For somebody with no inherent musical skill – probably as a result of singularly failing to engage with opportunities to learn music at school, something I’d love to have a word with past-Alan about – it’s a bit of a surprise how much musical performance I’ve ended up doing over the last few years.
My first foray was with the Star Copiers – a venture that started with two friends who were learning guitar, a challenge set by a friend organising a festival that saw a fledgling band start along with another friend on vocal duties.
After they’d performed a few times, at another festival a drunken conversation with Mark saw me say something foolish like “you know what you need, someone to sit on one of those box things to keep you in time“, “Good idea!” he said “You’ve got the job – go and buy one of those box things!“
And so it began, I managed to bash my way through the first cheap eBay cajon (and learned what a cajon was called), so bought a more expensive one, visiting a dealer in his warehouse and feeling like a massive fraud – and well, we actually managed to secure some pretty cool gigs for a bunch of mates pissing around covering songs in our own inimitable style. We even recorded a couple of songs and released them into the wild to raise money for St. Giles hospice, even securing a donation in exchange for some t-shirts from the frontman of Alice Donut, the band whose song we covered in tribute to our dear friend Richard.
Along the way I was invited to perform on my box with Ferocious Dog, Nick Parker, Dis-honest Foke, Morganella and a fair few other artists. It’s funny how things escalate from one throwaway comment at a festival, isn’t it?
As the Star Copiers fizzled out, the Car Boot Bandits came to the fore – pretty much the same deal from my point of view, cover versions (and one original song – which I wrote after learning to butcher a few chords on a ukulele), but then Covid-19 landed and it really took the wind out of the band sails, never managing to reconvene after the world closed down for a year and a bit. That said, I did record a song for Pete Drake (another artist I’ve box-banged with!) utilising ukuleles, cajon and some backing vocals from Ella for his Pete Drake Project album under the Car Boots Bandits name, despite the rest of the band not being involved due to lockdown restrictions.
Something submitted jokingly to Radio Nottingham of our only original song saw the local station make some kind of collaboration/mash-up with LadBaby too. I wasn’t sure whether to be honoured or horrified!
Running in parallel with these acts were Darwin’s Rejects – another group of festival friends, but with I think it’s fair to say a more ambitious end-game. Sometimes at festivals we mix-and-matched line-ups on festival open-mic stages, usually under the name of the Egyptian Whores. A couple of times when their percussionist Jim wasn’t available for a gig I was asked to deputise on my box – a real honour and always fun! At this time mostly a cover band too, but with a couple of their own songs in the mix. It made me realise how much I’d missed both the performing aspect of being in a band, but also the camaraderie of rehearsals.
It must have been obvious to everyone else, not least Ella as well as the rest of the Darwin’s (at that time) boys. A plan was hatched. Warren had determined the missing piece for the band’s sound was bass guitar, “you could learn that” he said to me I thought jokingly when we were rehearsing ahead of a gig I was covering for Jim. I didn’t take it too seriously, albeit idly fantasising that this could be a cool idea. Bass is like a fusion of percussion and guitar really after all!
In the background this conversation carried on between Warren and Ella – and on Christmas morning 2022 a lovely rubber stringed bass ukulele was under the tree for me. Okay, I might have got wind of this before Christmas even if I wasn’t permitted to open it before then! I dutifully signed up to some bass resources online and started to methodically try to learn to play, and progressed pretty well – but with gigs mounting up and me trying to learn ‘properly’ rehearsals left me feeling very out of my depth.
So I refocused, I developed a ‘cheat sheet’ template (initially on paper, now on an iPad) and realised that whilst I wouldn’t be a virtuoso I could get away with moving around mostly root notes to add some passable depth to our songs. Initially training myself to move round the fretboard I probably did one note per bar, but then built up to add some different patterns to lock into Jim’s drums. I progressed more quickly – I was on stage within a couple of months for my debut a couple of months from receiving my first bass guitar. Terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.
Since then we’ve been working on more of our own material – I love the collaborative approach, working out what patterns sound best for my parts, I’ve even offered up songs of my own which sates the creative writing dearth as we’re trying to work up enough songs to make up what will be our debut album later this year. The EP we released last year came a little too soon for me to actually play on so whilst I can merrily play those songs now, back then it made more sense for Warren to do it – so from a personal pride point of view I’m excited to actually have my own contributions laid down in recordings.
So yeah, the accidental performer thing seems to be such a recurring theme that it must just be something about me – I absolutely love being on a stage and hopefully contributing to something that people are enjoying. We’ve had some great feedback and I’m really excited about some of the things we’ve been working on that have yet to make it out into the wild – all of this stems back to innocently making a suggestion to Mark all those years ago about the need for a dude sitting on a box keeping time.
In the meantime I now have a choice of two basses – both ukulele sized albeit tuned like.a regular bass guitar, I like the quirkiness and convenience of size, a choice in pedal set ups, an amp – hmm, expensive hobby indeed. That’s what Russ always describes being in a grassroots band as being – and he’s not wrong, haha! But it’s a whole lot of fun!
It’s probably not escaped the attentions of many that I’ve been a bit of a grump of late – changes at work have been troublesome, and I succumbed to illness which I’m probably still coming out the back end of in terms of recovery. That said, there’s been a plenty of good things too – live music aplenty, meeting 
Goddammit 
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