Day three

Saturday November 1

Time for the rubber to hit the road. We have ten shows booked in over two weeks starting from today, and that is just incredible. And these aren’t little three or four songs, go in, hit them out and leave affairs. No. These are mostly 40-45 minute shows, so full-on physical affairs that will really test us and our repertoire with the needs to adapt to different circumstances and different audiences. And just to fast forward a little, because many more shows will be added to what we have now, there are a few times where we do three of these in a day.

Up to now I haven’t mentioned this next thought to Maja or anyone, what if we play the first show and it just doesn’t work? If Richard says, guys, I love you, you’re a great hang but this thing you have just doesn’t work here. Just have a nice holiday and we’ll all have a great time together but this isn’t going to work. It really could happen. That’s my apprehension and very real, anxiety really. It’s not nerves so much. We’re confident in our songs and in our performance. And our songs are set. And for performance, we know we can bring it and give it. And as long as we do that, that’s all we can do. But that’s it. That’s all we can do. We have nothing else. And if people here don’t go for it, well, they just don’t go for it. Will they? That’s the big question. And we’re also singing in a different language so for the most part the songs just have to stand for themselves. Which I think songs have to do anyway. I’m not a massive fan of that thing when you’re with someone and listening to one of their songs and they’re all insistent like, listen to the lyrics. For me, on first listen and first experience, a song has to stand up on its melody, rhythm and maybe structure. Lyrics can help pull all that together, but for actual meaning in them, I think that’s for later listens once someone is familiar with a song and wants to look deeper. But the weird thing here, and maybe it’s just me, but if lyrics are bad, they stand out and can and often do ruin a song. But if they’re good, they just sit there like that’s where they’re supposed to be and they don’t even get noticed. Again, exceptions, but yeah, that’s about it. So we’re here. We have the songs we’re going tomaira play and that isn’t going to change. Oh. Setlist choices. What to put in and the reading the room and maybe knowing what to change in there. And what will open well. Go big and overwhelm, or go small to mid and draw them in. That is something. But apart from that, what we have is what we have and it will either work or it won’t. And yeah. I do have just that little anxiety that it just might not. 

Still, when we’re on the way to that first show in the car and Richard asks if I’m nervous, I don’t hesitate and give a very casual, ‘no.’ I think and hope that calms any nerves he has because he’s putting himself and his reputation on the line here as well. The venue is Museo Yancuic, a cultural centre for children based around art, science and technology. I’ve seen some pictures online and envisage us playing in one of the activity rooms, maybe a bit like playing a gig in a library.

Into the covered carpark and we are met by Horacio and Frida. It’s really cool they’ve come out to meet us, and especially nice to meet Horacio as he’s been following our stuff online before we’ve come out here. So it feels like we have an ally in here already.

Now off to see the venue and it’s far far bigger than anything we were expecting. A big auditorium kind of place with seating for 300. Stage on the floor then the seats just rise above you. Kind of like a lecture hall. This will not be like playing a gig in a library and is far from my thoughts of playing something that would look maybe more like a classroom. From here we go past the side of the rising seats and into a dressing room underneath them. A really tidy, modern and quite wide open space, complete with our own toilet. So this is our first taste of what this is going to be like.

We’ve arrived in really good time and first thing is to set up for soundcheck. During which we’re going to try out both guitars – Richard’s, and the one we bought yesterday. We go for the one we bought. It just has a better feel for us. Actually, I love it.

I said this was a soundcheck. But there’s something else here we’ve never done before. A light check. Oh, we were introduced to two people when we got here. Right at the top of the auditorium is the technical room. In there, one guy will be running the sound desk, another will be running lights. Fine. But then we see what it really means and what Richard was asking about yesterday as things whirr up and the space around us transforms. Suddenly the huge wall behind us has been turned into a Diaries landscape. There’s our logo twenty feet high, then all kinds of swirling floral scenes begin to appear. This is the backdrop Richard was asking about and then went about setting up for us. We have never seen anything like it. Not for our performances anyway. Well, here we are. Now we understand.

Soundcheck – and lightcheck – done and we’re free for a few hours. With that, Frida takes us out into the neighbourhood streets and here we are. Out in a local barrio area of Mexico City. And it’s hot and dry and dusty. With street dogs everywhere. Even right next to the street taco place Frida brings us to. But they don’t bother us and just happily lie in the sun as our tacos come out and we have our first Mexican street food experience. Wonderful minced pork tacos made right there and then in front of us as we sit in the sun. 

Back at the venue and there’s still time for us to enjoy the place, so that’s what Maja does as we go upstairs and a couple of guys are holding a fully interactive beatboxing seminar. Every now and then they invite someone to go up with them and enjoy a short private lesson in front of everyone. And of course Maja does, also taking the opportunity to tell them, through Horacio, that we will be playing downstairs later. At 3pm.

As we go down to showtime, we enter the auditorium and it’s dark and a show is going on. A gentle puppet show. If I said it once I said it a thousand times. Put The Diaries first and puppet show last. But why are we going to an airforce base?…Oh. Sorry. Back to today.

So we mentioned this is a children’s place and for a puppet show there’s a really healthy audience. Not full, but the place looks decent. We’re thinking they are here for the duration and will stay for us and maybe be joined by a few more. Puppet show ends, lights go up, and the whole place empties. Oh. OK. We start from scratch. It’s a museum event, so we guess our audience will depend on how many people are around when we start, and then how many of them decide to come in here and check things out.

About 30 to 40 people is the answer as time is declared and we leave our dressing room and head for the stage for what is planned as a 35 to 40 minute performance. This is it. Our high energy original acoustic songs in English in front of a Mexican audience. Two songs in and a few people walk out. Another song in and another few walk outs. Which repeats during the next song. Oh no. This can’t continue. I still haven’t said anything to anyone about my thoughts on how this could go, but I’m now genuinely thinking what would happen if by the time we get to the end there’s no-one left in here. Playing original songs in front of audiences who haven’t heard you at all is, I think, one of the biggest challenges in entertainment so we know it can be tough, and we’re having to use all our experience and resilience right now to just carry on as though everything is great. Because hey, you’ve still got to bring it or you’ll lose the rest of the audience. Which is what happen. No. Not the losing the rest of the audience, but we just keep bringing it. And now the walkouts have happened, the people that are left are really into it and are totally with us. I think as we approach the last 10 minutes we finally really start to relax and enjoy it rather than doing our best to pretend we’re enjoying it. And when the last chord is hit and the show is over, the applause is warm and enthusiastic. By now we’ve even been getting a few cheers and here that is again. And when that’s done, a few people come down from the seats and immediately ask us for pictures with them. Oh wow this has been a ride of a show and certainly an experience. When it looked like we weren’t going to, we have now come through our first real test in Mexico. The rubber has hit the road and the car is still moving.

And it has to keep moving right now because our next show is in just over an hour and of course we have to get ourselves organised here, get there, and soundcheck. While Richard is keen to get moving, he doesn’t forget that we’ve just done our first show here and is quick to congratulate us and tell us he feels it went very well. And with that his phone goes. He comes out of the conversation and says that our 5pm start for the next show is now 7pm. Great. Relax, sit back and take in what we’ve just done and the fact that we did actually get through it and the audience was with us. Richard says that of course he saw the first few walk outs, but he says that what mostly likely happened is that once those people saw the show was in English they didn’t want to stick around for it. Fair enough. And yes, that does make us feel a whole lot better.

As we walk back out and across the auditorium, the soundman and light engineer come down the stairs and say that they loved it. And then here comes Horacio. He shakes both our hands then speaks to Richard for a minute or two, then he comes back and says thankyou then he’s off. Busy day. Richard says that Horacio would really like to get together and hang out with us next week. Right. That really is job done. First show down, and the more we start to think about it and the further from our minds those early walk outs become, the more we start to think that this has been a success. Now it’s time to casually make our way to the next one.

On the way Richard takes another phone call. He’s on the speakerphone and speaking Spanish so Maja doesn’t know what’s going on. I’m in the back – I’m the much smaller one. I’m always in the back. So I can’t hear too well. I try but I’m missing so many words that I just decide to pretend I don’t speak Spanish and wait for Richard to fill us both in at the same time. Once he’s done he tells us that Luis, his brother and bass player in Los Ekis may have got us a gig, and there’s also now the possibility of Los Ekis playing a gig while we’re here, and we’d support that. If that happens it will be at Richard’s own bar – El Zapata – which we’ve seen photos of but have yet to visit. It will also be outside in the garden. Oh that would be a good one to have happen.

We arrive at the next venue. A place called Faro Aragon. There will be a lot of faros in here. For that, think cultural centre. We will learn that a lot of our shows here are in faros because, like so many venues in London, if you don’t have your own following, no-one is going to be at your show. It’s not like venues have standing audiences or walk-in audiences or just people who turn up to see what’s on. No. They go because there is this one band they want to see. And if they don’t know you they ain’t going. I do see this in London a lot with people arriving all excited to be playing a London venue and then the crushing disappointment and incomprehension on their faces when they realise no-one’s come and no-one is going to. But…we’re in London. Yep. Sorry. It’s like that. There will be some exceptions, but that’s why you’ll be coming along with us to a lot of cultural centres – faros from now on. As a rule, by the nature of them being cultural centres, they’ll have other things going on, or just people passing in and out like visitors at a museum. And as such, we’ll have something of a potential audience out and about and ready to come in.

Back to Faro Aragon. Another really large building and there’s someone out in the street with a megafone telling people to go in and check out what’s going on today, and yep, we hear The Diaries in there.

In we go and there are a lot of people milling about around various exhibitions, and outside in the courtyard before entering the building there’s a traditional Mexican singing circle going. Not sure if any of these people will make up our audience, but at least they’re there.

We walk into the space we’re going to be playing and oh my, this is something like a small arena. I mean, the place is absolutely cavernous. While we’re entering there’s something of an actors’ workshop going on on the stage and people are of course able to watch. The stage is significantly raised and huge. Like a full on theatre stage. Out front I guess no-one’s expecting to fill the place. There are a load of chairs arranged in front of the stage. About five or six rows and I guess 20 or so in each row. Which would make a substantial enough audience. Through this we go to the side of the stage and walk up a ramp and into a dressing room which is bigger than some bars we’ve played. Add the toilet and shower area and it truly makes a decent sized apartment. The truly dramatic scene is to stand quite far in and look out the door through which all you can see is stage. In half an hour or so that’s going to be ours.

And then it is stage time and our second show of the day. That stage, well, we use it. And the backdrop in here. Wow. Just beyond. Even bigger than the last place. If anything, this is an exercise in how to really use a stage. You can really get up a run in here. Although I choose not to fully utilize my wireless to go out front. I tried in soundcheck just to see if I could hop back on stage. Yeah, but really not to be advised. Especially making that large step with a guitar on as well. But there’s enough up here to be going on with. A few of the actors have stayed behind and generally, people come in and out. Overall, of course we don’t fill that huge arena of a room out front, but there’s always enough of an audience filling the chairs, even with all the comings and goings. The best thing in this environment is seeing a group of five people walk in, stand behind the chairs for a while, and then all agree that yes, they’ll stay and see this one. A long way behind that is seeing the same thing and, at the same time, they all decide to walk out. But we have to remember it is a cultural centre with a lot going on. Some people really do have places to be and people to meet and are in here for the five or six minutes they have between activities or because they arrived a bit early and thought they’d check us out while they waited. Richard has taken great care to make us aware of these concepts because it would be too easy to get disheartened at people walking out or not staying. But again, we have a steady audience and some great reactions. Indeed, we don’t notice this ourselves, but afterwards Richard tells us of one guy who was kind of trying to grab the air in front of him and pull it in. With this, Richard explains, he was trying to catch our vibe. We’ll take that as compliment of the day.

OK. First day of playing and first two shows done. And we’ve been able to see that yes. What we do works here and people have been reacting well to it, even with lyrics they can’t understand. Which means the actual melodies, rhythms and structures have to do all the work. Not to mention actual performance. Looking forwards a little to tomorrow, and first thing in the morning and me and Maja have a chat about this and I admit my anxiety about this to her for the first time. She comes straight back saying that she had also been feeling the same way. But yeah, first two gigs down and we’re feeling pretty much OK with it now. It hasn’t at all fallen apart on first contact like we mildly feared it really could have done.

Back to today and we are far from finished. First, Richard is going to take us to a large cemetery where we’ll be able to see a Day Of The Dead celebration. And after that we have a house party to go to.

The cemetery. Right. This really is a big deal. We arrive, and it’s full on party time on the streets which are thronged with people as we all make our way there, buying beern to drink on the way, as everyone else is doing. Once at the cemetery, we join the hundreds and maybe thousands of people wandering the areas between graves, all of which are specially decorated, and surrounded by friends and family having their own private parties with their departed loved ones. We wander round in here for well over an hour, then go to make our way back to the car. As we do so, we see the new crowds arriving. And they really are crowds. It’s like walking against the exit of a concert. We are slo glad we arrived when we did. These people are not going to have the casual meander we had. We have no idea what kind of experience awaits them and are not sorry we will not find out. We are just very glad we got there when we did.

Now for a spectacular night drive overlooking the city as we get an on-the-ground look at the overwhelming vastness of it all. Half an hour or so of this and we’re at the house of Richard’s friends. A really big house with a lovely covered party area out front. And in there a Mariachi band is playing as we’re offered home made tacos. Yep. For their Day of the Dead houseparty, the people in this house have hired their a band. Somehow during all this I get allied up to play with them. As I write this, I have no idea how that happened, but there I am, up in front of everyone about to play with this eight or nine piece band. And on double bass. An instrument I have had hands on just three or four times, and I certainly have never played in a band with one. How it got around that I was able to do this, I repeat, I have no idea. But they go through the chord progression of the next song with me and I pick it up and am able to do something resembling a passable impression of a double bass player who knows what he’s doing. Maybe even a little more than that as I start to really feel the rhythms and put into there what I think should go. After it all and I’m back sitting down and relax, a member of the band comes up to me and says quietly, ‘You are a great musician.’ That could well be one of the finest compliments I’ve ever received.

And we’re still not done. Because once the band finishes, it’s announced it’s our turn to play. And so we get ourselves up and prepared to play our third show of the day. We stand in the middle of everyone and fire out a short set including I LIke You (Better When You’re Naked). And yes. Once more, it all hits. So now, first day really done and down and it couldn’t have been more fun, encouraging or active. Did I say active? Damne. That’s just one day. The first gigging day. We’re here for another two weeks.

We get back to the apartment and tiredness has become an exhaustion that feels like a wall. All that and we’re still at some level of jetlag with our body clocks at this late Mexican hour tuned to london time, where it is sometime mid afternoon as we sit here deep past midnight. Richard opens a beer and on hearing that satisfying crack, I go into automatic reaction and reach for one myself. At this, Maja says, Mark, please don’t. And then in some kind of tone of tired desperation says, ‘Will you please just go to bed.’ Her Scandinavian consonants mean that that final D comes out particularly strong. You know what? I think she might just have a point. I go to bed. We both do. Damn. Day one of gigging. Just wow.

Oh. But, final note from me. We’ve noticed that when Richard tells us about gigs coming up, he addresses them as ‘We’re playing.’ We just love that. We really are a team of three and we tell Richard this and tell him to please feel free to express it like that.

Maja: 

The shows have been great. I’ve been truly enjoying having some better stages to work on, with more space for movement and performance. We are by design a quite small and nimble band, but having space to move is absolutely great. I feel that my movements are getting more defined and expressive. 

I LOVE being on stage. I just do. I’m not feeling nervous or uncomfortable even though my manager insisted I was. Instead, I just look forward to it. 

There have been multiple new experiences. 

  • I don’t like using ear protection with us, but at the levels we’ve had to play at today it has been necessary.
  • The first soundcheck was hard. And the reverb of the auditorium made it so much harder to perform.
  • Performing, I thought the gigs went well, but it is so weird to not hear ANYTHING but the guitar and vocals. I could barely even hear the counts Mark was doing to provide time for me during some of the songs. I thought it sounded a bit empty. With just us. I guess that is how it feels on a big stage. Different. Not at all what I was used to.

It was fantastic performing at the Mexican house party. People absolutely loved us. And I thought the mariachi band The Estudiantes were amazing.