Day 19
Thursday March 17
Mark:
Oh I am not having fun this morning. The sea is really swelling and picking the ship up and down and I am really feeling it. All I can do is lie down on the kind of sofa bench we manage to make our own once we’re up and the actual bed is all packed away. Maja is up and about being social and attempting to introduce me to people but I’m sorry. I just can’t. If I lie down it’s kinda OK. But if I stand up, everything just seems to fall away beneath me. I don’t even feel like talking to the new friends I made yesterday. A passing nod if I see one of them when I go off on nature calls but that’s about it. Although there is quite a fun moment when one of them sings I Like You Better When You’re Naked at me as I pass him in the breakfast queue. Oh, did I just say breakfast? Sorry. No. Can’t. Oh, and now this. I really can’t believe this. Bizarrely, even just starting to write about the whole thing has caused something to psychosomatically happen and the world has ever so slightly started swimming and swaying again. I have to stop. Nope. Can’t even write about it.
On dry land and back in the car for the final leg of this epic journey, we start talking about what to do next. As we reflect, we start to conclude that the tour has really been a very elaborate dry run and the opportunity to develop ourselves as a live act. A great experience, but we don’t think wider Europe offers much for emerging bands. Where can you go? Scandinavia? No. Eastern Europe? Not really. France, Spain? No – and in particular here, I have intimate personal knowledge of Spain’s grass roots music scene. It does have one and it can be very good. The problem is, it doesn’t have an audience. Maybe Germany. Which really means Berlin, and we do feel we’ve created a toe hold there. After that, possibly Amsterdam, and maybe Prague.
Having done what we’ve done in the past few months, we now feel ready to begin to announce ourselves on the real marketplaces of emerging original music – Ireland and America. But really, more prominently for us, Ireland. Especially as it’s where we have our base so that automatically makes more sense. Of course, we do have America in the diary for late summer so that will take care of itself at the time. Until then, we decide we’re going to play as much as we can in Ireland and really try to get ourselves established there.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but today is March 17, which means we’re arriving back home in Ireland on St Patrick’s Day, and at a perfect time too. And it’s perfect for another quite bizarre and coincidental reason. It was a year ago today that we had the idea to write songs and tour the world and agreed that we would do just that. And here we are, exactly one year later, returning from our first international trip playing songs that have all been written by us since that day.
Maja:
It feels absolutely epic to return to Ireland today. Today is St. Patricks Day, which is well celebrated in Ireland. I’ve never been in Ireland during St. Patricks Day before, so I don’t really know what to expect. As we’re driving through the small villages we manage to catch the St. Particks Day Parade, which apperantly is a thing I am about to discover. The traffic slows down and we observe what looks like an whole village walking on the street, in funny vechicles, in trucks, drinking, being dressed amusingly in green. It’s marvelous. As a little truck drives by with a couple of lads dancing around on the back, I open the window to wave at them. And get squrited with a water gun. Thanks a lot.
I am over the moon that we got to catch the parade somewhere. A couple of hours later we reach home, and oh my gosh. I haven’t been home in too long. The unload the car and put the house in some order before we’re ready. We’re going to the Trap. To tell everyone we’re home!
As we reach the Trap, everyone is already drunk and most are home already. It seems like most drink at their non regular bar at this particular date so we don’t find a lot of people we know. But Angela who runs the bar gives us a big welcome home, and with that, we’ve landed in Ireland.
We’re back!
Friday March 18 to Monday Monday April 4
Let’s just cover this section of the return in one go. Over the week of arriving, a lot of rest happens, and then we slowly start to get the studio back together while also gently putting the house back in order as our mass of road equipment starts to get reassimilated. We’ve already decided that when we hit the road again, we’ll have less stuff than we’ve taken this time. A little more streamlined if you like. But for our first tour we did OK with what we took and not once did we find ourselves wishing we’d brought this or that. And we’ve learned a hell of a lot, not least that we can actually do this. That we can go into bars cold, get gigs, entertain and generate income. We also discovered that our level needed to come up a little more in terms of stage equipment, sound knowledge and in a few areas of actual performance. We bought and used the equipment, in the process gaining more experience of setting sound. And then during the enforced break in Sweden we really worked to up our performance game. Now we’re going to take a little time at home to rehearse in our Irish studio and pull up those few more performance levels we think we need. This will mean going deep and working on tiny percentages such as backing vocal placement. And with some of our increased vocal performance levels, quite a few of the songs now need to have a key change and these keys need to be discovered and practised.
During this practice, a new setlist starts to take shape as we start putting together what will become known as our smash set. This is to be a short 25 to 30 minute set of eight to ten songs, every one of which are just big. Which means no Insanity, Breakthrough, Wide Blue Yonder or even Smile Is Going Round, which has gone from a slightly up tempo pop tune to a gentle, insistent slow burn. With that change it regained its place in our affections and in the set as it was in danger of dropping out altogether. But it also means there’s no place for it right now. This short, intense set is designed to hold us up in the demanding, and frankly slightly hostile atmosphere of coverbar world where we intend to place ourselves. I’ve never seen anyone attempt this. Not on the scale we’re about to, going out there time and time again into such environments. But really, the theory here is that this is about taking ourselves directly to the end audience. To explain that, let’s take a look at this. First of all, and most simply, we think it will give us more gigs, or at least it will give us more venues to be able to take a run at. There aren’t a huge amount of venues for original acts, and even fewer for those making their first steps. Those bands tend to play quite sparsely, placing shows quite far apart to maximise audiences basically because there are only so many times in a given period even their more committed friends and family members will come out to see them. It can also be quite hard to get shows in the early days. You have to persuade a promoter to fit you somewhere on a bill, normally at the bottom of a three or four band evening. Then, if you do well, you can start to climb further up until you’re doing your own headline shows and then progressing with this to play bigger and bigger venues. That’s the hope anyway. I think you can already see that this is quite a time consuming process. The plus side is that on the way you’re playing to open minded audiences that want to get out and see new, emerging acts so they’re generally more eager and forgiving than your average bar crowd. But this audience is not huge. It also means that you’re not coming to the attention of the wider public at all. That doesn’t happen until you really get up in the atmosphere as a headline act playing pretty decent sized venues, hopefully with attendant press coverage, massively hopefully including some kind of TV or radio play. And believe me, looking at it from grassroots, this is a high bar to be aiming at with very few even attaining that level of success. But even then, for a band starting to show signs of breaking through, those early TV and radio slots will tend to be of the niche programming variety. So no. The general population won’t even be vaguely aware of you until you’re at least nibbling at the bottom rung of the fame game. What we’re doing is going straight to that end audience now. That means we have to able to grab them instantly and keep them grabbed.
Maja:
Right from the beginning we engineered the songs to captivate the toughest of audiences that wouldn’t always be open to listening to original music. So no singer songwriter vibe, no calm songs about heartbreak. Only short intense songs without too many instrumental breaks, with a lot of dynamics to keep people’s attention glued to us. And that’s also why we only play for 30 minutes in the kind of bars we’re playing now. People can’t keep their focus for much longer. They start to want to get back to talking to their friends, order a new pint and the music, however captivating, starts to overstay its welcome. That meant we needed to write about ten short intense, catchy songs of around three minutes each, and we needed to build an intensity of performance to keep the audience’s focus. There’s also no time for talk, because the audience doesn’t really want to listen to what you have to say. Get on with the music please. That is, if we even want you to get on with that.
So where we are now is that we need to get in there, present ourselves during setup, do our show swiftly and do the talking after the show, when people know what we’re about. The idea is that the people get to speak to us afterwards, when they are still in shock over how amazing our show just was. That way we don’t need to explain as much and it’s easier just to let them talk. We’ve already shown them that we’re rockstars, and they get the chance to take that in.
Mark:
This period now is about really consolidating ourselves and being able to put all the above into action, mixing in all the experience we gained from Germany. We settle on a set, selecting what we believe are our biggest songs. And as we do, we realise we’ve inadvertently written out the track listing for our first album. Oh. We have our first album. Which will be this set and some of our slower songs such as Insanity,
With that we’re ready to get to work. We put no pressure on ourselves. We’re going to be ready when we’re ready. We’re thinking two to three weeks to focus on rehearsal and then we’ll get back on the hustle trail as we start to take on Ireland. The idea now is to get all these up to standard, and then make one take, one track recordings of each one, to make what we call representation recordings. These will essentially be to show to prospective album producers so that they can get an idea of where we’re coming from, and they will also give us something to show to bars when looking for bookings.
And while we’re settling back into our small country town Irish life, people around here are starting to ask us when we’ll be playing in the local bar again. Almost every other time we’re out someone will ask. Even in the shops. And so many of these people we don’t even know. Yes, it does feel pretty good.
Day 38
Tuesday April 5
Mark:
Warm pitch to start today. From when we played on the ferry to Ireland from France we have a recommendation from a guy called Cockney. This is to a bar called Joseph McHughes in Liscannor, Co. Clare, about two hours drive away. Our plan from there is to drive to the nearby town of Lahinch and see if we can pick up a gig there, then we’re going to go have a look at Galway which I’ve always heard so much about as a live music centre and which everyone has been telling us we simply have to go to.
We find Joseph McHughes, a pub in a tiny area. Practically two pubs in a car park and that’s it for round here. In we go and we find the manager. We introduce ourselves and drop the name we have. ‘Oh yes, Cockney,’ she says. ‘He sent you here did he?’ Indeed he did. Saw us play on the ferry over. ‘Well, if you want to see how you go we could fit you in this Saturday.’ Oh wow. Straight in. Yeah we could do that. We chat times and come up with 9pm. Brilliant. That works.
Now we drive to Lahinch and have a look around for a bar that looks like it could work. We settle on a place called The Corner Post. Again, it’s a pretty quick pitch and the guy says we could do 10:30pm this Saturday which would work perfectly as he has a large party in that night. Fantastic. And just like that we have two gigs booked for Saturday. Now let’s try our luck in Galway.
No. Galway does not happen. It looks fantastic. Colourful and lively looking, so full of promise with, just like we’d been told so often. Bars offering live music on almost every corner, and on all the streets in between. And the lovely Eyre Squre in the centre surrounded by bars. Yes, there’s a lot of hustling to be done here. But we’re not far into it before we realise there could well be two problems with Galway. And the more we try our luck, the more our initial thoughts are confirmed. First, with it being such a tourist hub, and with music being one of its principle attractions, of course everywhere is booked. All. The Time. And with mostly the same people holding residencies in a given bar. Yeah. It soon becomes apparent the whole place is tied up by booking agents, who we’re encouraged to get in touch with. But for what? A two hour show? Chucking in covers and trad songs? That’s not our thing. There’s a strict model here and we just don’t fit into it. Second, we don’t get to speak to a single manager, so no decision makers. And even if there were, we very much get the impression they still would have referred us to their agent. We had such high hopes of Galway and we’ve turned up absolutely nothing. And after picking up two gigs so easily in tiny seaside towns.
On the way home, we conclude that has to be the way to go. Forget the so called famous music epicentres. We should be focusing on the midlands – the area of Ireland we live in – and the outer areas of the cities. As for the villages, hit them all. Even, or especially, the tiny ones. Maybe the managers there want music but don’t get pitched so much. We really think that’s a good idea for what we have, but oh, what a disappointment Galway has been.
Day 39
Wednesday April 6
Huge relief today as a result comes in we’ve been eagerly awaiting and dreading at the same time. Ed Sheeran wins his courtcase which he’s been fighting alongside his songwriting partners Steve Mac and Johnny McDaid.
If this means nothing to you, just let me say first, that this is huge, just huge for us. There have been a lot of concerning plagiarism cases recently, or at least it’s felt as though it’s proliferated recently and in a way, I actually kind of get it. Bear with me. I’ll come to that. But while there may be some genuine grievances in plagiarism cases, so many of the ones flying about around the current time are purely spurious and nothing more than shakedowns. People with no chance of doing anything for themselves trying to legally steal from those who’ve actually gone out and made it. It basically boils down to, I once used words, that songwriter is using words and made them into a big money making hit. Therefore he or she owes me money. I’m not even exaggerating that much. The Ed Sheeran case felt like a bit of a landmark moment. If he won, maybe this could set something of a precedent and signal the end of these kinds of pathetic, money grabbing, empty spurious claims. But if he lost. Oh man. If he lost. We really don’t want to think about it. It could have been the end of songwriting as we know it. As Ed said himself summing up the experience afterwards, 60’000 songs go up on one particular streaming service every day. I had to go back and check that. Yes. Every day. Which makes 22 million a year. And that’s just on one service. And all of these songs use the same 12 notes. If you’re reading all this Diary because you love your music but have no idea about how to go about making it or how it’s made, yes, there are just 12 notes available to us. That’s if you don’t count the notes in between that we generally don’t have but which are used in some eastern forms of music and I’m not counting them. Those 12 notes. A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G and G#. Yep. Taking away the eastern stuff which can sound a bit strange to us, going back centuries, or even millenia, every song, music score, piece of classical music and every single song on every single Beatles album, uses just these 12 notes and nothing more. Because there is nothing more. Again, as Ed said, coincidences are bound to happen. And yes, there is some imitation, homage and reference. But downright copying? Not as often as you might think. I mean, consider it. Really consider it. I write a song about my wonderful, magic football which I love very much. Try, if you can, to imagine the wonderfully unique melody that only I could possibly have come up with. ‘Maybe you’re gonna be the one that plays me/ Don’t call Saul/ You’re my wonderball.’ Now seriously, do you really think I’d be calling my friends to come round and hear my amazing new song and think they wouldn’t pick up on it? No. Outright copying, for the very most part, just does not happen. Songwriters are creators who want to create. Not copy something else and pretend it’s theirs. Alright, there are some bad actors out there, but for the most part, the people doing the bad acting are the ones accusing others of doing it and then trying to nick all their money.
Now we come to this. If Ed had lost, there’s no two ways about it. It would have been open season on songwriters and as close as dammit to finishing up our chances before we even got out of the gatefold. Anyone who ever had a hit ever, from this day on, would have had it stolen from them the second it got the tills ringing. Basically, the industry into which myself and Maja have set sail and are attempting to steam dead ahead into would have been all but destroyed. I don’t think it would have stopped us doing what we’re doing but I think we would have been living in state of denial that it was even a thing anymore to actually have a go at making something in there without having it stolen from you the second it actually became something. Believe me. The long long wait of a week or so from the conclusion of ‘evidence’ in this case to the actual judgement coming down was agonising.
I did say that I did get it didn’t I? Well this is that bit. We’ve said before that it’s never been easy to make it in music at any level and in any discipline. But to try to get anywhere now as an original act, I don’t think it’s ever been harder. So for those trying but never getting anywhere and not seeing how they can get anywhere. What can they do to shorten their odds of at least getting something out of this game? Try to take it from those who have it. Yeah, record companies have been doing that to artists forever, but now artists are doing it to each other. And so often, it’s done in the hope that the person being pursued just decides it’s not worth the hassle of defending and just settles out of court so that they can get on with their current album writing/recording, touring, or whatever else it is they’d rather be doing. In a lot of these cases it’s really nothing less than a good old fashioned shakedown, and I can’t help but think a lot of the ‘artists’ are put up to it by the music industry’s own take on ambulance chasing lawyers. No win, no fee. Hello. I’m calling about some chords you recently used. Is that right. Did you recently use chords? Er, yes. Great. I’ve just heard that someone else did. For no money up front, and just a split of the robbery, er, rights, I’ll get them to admit they used the same chords as you and give us the royalties. Great. Thanks. One further question. When you did these chords, did you also use words? Er, yeah. Wonderful. Open and shut case. We file tomorrow, and by the day after that, every songwriter in the world will wish they never bothered writing any songs in the first place. Because, well, if anyone with a pen and a musical instrument can ‘prove’ they didn’t actually write them without copying and can now take all their money, what’s the point anymore?
And that, my friends, is what Ed Sheeran, Steve Mac and Johnny McDaid have just saved us all from.
Day 40
Thursday April 7
We have so much in place. All we spoke about, all we had to do. We’ve moved countries – from England to Ireland. We’ve set up our house, with the studio. We’ve toured and learned what equipment was needed and bought it and learned how to use it. We’ve written our songs and got our performances in shape. So our rehearsal is essentially done. And that in itself has been a huge process. We’ve built the website with all the content. We have a brand. Attached to that we have new cards, beermats and posters on the way. We have The Diaries themselves, which I’m writing in as I write. So much of getting all this done has included tons of admin, and so much of the other extraneous activities involved in building a new life, while working on extrications from the previous one, and getting the house and travelling bits all in order. We’ve done all that too. The album is on the way now and we’re on that in the studio. The Diaries are taking care of themselves right now although yes, publication of them at some point is on the cards and that will add another layer to the to do list what that comes about. But right now, our activity has boiled down to a very simple equation as we seek to start to build our presence in Ireland – our local(ish) area then beyond. Book a gig, play the gig, talk to the people before and after.
And we’ve concluded, after what we’ve discovered on the ground, that we should concentrate on our own midlands area and the surrounding areas of Dublin, especially the towns just outside it. Afterall, half an hours drive from Clara and you’re practically in Dublin.
Mark:
Now we feel ready to begin recording our debut album, it’s time to make a phone call we’ve been wanting to make for some time. It’s time to call a producer. I’ve had a guy in mind and we pretty much know what we want from him. His name is Steve, he lives in Madrid, and he was one of a two man production team who I worked with when putting together the Drunken Monkees album. Following that I was in a blues band with him for the better part of two years – the two years preceding The Costa Blanca Diaries which kicked off Mark’s Diaries and the whole Diary thing. It was while working with him that I began the total reinvention of myself as a bass player and, I suppose as a musician.
Maja is really getting hold of the production side of things and I have a fair idea of the process too, so we’re not looking so much for a hands on producer. We can do the heavy lifting and big brush strokes ourselves in terms of getting raw tracks down and getting them to sound somewhat serviceable. Really what we need is someone who can advise us about being more effective as we put this thing together, and then put the finishing touches to it all when everything is done. We put the call in and have a great chat as we talk for the first time in years and he and Maja meet – on the phone – for the first time. During this call we get it all sorted out. We will record two or three tracks as well as we can – probably two – send them to him and he will tell us what we could look at to get them to another level. We’ll then make any improvements needed before taking that knowledge and applying it to the rest of the recording process, getting his views, opinions and guidance along the way. Then, when the whole thing is done, he’ll cast his eye over the full job and polish it all off until we have the finished product. That’s the working theory, he’s well on board and we’re all totally clear with what we have to do.
Now, before we begin the actual recording proper, we’re taking a trick from the Metallica playbook. What they’ve often done before the actual sessions is to record covers to test and get used to any new equipment and maybe personnel. That way they don’t waste time or creative energy going through this with material they plan to actually use. For our version, we’ve decided to record Oasis’ Supersonic. Not for any kind of release, but just to get used to all the toys and tools so that we can hit the ground running when the real production begins. Tomorrow we have our first gigs since returning to Ireland, so the first gigs of what is essentially our Ireland tour, then the next day we’ll begin work on recording our album, starting with pre production.
Day 42
Saturday April 9
Two gigs today. Two. About ten minutes drive apart on the western coast at the top of country Clare. It’s a drive of two and a half to three hours and in the vicinity, we have the famed cliffs of Moher – Liscannor, where we’re playing our first show at Joseph McHugh’s, is the closest village to the cliffs, just four kilometres away. One of the joys of touring and wide range gigging is the opportunity if offers for sightseeing and this area is apparently one of the most spectacular in Ireland, which is of itself renowned for its overall spectacular landscapes, most of all the coast regions of enormous number. So yeah. I’m quite excited about the prospect of finally getting to the cliffs of Moher. I never made it there when I lived here before.
The cliff chain runs for about 14 kilometres and raise to a maximum height of 700 feet – a little over 200 metres, with even the lower regions coming in at well over 100 metres. From these vantage points you can see the Aran Islands and a whole bunch of mountains over in Galway. As such, you might not be surprised to learn that they’re Ireland’s top attraction, pulling in around one and a half million visits per year.
We have this wonderful romantic vision of driving up to the edge of the cliffs and being able to contemplate the far below pounding Atlantic while running through a few warmup songs. You know, the kind of thing you might see bands do in videos which look quite amazing, but have no bearing in reality. But yeah. We are going to go do that reality.
Or so we think.
When we arrive in the general area, we discover the whole thing has been somewhat commercialised and that simply driving up to the cliffs and looking after yourself isn’t a thing. Instead you have to park in the visitor carpark which has a charge, and then there’s the whole ‘Cliffs of Moher experience.’ It looks like it’s a whole daytrip thing rather than just come and briefly hang out thing. That’s not part of any of our plans at all. So we decide to forget about this part of it all and just go park near the venue and have a little play there. We’re still on the coast, so we’re still able to find a lovely seaside spot to park up, get the guitar out and have our planned little warmup play in the car, with the front seats reclined all the way back to give ourselves a little more room. We spend a little time leisurely working through a few songs, then rest a little bit more, then we’re ready to drive the last few metres to the venue before heading in to set up.
It’s to a slightly bemused clientele that we roll in and begin to prepare ourselves. But we have been afforded a really good space to play in. A whole wall area directly opposite the bar. Up to the bar and over to the left, unseen around the corner, a small group of men is gathered. Once we have set up somewhat organised, I take myself round there and introduce us with cards, and they seem quite warmly welcoming and intrigued as to what we’re going to do. While I’m doing this, Maja takes the right hand side of the bar and introduces us over there and we then both make our way across the bar area itself before meeting in the middle. Right back to the very first days in Berlin, then onto Hamburg, we realised that it was a good idea to let people know this will be a short show, and one of originals only, and generally give people some kind of idea of what we’re about. That done, we return to our stage area to continue preparation. As we’re starting to put our equipment together, an old man comes up to me and asks if we’re going to play trad. ‘If you don’t you’ll have me to answer to,’ he says in some form of mock aggression. But he isn’t changing his stance too much and it looks like he really is expecting some kind of response and acquiescence. As we’re enjoying our mini standoff and I’m trying to explain to him that we’re only going to be doing our own stuff, no trad, a lady enters the picture, comes between us and talks gently to him, explaining what’s going on. For a start, the man also seems a bit perturbed and a little angry that we’re getting the chance to play in here when he wasn’t able to get himself booked. The lady quickly introduces herself to me as Helen, then returns her attention to him. ‘These guys have got something different going on altogether,’ she begins. ‘They’re not being paid by the bar. They’re actually very brave people just rocking up to places, doing their own thing and then passing the hat.’ He still doesn’t seem to understand and still wants to remonstrate with me but she guides him out of the back door, turning to me and saying, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort him out.’ Great. When she returns, san slightly confused old man, Maja’s arrived on the scene and I introduce them to each other. Helen then addresses both of us emphatically, saying, ‘I think what you guys are doing is brilliant, and just so brave. Just to have got off your backsides, created something and then started to bring it round to people who have no idea what you’re about to do, and sink and swim on your own devices, I think that’s just amazing.’ Thankyou very much. ‘You know what?’ she continues, ‘I have to go. I can’t stick around, but I’m going to put a fiver in your hat just for the pure stones you guys have to go around and do this. All fair play and respect to you. With that, she produces the promised fiver and drops it in the hat, then she hugs us both, wishing us all kinds of good luck both for tonight and beyond, and heads out the front door.
As we approach showtime, a large group of girls on a birthday night out around the towns and villages comes in. This is a thing in rural Ireland – groups of people renting a minivan for an evening and going round a whole bunch of different places. We often see such vans in Clara. A few of them, including the birthday girl, come and say hi and are very very interested in what we’re about to do. They say they’ll be up front and are really up for it. Great. Out of nowhere we have our main audience. When we start, they are exactly where they said they would be. Four or five of them starting to get into the swing of it and dancing. But the group as a whole kind of holds back and the girls dancing seem to get slowly discouraged and they fall back as well, meaning we’re playing to a mostly disinterested looking bar; the guys around the corner have stayed firmly around the corner. However, through this veil of indifference a few people really stand out for their levels of interest. A few guys sitting facing the bar have turned round and are looking at us in something resembling confused shock. Like, what the hell is this. More and more, this starts to spread about the place and now and then, one of the guys round the corner comes and has a look for a while. We’re a long way from totally winning the bar over, but people do at least seem to be listening and a few people seem to be really deep into what we’re doing but quite unsure of how to react. My take on this is that most, if not all, of the people in here have never seen a grassroots original band. Sure, they’ve probably been to a Stones or U2 concert, or seen other bands on varying rungs of the fame ladder. But right down and dirty brand new unknown acts playing their own music and songs that mostly no-one’s ever heard before? No. Don’t think so. I would say that the entirety of bar concerts anyone in here has ever seen has been coverbands. Which means they really have no idea of what to make of us. If there was to be an emphatic response, I also think that’s been a bit dampened by the more dominant personalities in the room. Maybe one or two of those guys round there are being a bit cool for school, or non comitant, so the others feel they can’t really show too much enthusiasm. Ditto for the group of girls, which seems to have totally lost interest. But none of this phases me or Maja the tiniest bit as we continue to perform as though we own the place and it’s our very own little Wembley. That’s just how you have to do it. Back down, show the slightest amount of fear, lack of confidence or hesitation and it’s all over. Keep pushing forwards and at the very least, you’ll find a way through. And so it is here, as those who are into it really seem to be picked up and transported by the way we’re totally giving them a real show, regardless of what the general feeling in the room might be. Our thoughts on all this are a little borne out by the round of pass the hat which I take on once we finish. The guys are polite enough but mostly decline, and one of them even says, ‘I’d pay to you stop.’ I don’t miss a beat or take offence. Instead, I just smile the smile and say, ‘Well, look, we stopped for free so you’re all good.’ The girls? Well, as one, they just don’t want to know at all and I don’t push it. Afterall, you can’t and shouldn’t. The hat’s there. All you can do is make people aware of it and they’re free to react in any way they want to. But out of these cold hard pockets, a few people almost seem at a rush to get to me and drop something in, and one or two even call me back when I inadvertently miss them out and start to walk off. Like we thought during the show, something has connected somewhere. OK. One down. We pack up and leave with no-one seeming to notice we’re doing so. Fair enough. Onto the next place.
We find quite a lively atmosphere at The Corner Post in Lahinch. This is a two room bar. The front is quite traditional and loung-ey, then off to the side of that through a small doorway is a much larger room, currently operating as something of a dining room for three long tables around the two walls right and left, and one at the top of the room. When we enter, Michael, the manager, says we can set up wherever we want in the lounge area. Every table is taken, and there’s just one space available which is right inside this room at the bottom of the two steps up to the dining area. However, it’s full of tables right now and Michael suggests we wait until the big group has gone and then we can put the tables in there and begin at the rough start time of 10pm. That big group is a hen night, so all girls out on the town. This request to wait until they’re leaving so we can use their space for the tables that are in our way doesn’t strike me as odd until we’re packed up and leaving at the end of the night. He’s just said we should wait until that group is gone before we start because their presence is preventing us from setting up. However, it’s because that group is here that he’s booked us in here tonight. In all the busy-ness of the evening, this little fact seems to have been forgotten. And anyway, when 10:40 rolls round and they’re still there, we decide we can’t wait any longer and move the tables into there anyway, positioning them just about appropriately with the help of the bar staff letting us know where they can and can’t go. OK. We can set up and get started now. We do this with one speaker to the right of me stage right, taking care of this room, and the other speaker to the left of Maja pointing in towards the girls. Just as we’re set up and ready to go, they all start singing Zombie by The Cranberries. Hearing this, I join on to accompany them on guitar and they react in full-on joy. With this simple call and response, they are with us. Just a few more minutes of last minute preparations and we’re all good. We’re in and the girls are up on their feet and loving it. But we’ve started far too late and they now are indeed about to leave. They manage to stick around for the second song as they wait for stragglers to be ready, but then they really are out the door. As they file past us, I’m chugging on an E chord as we enter the break of Run. We hold off on the vocals and talk to the girls as they walk past, thanking them and encouraging them to take cards. They take it all in fun and plenty of communication and thanks and warm words come back from them. But then they’re gone and we’re left playing to a tiny bar of a few patrons scattered round tables with two or three actually sat at the bar. But, just like at McHugh’s, we once again find ourselves looking into faces staring back at us in some kind of disbelief and uncertainty of how to act to what’s going on. And the applause is wonderfully warm when it comes. The bar staff are also totally into it, and when we finish, almost everyone is happy to put money in the hat that I take round. But that everyone really does not add up to very many people. But still, we’ve made something of an impression in here tonight, although I’m a little disappointed to hear that Michael wasn’t able to stick around and had to head off to meet someone. Oh well. Like the last place, we leave without organising a return date, but that’s absolutely fine. They’ll call or they won’t. In the meantime we’ve got a whole country to have a run at as we just continue to push relentlessly forwards.
Day 43
Sunday April 10
We do have plans for that relentlessness today in the form of more hustling, but after arriving home near 3am last night after two gigs and the drive, we take far more time to feel up and at it than we expected. Instead, we watch movies, and later on, get to gentle work with pre pre production as we call up Supersonic and start to learn and rehearse it.
Day 44
Monday April 11
We ordered a few things from Thomann and they arrive today. As ever, a Thomann delivery can feel a bit like Christmas, especially when you don’t remember everything you’ve ordered and that’s just what it’s like today. By the time we’ve finished and have allocated new and already existing bits and pieces to road set up and studio gear, we have two complete sets of equipment meaning we can just keep our live stuff packed and ready to go. No more need to pull down the studio, take it out, then put it back together again. All we need to do now is unhook the studio monitors to take out as live speakers, and off we go. Among all this we now have an extra speaker stand meaning we can now set up two speakers either side of us on stage for a much more professional look rather that what we have been doing which is one speaker on a stand, another on a table. And more, we also have the capability to fit all this on the trollies we have, so while we will be using the car for the foreseeable, we can still walk around with all this stuff if we have to like we did in Berlin and Hamburg.
To get all this done, we dive into a busy day going through everything we already had and everything new and splitting it all into sections, while also making sure each piece of equipment is marked to denote where it belongs, which serves the automatically dual purpose as marking it as ours for when those tricky moments can arise, such as a DJ, another band on a bill, or simply a musically well supplied venue thinking you might just innocently and accidentally be taking something of theirs. I had a very awkward situation in a previous band. We were packing our gear up when the duty manager of the bar insisted the speaker we were loading onto our trolly was theirs. This really strained polite relations for an uncomfortable ten minutes or so until someone finally remembered that one of their DJs had taken theirs home with him the previous night to fix it.
Back to today and by the time we’ve finished with our delivery we now have enough for two fully functioning studios in the house and a live setup. With this we begin setting up a whole new studio in the upstairs spare bedroom. This is where we decide most of our recording will be done. The larger downstairs studio will now be used for preproduction, and especially as a place where I can work on practicing and maybe even recording bass parts at times when Maja is in the studio upstairs.
Day 45
Tuesday April 12
Mark:
After a little studio time, as afternoon comes, we start to get ready for what will be our first real hustle day. I say this because we’re not totally counting the Clare/Galway hustle for two reasons. First, the Liscannor/Lahinch trip was based on actual leads and being able to drop a name, so at the very least they were warm rather than completely cold calls. And second, because Galway wasn’t so much a hustle, more an exercise in collecting emails and phone numbers and not being able to pitch to anyone.
And I say ‘we get ready’ because we fully pack the car as if going for a gig because, should the circumstances arise, we want to be ready to play a venue there and then. Either a manager could be like, you can play tonight/now if you want, or we could actually offer it if we think the window is there. This packing of the car includes overnight provisions including an overnight bag, our blow up double mattress, and sleeping bags. Because, well, you just never know.
Our first hustle target is our nearest decent sized town of Tullamore, the biggest town in our county of Offaly.
The plan is to first ask if a bar actually does music of any kind because if it doesn’t, it’s not likely to be viable and there’s no point wasting anyone’s time. But even then, nothing is set in stone. As we make our way round the town, quite a few places don’t, and we say thankyou for your time and goodbye.
One of the places we have highest hopes for is The Goalpost where Pat plays, so at the very least we already know they have regular live music. We pop our heads in and immediately see it’s too busy for anyone to have any time to talk to us. Oh dear. It’s approaching 6pm and we may have left it too late for today. OK. Carry on.
So straight to Fergies, the main live venue of Tullamore. There, we meet Fergie himself. The bar is empty and we’re thinking, ‘Here we go.’ But he seems totally uninterested and not massively communicative and is really just like, ‘I’ll have a look and get back to you if I think it’s something I could go for.’ Fair enough I guess and maybe he’s inundated with bands, or has enough going on already, and that’s just his way of dealing with new people coming in. But we were expecting a little more, even if just a touch of engagement and interest in what we were doing. Especially when we’re able to say we don’t charge and are going for the hat approach. Maybe that’s the part he doesn’t like and it might not be for everyone. Who knows?
Just outside the door of this bar we see a poster advertising a lineup of original acts coming soon in a venue called John Lees. Which is just round the corner. Oh yes. This was already on our list but we hadn’t yet checked to see where it was. A band called Double Bill who we saw at the trap last week told us about this place. Thanks for the tip lads. We’re here now. In we go.
Oh well. The main man, John, isn’t in. It’s suggested we try again after eight.
Another few bars with no managers in sight. This is starting to get slightly frustrating.
We decide it could be time to see if The Goalpost has calmed down. It has. A little. The barman points the manager, Darren, out to us who is out in the bar, and we go and introduce ourselves. He Politely listens to our pitch and, when we’ve finished, says, ‘You can’t argue with that.’ It’s a wonderfully casual and encouraging acceptance. He asks us to leave details and says he could possibly put us on the weekend after next. Thankyou very much. We’ll say no more and see how that pans out.
Onto the next town, which we’ve selected as Moate. This journey takes us all the way back to Clara, and through the other side.
As we arrive and take in the small town, which is comparable in size to our own Clara, we see that there are three possible bars. Peadars, Egans and The Gap House. While Clara is a town centred around a few streets and something of an identifiable shape, Moate is one of those towns you see so often in Ireland which consists of one single, long street on something of a main road with constant fast traffic passing through it, all using it simply as a place to go through to get somewhere else.
Peadars’ outside advertising makes it very clear this is a bar for live music, so we feel quite good as we go in. Once more we discover no manager is in, but the bargirl Anita is open to us and seems really interested in what we have to say and says she will let the manager know. Great
Egans is a small looking place, but when we go in it’s surprisingly big. No manager again, but the girl who introduces herself as Rachel thinks the manager could well be interested. Again, OK.
Now we go for The Gap House, a really quite large looking place right at the end of the town with the main road shooting off either side of it. We enter and find ourselves in the front bar which is quite sparse of furniture on its pristine wooden floors. There are two guys sitting at the bar and one behind it. We go and ask the barman if they ever have music and he politely says that no they don’t. No worries at all. Thankyou for your time, we will bid you good day. Maja walks out and I follow. But then I quickly turn around and decide to introduce ourselves to the patrons and barman anyway and give them cards, just because. These are accepted with some degree of well graced bemused amusement with a touch of genuine curiosity. I then ask the barman’s name and he gives it as Dennis. Lovely. Thankyou and goodbye. We leave again. Maja is out first again. ‘Do you charge at all?’ Dennis calls out to our backs. I turn round. ‘No we don’t. We only play half hour shows then we pass a hat around and see what happens. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘In that case you could probably come back and do something one night when I might know I could have a few in.’ Oh wow. A possible gig out of absolutely nowhere. And we were on our way when the window opened. ‘That would be wonderful,’ says Maja. ‘Great,’ says Dennis. Leave it with me and I’ll give you a call sometime.
As we walk out into the street and the door swings shut behind us we collapse in fits of hysterical laughter. I have never, never experienced anything like that in a bar hustle before.
As we return to the car, we notice a poster for a craft beer festival in this town sometime in July and it will include live music. Cool. Another contact to add to the list. I cross over the road and jot down the details. We will be in touch.
Now we’re off to the one bar village of horseleap. One bar. Does that qualify it as a village? No idea. Anyway, that’s where we’re going now. We arrive and see it’s not just one bar, it’s also one shop, with both places housed in the same building and run by the same person. Literally. Behind the bar we meet Brida who is happy to hear our pitch for what we have to offer. As we’re talking to here, there’s a tinkle and we realise someone’s walked in the other door outside and has entered the shop. Brida excuses herself and disappears off to the side of the bar. Oh, she is now behind the counter of the shop. It’s the same counter. This side looks like a bar and that side looks like a shop counter. But it’s the same piece of construction. Only in a place like this. She comes back and we chat for a little while and she says that yes they do have music occasionally, and yes, there could be room for us, but she has no idea when that could be just yet. OK. Positive. Maybe something to think of for the future. We thank her for her time and leave it there. Yeah, we could do something in here if we catch it at the right time.
We need to go shopping which means we need to go back to Tullamore. Which just happens to coincide with the little after 8pm time when we were told the main man would be in John Lees. As we enter the town we notice a large bar on the edge of it that we’ve driven past many times. Large enough to have its own car park. Why the hell not? We stop and walk in. It really is quite big and split into two more or less equally sized bars with the front door giving you the option to go left or right into either one of them, and they’re joined again at the back by a little walkway, creating a kind of circle. A social circle, if you will.
It’s quiet and the bar girl we speak to says that yes, the bosses are in and that she can introduce us to them. She leads us into the opposite bar to the one we’re in now and points out two people sitting on the public side of it, right at the far end. Thankyou. We go down and introduce ourselves to them. They are Gordon and Maria, and they listen attentively as we give them our pitch. They look at each other, have a silent conference, and then Gordon says, ‘Why not? When would you be thinking of?’ We have a think and the four of us settle on this Friday. So that’s it. Just like that, Gig booked.
Back out in the carpark and we’re giddy with the excitement of a result in a bar we really weren’t considering and not one person has mentioned to us as a possibility.
Now we have John Lees, which is on the way as we head to the supermarket. We’re met by the barman who happily takes us out back to meet the man himself, and oh, this is a much bigger place than we expected. We’re to discover it’s three venues in one. The front bar, the really quite large covered beer garden area, and yet another small venue complete with stage in a room leading directly from that. John shows us it all as we talk about who we are and he tells us about the kinds of events the place has. They include a Ukraine benefit concert coming up next Friday – the 22nd. He says he’s happy to chat to the guy organising that to see if he could find a spot for us. Probably a 15 minute show for us. If that bill is full, John says he’d be prepared to organise another day we could play to see how we go and take it from there. Like our man Darren at The Goalpost said, can’t argue with that.
We know there’s been a lot there to take in, so to recap, out of today’s hustle, this is what we’re looking at.
15th April – this Friday: The Lantern
Friday 22nd April: possibly John Lees
Saturday or Sunday 23/24th April: possibly The Goalpost
There are also call-back possibilities to venues showing at least some kind of interest.
Peadars, Egans, and The Gap House of Moate.
Paddy Ryans of Horseleap, although we’ll probably just leave that one and see.
And a festival event to get on to.
Day 46
Wednesday April 13
We have another delivery today. This time our stationary, which means we have new cards, a whole more ton of beermats, and posters. And stickers, and now even one of those ink stamp things for The Diaries. Very cool. We decide this is a perfect opportunity to go visit a few venues we’ve chatted with to maybe give them a bit of a nudge. First stop is The Lantern in Tullamore, which we’re playing on Friday. So they have our first posters now.
Walking through the town on our way to The Goalpost we bump into our musician friend Pat. He’s with a couple of friends and introduces us to them as rockstars. ‘These guys are badass,’ he adds. Absolutely fair enough and taken. He was one of the first people to tell us that we were wasting our time trying to play originals with no covers at all. Now he’s all, ‘Go for it guys,’ and introducing us as rockstars. Feels like a turnaround of acceptance.
Now into The Goalpost, again, ostensibly to drop off beermats, and posters just so they have them to hand should we be booked. Seeing what we’ve brought, Darren says, a little gleefully and with a touch of, what the hell do we have here, ‘You guys really aren’t messing around are you?’ Nope. We most definitely are not. With that, Maja declares to him, ‘We are going to be famous. We just are.’ Darren looks on with a smile and a wry shake of the head that says, ‘That might just be true.’
When we arrive for the drop at John Lees, John is there and immediately greets us, saying, ‘Have you seen my email?’ We explain we’ve been out for a while, and that no, we haven’t. ‘No problem,’ he says. ‘I’ve spoken to the organiser and you guys are on the bill for that show next Friday.’ Not only that, but it emerges that our 15 minute slot is at 11:30, the last performance of the night with the whole thing beginning at eight. Our very first bone fide headline show. ‘So we’ve got you booking in for that and we’ll see how it goes,’ he says. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Tullamore done and it’s back out to Moate to to do the same drop of posters and have a cheeky chase-up there.
The first place we pop into is Peadars, where Anita is once more behind the bar. Shesays the manager isn’t there today either, but that’s fine as we tell her we’re just here to drop off these bits and pieces that just arrived today. The bar was empty last time we were here, but there are four people in here today enjoying a quiet drink and they all throw us a hello as we walk in. This makes it slightly easier for us to do what we sometimes do on the hustle which is to say hi to customers and give them a card.
We carry the guitar around everywhere now when we’re out and about like this. First, when we’re out and taking all our gear, because, well, you never know, the guitar doesn’t fit into the boot. So for security reasons we don’t want to leave it lying around all obvious in the car. But secondly, we bring it along anyway for its conversation starter potential and again because, well, you never know.
This turns into one of those ‘You never know’ situations. As we’re thanking Anita and making our way out the door, one of the four people says, ‘Are you really leaving without getting that guitar out giving us a song?’ You see what I mean? Well, what can you say to that? I guess we can. The other three customers instantly become more animated, with one of them even calling out, ‘I hope you’ve brought a hat.’ Oh yes, we have. Yep. We carry that everywhere with us too. Because, well, you never know.
There is a little table area that musicians usually use in the corner opposite the bar, but we’re not going to use it. Instead, it just becomes somewhere to store the guitar case. We have two people sitting at the right of us at this end of the bar, a guy at the other end and, opposite, the man who first suggested we should play, seated at a table near the door. Me and Maja have a quick conference wondering what to play and go for Rock’n’Roll Tree. As we begin, I gently nudge Maja forwards, whispering at the same time for her to do so. And so she does. So Maja is now pretty much on her own standing right in the middle of the bar with me a little behind. This reason for this is to put her closer to the people so that she can be heard better above the guitar because, well, she doesn’t sing massively loud and this is a big song and there’s only so much I can reduce its volume. The guys and lady in here immediately go for the song, reacting to each dynamic change with increasing delight. A minute or so in and a few phones are out filming us, one of them being held by Anita behind the bar who is looking on joyously. By the time we come to the climactic end, at least two of of our small audience are off their seats dancing, and the cheers and applause make it sound like we’ve just played a far bigger room. We react to them with thrilled laughter and profuse thanks and I make to put the guitar away. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I hear someone call out. You’re not putting that away now. At least one more.’ Yes. More, come calls from all around the bar. ‘I can’t,’ says Maja almost silently to me. ‘My voice won’t do another one like that. Not without an amp.’ Well, what about a low key one? OK. We’re not convinced a quiet song is the best way to proceed, but it’s all we’re going to be able to manage so after a bit of a conference we settle on Smile Is Going Round. This song began life as something of an upbeat mid tempo-er but after it was dropped from the set, I suggested we give it a go as a more sultry number. Before we were halfway through that experiment, we knew we had accidentally unearthed a new keeper. That was a magical rehearsal moment. Now we pull this version out for the first ever time. The effect truly is magical as me and Maja take turns to switch sides in the bar, walking around the place and around each other. As we do, the regulars come and join us, taking turns to dance with each one of us, with one particular moment seeing Maja swaying with one of the guys while I dance with the lady as she has an arm draped round my shoulder.
The Diaries has seen quite a few moments that a Hollywood script editor would have thrown out, and this surely has to be added to them. Two people walk into a bar with a guitar. Get cajoled into playing, then the whole bar gets up and dances with them to songs they’ve never heard before. Oh come on, says script editor. But here we are and that exact thing is happening. We finish to rapturous applause with each person almost rushing to shake our hands or give us a hug. And we get all their names. Pauline and Eamon this end of the bar, or at least they were when we started. John down the other end, and that was Frank who got it all started, and he very vocally claims the credit now and rightly so.
During the wonderful aftermath I’m mentally debating whether or not to bring the hat out. Afterall, we have only played two songs. While I’m still going through this in my mine, Maja picks it up and goes with it. Oh. OK. It’s happening then. There is one mild, slightly jokey protestation that this isn’t quite the Irish way of doing things, but Maja doesn’t back down. And the protest is half hearted at most, and possibly not even really meant at all as every single person drops money into the hat. I think it was possibly more of a surprise, and then they maybe thought, well, why not. Within this, Maja asserts herself saying, ‘This is what we do.’ And I add my bit that the record companies take most of the money and streaming barely pays anything to start with. But this does pay apparently. And we get to keep it all.
Hat done and questions start about who we are and where we came from, and we delight in tag teaming each other as we fill them in on our story and their collective heart melts a little more with each extra detail. Then Anita drops in with, ‘I’ll be sure to tell the boss about this. Hopefully he’ll have you in for a show.’ Hopefully.
Soon after that we say our goodbyes and head out across the road to the car, laughing and shaking our heads in total euphoric disbelief as Maja says, ‘We might just be the first people ever to drop into a pub for 20 minutes and leave with more money than we went in with.’
Now onto The Gap House. A little disappointingly Dennis isn’t there so we speak with bargirl Sarah instead and ask if we can leave a poster and beer mats with her. She’s a little confused, but is like, er, OK.
Next it’s back into Egans where we find the one barman standing in the middle of the bar chatting to the few people who are in – one guy at the bar and two people at each of the two tables opposite the bar. He says he’s not the manager but he’s happy to talk. Talk music? Well, we have regular people and that’s it really. What if we’re not charging but want to do our own thing for half an hour and pass a hat round? Oh. OK. When would you like to do that? Whenever really. Next Thursday, he offers. Just come in whenever, he suggests breezily. And just like that, job done.
Back home and we decide to go to the trap for one or a few. Once in there and comfortably seated at the bar, we say hi to a few lads and they give a big enthusiastic hi to Maja as it’s the first time they’ve seen her since that first show in here. While we’re chatting, one of them, called Steve, tells us about a bar called Gussies 5km down the road in the village of Ballycumber that has an open mic style thing on Sundays from 6-8. He says he’ll be there with his friends, and now, so will we.
Later on, the bosses, Jimmy and Angela drop by for a drink. I leave Maja with the people we’re chatting to and show them the new beer mats and ask if we can leave a few. No problem. And they them and want to know where we got them printed. Maja’s been on that so I say I’ll go and get her for them. So go back to the table and Maja disappears to chat to Jimmy and Angela for a while. It really goes on a while as I see them in deep conversation. When she comes back, she says, we got it organised. We’re playing here Wednesday May 11. Wow.
So this is where we are and what we have now.
Home recording studio
Home rehearsal/pre production studio
Car packed with overnight needs
Fully portable road gear
A producer to guide us
A website
Pre production underway on our debut album with actual production imminent.
New beer mats, new cards and posters, with a bunch of all three out in a load of bars
An income. An actual income. Not enormous amounts, but we have now proved that can actually generate real hard currency money playing live with our own songs
A few new gigs in the diary from today:
The Lantern, Tullamore, this coming Friday.
Egans, Moate, Thursday 21st April
John Lee’s, Tullamore. Confirmed for our first headline show Friday 22nd April
Gussies, Ballycumber: a new open mic thing, whatever it turns out to be for this Sunday
The Trap booked for Wednesday 22nd May
And money that we didn’t have when we left, from the hat from a mini show we got asked to play on the spot. Which means a show played out of nowhere today can be added to the list above.
Oh, one thing before we leave this entry. While we were in The Trap, my phone rang. At first I thought it was the manager from Peadars calling to book us. But no. It was the guy from Egans, apologising massively, saying he’d jumped the gun, had spoken to his boss since we left, and the boss had nixed the show, saying their’s was purely a trad bar. Paul can’t apologise enough, but I tell him it’s all cool, and add that I really appreciate him letting us know. So, while you’re here, you can go up to that list and just cross that gig off.
Day 47
Thursday April 14
With a live performance yesterday and four more assured – with a fifth that quickly went by the wayside – we take a day off hustling to concentrate on Diary writing, which has been massively neglected lately, and to get some real mileage in the studio. But a maker’s gonna make, a ballers gonna ball and a hustler’s gonna hustle. Late on we decide to go for a decent sized shop at one of those edge of town supermarkets that Tullamore has. One of them, bizarrely, has a pub at its edge. It’s not so much a pub with a carpark, as a carpark that just happens to have a pub. Apart from being massively curious as to what this kind of pub could be like, we also look at each other and are like, why not? It’s a bar, we’re here, they can only say no. It also has a sign at the door that says it has music. OK. In we go and the barman calls the manager over who seems to be off duty and having a drink with friends. But she still comes and is happy to hear what we have to say. Her name is Jenny, she is absolutely lovely with us and personally very interested in our story and what we’re doing. But she says the customers wouldn’t be. This, she explains, is one of those bars where people come for a quiet drink and know that’s what they’re getting when they choose a bar like this. They wouldn’t thank anyone who rocked up and, well, rocked. I totally get this. As much as I love my live music and have often sought out original bands, if I wanted to chat to a friend or friends, and just chat, we would steer ourselves away from potentially louder places and choose that one over there that never had any live music. If someone then came in and proceeded to do the music thing live, I know we wouldn’t be impressed, even if we were impressed. So Jenny is purely reflecting her business and all good. But I really feel we make a big impression on her and Maja doesn’t hesitate to give her a few cards. We leave with all her good wishes, and feeling like we’ve once more left with something on the table. If you’re trying to spread by word of mouth, and where we are, we feel that’s the most powerful tool you can have, we’ve once more put that word out. Jenny, just thankyou for listening. Sometimes that in itself can be good enough.
Day 48
Friday April 15
When we were being told to please please not attempt to play original songs to coverband audiences, they’ll throw things at you, please don’t do it, lads, I’m telling ya, you’ve got to throw a couple of covers in or they’ll eat you alive, I think The Lantern in Tullamore would have been pretty high on anyone’s mind. Right on the edge of town, it’s a pub for 50-something year old hard men who want to play pool and watch sport. And maybe once in a while get in touch with their more sensitive side by waving their hands in the air to Sweet Caroline while making sure not to touch anyone else’s hand. It is not a place you go into and try to sing your own songs. It just isn’t. Which, of course, is exactly what we’re going there to do tonight. ‘Don’t do it lads,’ I can almost hear as we walk in the door. To be fair, our initial experience is to be greeted with nods of friendliness and a few murmurs of at least appreciation as we park up right next to the door and start loading the gear in. We enter the cavernous room on the right hand side of the bar and yep, there’s live soccer on the telly. The most popular thing in here is the pool table, and there are a few guys hanging round still wearing their hi-vis tops. Over in the other bar are two large tables hard at playing poker. I’m only assuming it’s poker. At the very least, it’s a card game requiring serious, silent and slightly menacing levels of concentration. Yep. We wrote some songs that we’re going to play in here tonight.
From all this, Gordon looks up and welcomes us with a generous smile. Like quite a few people before him, he’s given us this gig without even having heard us. I don’t know what must be going through his mind, but he’s bright and positive and interested to hear how we’ve been getting on and seems genuinely please when we tell him we have our first headline gig, also in Tullamore, for next week.
We feel the curiosity levels rise all over the place as we set up in the corner showing nothing but quiet assuredness and confidence. You really can’t overestimate how much this can be as important as any performance. Show fear or nerves in the centre of all this and you can be done before the first song starts. Show total confidence and people might just sit up and think, ‘Oh, OK. Let’s see what we have here.’ Seeing what they have here is exactly what the guys and ladies in this place do. They give us at least that, and show amusement and some decent level of interest as we do our pre show thing of handing out cards and letting people know what we’re about to do in here.
You really don’t want to show your hand too much at an originals gig, but that’s tricky when you have to soundcheck in front of everyone, which is what we do now, with the jukebox still on – Gordon did offer to turn it off but we said it was fine. This is a very important element of the night. We don’t want to go on too long and start annoying people and lose them before the first song, but we also have to get it right. To that end, for the first time, we begin by just soundchecking with the monitor that is only facing us. Get the mix right in there, then turn on the speakers. Here, I ask Gordon to let me know if things get too loud, and I play guitar at the highest levels of volume I can manage while Maja gently turns up the dial. I stop it at a pretty decent place and glance over to Gordon at the pool table, and he winks an approval. Great. Get some vocals in there and make sure they’re high enough in the mix. We’re done. See you in a few.
Gig time and everyone is holding their positions. Backs to us at the bar. Coldly concentrating on the next pool shot. We just launch straight in. A four count and I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). This has them going straight away and ears perk up and people at least half turn towards us. The pool guys are nudging each other just ever so slightly to maybe pay a little attention. And there we are, smashing and rocking it out and acting as though the bar’s full of a crowd that came out tonight to see nothing but us and wanting a show. Maja’s hair is flying all over the place and she’s roaring at the ceiling. Next to her, I’m pounding away on the guitar like I’m trying to break up a road. In perfect time and rhythm of course. When we finish, it’s to cheers, shouts and a very insistent applause. We say nothing. Right into the next one. Rock’n’Roll Tree. And on and on it goes. Run really gets people going tonight, more than it ever has, Beanie Love really has them smiling and some actually bouncing with us. In between all this, Gordon walks past us and drops what is actually a performance fee into the hat. We’ve actually just been paid. For the first time. Not a bar manager kindly dropping a personal fiver in. An actual decent standard rate for a regular bar band. After this, Fire. Oh, Fire. Pardon the pun, but this is a gentle slow burn that asks an audience to just trust you and hop on for the ride and see where it goes. By the time we get to it, they’re ready and prepared to at least see which direction this thing is headed in. It’s a quiet opener and I take my cue from Victor Wooten, and his lesson that sometimes it isn’t volume that gets people to listen, but lack of it. I dial back as far as I can on the gentle arpeggiation of the earlier stages of this song and the bar falls into the sudden quietness we’ve brought upon the place. We have them. We really have them. This song builds. And falls back, and then builds again to climax in a burning adrenaline rush. When the final rush hits and then pitches into silence, the bar erupts. Oh wow. If ever there was a crowd that epitomised the kind of crowd we thought we could come and play to where few others would even attempt, this is the one. And, right from the beginning, back in London, we had the confidence that we could win such a room over. Before we even had a single song written. And here we are. We’re even point blank refusing requests to play this or that song, or to have this or that person come up and sing with us. We’re here to do our thing and that’s he end of it. We smile and we’re polite. But firm and clear. We play originals. No covers, no singalongs. The message is received and respected as what could have become demands just shrink back and cease.
After the gently epic intermission of Fire, it’s onto Six Sense Lover, brand new song How You Rock’n’Roll, then the frenetic, almost metal sounds of My Game My Rules, which we attack like we never have before, with Maja spitting the words out with a new fury of viscious, daring threat. And the finale, we just howl it into the air and up at the full moon that we know is out there looking down on us tonight. As we finish and collapse in a pool of sweat and heavy breathing like a distance runner coming off the last tortured strait, the bar picks up where we left off, filling the room with sound and at least some cry of ‘Encore.’ The call isn’t insistent enough though, so we decline to continue. But hey, encore definitely got called and we’ll take that.
We feel we’ve passed quite a few of the sternest tests tonight. Now for the final one. The hat. Which has already seen some action with a few people stepping forwards and making a drop. I make special care to go to them first and express my appreciation. Now I head off round the rest of the place and each group I approach opens up, lets me in, then closes around me as everybody puts in. Everybody. Some even cajole friends to get their wallets open. There’s a mood of triumph in here and handshakes are all around with people also keen to chat briefly and ask how we’ve been getting on generally and when we’ll be back next.
When I get back to Maja, she’s busy chatting to a few guys who’ve come over and hands me one of our beer mats. It contains a handwritten message and her autograph, and now I’m requested to add mine. We’re told, ‘You guys are going to be something, and this will be going behind the bar for everyone to see that you were here.’ Oh wow. We even have a private party request and we negotiate a provisional fee that any professional band would be happy to accept. Whether or not they follow through is irrelevant and we suspect they won’t. But they were impressed and interested enough to ask and we’re delighted with that.
Now, those beer mats. We’ve just had them redone and we deliberately made the open space on them clearer to make it possible to autograph. A massively presumptuous move, but really, it felt anything but. And here we are, on our first full gig since receiving them, and we are indeed being asked for our autographs.
Once we’re all packed up, it takes a while for us to be able to leave. It’s all hand shakes and hugs and, for Maja, huge hugs. A few even tell me how refreshing it is to hear someone doing their own thing, that all they usually hear are the same songs by different people. Didn’t see that one coming. And then we’re home. We’ve only played a half hour show so it’s still nowhere near last orders. We unload the car into the downstairs studio and before we know it, we’re back out the door again and down to The Trap where we grab our massively appreciated post gig beer and just sit there in a daze as we try to take in what we’ve just done.
Maja:I just want to write a little of my experiences
Day 49
Saturday April 16
Mark:
We wake up still a little overwhelmed about last night. The biggest thing we feel is vindication. Everything we thought we could do when we started has just been done. We always knew we could. But actually doing it. Actually going through the experience and coming out the other side like that is a whole different thing. A relief? A triumph? No. The word really is vindication. But really, you know, you know and you know. But until you really do, all you truly have is belief in yourself. Hard, cold, unshakeable belief maybe, but at the end of the day, it’s still only belief. Now it’s actual, total knowledge.
We’ve walked into a cold solid coverband bar with our own music and were met with, well you saw it just like we did. Cheers, encore shouts, autographs and payment. But as much confidence as we’ve always had, getting autograph requests in such a venue this early in the game was never a part of even our most optimistic vision.
Now we feel, for the very first time, that we have a few shows coming up with no weight on them. Open mic tomorrow, whatever that really is, then headlining with four songs in original venue next week. And it’s Easter weekend now so the bars will be busy so we can’t even get out and hustle.
Day 50
Sunday April 17
Into Ballycumber and Gussies for tonight’s open mic. What will this be all about? For a start, we see that Gussies is one of three bars on a short stretch of road. So surely it’s not going to be full of guys and girls rocking up with their guitars like what we saw in Berlin. We’ve arrived a little early and are enthusiastically greeted by the already slightly busy bar. All stools at the bar itself are taken, so we order cups of tea and take a table by the window.
While we’re there we work on what will become something of a mission statement for our website and ‘donate’ button. We hammer it out for a while until it looks like this:
This is what we do
We believe society wants and needs new music that comes from the heart
However, most hits are now written by using algorithms
We don’t have a record deal yet, but then, most record companies keep most of the money anyway and then find ways to take the rest
Streaming pays next to nothing
Bars generally don’t pay original acts, but we understand and have no problem with that
Which is exactly why we have the hat
Please think of the Donate button as the online equivalent of the hat and help keep us on the road
Just before 7pm, Emmet, the man of the night comes in, sees our guitar and comes and says hi. We ask about what’s going on and it very quickly becomes clear that this isn’t quite an open mic in the way we might imagine such a thing. Instead, it’s more an open trad session where you have the performers, or in this case, the performer, and people are welcome to sit in at the table with them, or now and then, people might be free to do their own thing, maybe as in the case of an open mic, so I can see the overlap. I’ve always known trad sessions operated kind of like this. It’s just that we weren’t totally sure what we were walking into was essentially a trad session, just a one man affair. And a very popular one; as soon as 7pm nears round the doors barely stop opening as more and more people come until there’s hardly any room left in the place. He starts and it is indeed all Irish ballads and rebel songs. Fair enough. But we don’t really fit into this. But Emmet’s game and a few songs in he invites us to do our thing. Just like we did in Peadars in Moate last week, we don’t accept the invitation to take the performers’ spot. Instead we do the whole perform out on the floor thing, with me and Maja again moving around the place, around each other and at times just moving as one. We play two songs and we do get a pretty decent response, but we also feel that people aren’t totally sure how to take us and our in your face approach. But, much like Clare a few weeks ago, it’s clear that within the slightly bewildered uncertainty, some people are massively into it, especially a small group of guys over in the corner at the end of the bar. We finish and take a seat and order a couple of cokes and settle back to hear what else Emmet has got in his locker. We feel we’ve given a good account of ourselves and have at least been appreciated if not quite fully embraced. Maybe we were just too up, loud and brash. If so, fine. That won’t make us back down at all. But maybe we’ve judged a bit too quickly about how we were judged. About ten to fifteen minutes later and we’re starting to be asked why we’ve put the guitar away. Surely we’re going to do more. As encore shouts go, it’s the most benign I’ve ever heard. We smile politely and say thanks for the encouragement, but encouragement turns to insistence. Come on. You’re not done. Get up and do some more. I’m almost apologetic as I catch Emmet’s eye and say, ‘Are you OK with us getting up again?’ No problem, he says. But we’ve decided to play more to what the room might want this time and give them something slower, laid back, but maybe just a little intense. We go for Insanity, a song we love but which isn’t in our big smash set. Everyone’s talking as we stand in the middle of the bar and start, totally unamplified. Maja doesn’t even begin to attempt to sing over the noise. Instead, she starts so quietly even I can’t hear her. But a line or two in and the bar starts to quieten down, until all that can be heard is Maja’s gentle delicate voice and my softly arpeggiated guitar. A few people even start to talk a little again but are quickly asked not to by their friends. By the time we finish, it’s fair to say talking has resumed a little, but everyone is still with us and we get the warmest of applauses.
Trad audiences, it seems, are lovely to us and give us a fair crack, but something about us might not connect with them quite so much. And that’s fair enough. Which is why that guy booked us the other day in Moate before it was suggested to him that he might want to reconsider. Now, this isn’t going to make us run scared from trad bars and we’ll happily play any time the opportunity presents itself but tonight’s experience has shown us that if we see a trad bar, maybe we shouldn’t try to book our own show there. We can all still be friends, but it’s possible we should just respect each others’ space even as our spheres occasionally collide. They totally have their thing going on and when they go to it, they expect to see, well, their thing. And maybe, just maybe, a touch of us as well.
However, we have made one little mistake that we will learn from. We gave out beermats and cards before we played. Sometimes this is the right thing to do, but in an open situation like this where keeping the audience informed is not our responsibility, possibly not. What it means now that we have no reason to go round the bar and up to people again. Oh well.
Maja: My recording experiences
Day 51
Monday April 18
It’s two O’Clock in the morning and we’ve only just begun the talking.
I’ve had an idea for a few days a new concept for the website and have been developing wording to go with it. I introduced it to Maja last night during the trad session and, there and then, before Emmet arrived, wrote the first draft on our shared web folder. She gets up at 2am and starts fiddling on the computer to make this new thing work. Then, after a few hours sleep, at 5am we’re both at it as the wording gets refined and she returns to the website to also refine the aesthetics.
What this is all about is putting some wording on our ‘Donate’ button. I feel quite strongly about the word donate. It suggests giving to a charity, or giving because you feel generous, or just, really, the problem is with that word too. Giving. Afterall, when you go to a shop and pick up some milk, the money you give to the cashier is not a donation. When you go to a concert, you don’t donate in return for a ticket. And when we used to go and buy albums and CDs, even the record companies paid their bands royalties. These were not donations. So we’re putting our work out for free consumption if that’s how anyone wants it – this very Diary you’re reading now. Our live shows. Our album, which we’re working on right now. All there to just be taken and no problem. But this is what we do. And to sustain it, to make it realistic, money has to come from somewhere. OK, from a record company/ record deal or the joke income, er, stream, of streaming. But there, money is coming from a public that has decided to pay for a product. Record companies pay a fraction of a fraction, and are trying, and succeeding in many cases, to take more and more from more and more of their acts’ activities. And the streaming services don’t even pretend to bother to pay. Not really. So what is a new act to do if they’re trying to be viable on their own two feet as we are? Make it for ourselves. At least that is if we’re saying we don’t want to play the industry’s game, at least not the way they’ve got it set up. Until maybe someone comes along that we actually want to work with but we are doing our best to learn the very painful lessons of so many predecessors who put it all out there for so many other people to get so rich from. People who knew about absolutely nothing about music but knew how to squeeze money, even if it meant choking the people they were squeezing from.
So yeah. The ‘donate’ button is there, and I don’t like the word, but to be fair, there really isn’t a satisfactory alternative. Support? But if someone goes to see a band and pays the demanded entry, they might be supporting them, but that payment to enter isn’t a voluntary donation because the fan cares so much about the band’s individual members’ welfare, even if they do care a little. It’s being paid because if it isn’t, the doors remain closed. So yeah. I want to kind of supercede the word, and I think it’s time our button had a bit more weight. And no, we don’t want to introduce a pay wall. I’ve thought long and hard about how to do this and, as far as we are now, this is it.
This is what we do
We believe society wants and needs new music that comes from the heart
However, most hits are now written by using algorithms
We don’t have a record deal yet, but then, most record companies keep most of the money anyway and then find ways to take the rest
Streaming pays next to nothing
Bars generally don’t pay original acts, but we understand and have no problem with that
Which is exactly why we have the hat
Please think of the Donate button as the online equivalent of the hat and help keep us on the road
Oh, and that algorithm thing. Something we’ve only recently learned about and it suddenly makes so much make sense because so much of today’s music, at least what’s topping the charts and getting all the radio play, all sounds the same. Why? Because it’s literally designed that way for maximum effect. You want to write a number one song? Have a computer analyse the current number one and write something that hits all the same buttons but doesn’t quite sound the same, but really, does. Refresh and repeat.
As well as being on it at 2am, then 5am, we’re also up again early after a little more sleep to really get onto fully organising the house which just needs those few more touches we haven’t got to since arriving back from Hamburg. The feeling here is that we are actually beginning the recording of the album today and to be fully committed to that, we want to know the space behind us is clear and free of any nagging details. We don’t want to be recording or mixing a track, while knowing a ton of housework is sitting behind us. Of course, housework is never really done, but we want to at least feel on top of it. By around 7:30pm, we feel that we really are. The place looks and feels amazing. House in order and pre production track done and lessons learned. We are really, truly ready to go.
Eight O’Clock on the button and the first actual session of album recording begins. We finish this first session two hours later with a first full rough drum track and doubled guitar track for our first song.
Day 52
Tuesday April 19
Mark:
Although we’re now in the album recording process, our thoughts are still very much on hustling and playing live. Among this, we’re also starting to think about getting ourselves more onto the original scenes around the country. This will be a totally different kind of hustle. Getting onto an original scene is more about knowing the people. Networking, really. Maybe playing open mics in the main cities and actually getting to know the promoters and other acts you could do gigs with. But for now it emails as we start to try to get ourselves onto some festivals. I’m not massively sure what can come of this as again, I believe it’s going to be who you know and what your reputation is, but emailing certainly can’t hurt. So I’m downstairs researching and sending emails on that while Maja is upstairs working on and learning more and more about music production. And in between my other bits and pieces down here, I also have the job of getting into our downstairs studio from time to time and working on pre production so that I’m ready for Maja when she needs me. Part of my pre production is determining the BPMs for the songs so that she can possibly at least lay a raw drum track for me to play to when my recording time comes, and with that, I’m also practicing recording for real down here, learning to play some of the songs to recording level, so that by the time I get upstairs, I’m as ready as I can possibly be and hopefully don’t need too many takes; unlike vocals or bass, acoustic guitar generally has to be done in one take, so a full perfect performance with very little chance for drop-ins. This can only happen if a song has a natural stop/s and you’ve at least recorded up to a stop. And all this has to be done with energy and feeling. And as we’re double tracking the guitars, I have to do it twice. So by the time you get in there, you truly do need to know what’s going on.
Studio and pitching it is today and then around 7pm we start to get ready to go hustle in Athlone, the largest town in our immediate area.
What we’ve neglected to do before setting off however, is to check if there’s are any big sport on tonight. There is. Liverpool v Manchester United, one of the biggest Premierleague fixtures of the season. Which means all the bars are far too busy for a manager to have any time to talk to us.
But we’re here so we still decide to take the opportunity to have a look around and see the inside of some of these bars for the first time. One of them is Sean’s Bar, officially recognised by The Guinness Book of Records as the oldest bar in Ireland. Of course the Guinness book had to say it was an Irish bar. But at around 1000 years old and in the most central major settlement in the country, it probably is. It’s actually known what the oldest bar in the whole world is, but I’d say this place has a pretty good claim. As such it’s about as traditional as you can get. There’s no football in here for a start and we see there’s music every night. But when Sean, the manager, happily comes out to see us, he explains they only have trad music in here. Given our experience of Sunday night, we know what that means and thank him for his time. But he has a little more to give and very generously namechecks a few bars for us that we might like to try, including The Brazen Monkey which we’ve already been in. This is a new bar, he says, so could be a good opportunity for us. Indeed, the guy we spoke to in there said as much but the manager wasn’t around. Which is the case just about everywhere else. Around 10pm and we decide to head home. But then, just at the last corner before our carpark, we see that the bar Flannerys is far quieter than it was when we first arrived and poked our heads in to see that it was packed and the soccer was blaring. Why not? Let’s pop in again and say hello. It’s right there. You never know.
Maja: I’m going to write about our performance
Past the first bar, might as well try. Davey, Lee, Paddy. Sasha behind bar. Phil. Tells us about Jimmy Stewart in Mayors, Ballycumber, and Chrissy in Dark Horse.
For possibly the fifth time in a row, dinner doesn’t happen for us until sometime after 11pm. There’s just so much going on right now and so much to do. And we’re loving it.
Day 53
Wednesday April 20
After a day in the studio we think about returning to Athlone and trying again, but having learned our lesson, we check the schedules first. Yep. Another big match on. OK. Let’s carry on where we are.
Day 54
Thursday April 21
With Maja away in Sweden for ten days from Monday and with a gig tomorrow – our first headline – we decide to forget about the hustle, just keep on hunkering down and keep at it. So again, studio and catchup on Diary writing.
Day 55
Friday April 22
As soon as we arrive at tonight’s gig at John Lee’s in Tullamore, we’re greeted at the entry with, ‘Oh, you’re The Diaries. I saw you guys last week.’ Oh hello. Yep. He was randomly at Gussies in Ballycumber when we played that mildly luke warmly received performance at the trad night. We’re to discover it was slightly warmer than that, the first clue being when he follows his introduction up with, ‘We’ve got you on last tonight because it’s pretty hard to follow what you do.’ He then gives us a bunch of drinks tokens, we have a brief chat, and then me and Maja walk into the venue looking at each other in gleeful disbelief. And what a great looking venue it is. It’s essentially a covered outdoor show. Long, very attractive beer garden with a cool booth style seating system. You won’t get wet, but it’s open to the wind and general outdoor temperature but with powerful gas heaters, the kind that shoot up that single column of fire. So it’s warm enough. Then a really great stage set up with a log panelled backdrop decorated with multicoloured flags and a poster for the event.
While we are in essence headlining what is a benefit concert for local Ukrainian refugees, some of whom are in attendance, we’re the only musical act on tonight. Everything else is comedians and poetry readings. And a magician/comedian act.
We’ve decided to come decently early to catch as much as the whole show as we can. This is to generally see what’s going on and support our fellow performers which does facilitate the hoped for hang later, but apart from that, we really do simply want to enjoy an evening of entertainment that we also happen to be part of.
We are in and out a little bit, but we catch three main sets. Ross, David and Alex.
During this, about 20 minutes to half an hour before our 11pm start time, I have a massive surprise when I recognise a few guys from the Ballycumber performance. And they recognise me too and we have a lovely hello in the back of the bar far away from the stage. My pleasant surprise at seeing some friendly faces turns to absolute shock when they say they’ve come here tonight specially to see us. After we arrived, Dave called and let them know it was us, the act from the other night, and that was it. They were on their way. Do you have any idea how hard it can be sometimes to get friends to come out and see your shows? And here are a group of lads we’ve never met, who’ve gone, ‘Hey, The Diaries are playing tonight. We should go.’ Now I learn that they were only very much passing through Ballycumber that night and decided on the spot to drop into one of the three bars in the village for just the one – and it was just the one – and we just happened to play our first set of two songs while they were there. They weren’t around when we were cajoled into playing a third, but it didn’t matter. By then they were sold. And here they are.
By the time showtime comes around, the atmosphere in here has been completely warmed up by a wonderful set of stand-up routines and at times irreverently observational poetry readings. There’s possibly even a sense of anticipation in the air as we finish setting up and prepare to launch into what will be a well paced five song set. For the tougher cover bar crowds, we play what we call our smash set. For tonight, 15 to 20 minutes, we’re going to start off with two big ones – I Like You (Better When You’re Naked) followed by Rock’n’Roll Tree before taking things right down with Fire and Insanity, then bringing it right back up again with Six Sense Lover. Fire is in our smash set as a slight gamble as it starts delicately before slow burning into something else, but Insanity really is a gentle lovely flower of a song, although it’s cutting in its observations of those who would dissuade you from following your own path. ‘What they want what they need/ They’ll give anything just to see you bleed/ Just the once then they’ll say their right… and so on.
From the very opening frantic one-two-three-four count as we kick ourselves off, this whole place is with us. And the guys who came out to see us are right at the front and wonderfully rocking away. Sitting down, but still very much rocking away. As great as the stage setup is, it is a little strange as it faces directly to that one booth opposite with the rest of the venue at stage left. So, to play to the whole place, me and Maja have to set ourselves up kind of in a line. Both of us facing diagonally but sideways with me having a perfect view of her back the entire time. But this also means that for the first time I’m able to see her full performance, and man does she perform tonight. I see the crouches and the near jumps and the expressive arms and the reflexive thrashes to the pulses of the songs, and her hair whipping right, left and up and down, spurred on by the gusting wind that comes through us every now and again as if to remind us that we are actually almost outside. And that wind is cold and we’ve made our own individual decisions to remove our bigger tops and play as though we were all warm and toasty inside, although those warm and toasty places very quickly turn hot and sweaty for us. But tonight, it’s wonderful to have that wind and I greatly welcome its chilly bellows.
As you probably know, we always go for it, but there’s something a bit more special in tonight’s air as we feel it blow through us in those welcoming cold blasts as we continue to ignite. It could be that maybe for the first time ever we feel we don’t have to force the issue and instead have a crowd that is really on side and with us right from the beginning. We don’t even have to worry in the slightest when we bring the tempo right down as they continue to hang on to every note. We feel this first with Fire, as real fires flame upwards all around this inside/outside room. Then into Insanity, then right back out the other side as we announce our last song, then finish it the roar that’s been accompanying us all evening. No encore shout, but that’s OK.
Out on the floor and it seems everyone wants to talk to us as we immediately have so many people come and say hello. Before we know it, we’re the centre piece of a group photo with more and more people joining. Out in front the official photographer for the event does her best to fit them all in. Then we hear thanks, thoughts, and even a little analysis as we’re described in the most complimentary terms as punk. We’ve heard that before, but here it goes a little further from Dave, one of the organisers who also performed earlier. He says that it’s not so much that we’re punk music. More, he says that punk was always meant as an attitude. Of being individual, of just going for it, of just totally doing your own thing. ‘I really see that in you guys,’ he says. And there’s more. Much much more. As me and Maja go our separate ways to better work the room, we meet the guys who specially came to see us. Reera (I’m certain I spelt that wrong), Cras, who filmed the video of Rock’n’Roll Tree and Padraig. I believe there were a few more too. Among all this I get a massively enthusiastic review of ourselves saying that we are totally on our way and headed for serious places. ‘I’m not the guy to do that,’ my companion says, ‘But you will meet that person. And soon. I’m telling you.’ Man, it is so nice when the faith is coming from someone other than yourselves.
As we hang around and go deeper into the vibrant evening, there are other chats, and people saying they might be able to hook us up with this or that venue or this or that promoter, and the Daves say we are very much in their minds now for future shows. And we also hear the word on a load of open mics and other contacts in Dublin from a chat I have with Ross who makes it clear he doesn’t claim influence, but says that he will pass us on some details that we really should chase up. And true to his word, he does. Cras sends us the amazingly shot video, Ken says he’ll mention us in his blog, and by Sunday, without any notice, we’re just up on the Instagram site of the Tullamore Arts Society. There’s been so much here tonight that has seems to have suddenly elevated us into a place where things just feel that little bit more real.
And one of those videos from Crass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIjQ81X8dzs
OK. We’re building on our German experience now. We’ve worked on our level and are finding out that our thing really does have the capacity to hit. It did in Germany a few times as well to be fair. Maybe there will always be gigs that don’t quite work, but even in some of our shows that haven’t made it so big, we still felt there were one or two people who were really into it. And then we have something like tonight, with people following us here, and paying to see us after catching us somewhere else. That’s a whole new thing. And taking tonight after pulling off The Lantern, a venue we were told even seasoned cover musicians saw as a tough crowd. Yeah, I think we have this now
Day 57
Sunday April 24
We’ve noticed the occasional creaking sound at the end of our guitar recordings. I have to stay absolutely still to prevent it from happening. But that’s not so easy during songs when there are quiet, or stop/start sections. Little noises have been creeping in there too. I’ve been trying to minimise this in the studio by making sure I’m not wearing anything with buttons, like a shirt. No belt for trousers, and no buttoned trousers either. But still that noise. We discover it’s the strap moving just ever so slightly around where it’s attached to the guitar. Maja comes up with a genius idea to fix this. Put a cut open sock on the ends of each strap and attach them to the guitar through the socks. Now I can move around all I want in front of the most sensitive microphones and there’s no unwanted noise at all I now also have a guitar sock. Come on. Rock’n’roll.
Day 58
Tuesday April 27
I’m on my own for another week or so with Maja having left yesterday for a ten day visit back to Sweden. Top of my to do list is to basically record as much guitar as I can. I’m fairly confident I’ll at least be able to get all the guitar parts down in this time and maybe even one or two bass parts two. I get to really setting things up today, all ready to just blast it down. To continue with her own things, Maja’s taken her interface with her and I’ve got mine. I get to it and after a little while I discover that – well, let’s not get too technical and boring here – my interface doesn’t record in the same way hers does. Which will probably render anything I record on it unusable if we’re going to go for commercially viable levels of quality and consistency. Which we are. At first this is very frustrating because this was the main thing I was planning on doing with my time alone. But then I realise there is plenty I can still do, even if it’s just prep. I can do pretty damn good levels of practice and preparation with what I have. I’m not going to make predictions or get ahead of myself, but yeah, I’m still good with what I have here, just a different kind of good. I’ll take that.
Day 61
Friday April 29
Studio today and the sock falls off the guitar. This is possibly the first time anyone’s ever said or written that in the history of guitars. And yes. That is the most exciting and diary worthy thing that happens today.
Day 66
Wednesday May 4
Maja’s back today and wants to do absolutely nothing. Fair enough.
Day 67
Thursday May 5
Out to buy drumkit and three shops including Dublin
Do we want to write about this?
Day 72
Tuesday May 10
We’re supposed to be playing in The Trap tomorrow but we’ve been checking and there are no posters up and no mention of us on their website. We decide to cancel as it looks like no-one knows we’re playing. We meet Jimmy there and he tells us they lost the posters. ‘But people know alright,’ he says. Word has got around. But if you could bring more and we’ll get them up, that would be good. OK. We’re back on again, not as if we were ever really off, except maybe in our own minds. However, he asks if we could put our time back to 9:30 from 7:30 as one of Clara’s soccer teams has a big match and everyone will be at that. Cool. Done.
Day 73
Wednesday May 11
And what a gig it turns out to be. Fantastic attendance with a massive anticipation around the place for seeing us. And we meet it head on and in full. Huge reactions to everything and, at the end of it all, three encore shouts, two of which we respond to. I’m fortunate enough to have quite a lot of experience of triple encore calls. And in that experience, the third rarely goes well and you end up wishing you’d stopped at two. So we do, and still leave them wanting more.
This is also the first outing of our brilliant new backdrop which adds a whole new level to our stage appearance.
A few highlights of this one.
First, there are many shout outs for I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). So we play it early on, then of course it gets a massive call for when the encore shouts begin. And yes, we play it again.
Almost everyone here tonight came out just to see us, with one guy leaving work early in Dublin to be able to get here in time, and a few other people coming from 10 miles away and beyond.
The last time we played in here was November 5 last year, which happens to have been our first ever show. Fully six months ago. So it’s incredible for us when someone requests one of the songs we played that night – Bang Bang. Which we actually wrote entirely by accident the night before that show. They don’t call it out by name, instead saying, play that one you did without any music. Yep. That’s Bang Bang alright. Even more remarkable, we don’t even do that one anymore, or at least we haven’t done it for quite a while. So I’m sorry to report that we’re unable to meet this request for one of our own songs.
We have had this quite a bit at other shows, but it’s so cool to be able to say again, that we have people all around trying to sing along to songs they’ve never heard before. We know, because some of those songs we’ve never played in here before.
The total time for this show clocks in at 50 minutes. That’s 50 minutes of people hearing songs they’ve never heard before – apart from I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). But when we announce we’re at our last two songs, a whole bunch of disappointment is directed at us. After which, yes, we get all the encore calls.
And yes, at 50 minutes, this becomes our longest ever show, unless you count what we did at Bei Theresa in Hamburg, but really, that one just felt like a glorified rehearsal.
The hat really is getting some actual respect. We did well at The Lantern back in the middle of April and very much again here tonight. I think for the first time we’re realising we can actually make money doing exactly what we’re doing right now.
Day 77
Sunday May 15
There’s a coverband playing a mid afternoon show in the back garden of The Trap today and we go there for a really cool return as time and again we’re congratulated on our midweek show. We even get introduced to some people as the next Oasis. We’ll take that. After the coverband has finished their set, the stage at the back of the garden is left tantalisingly empty. As the DJ turns the volume up, me and Maja walk up the slightly spiralled ramp which leads to the side of the stage and basically get busy dancing all over it. After a while a few regulars come and join us. A little while after that when we think we’re done and go to walk down the ramp we’re very much told, no. You guys get back up on that stage. And so we do as Maja discovers she’s now very much the centre of attention, a role I think she’s decided she very much relishes in. When we finally do come down, I take off to the bar. When I look back, expecting to see Maja right behind me, I see she’s somewhat disappeared into a crowd of people who have welcomed her off the stage.
Day 78
Monday May 16
The Diary’s going to have a slightly different feel for a little while maybe. After a bit of a flurry of gigging activity, we’re not really trying to do much more right now than record. We don’t think anyone really wants a full blow by blow account of the studio, and it could also get quite confusing as we’re working on all the songs simultaneously; a vocal on this one, then that one, then a drum track on this one, then a bit of mixing and production over here and so on. So what we’re thinking is going track by track in here at the end of recording and maybe talking a bit about the experience of laying each one down. Most of the days we don’t write anything, assume we had our heads down in the studio, or maybe relaxing between studio days, because we really are about to get very busy in there.
Day 82
Friday May 20
Yeah. It’s kind of like this. A long and tough studio day today and we decide to go to The Trap for a quiet drink to take things in and decompress a little. We walk in and, rather than finding a chilled atmosphere we discover a full on band is playing and the place is packed. What have we missed. We quickly retreat to the street. A quick glance at our phones tells us it’s Friday. Damn. We thought it was Wednesday. It’s quite possible one of us even thought it was Tuesday.
Day 89
Friday May 27
We’ve been hitting the studio really hard for a while now and learning a lot. This is taking a lot longer than we thought it would and it’s going to take a lot longer yet. There is so much more to do and learn than we had possibly began to imagine at the start. As such we’ve been discovering that this is what it’s really all about at the moment. Learning how to use the thing – on so many levels – and, in some cases, just learning how to work together in what can at times be a bit of a pressure cooker environment where sometimes there are no right or wrong answers but where everyone has an opinion. We’re also really trying to figure out how we actually sound as a band; all this time we’ve been operating as a one acoustic guitar act, but suddenly we’re throwing bass and drums into the mix along with maybe a couple of other subtle elements. How does this rhythm section interact with us and how do we interact with it? What is this whole thing supposed to sound like? These are questions we’re wrestling with all over the place as we recruit a virtual bassist and drummer and they’re made up of the same people – me and Maja. For bass I’m playing and coming up with the parts, with Maja’s input as well. And it’s the same with the drums. We’re using midi drums for this but with real drum sounds recorded from source. It’s a big beast to tame and something Maja was working on for over a year to try to figure out. So even at what feels like an early stage in our midi drum journey, she’s already been on it a year. It’s only in this past phase of sessions that we’ve been able to work with them in a coherent way. And we’ve been doing that together. It’s been like trying to tame an enormous beast, finally getting it to bend to your command, and then trying to figure out what exactly you actually want to command it to do, while essentially still trying to work out all the details of the game.
With this and everything else it’s fair to say we’ve been getting incrementally fried, and we’re feeling done. For now.
So we’re taking a day or two totally off. Kinda. With that we take a drive to Ferbane, a village about 20 minutes away. We want to go and visit a few different places and maybe have a look at a bar or two. No hustling. Absolutely no hustling. But we may talk to some people, if you can give that another name please.
After walking up and down the peaceful roads of Ferbane we decide to go and have a look at a bar called Henneseys. It’s a decent sized front bar with a large restaurant out back and we’re able to have a quick chat with Fionulla, the manager. We’re not looking for gigs. We are NOT on the hustle. But we introduce ourselves to her anyway and she really likes the sound of what we’re doing and says yes, come back and try to organise something when you want to get onto that.
Ferbane really wasn’t that big, so now we decide to take a drive to Birr and see what that place is all about.
Well, what can we say about Birr? In population terms it’s not even twice the size of Clara and almost a third the size of Tullamore. But damn it has a lot of bars and we get a positive reaction from just about every one of them. By the time we’re done, Birr could well be our new favourite place. Who knew? We walk round the town and at pop our heads into most of the bars. Sometimes we do more than that. In a fair few of them we’re able to have a chat with a manager and one or two regulars.
In one bar we meet a customer called Speedy. He hears our pitch to the manager – we’re kinda on the hustle again, or at least introducing ourselves with intent, whatever you would call that. What can I say? We can’t help ourselves. We bump into him on the street as we’re leaving and he gives us a rundown of the bars of almost the whole town. This gives us a very good list to start with. He says it’s so great to meet people who are doing their own thing and having a go and he’s happy to do his bit to help.
I think it’s also fair to say we’re starting to develop a bit of quiet confidence in what we do. In one bar, the pitch – or whatever it is today because we are definitely not hustling – is going well and the manager says, ‘So you do a bit of everything?’ ‘No,’ I reply absolutely straight. ‘We only do our own thing.’ We get a bit of a nod of acceptance and respect from that as it goes. ‘I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have a go,’ he says. Thankyou very much. We’ll be back.
And on and on it goes with people just being impressed that we’ve come here and we’re having a go at having a go and doing our own thing.
Yep. Birr. We will be back.
Day 90
Saturday May 28
Out for another countryside walk today. We head towards the larger town of Mullingar (pop: 21,000). There are a few lakes dotted about around the outer edges of this town so we quite fancy a gentle countryside stroll. We find one of the larger areas, park the car next to a beautiful good sized lake and head into the woods. However, all is not quite as calm as we were looking for. We’ve landed here bang in the centre of the local music festival and, as we’re walking around trying to enjoy nature and calm our thoughts, the air is vibrating with bass drums and electronic music. I’m quite liking the contrast in ambience but Maja is finding it just upsets what she was hoping would be a tranquil mood. ‘No,’ she says after about 20 minutes. ‘This really isn’t working. I need to get out of here.’ That’s a shame, but understood. So back in the car it is. We’re gonna go check out Mullingar and see if we think we can do any damage here.
Well yes, we do believe we can is the conclusion. Where Birr was a lot of lovely, older style traditional bars, Mullingar is very much of the times and a lot of the places feel like slick city bars. We drop into quite a few but while yesterday we hit the town in mid afternoon and all was quiet and we were able to chat to people, this time we’ve arrived early evening on a Saturday and things are quite a bit livelier. But that’s OK. We’re just on a kind of fact finding, vibe feeling mission. The vibes are good and the facts will speak for themselves when it comes time to try our hands here. For now, yes, we’re also getting a really good feel for Mullingar and have a pretty good idea of what bars we might well have a go at first when we return.
By the time we get back to Clara, the soccer Champions League final is just about to begin. Oh OK. Why not. We pop into The Trap, the decision to head there made easier by their advertisement of a barbecue out back. That will do us just nicely thankyou very much. But more than that. We get out there and discover it’s free. Yep. Free hamburgers and a great seat and table from which to be able to see the big match. A great way to conclude our two days off and two wonderful days of definitely not hustling.
Day 94 – 124
June. Just June
As the month develops we get deep into album territory. This is where we often lose track of time and declare we should take a break for a snack or something, only to discover it’s 10pm, or maybe even later. This includes one day when we decide to do a roast dinner, only to discover it’s past 11pm by the time we emerge. That’s fine. Put the oven on. We’ll do it now. Dinner comes out of the oven around 2am. Yep. This is what it’s like now. While this is the most extreme example of how things are going now, it’s also a pretty good indication of where we are. And each day when we go to bed, that night’s sleep just feels like a necessary interruption before we begin again. Sometimes not much more than a glorified nap with thoughts already deep into the next day. As soon as we wake up we know what to do and we know how we want to do it and we’re almost directly back to the studio. Yes there are days when we get smashed by tiredness or allergies or some such thing and do little more than stay in and around bed all day. But on the whole, as June rocks on and on we roll with it, you could say we’re somewhat starting to find our rhythm.
During the month, Maja has a great idea. What will become known as the ‘Now hustle.’ So far we’ve been booking shows for a week or so in advance, and then turning up on the appointed day with all our gear, to set up and play them. So far so conventional. Maja’s idea changes all this. What if we just turn up at places and offer to play them there and then? And turn up totally prepared. Which means one speaker, which we’ll carry in a backpack, bought specially for that purpose. So we take ourselves off to the biggest sports and outdoor shop in Tullamore and find exactly what she was thinking of. So now we can walk semi conspicuously into a venue with one of us carrying a guitar and the other one wearing a backpack. Who would know? Make the pitch and say we’ll play there and then. No idea how many songs we would do. Maybe 20 minutes worth? Pass the hat, pack up and then onto the next place. We have the backpack, we have the speaker, we have the guitar. And we have just about the right amount of cheek and confidence to go with all that. You know what? It might just work.
Day 125
Friday July 1
We’re up and about and I’m all ready for another day in the studio when Maja suddenly says, ‘I want to gig tonight.’
So, rather than working on the album today, we get busy seeing what a set could look like and working on that. Which means only the smashiest of smash set songs. We’re thinking of a top length of six songs per show, maybe fewer. And hoping to play at least three shows. We’re also going to have Maja on the mic, but myself unplugged. We’re not anticipating massively busy bars so we’re confident this will work. People often play acoustic and unplugged. We’re just giving Maja a bit of an extra mic boost so that she doesn’t have to blow her voice. We rehearse a bit later than intended, and then it’s time to get our gear together and leave. But we’ve never done this before so the organisation also takes a bit longer than intended. We’re not ready to leave until sometime between 6:30 and 7. Meaning we don’t even arrive in Birr until around 7:30. Way too late to make any real impact, we think, but we’ll just get started and see what we can do.
The very first bar we go into, the manager says he doesn’t feel comfortable with the concept of the hat, but he likes that we’re trying to do our own thing. The place is really busy right now so he invites us to call him later in a few days and arrange a show, for which he’ll be happy to pay us. He also says that when we do come back and play, we can sit in the corner and be something like pleasant background music. We thank him very much and leave, with no intention to call. Fair enough to everything he said, but right now for us, this is all about the hat. But also, damn. There’s no way we’re going somewhere to be background music.
We go right into the bar next door where there’s just four people in the place. But we’ve already decided we’re not going to let that put us off. Four people plus a bar staff is four people plus a bar staff to help spread the word. It all counts. The manager in here is up for it, but asks us to come back at 10 when there will be more people in here. OK. That works. First gig in the book tonight. We leave them posters and beer mats. We’re in and we’re on.
Now we head down the high street and into a bar called The Palace where we meet bar manager Nadia. She’s well into it and says we can come back and play at 9. Great.
It’s approaching eight now and we have two gigs in the book. We go nearby to a bar called Molloys where there’s just five or six people spread across the bar. Never mind. We do out pitch. ‘You’re talking about playing now?’ Asks the manager. Yep. ‘Sure, you can do that,’ he says. ‘There’s a bunch of guys out back. If they want to see what you can do, you can play for them.’ Great. We head out back and find a large concrete garden with a bunch of guys in their early 20s sitting around a big round table watching rap videos. They’re all attention as we tell then what we’d like to do and they’re well up for it. One of them goes and turns the TV off and they wait expectantly for us to start. We’re right into it with Six Sense Lover, and yes, they’re with us. We carry on through another three songs, declare we’re done and they want more. All through this, various people from the front bar have been coming out to see what’s going on. We give the boys here their encore, then produce the hat. They almost fall over each other to put into it and we’re not just talking coins either. This is a decent haul from a great start. They also give us the heads up on a few venues we should check out. Brilliant. Thanks a lot guys. We’re on it.
From here we get to The Palace quickly to see Nadia and tell her we’ll be running a little late as we have some places to check out before our show in here at 9. No problem. The first bar we were told to look at is insanely busy. The manager meets us and takes our card, but really, there’s no chance to chat and really hustle here. I leave them to it.
The next place is Kellys nearby. It’s quietish now and the manager, John, is interested but wants to see what we have to offer first. He wants to hear at least one song. ‘Go and rattle away in that corner there and we’ll see how we go,’ he says. We don’t set up the speaker. Instead, I hang back a little with the guitar and Maja stands on the corner of the L shaped bar, right in the middle of the people sitting at it and facing the bar staff. I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). What else? We blast through half of it and climax at the end of the second chorus rather than going all the way to the end. This is enough. The place erupts and John says, ‘Very good. I’ll see you guys at 11.’
So that’s it. Having arrived in town a little after 7:30, we now have shows at 9, 10 and 11, and did our first one at 8. And we’ve just shown what we can do in this bar to get that show at 11. That also counts as a performance. But now we’re actually in a rush. It’s already way past nine and we have to do this next show, make it to our 10 O’Clock, then round it all off at 11.
The Palace goes so well that Nadia immediately books us again. For 11am gig for Monday, July 11. That’s eleven of the A and the M. OK.
Now we pack up as quickly as we can and take ourselves to our 10pm where we discover they’d forgotten they already had something on so we were double booked. No problem. We’ll see if we can do Kellys early. We can. It’s 10:30 by the time we get started in there so pretty close to the booked time so all good. The reaction in here is huge with two encore shouts and John, the ever so sceptical at the beginning manager almost dancing his way around the place. And again, the hat does its work, just as it did in Mollys and The Palace. Including the audition, that’s four shows around here tonight with another one booked that didn’t quite make it. And from a standing start at 7:30. Damn. And the hat has done really well for us. This is a thing now.
A big takeaway from tonight is that we have to be better organised with how we organise and carry things. A few times we were asked for cards, or wanted to give beer mats, or just give cards around a bar, and we had to scramble a bit to find them. We also found ourselves rushing to pack up a bit a couple of times, meaning we then had a bit of trouble setting up quickly at the next place. We just need to tighten ourselves up a little bit on all this. It’s all about the percentages in the details. And it’s nights like this that let you know exactly what you need to sharpen up on to pick up those percentages. On the way home as we reflect on tonight, we also conclude that four songs is pretty much optimum, with one more to be added for an encore. We also decide not to hustle any of the bars we play for future gigs. No. Instead, hit a town and move onto the next one. Otherwise we could find ourselves bouncing between towns all the time playing this or that single gig that we booked, when we could be in some new place hustling a whole bunch of gigs on the spot, just like we’ve done tonight.
Now going to try to catch last orders at The Trap. Well, we do, but we’re only just settling in when people start to ask if we could bring the guitar and carry on in here. We resist, but the requests become a clamour. OK. We’re doing this. I bring the guitar back and we do another set, totally unamplified this time with me hanging back and Maja giving it her all out front. And for the fifth time tonight we totally smash it. I think we’ll take that for a result. Just so much bigger, better and way more vast than anything we could have expected when we left the house, especially as late as we did. And yes, we’ve also brought in a lot more money than we could have imagined from doing this. People, we’ve taken totally our own songs, own vibe and our own style. And it’s happening. We are doing this.
Day 126
Saturday July 2
Just decompressing and going over yesterday. First, just an amazing experience and result. And yes, as covered yesterday, we learned a lot, not least in how we could do it with just that bit more more slickness. But we have also seen if this is viable, and yes it is. Now we know for a fact that we can go out, play shows on the spot in the way we want, and make money.
We conclude that if we can just get out there enough and continue doing what we did yesterday, we can totally make a living out of this now. And that is a big, no, huge, moment to have arrived at. But now we have to concentrate on the studio for a little while longer. Yesterday was really about satisfying that curiosity itch as to how much this could actually work. Now we know it can, we get back to work.
Day 132
Friday July 8
We decide to have another go at that instant gig/hat thing. This time we’re going to try Athlone, the second biggest town in Ireland’s midlands region. The biggest is Portlaoise, the third is Mullingar and the fourth is our own Tullamore.
After a couple of places in which the manager isn’t in and so it’s almost a waste of time to hustle, we come to The Brazen Monkey. We were deliberately heading in this direction as we’ve heard in previous visits how this was a new place that would welcome new music, and so it proves to be. And it certainly does all look brand shiny new and all refurbed. However, the manager would like to hear at least something of a song first. We do our half of Naked thing and yep. Come back at 8:30. It’s about seven now. Cool. A bit more hustling to see what else we can shake out, while having one in the book.
What follows is a slightly frustrating time with few managers being around tonight. Then we come to a bar that says yeah, sure. Go for it. Great. We start setting up, then the person who said yes comes back. Turns out that person was a supervisor, and the manager has told them no. Apparently another band has been booked and is about to arrive. I can confidently report (giving all benefit of the doubt while others may not) a band could have been booked but none arrives. We know for an absolute fact that no band arrives.
We’ve got time for one more hustle and we decide to hit a place called Vals. This is a quiet locals type bar but we checked it out a while ago, had quite a positive response and were encouraged to come and try to play should we ever return to the area. Well, here we are. We go and meet Val once more and he says that yes, absolutely. Come back at 10/10:30 and do your thing. Great. Now for The Brazen Monkey.
We arrive and the vast bar is practically empty. Oh. OK. No worries though, says Gary, the manager. There’s a big crowd coming at 9. Hold off and then you can play for them. Oh wow. Cool. We have our speaker with us for Maja’s vocals but Gary’s adamant we won’t need any amplification at all. Just do your thing, he says. But no. We mic the vocals thankyou very much. So we set up and wait.
Nine comes, and so does the promised crowd. A lot, a lot of them. Enough to totally fill the bar. It looks promising until we realise that there’s very little reaction to a live act being on. Not only very little reaction, they don’t even seem that aware that we’re here. Also, up to now we’ve been playing much smaller bars to not so many people and where you could reasonably expect to play totally unplugged. Although Maja does have a mic, which is how we’re set up in here. We get started and people around us are into it, but that doesn’t last too long – two songs at most before we realise we’re doing little more than playing to ourselves – as the people out front keep pounding the jagermeisters. They’ve just got off the boat – literally. One of those Viking type trips and they’re clearly well into their evening. I try to take the show to them and disappear into the thick crowd with the guitar while Maja continues singing from the stage. It’s like this. I can go where I want because I’m not plugged in. Maja has a lead and so can be heard, but can’t go and take on the crowd like I can. I’d like to say it’s a valiant effort on my part to do just that, but really it doesn’t work and I’m basically ignored. I get back to the stage and me and Maja agree we should do one more song and call it. That will make it four songs for this show. About standard, but we were expecting more and, after a promising start, it really didn’t take off. I must say it’s with some reluctance that I start to take the hat round. I’m met with almost incredulity. As though I’m some beggar who just wandered in off the street. Yep. So many people in here, especially those towards the back, didn’t even know anything was going on.
Hey mate
Bottle of wine and Never Dine Alone. Babble On really got us, then Without You had us dancing in the kitchen. Without You is up there with Maja’s favourite songs. Great job mate. From Maja specifically: ‘Keep going and keep strong.’ Not at all to be confused with me not wishing you to keep going and being strong. Remember: The Diaries love you.
We start to feel not so bad about this when the lady in charge of this unwieldy crowd comes up and asks to borrow Maja’s mic. Maja’s reluctant, but the lady assures her it’s just for a few seconds. It clearly isn’t, as she starts to call out a whole itinerary and then starts trying to line up some kind of game. Yep. Pretty big liberty taking. But now we see that the whole place ignores her too. We really were against it. This crowd is up for nothing but seeing how many Jagermeister shots they can do, and now I see that, it all makes sense. This is one of the most mind bending, personality altering drinks there is, and it’s all over the place. And now, as our new and unwelcome microphone friend continues to struggle against the tide, we see just how puerile this group is, as a single, unthinking group entity. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, people start randomly bursting balloons like this is the most fun game ever. For us, the place has now become something we just need to escape from as we try to talk between us. Another balloon bursts at a painful frequency and volume. Then another, and another and another. A few more and we’re getting visibly angry, almost panicky with the ear splitting regularity of the things. The jager has taken full effect and a large group of actual adults has been turned into a bunch of follow the leader toddlers. The biggest and most fun pleasure in their lives right now being the loud bursting of balloons. Oh, this is just the best game ever. Except it really isn’t. And we’re packing gear away and so can’t even cover our ears. We get everything down as quickly as we possibly can and flee out into the still sunny street without even bothering to acknowledge or say anything to Gary. First, we just had to get out of there. Second, we feel we’ve been totally hung out to dry here, and feel even worse towards him for the insistence that we wouldn’t need any amplification at all. What the hell was he expecting us to do? Well, we’ve done it and we’re done. Off to Vals. Well, the ‘show’ we’ve just done hasn’t been as totally lost as we thought it was as a few guys want to talk to us now outside and say how much they enjoyed it. Wonderful. When they ask where we’re going next and we tell them, they ask what we’re bothering to go there for?
We’re met at Vals by a very sedate crowd. Everyone seated at the small bar. Expected. And a young family seated at the table opposite the bar. Cool. As soon as we begin, the place opens up for us and everyone’s totally into it. Especially the family and their two boys. We power through a fantastically fun and relaxed set with the whole place on our side. We really are helping to make their evening and, after our last experience, they’re making ours as they restore our faith in impromptu audiences. When we finish, Val is first to generously put into the hat. Then everyone else follows. We leave with the best wishes of the bar ringing harmoniously in our ears rather than the attack dog balloons from which we escaped the last place. Guys, that’s why we bothered to go to Vals and why we shouldn’t have bothered with your lot and that last jagermeister soaked disaster.
Day 133
Saturday July 9
We played at a place called Gussies in the nearby village of Ballycumber a few months ago. You might remember. A whole bunch of people came to see us and pay €10 for doing so shortly after. So it’s with some confidence that we return today and book ourselves in again to play tonight. We meet someone who says he’s the manager, he’d love to have us later. Eight O’Clock give or take. Great. That gives us an hour or so to go to Ferbane. We’ve decided to check out Hennesey’s, where we met the lovely Fionulla a little while ago. She’s delighted to see us when we arrive and very quickly books us for 9:30 tonight. Before we leave, she makes sure to get posters from us and to take pictures of us with them for her social media. Two shows almost immediately in. That will do us. Now off to Gussies.
We arrive and there’s someone else apparently in charge now. We go and say hello to the guy behind the bar, but before we do, he says, ‘No. You guys are no good.’ He says it with such brutal finality. Sorry? ‘I remember you. You were in here a few months ago. You were no good. It didn’t work. ‘But we spoke to someone today who said he was the manager and we booked to play here with him.’ ‘No you didn’t.’ Oh, this is fun. Fair enough. Someone was messing about. I know we’re going to get nowhere here, but I can’t let this next thing go unremarked. ‘I get that you didn’t like it,’ I begin, ‘but there were people here last time who came to see our next show. And they paid for it.’ ‘No they didn’t,’ he says. ‘Yes they did,’ I say. ‘No they didn’t,’ he says. ‘Yes they…’ actually I don’t. But he does continue. ‘You were no good.’ We’re stunned. We’re actually laughing at this guy even as we’re being rebuffed in the rudest of terms. It’s the only way to react to his unreasonable absurdity. Although this might just be his gruff friendly/ unfriendly way because in his next breath he says, ‘You might want to try Flynns down the road. They have music.’ OK. Er, thankyou. And we’re gone. We will not be returning to Gussies.
We find Flynns and the manager is hesitant. He puts it to the quiet regulars in here. Do they want us to play? They’re non committal, although one or two do give quiet voices of assent. That’s enough. We set up under a lot of bemused gazes. Then we begin. Under a lot of bemused gazes. The ones that are well mannered enough to not be bemused have their backs to us. So maybe they are bemusedly gazing, just in a different direction. Or maybe doing gazing of an even more negative kind. No way of knowing. We being the only way we think we can under such tough circumstances. With a blast of I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). Gets them every time. Even when we only do the half length version, which is exactly what we do now. Nope. Nothing. Or at last not much. OK. Rock’n’Roll Tree. Again, very little. Now we hit them with another of our old faithful encore songs. How You Rock’n’Roll. When even this fails to elicit much more than an approving sigh – yes, they can sigh approvingly here apparently – we look at each other and are like, yep. We’re done. After yesterday’s embarrassment at The Brazen Monkey, I can’t face doing the hat in here. Maja says she’ll do it then. And the first guy she goes up to puts a tenner in. Wow. Did not see that coming. A few other people put in too. Coins, but hey, we’re always grateful no matter what it is. We leave with a haul of around €15. We’ve had better results, but hey, a packed Brazen Monkey yesterday yielded less. It’s with some triumph that we reach the car. We really can’t take that result in after a gig that felt so totally flat. Next.
We meet something of a similar bemusement at Henneseys, but a more familiar kind. A, ‘We’re not sure what to expect, but OK, do your thing,’ kind. It helps relax everyone that Fionnula is so welcoming, and as soon as we begin, people relax even more. Or, more than that. They’re very quickly with us. Two songs in and the experience of Ballycumber is totally washed away and drained behind us. Yes. This is very much more like it. And the hat agrees. We count it as soon as we get to the car and it’s given us the highest result from this type of gig so far.
Day 134
Sunday July 10
We take some time to really talk about and have a good look at last night and consider how we’ve done so far with all these instant hat gigs. The more we talk, the more we realise ,as long as we just do the miles, we really are now a fully, financially viable, independent proposition. With that we declare ourselves professional songwriters and performers. The huge moment just got huger.
It gets even madder when we go out for a pint in Dolans and get asked for our autographs by someone we’ve never met. And this in a pub we’ve never played.
Day 142
Monday July 18
Maja decides today is a Diary holiday. The sun is fully out, our time is ours to do what we want with it, and we’ve been using it very busily lately. So yeah. Makes sense. Also, Maja’s going to Sweden again next week for a visit so we should take these hot sunny days of summer while we can. We’re taking this one. We have a think and a look and decide we’re going to go to the seaside. We settle on a beach in Galway, get packed up and set off.
Although it’s a Monday, there’s still a very healthy attendance at the large beach we discover, but at the same time, plenty of space for us to set ourselves up wherever we want. This will be the classic beach day of reading in the sun and swimming in the sea. And what a great sea it is, full of some of the biggest waves we’ve ever seen, but just small enough to be playful and not dangerous. And play in and among them we most definitely do, along with the rest of a very joyful crowd of swimmers and wave riders. Although, with all these waves comes a tiny little bit of inconvenience in the shape of hundreds and hundreds of jellyfish. They’re spread all over the beach and they come upon us in, well, waves.
We ride the crests up and down, surf/swim, then out again. Then off for some sunbathing/reading. Then back out into the water. It’s a few hours of summer beach perfection until we declare ourselves done and head off for a drive. New destination: The cliffs of Moher.
What to say about this world famous landmark? Just that they’re so high, you can look down and see birds flying high above the sea. We’re over 200 metres above that sea at some points as we walk along the cliff edge. Well, not quite the cliff edge. Are you crazy? No. We’re safely inside the short wall, a comfortable distance away from the actual edge thankyou very much. But close enough to marvel again and again and again as we look along the seemingly endless stretch to more cliffs in the distance and even a small chain of islands. And again, with it being a Monday afternoon, we almost have this 14 kilometre long thing to ourselves as we pass very few tourists. It’s an absolute privilege to be here and we’re aware that we are in the presence of, and standing on top of, one of the true natural wonders of the world. And yep. I’ve just checked out worlds greatest cliffs, and right at the top, standing above all the others in more ways than one, is this very spot we’re standing on right now. It’s not just a walk. So many times we just stop and stare and try to take it all in. But really, that’s an impossible feat. You can never take this all in. You have have to keep trying and keep looking. Until that sad moment comes when you realise you have to go home. It’s either that or stay here forever. And believe me, that may well not be so hard to do. This truly is scenery the like of which neither of us has ever seen. With that, I’m touched with more than a tinge of guilt that I lived in Ireland for nine years way back when and never came here. Well, I’ve put that right now.
And we’re still not done as we get back in the car and head off in search of dinner. Now onto the lovely little town of Lisdoonvarna. We find a large hotel restaurant here and settle down for fish and chips while being entertained by a pretty cool and lively cover duo. But what blows me away here more than anything is that they’re playing for tips. It’s always been a given that original acts do not get paid. They can make money if people pay to see them – no upper ceiling; how big do you want your stadium? But unless you’re famous and are playing Mr millionaire’s birthday party, original acts do not actually get paid. It’s up to them to hustle. And on that, we have the hat. Cover acts on the other hand very much have a ceiling. It can get a little high, but it will never reach the stratosphere – alright, the occasional tribute act. You’ve got me. But you see what I mean. No. Cover acts get paid. Fill the diary, chuck the odd wedding in and you’ve got a nice enough full time earner. You won’t be retiring to the Caribbean in your yacht on it but if you’re able to play the game well enough, you can get by while it’s rocking. And that’s why people play covers. But for a tip jar now? That’s harsh. I’d never seen it until Hamburg, and I’ve been aware for a while that it can be common in some tip heavy cultures. But in Ireland? No. Original bands hustle – or take all the non paying gigs they can get in the hope of reaching the next level – and cover bands get paid. Original bands can strike it rich, but usually don’t, while cover bands can get by, and usually do. But here we now see the first creeping of the metaphorical hat into coverband territory. In Ireland. All of this is to say that I feel much better about the hat now. The first time we did it here we were told it wasn’t very Irish, although to be fair, we did quite well that night. On our first full hustle, the first guy we asked said he was uncomfortable with it. And to be fair, when we were contemplating it after our Berlin and Hamburg experiences, I was uncomfortable with it – still not quite got it in/on my head so to speak – and my one reservation about it being a financial way forward in Ireland was that culturally, it would not be accepted. I still can’t believe it has been totally accepted in the way that it has.
In Germany, once we became aware of the ubiquitous concept of the hat, whenever we saw a band we put in generously because, well, that’s what we were hoping people would do for us. Which could mean putting in two or three times a night because we were bar hopping, checking out venues and bands. Who would all then put a hat in front of us. And it was Germany, so we always carried cash; it’s still essentially a cash society. Now here we are, a lovely dinner in front of us after an amazing day out and we have a live act to enjoy it all to. And they really are very enjoyable. And guess what. Yep. We have no cash. Oh OK, we manage to scrabble a few coins together so that we can make it look like we’re joining in, but really, it’s not much more than appearances and solidarity between fellow hustling musicians. Sorry lads. We tried. And believe us, the intention was there.
Day 148
Sunday July 24
We decide to go to Trap just for a drink or two. As soon as we walk in we’re met with clapping and a small cheer from a section of the bar standing near the door. Now a few of those people come forwards and request a picture with us. Oh. OK. We do that and then continue checking the place out, because there’s clearly something going on out back. We walk through the bar and into the back function room which really is rocking. Just as we’re at the door and about to enter, someone comes out, see us and also requests a picture, giving his phone to a friend to do the, er, honours, I guess. Damn. This really feels like being famous.
The back bar thing is a Status Quo tribute act and they’ve really brought the crowds out tonight. General live music fans and committed fans. And Status Quo inspire a level loyalty in their fanbase that very few other bands enjoy. That loyalty is on full view here and is actually a little inspiring as the committed few work the room and pull other people up to dance. We grab a drink, find a great spot at a table in the middle of the room and get right into it, and yes, a dance or two. In an atmosphere like this, with a band this tight and into it, you really can’t not.
A few rounds in and I head into the front bar for another. Before I reach the actual bar, I’m enthusiastically introduced to a guy called Roy. Roy, I’m told, is a major promoter. He counts Dublin’s 3 Arena as one of his venues. Damn, this is the place that used to be The Point, Ireland’s biggest purpose built music venue with a capacity of 13,000. While I’m standing there, Roy is told all sorts of great things about us. Then he says to me, ‘Could you do a song or two for me in here now, or not now exactly, just some time tonight?’ I’m not entirely sure, but I’m met with something of a chorus of persuasion, so I say I’ll see what I can do. I’m not going to just get the guitar and have me and Maja do something in here without any licence at all. Not to mention the fact that she’ll want to be amplified. So I go and pull Maja out of the back room and tell her what’s just been asked and would she be up for it? Well, yeah, sure. We’ve both had a few drinks, but hey, it’s just a few songs and we know what we’re doing well enough. Let’s do it. Now to see if this can be done. Jimmy’s around and I ask him for a quick chat. I explain to him what’s going on and what we’ve been asked to do. It’s quite loud, even out here in the courtyard type area, and he’s not completely sure what I’m asking. To be fair, neither am I. His initial response is, ‘Not a chance.’ It’s not been planned and besides, there’s another band playing right now. I tell him we had no intention of this, but have an opportunity to play for a major promoter who’s specifically asked us to perform for him here and now. Jimmy ponders for a few seconds and says, ‘Yeah, but what money are you asking for?’ Money? No. Nothing. We don’t ask bars for money at all. We do the hat. But this being a kind of live audition, we might not even do that tonight. He thinks again. Whatever he says next I decide I’m going to have to have to accept because we’ve had enough of a back and forth and the volume is quite difficult to talk through. ‘Oh, OK then,’ he says. Brilliant. We’re on. I go and tell Maja, then I go into the front bar to tell Roy. He’s nowhere to be seen. But no worries, I’m told. He’s around. Just go get your gear and do your thing. OK. One impromptu instant show coming up.
By the time we’ve got back home, returned and set up, the show in the back bar is coming to an end. Word has got round that we’re about to play, and an expectant crowd is starting to form. Great. Except Roy is still not among them. He said he would be around all night and whenever we played would be fine. Well, where is he? I’m told various things. Out back, or maybe even gone to Dolans for a quick one. But we should just start, we’re told. If he doesn’t come, he can be sent a video. But that’s no good. We could have already just have given him a video link if that was the case. He wanted to see us. He asked us. Where is he? All fine, but the increasing crowd is starting to get a bit restless and really wants us to start. We say we’ll wait another ten minutes and if he doesn’t come, well, we’re all set up to play now. People clearly want a show, and so we’ll just play. But just the two or three songs, as that’s all we were planning to do, just so Roy could have a look.
Two or three songs. Yeah, right. But this is in danger of becoming like The Brazen Monkey; I have an unplugged guitar, while Maja has a microphone. I do my thing, walking among the room chugging out a few isolated chords as something of an introduction while Maja gets ready. I can immediately see this is very different to The Brazen Monkey. People are waiting. Their attention is held. They want to see us. Not slam Jager and burst balloons. We start. And it’s on. Instantly. The room is with us all the way. There’s not a single hope we’re getting out of here playing just two or three. Two or three in and it’s clear the room is just warming up. The cheers greeting the ends of our songs are enormous. Some of the reactions enter soccer jubilation territory. This is mad, and we’re just riding it. Me all over the place and Maja doing her thing from the stage. And in and among it all, our friend Cyvina is filming. We’re going to miss the end on the video because we were not expecting anything like this and my battery is not fully charged. But I can report that we get enough.
After song four or five, someone comes up to me to make a request. I tell him we only do our own songs, sorry. ‘These are all your own songs?’ he asks in incredulity. Yep. He takes a big step back and says, ‘Carry on.’ Brilliant. And so we do.
We end up playing around 40 minutes and it’s a full on sweaty affair, with the whole room involved and engaged. And here’s Jimmy, coming in for the party as well, and the two of us just rock it out when me and Maja break out our latest song – The Cat – for it’s first appearance.
When we finish, the call for an encore is absolutely irresistible. We blast into How You Rock’n’Roll. We’ve already played I Like You (Better When You’re Naked), but of course we’re not going to get away with not playing it again. Bar regular Alan is with us right at the front, being a great cheerleader and supporter, and now he turns MC. He announces to the crowd that we’re now going to play what he calls our hit. You all know it, he says. Over to us. It’s into a frenzy that we launch our final song and our second encore. And when it’s all over, Cyvina comes up to us and in some jubilation presents us with our hat. Oh wow. She’s already taken it upon herself to do the hat. And it’s full. People really have gotten into the spirit of it and very generously put in. By far our biggest ever take. And for a show we had absolutely no idea of when we came in here tonight. It’s fair to say it’s up there with the very best we’ve done, and certainly the most vociferously received. Although yes, Laksmi in Berlin still holds its very special place in our memories. But tonight? Oh wow. Just the size of it. The full show-ness of it. The hat result. The expectation. Yes, this was a big one. But Roy is still nowhere to be seen. As far as we’re aware, he missed it all.
And here’s a part of what he missed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhjg2Wp0I8&t=29s
Day 149
Monday July 25
The owner of our local music shop in Tullamore recommended a specific guitar for us a while back, one that he was just starting to get in. He has a really good feel for our sound and totally understands what kinds of demands our hard hitting, low tuning and high energy performances place on a guitar. This is a monster of a guitar from Tanglewood and we go in today to have a look at it. He says it can handle low end better than just about anything in the price range, has a larger, stronger body, and can be extra reinforced just for us. It’s a Harry Potter wand moment. As soon as we take it off the wall, it already feels like ours. And I don’t need to play it for more than a few seconds to confirm that fact. It has a sound and feel unlike anything I’ve ever experienced from an acoustic. Just enormous. Huge action – meaning the strings are set high above the fretboard. But that’s fine. The way we play, we really need that extra room for string vibration.
Day 151
Wednesday July 27
Maja leaves for Sweden today. The plan now is that I will have a couple of weeks to really hit the studio, rerecording all the guitar parts with the new guitar. Then the bass down, then onto the drums. Basically to get as much as I can of the backing tracks down. We’ve decided to take advantage of Maja’s Sweden trip for a brief European tour because, get this, she’s driving there from here, then driving all the way back again. So, we decided, why not come back together, hitting a few different countries on the way? And we decided to begin that together bit in Berlin, sometime in the second week of August. Then after Berlin we’ll play it as we go, hitting another country or hopefully two, before returning to Ireland on August 24 through France.
Day 152
Thursday July 28
My studio stuff doesn’t quite work out as planned. The day Maja leaves I get sick. And stay sick for a little over a week. I do manage to get some studio time in when I’ve recovered, but not as much as I was hoping for. During this period we decide to head to Berlin on August 11 by which time I’ve at least managed to get all my guitar parts in.
Day 158
Wednesday August 3
A message comes from Maja to tell me that she’s bought the equipment we need to go wireless, something we’ve been discussing lately. Now she’s gone and actually sorted it out. Just brilliant. Another step forwards in our presentation. We’ll be trying this out for the first time when we play the first show of our next European tour.
Day 161
Saturday August 6
Recovering from being sick and just kind of meandering to take off, while getting back into the studio and really getting those double tracked guitars down. Then my phone pings. It’s a guy saying he works with Roy and that Roy would like to meet us. I Text back and say that Maja’s not in Clara right now and that we’re going on tour soon, but I’m around. Great, comes the message back. If you’d like to meet, Roy’s in Dolans right now and he’d like to talk to you. Oh. Oh. OK. So I take myself off to Dolans, and on the way I get another text telling me exactly where he is in there. Fine. And yep, I do find him. It’s a good job I was told where he was actually, over by the side next to the fireplace. Because the place is packed. Of course it is. It’s Saturday night.
He’s a bit surprised and confused when I go and say hi and that I understand he wanted to see me. I’m now confused that he’s confused, and I show him the text communications I’ve had in the past half hour or so. ‘Oh, that’s just someone in here playing silly beggars,’ he says. I’m confused even more. ‘I do want to talk to you as it happens, but this is someone just trying to insert themselves into the deal.’ The deal? What the hell? Roy continues. ‘Look, I was planning on calling you,’ and he pulls out our card from his top pocket. Right there in his pocket. He immediately tells me to forget whoever was texting me, and I never do find out who it was. But it looks like someone got wind that Roy was interested in working with us and decided to, as he says, insert themselves into the deal as a middleman. What the hell? People are inserting themselves into potential deals involving us now? Apparently. ‘So you did see us?’ I ask. ‘I did. I kept myself at the back, but I saw alright. Then a few days later I saw a bit more on some videos I was sent.’ Oh, again. OK. ‘Look,’ Roy continues, ‘I know Maja’s away…’ He knows? ‘When is she getting back?’ ‘Well, she isn’t,’ I begin. ‘Well, she is, but I’m meeting her before then. In Berlin in a few days, and then we’re going on tour for a few weeks.’ ‘Great. And you’re back when?’ ‘August 23rd. So, last week in August.’ ‘Cool,’ Roy says. ‘When you get back, give me a call and we’ll see about starting to get some gigs arranged. You’d be looking at something in the €500 region. Sound good?’ This is mad, but I don’t blink. ‘Yeah, but you do know we only play originals right?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Great then. I’ll let you get back to it and I’ll be in touch.’ ‘Do that.’ We shake hands and I’m out of there, his number on a piece of paper he’s just written on for me. I go across the road to The Trap, get a beer, go in the back garden and get in touch with Maja.
‘You’ll never guess what’s just happened.’
As we discuss this, now and in the next few days, we decide this is even bigger than getting the fabled record deal. We talk about that thing when bands have this or that label interested in them, or maybe when a new band gets signed and it’s all go for them, but a record deal could still go all kinds of ways south. This is much more than that as far as we’re concerned. This is what looks like a major promoter looking to get involved and to throw us straight in. Record deals. For a start, what does that even mean today? No, this is getting in with someone offering gigs, very well paying ones right from the off, and with a line to The 3 Arena. The Point. Ireland’s biggest music venue. We have no idea what to imagine. Support gigs with major artists? Probably some smaller gigs to start at smaller venues to see how we get on. Surely not straight to the arena. I’m guessing we’d have to really earn our stripes first. But he’s talking real money straight from the off. What kind of gigs would they be? Not basic pub gigs, that’s for sure. Not at €500 for a new original band. And what kind of new original band gets €500 a gig? What kind of gig even pays that for an original act? But even forgetting the money, with no idea how regular those kinds of gigs would be, this really does look like a potential line to really getting this thing started. We conclude that our job now is to sharpen ourselves up with a solid series of gigs in Europe, then get back and make the call.
Could this really be it? Or whatever that ‘it’ thing is?
