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Written by DavidP
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Jan 08, 2009 at 06:54 AM |
On The Road With DP
Notes From a Banjoist’s Journal
Friday, 21 December, 2008 Mental Home - Leytonstone, East London.
My agent rang with this job with just one day’s notice and I was unable to play 4.00-6.00pm as requested. The client accepted 2.00-4.00pm instead so I duly arrived at the nastiest job of the year. One woman, who must have weighed around 40 stone, stared at me while I was setting up. She sang along a little but continued to stare throughout the performance. The venue was dark, dreary, dirty and smelly. I was given a cup of tea in a stained cup and began the show to less than half a dozen inmates. One man became violent at regular intervals, shouting and screaming abuse to all and sundry. White coated staff appeared each time to take him to the garden for ‘settling’. As there was virtually no audience and nil response, I set the backing tracks to auto pilot, performed the show as if I was at the Palladium, packed up and left just a food was arriving and a party was commencing. I guess they really did want a 6.00 pm start so they must have had their party and missed the entertainment. Well, I got paid and was glad to leave and find fresh air - such is the musician’s life!
Friday, 11th January, 2008. Keep-Fit Society. Dance, Wanstead, London.
To this cavernous hall I took just clarinet and sousaphone and small P.A. system. There was a sigh of relief on our arrival as it seems someone on the Keep-fit committee had given us the incorrect start time and we should have begun earlier. Boy, did we work that night as the very fit audience was in the mood to dance for the full three hours of our performance. I always find that a little friendly patter and vocals with most numbers, makes a connection with the punters. It certainly helps to relive any tension, and makes them feel relaxed about taking to the floor. Fortunately, I had booked a bass player who was happy to work with me in laying down a strong, uncomplicated rhythm. Banjo players should remember this and work with the rhythm section to produce a solid, swinging grove, easily identified by dancers. We learnt at the end of the evening that the dancers had preferred our trio to the eight-piece band plus female vocaliste hired to play at their last function. And it seems we were more expensive - well I guess you get what you pay for!
Friday, 29th February, 2008 Epping Green, Essex. A telephone call from my local public house alerted me to the fact that several regulars had requested a live jazz evening in the pub and that my website had been the first to pop up for local jazz. I arranged a reduction in the fee seeing as I had a mere 150 yards to travel and booked a clarinettist and double-bass player. Of course, when we arrived, the publican who booked us was long gone but the new incumbent was honouring the contract.
I told several acquaintances about the event and many came to eat a meal in its restaurant and see how banjoist and superstar does it! Well, we worked hard and played our hearts out putting on a good professional show with well known tunes and lots of vocals. However, all we heard from the punters was, “Don’t know nuffin’ about this sort o’ stuff. I like Zed Leplin” The manager was a characterless, faceless man who neither thanked us nor gave us and orange juice. “’ave you got an invoice?”, he blurted out. “No”, I said, “but I can write you one here and now and send a typed invoice tomorrow” He reluctantly agreed before handing over the bundle of cash, all still with an expressionless face. No wonder pubs don’t thrive with dummies like that at the helm. During the next week, someone from the pub rang to ask for the invoice...some hope!
Saturday, 1st March, 2008. Epping Green. Two men (cousins) who had seen me at a recent gig booked a lesson for that morning. I duly ran off all the paper work and beginners’ stuff for them to study and get started. I was surprised when they both turned up with tenor banjo after I had prepared everything for plectrum banjo. I should have checked, I guess. Both were quite advanced in playing three chords; C, F and G7! They had had regular meetings with each other and plonked away at their great achievement to there hearts’ content. Trying to make them read one note of music or learn a fourth chord, was a nightmare as their fingers would move only to the aforementioned shapes. Each had worn groves in the fingerboards where these elementary chords had so oft been performed.
Successive lessons were booked where I tried to get them to play really simple exercises reading only the open strings (C,G,D,A) but we went from weeks of them learning the strings upside-down to weekly forgetting that the low string was a C. Each week I explained slowly and carefully how to play the simple stuff: there was nothing more elementary to give them.
Eventually, after several weeks of them arriving, remembering nothing from the previous week and having done no practice, in fact, nothing but play their three favourite chords, they failed to arrive for a lesson. I sighed with relief!
Sunday 6th April, 2008 Ealing Guitar Society - Recital.
Now, playing a recital is a specialised job requiring a vast amount of rehearsing. When I see an actual concert or recital in the book, I begin preparing early. I know I will be favoured with an interested and attentive audience so I like to return the compliment and arrange a list of pieces as varied as possible from my current repertoire - or if not current, items that I can learn and perform in time. If you have a concert to perform, don’t make the mistake of preparing a programme of stuff you have never performed before otherwise the nerves will get the better of you: better to play material that’s tried and tested and with which you will feel confident on stage. Here’s how my plan turned out. After my walk-on Superstar jingle, the piano/bass/drums backing track rolled immediately into All Of Me, a standard I can play with my eyes closed and a good number to kick off with to get feet tapping and warm up the fingers, etc. Next was Calliope Rag with simple piano accompaniment followed by Isle Of Capri as a Cha Cha - once through straight, double-stops from half way, second chorus - improvised, third with all the stops out. Next, a sonorous September In The Rain in swing rhythm, then Sway, a rumba. The theme from Love Story pricked up the ears of the audience, surprised to hear this on banjo, then Hello Dolly with just a bass backing for the first 16 bars and introducing a vocal as a change of colour.
Basin Street Blues allowed me freedom to play a little jazz, before C’est Si Bon in punchy Latin rhythm.
For a complete contrast, I put a little Bach piece with piano accompaniment on the menu and followed it with Steven Foster’s Old Folks At Home played slow then fast tempo with vocal. Yellow Bird to a Lambada track went down well as did a hotted up Take Your Pick to complete the first half.
During the interval, I sold a good number of my CDs and the classical guitar enthusiasts chatted, all wanting to see the Ome Vegavox, intrigued as to how all that noise was emulating from just the one instrument. The guitar, especially the classical version, is, of course, a very much quieter instrument. The banjo, subtly amplified and made bigger by a little reverb, filled the room and why not?
A vocal version of I Can’t Give You Anything But Love eased me into the second half which also contained more Latin (I like it on the banjo - don’t you?) viz. Manha De Carnaval, Besame Mucho, and Hernando’s Hideaway (tango), Never On a Sunday (Chaguiro). I included another rag (Joplin’s Entertainer), another film theme (Godfather), Over The Rainbow, Harry Lime Theme and Winchester Cathedral just for fun.
At the end, the organiser handed over the nitty-gritty and asked if the audience had enjoyed the evening. What a funny question, I thought until I realised that he had spent most of the time messing around in the kitchen with the girl who made the tea!
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Last Updated ( Apr 01, 2009 at 01:20 PM )
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On The Road With DP 
