#001
Set List
Sons of the North
The Beast
War & Churches
Father Knows Best
Spectrum
While Away
Tom’s Tap, Crewe
Fourteenth of June, twenty-twenty-five. James Farmer AKA Tiny Pioneers caught a rough draft of “While Away” that I shot on my webcam the day I wrote it. I was only planning on sending it to Mike - the last mate I still have from the group that the song’s about - but I went on a bit of a dopamine hunt and posted it to a couple of local Facebook groups as well. James saw it, dropped me a message asking if I wanted to be in his next “Secret Songwriters” night at Tom’s Taps. I’m a secret, and I’m a songwriter, so why not?
So now I have officially my first gig; not playing cover songs, not “creating ambience”; I’m on a stage for 30-minutes, with 100% of my own material, and whoever’s in the room is staying there purely to watch people perform.
There was me, Tiny Pioneers and Violet Cry. Considering most of Crewe was already smashed and knackered from the town’s Pride event during the day, we still had a room full of people hanging onto every song, which is no mean feat, but apparently not unusual at this place. At this level, getting a bunch of people to give a toss about music they’ve never heard before is like hearing a Guardian subscriber say they’re wrong about something; rare, deserved and delicious.
I made friends, I sang my melodramatic little heart out, and after six months of shaking my way through open mics struggling to be heard, I truly felt present; like a good performer, who made it a night worth leaving the house for. Another rarity these days.