re called parties. This is exactly what The Kentish Town Cluster is. It’s really a great idea and is an opportunity for the people of the town to come together as a community both as a business and socially. But more business.

So I go on my own. Like the concept of jam sessions I’ve often spoken about, it’s much better to go to these kinds of things on your own. While you might feel a bit out of place at the start, once things get warmed up, you don’t have to worry about leaving your friend on their own and with no reason to be there. Also, with a friend in tow, it can be that much harder to just wander into conversations. It also means I have absoltutely no idea where to start. I go into the room and it’s just people talking to people. It’t not even like that rent a room get together I went to where we all wore badges denoting renter or rentee, along with desired area and budget/asking price. Or those entrepreneurial things you may have heard about where investors have a blue badge and people looking for investors have a red one. No. There’s nothing. It’s just people. How do you begin to know who you should be talking to? They may not even be here yet. What if they come and go while you’re speaking to the guys who run the new local falafel cafe?

Rather than pile in, I decide to hang out at the edge for a while, while I get my bearings and see what conversation I might want to get involved in. I did something like this in my first days in Ireland when I knew no-one. I would go to a pub, scope out all the tables, see one that looked interesting or like it was having the most fun and just barrel into it, introduce myself and say I was new in town and knew no-one. In all the times I did that I got knocked back just once and all the other times had a wonderful evening. A warning. If you want to do that, make sure to have a very definite and sustainable ‘up’ energy and positivity; it takes that just to get going. It takes even more to maintain it once you’ve been accepted.

So here I am, on the edge getting my bearings and yes, feeling a tad awkard and uncertain. I’m sure I will get into this but right now I can’t see how. I just feel like the forgotten date at prom night. After a while, I see a small high table in the middle of the room that’s surrounded by a bunch of people all seeming to be getting on. And, near to it, another table with a similar looking group. It occurs to me that if I just position myself on the edge of the first table, I’ll have direct access to both groups while, to each group it will appear as if I belong to the other one rather than my current rather unfortunate position of wallweed.

So in I go. Almost immediately I get talking to a guy called  Richard who owns a Cuban music venue in Camden that I know, and a girl called Claudia who’s an interpreter. There’s not really anything here but it’s nice to be finally talking to people and, apart from that, I start to see how easy it is for people to introduce themselves and be welcomed into conversations. It’s happening all over the place and happens as I’m talking here. It occurs to me that this is the exact reason everyone’s here so the usual standoffishness and cliquieness just isn’t happening. Yes, it’s full of people you don’t know, but the kicker is that all the people you don’t know don’t know anyone either. It’s exactly like being on the underground except you’re expected to talk to each other. Which is exactly how this thing started in the first place. The organiser, James, was once on the underground when he saw someone with a CV. Snatching a closer look, he saw that the guy had some experience he was interested in. So he struck up a conversation with him and discovered he was on his way to a job interview. Seizing the hands of fate, James offered him a job there and then and the guy skipped his interview and started working for James and still does. This is London.

Apart from the ease with which people start conversations in here, I also notice that there are no hard feelings when people quickly move on, realising they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Rather than people being offended, they’re like, ‘ No. Move on. Find what it is you came here to find.’

In this spirit, I move across the room and find myself talking to Tally, who runs a print shop in Kentish Town and who says she’s the longest serving business in the area. Through here I get talking to some people who organise tours of British battlefields across Europe ‘Everywhere we’ve been we’ve had a fight with someone,’ and then a girl who has music magazine who works with some latino bands on the management side. Her music magazine is nowhere in my field but she takes my card as a – you never know when you might need a bass player.

I move on again. Across to the other side of the room where I just storm into a conversation and find myself talking to Eric, Simon, Katie and Tiara who are all architechts and interior designers. It’s a fun hang but, again, not what I came here for. After a while I tell them this and head off to the bar to disengage preparing reengage. From here I’m going to re-recce the room and decide which part of it to hit next.

As I’m doing this, out of nowhere comes a girl called Smera – I have no idea how to pronounce that but it’s a supercool name that sounds like Sarah with an M inserted. I tell her this and we just hit it off. She says she’s here to support her friend Lou but is finding herself talking to more people than Lou is. She introduces me to Lou, then to Yvette who seems excited I’m a bass player. Yvette introduces me to Miranda, Who’s here looking for a guitar player. I say I’ll see what I can do if she finds me on Facebook. I chat to Miranda for a while, giving her something of a pep talk as I feel she doesn’t get out enough and then Smera retruns and takes me to Yvette and Lou again. I’ve come full circle. They’re standing right where I was at the beginning when I was still sussing this place out. It’s the wall which is practically fully made up of windows overlooking the high street of Kentish Town. Lou’s in a band and has a gig coming up in Euston and Yvette is a friend and big supporter of hers. It’s Yvette who tells me that Lou used to be a backing singer for  a ton of household names at a time they had massive hits and is now trying to make it happen for herself. I think this will be a bit superfluous but I recommend she sees 20 feet from stardom. No. Not superfluous at all. Not only has she never seen it but Yvette has it and says she’s been trying to get Lou to see it for ages. Once I mention it, Yvette says to her, ‘That’s it. We’re making a date, you’re coming to my house and we’re going to watch it.’ ‘Is this something I should really see?’ asks Lou. My reply: ‘It should be a legal requirement that you see it.’ If you don’t know, this is a documentary about backing singers for huge stars trying to become stars in their own right. It’s hearbreaking, inspiring and a little bit scary all at the same time. In Bruce Springsteen’s words, ‘That walk to the front is complicated.’

Of course, we get talking about my thing and Yvette casually, almost in a throwaway manner, asks where we’re playing. I tell her about the gig at O’Neills, Muswell Hill. Her eyes widen. ‘You’re playing there? We’re definitely coming. And then you’re going to come to Lou’s show in Euston.’ With that, she’s on at Lou to get the details of our show and asking me for cards and whatever other information I can throw her way. While all this is going on, I’m listening to Smera talking and that conversation is sounding very interesting. At a natural break, I take the opportunity to ask what she does. I don’t think it’s rude at this stage. In any case, it wouldn’t have been rude at the beginning given where we are. Yep. She works for a major record label directly with quite a few household names. She co-ordinates their videos, liasing between them and the director; it’s often her job to source the director. She mentions one very high profile female singer she works with who always knows exactly what she wants for her video and has the concept fully worked out before a director is even chosen. So for this, the artist and director just work together as one. I wonder if Smera could be a good contact for Omater. The more she talks, the more I see she’s connected with some of the major decision makers in her company. When I have the full Omater package, I think I will get it off to her.

By now we’re almost the last people left in the place. They decide it’s time to leave and they all hug me massively as they do. I’ve not seen much hugging action going on tonight. Before she leaves, Smera takes her Oystercard out and says my card is going in with it because it’s a special one. We’ll see. Now they all know where I am. Will they be in touch? I have no idea. But I do know I have to go to more things like this. As tonight’s proved, from unpromising beginnings, you never know who you might meet. This is London.