GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW… REVIEW!

“When it was 2024
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for playing TRAD. JAZZ CLARIONET
And bassoon and flute and other things
I’d write long blog posts about it
And make silly graphs
When it was 2024.”

 
The year 2024 was a significant one for many reasons, but from a personal viewpoint it was particularly memorable because it gave rise to a brand new feature on my blog: The Gig Review! Over the course of the 12 months I kept a rigorous record of all my musical performances, which I then collated into a monthly digest for the world to enjoy. The end result was a series of blog posts that, taken together, make up a complete picture of a year in my life as a performing musician. Every concert, every jazz club, every wedding reception and every pit orchestra appearance was chronicled along with all the little adventures that form an inseparable part of the wandering minstrel’s career.

Well now 2024 is in the past, but before I completely draw a line under that chapter of my life it seems like a fun idea to have a look back on the year as a whole. And therefore I present to you ‘The Gig Review… Review’, in which I will cast my eye over some of the highlights, some of the lowlights, and some of the downright weird things that came my way last year. But that’s not all, for I’m well aware that the one thing people these days really want is STATISTICS, so I’ve even gone so far as to draw up some vibrant graphs and calculate some fun figures with which you can wow your friends next time conversation seems at risk of drying up.

Before I get too carried away though, in the interests of clarity I’m going to define what I mean by a ‘gig’ in the context of this retrospective. For my purposes, a ‘gig’ shall be any performance (paid or unpaid), and any paid rehearsal. For example, a musical theatre show that consists of 2 rehearsals and 5 performances will count as 7 gigs (even though it only amounts to one booking). Now, I’m aware that there are some professional musicians out there who would take issue with my including unpaid performances, but for my purposes I consider them equally relevant. Plus, I only did 4 over the whole year – in fact, allow me to illustrate that point as I mean to continue by way of a graph:
 

Not included in my definition of a ‘gig’ are unpaid rehearsals, recording sessions, commissioned compositions (i.e. my ‘Bird of Paradise’ film score), cancelled bookings, and busking sessions.

I believe that is all the prior knowledge you need in order to fully enjoy this latest addition to the blogosphere. So let’s all take a deep breath, count to ten, and get ready to dive into some STATISTICS!
 

The first and most obvious question you may have is, when all is said and done, how many gigs did I actually do over the course of the year? Well, drum roll please (or failing that, a low-pitched trill on the contrabassoon) as I reveal the 2024 total…
 

 
Wow, that is quite a lot actually. A performance every 3 days – no wonder I was tired! But now let’s delve a little deeper. If only there were a graph that could show me how those gigs were distributed over the year’s 12 months…
 

Now that is interesting. I always think of the summer months as the busy time, with winter being basically dead and the rest of the year fairly average. This, however, seems to tell a different story. Sure, January was desolate as ever, but broadly speaking the first half of 2024 was on the quieter side (with June being particularly fallow for a summer month), and it was only from July onwards that things got really busy. October and November were my most hectic months overall, and I attribute this to my doing full runs of 3 separate musical theatre shows, which really served to fill out the diary.

Clearly the supply of gigs ebbs and flows over the seasons – summer is the time for weddings after all, and Christmas is the time for Christmas parties (unless you’re really odd). But what were the most common types of performance on the whole? Let’s have a look…
 

It seems that musical theatre gigs and their associated rehearsals make up the biggest piece of the pie. But that’s the advantage of booking in a whole run of performances in one go! Looking a little closer, we see that weddings – the perennial employer of musicians – were a common form of gig, and there were plenty of birthday parties looking for aural entertainment. My work with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band ensured that agricultural shows accounted for a significant portion, whilst my role in The Dixie Beats meant that I was twice as likely to be found grooving in a jazz club than performing in a formal concert!

All this talk of different bands has now got me wondering, which ensembles did I end up playing with the most over 2024? Here’s a tasty pie to give you an idea:
 

Anyone who knows me well will not be surprised to see that Jelly Roll was by far my most regular band, but musical theatre gigs equal it precisely in terms of quantity. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the orchestra last year, however The Dixie Beats had a good innings with an average one gig per month, and my recent branching out into solo saxophone performance has resulted in a healthy dark blue chunk at the top of the chart.

Interesting stuff. So interesting that I feel I need to move on and think about something else for a bit, but before I do I would like to present my first award of the Gig Review… Review! For I may have done over 120 gigs last year, many of them involving variations on familiar repertoire, but there is one particular collection of music that I was asked to play over and over and over again in pretty much exactly the same way every time. And therefore, ladies and gentlemen:
 

 

Anyone reading my Gig Reviews for the first time may be forgiven for thinking that this is a travel blog rather than a music blog. And it’s often been said that a ‘professional musician’ is basically equivalent to a professional driver with a few musical instruments thrown in. Now, I was well aware that I’d spent a lot of time in the car last year but even I was surprised when I found out exactly how much. Can I request another contrabassoon trill please, as I reveal…
 

 
Phew, that’s a lot! My average gig, then, required a 100-mile round trip in the car – and let me remind you I took public transport and got lifts for a significant number of journeys! Also, remember that doesn’t include the driving I do in my spare time for leisure and visiting friends and late night joyriding. I’ve driven nearly 12000 miles purely for the purpose of playing music.

Yes that’s quite a distance, but is it really that surprising? Not when you look at the following map, which shows the locations of all my 2024 gigs:
 

Of course there’s a significant cluster around Manchester, where I’m based, but the rest of them cover most of the length and breadth of the country. Furthest north is Musselburgh Racecourse, where I performed for their Ladies Day with Jelly Roll. Down at the other end is that wedding I did near Exeter in January, the day after I’d added my most easterly point to the map playing at a funeral in Great Yarmouth. I even made it as far west as Snowdonia, performing at a wedding with Jelly Roll back in August.

What’s not so easy to determine from the map is what the actual driving distances were like for each of the gigs. And so you may find yourself wondering, what was the furthest I had to go to perform last year? I sense another award coming on…
 

 
But not every gig is a million miles away. To make up for some of my more ridiculous travels, I have had a reasonable share of local gigs:
 

 
Those Thursday night trad. jazz gigs just couldn’t be any more convenient for me if they tried!

I’m pleased to say that I have emerged unscathed from all this travelling, but I must say there have been one or two journeys I would rather forget about. There was the trip from Manchester to Leeds in May which took 4.5 hours instead of 1.5 on account of all the roads being closed for Leeds Marathon. There was the 9 mile journey I did in November which took an hour because of football traffic. There was the drive to Worstead where my sat-nav stopped working 10 minutes away from the destination. The drive from Chepstow to Manchester on 27th December that took 5.5 hours instead of 3 because of (you guessed it) traffic. You get the idea… But there’s one journey that sticks in my head as by far the most stressful, to the point where when I got home I had to buy some prosecco and a large bar of chocolate to calm my nerves:
 

 
I realise I’m breaking one of my own rules there by referencing a gig that was ultimately cancelled, but I think the fact that I still had to do the drive makes it worthy of the award! If you don’t believe me, here’s a reminder of just how bad it got:
 

That’s the bad side of doing so much travelling, but let’s not forget it has its upsides as well. I get to see a lot of the country and take in much of its diverse and varied scenery. So this is what I’d like to honour in my next presentation…
 

 
And let’s take a moment to remind ourselves why…
 


 

Whilst it would be lovely to always perform in a nice warm, well lit, acoustically pleasant environment, or outdoors on a calm sunny day in the middle of summer, the nature of gigging life means such situations are not always possible. I can end up playing on any day of the week, at practically any time of day, in pretty much any location, and I’d now like to celebrate that by thinking about some of the best and worst performance situations I found myself in over 2024.

Let’s start with a nice practical one. It’s common knowledge that I play quite a few different instruments, and my musical theatre work ensures I’m regularly required to play several in a single performance. But what’s the most I had to bring along to a gig last year…?
 

 
There was a lot of instrument juggling going on in that gig, I tell you (especially seeing as I was seated sideways-on to the musical director). Here they all are in various stages of assembly:
 

Of course not every client who books a wedding or birthday party chooses the venue based on its sound (unfortunately), and as a result I often find myself having to deal with all sorts of undesirable echoes and reverberations. So let’s have a look at the next two awards which take in the full range of acoustic environments…
 

 

That wedding anniversary I played for in September with Jelly Roll was the only time this year I remember actively noticing how pleasant the acoustic was, adding a roundness to our sound without drowning it in echoes. It was originally built as a concert venue after all, and I’m pleased to say it lived up to expectation.
 

 
Another Jelly Roll gig saw us performing for a birthday party in the upstairs room of this delightful Italian restaurant. While it may be ideally suited to munching on pizza, it sadly didn’t lend itself as well to music (despite the presence of a grand piano). Being quite a small, reverberant room, all the sounds seemed to pile on top of each other to create an unholy mess of musical instruments and chatting voices, each straining to be heard above the rest. Non buono!

While we’re thinking about disappointing environments, let’s consider the weather. I’ve had my fair share of cold rainy outdoor gigs over the last year, notably Kelso Racecourse which tends to hit us with particularly unfavourable conditions on a regular basis. However I’d like to give the next award to weather that didn’t affect my own performance too much, but did defeat the purpose of the entire event itself…
 

 
For this occasion the venue was ensconced in a thick blanket of fog, meaning not only was it impossible to see the racecourse but it was also impossible to see the nearby screens that were supposed to display live video feeds of the racecourse! I hope the horses could see which way they were going because we certainly couldn’t.
 

And now I’d like to hand over to a very special friend of mine. Followers of The Jelly Roll Jazz Band will be familiar with our faithful mascot Clarence the Clarinet-Playing Cat, who accompanies us to every performance and usually gets a selfie to commemorate the occasion. Well he’s only small and quite easily gets himself into unfavourable scrapes, as we’ll see in considering the next award:
 

 
Here is a snapshot of the very culprit, mere moments before the drama ensued:
 

We were genuinely worried about Clarence when this over-inquisitive mutt carried him off into the distance, and breathed quite the sigh of relief when we later discovered him passed out in front of a colossal mound of cake.

As I’ve already stated, while Kelso Racecourse have been very appreciative and loyal in having us perform 4 times over the course of 2024, the location itself is seldom as kind to us. The first time we played there in March it became so cold and rainy that by the end of it my lips were barely flexible enough to form words, let along a clarinet embouchure. And for that reason…
 

 
Cor blimey, I don’t half complain! Don’t worry though – I’m now going to celebrate some of the year’s most fun moments. And I’m going to start with the award for ‘best outfit’. I don’t get to dress up that much for performances, and when I do it’s usually just small variations on a theme. For concerts I usually have to wear a dinner suit or all-black. The Dixie Beats have a regular uniform, whereas for Jelly Roll gigs and solo bookings I normally don some sort of suit and tie ensemble. But back in May I played at a party with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band down in Somerset (which didn’t actually make it into the Gig Review at the time, so I do apologise) and one of my bandmates lent me the most fantastic jacket to wear, which even brought about the birth of a brand new character…
 

 

So that’s the clothing celebrated. But how about venues? When you think of musicians performing you probably think mainly of theatres and stages, but I am fortunate enough to enjoy a vast array of locations and situations in my gigging life. Particularly fun are the vehicles – in the past I’ve played on vintage cars, open-top buses, a miniature railway and even a tank. And it is with that in mind that I’d like to present my next prize…
 

 
Because what could be better on a balmy summer’s evening than floating along the River Severn playing a TRAD. JAZZ clarionet version of ‘My Heart Will Go On’ for a celebratory retirement party?
 

In terms of stamina, not all gigs are created equal. Some are more intensive than others, requiring a lot of concentration over a sustained period, while others allow more space for relaxation and rest. Then of course, some performances are just a lot longer than others – as my next 2 awards will demonstrate!
 

 
Ironically this performance was a bit too far away to qualify for the ‘Most Local Gig’ award, however as I was a guest artiste who only joined in for a rendition of ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ it does not go without a prize.
 

 

‘Longest Gig’ is a bit of a tricky one to judge, seeing as I’ve done quite a few performances that involve a total 3 hours of playing spread out over various time intervals. But I’ve chosen to give it to the Lancashire Show because not only was the playing time distributed over an approximately 6-hour period, but it was also repeated over 3 consecutive days to give a total 9 hours of performing! Oof!

And now for the final presentation in this section, which is the award for ‘Weirdest Gig’. Because it’s all well and good doing prestigious events in glamorous concert venues, but let’s be honest the most fun gigs are the ones that are just darned peculiar! There have been quite a few this year, ranging from the opening of a(nother) hearing clinic in Sevenoaks to a surprisingly brief theatre foyer performance in Rhyl. I’ve had a few interesting experiences at funerals as well in 2024 but it seemed a little disrespectful to lampoon them publicly, and therefore it is with great pride that I announce:
 

 
I wasn’t even sure what the occasion was until I turned up for this one, but by the time I was playing ‘Dance Monkey’ in the corner of the living room of an Airbnb in a remote town in Wales, while a group of tipsy 60-something-year-old women boogied the evening away on the rug in front of me, I was left in little doubt. They even made me a packed tea for my journey home!
 

Playing music is great and all that, but sometimes it’s the extra little bonuses that make a gig really special. For that reason I’d now like to honour 2 gigs that sent me home with a spring in my step for reasons completely unrelated to the performance itself!
 

 

You seldom know quite what you’re going to get when food is provided at gigs – all too often the best you can hope for is an egg sandwich, which you have to try and appreciate while all around you wedding guests are enjoying a full 3-course gourmet meal. But playing at Farndale Show with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band is never disappointing as they provide the most fantastic buffet which we look forward to every year.
 

 

I’d been meaning to get myself some new sunglasses since leaving mine halfway along the Transpennine Trail back in 2022. So I really felt it was my lucky day when I was playing walkaround TRAD. JAZZ at the Bath and West Show with Jelly Roll, and a stallholder stopped us to ask, “How many free pairs of sunglasses would we have to give you to play a song outside our stall?”
 

Normally at an awards ceremony you’d expect an ‘audience award’ to be an award, as voted for by the audience. My version is a little bit different, however, as these are awards presented to audiences themselves, without whom my entire career would be deemed fairly pointless! So let’s go straight in at the deep end with my next 2 presentations…
 

 

Playing at informal events it’s usually quite easy to interact with an audience, and not unusual for people to come for a chat or tell you that they’ve enjoyed the performance. But in musical theatre the musicians are often the unsung heroes, with most of the audience leaving before they even finish playing the ‘exit music’. Northwich ‘Oliver!’ was an exception though, as we were seated in front of the stage, where we received a surprising number of appreciative comments from audience members on their way out. Thank you audience! No, thank you! No no, really, thank YOU…!
 

 
Over the whole year, only once in the Gig Review did I actually complain about an audience’s response, and this was it. I would have preferred heckles and boo-ing to the complete bland indifference we received from this lot! Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.
 

The nature of playing at parties and celebrations means you often play for crowds who are maybe not entirely safe to drive. This is the subject of my next award, in which I performed in the ‘Pommery Champagne Garden’ and particularly enjoyed the progression of watching the audience become gradually drunker over the course of the day:
 

 

And when you consider that in 2024 I played in the cider tent at the Bath and West Show, the beer tent at the Lancashire Show, and Bowland Brewery for a wedding reception, that’s quite saying something!

One of the challenges of working as a musician is having to organise a wide range of bookings, all with different locations and timings and individual quirks, with clients that have varying degrees of administrative ability. There was one 2024 client, however, who blew me away by the amount of detail and precision with which they conducted their event…
 

 
I knew things were going to be easy when she sent me a comprehensive PDF detailing every conceivable minutia, even including a photo of the person we would be dealing with on the day!

My next prize is dedicated to repeat audience members, but particularly those you least expect to come across. Obviously when you play the same venues on a regular basis you get used to seeing familiar faces, but once in a while someone turns up who is such a surprise that you can’t quite believe the coincidence.
 

 
When I (eventually) arrived at this gig, the last thing I was expecting was to meet someone who had seen me perform at their grandfather’s birthday party in Billericay back in 2017!

Now I don’t pretend that, as a professional in the showbiz industry, I spend all my time mixing with the rich and famous. However it’s not unheard-of to come across the occasional minor celebrity. In recent years these have included such leading lights as the Reverend Kate Bottley, Jodie Prenger and Rylan Clark, but the recipient of my next award gets a special honour for referring to me and my colleagues as the best orchestra he’s ever heard!
 

 

The final presentation in my ‘audience awards’ is dedicated to all those people who come up to me and just say really weird things. Sometimes it’s vaguely insulting (“You’re a very good musician. What do you do for a living?” or “Did you just not fancy bringing your saxophone today?”), sometimes just absurd (“Are you brothers?”), and sometimes – in the case of this recipient – a particularly fine example of the ‘backhanded compliment’…
 

 

No it’s not the end of the article – not quite! Before I get to that, I need to present the award for my most favouritest gig EVER (or at least, of 2024). This is made slightly easier by my having chosen a regular ‘Gig of the Month’, which means I have 12 possibilities to choose from. So before we go any further, let’s remind ourselves of the nominees…
 

1. Debussy ‘La Mer’, Ravel ‘Pavane’, Berlioz ‘Symphonie Fantastique’, Stockport Symphony Orchestra (January)
2. ‘Oliver!’, Mid Cheshire Musical Theatre Company, Northwich (February)
3. Joint 60th/70th birthday party, Solo saxophone, Maesteg (March)
4. ‘Regain Hearing’ branch opening, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band, Sevenoaks (April)
5. The Royal Bath and West Show, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band (May)
6. Thetford wedding, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band (June)
7. ‘Company’, Southport Spotlights Musical Theatre Company (July)
8. Farndale Show, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band (August)
9. Clitheroe wedding, The Jelly Roll Jazz Band (September)
10. ‘Little Shop of Horrors’, St. Helens (October)
11. ‘Beauty and the Beast’, Junior Stage 80, Sale (November)
12. Eagley Jazz Club, The Dixie Beats (December)

Ooh, it’s a difficult decision to make indeed. All of the above performances I would happily do all over again given the chance, and there is such a variety that they are by no means easy to compare. An orchestral performance of Berlioz is verry different to a solo saxophone performance at a birthday, which in turn has little in common with a trad. jazz gig at a hearing clinic or a run of a Sondheim musical.

In the end I’ve chosen to go with an occasion that combines many of my favourite things into one gig. I like playing outdoors in the sunshine. I like low-pressure gigs where the music is a pleasant addition rather than the main focus. I like regular bookings where I know the routine and don’t have to navigate a brand new environment. I like performing with old friends I’ve known since I was at school. I like it when on-site accommodation is provided so I don’t need to worry about getting there on the day. I like meeting weird people and seeing lots of cute animals. And I like a copious supply of free cider.

In other words, if you haven’t guessed already…
 

 

 

Well there we have it – a whole year of gigging concluded, and another one well underway! It’s been nice to look back at all the interesting experiences I’ve had of late as chronicled on this blog, but before I conclude it seems apt to go a bit meta and think about The Gig Review itself. I’ve put an awful lot of effort into these retrospectives after all but I wanted to find out exactly how much, so I’ve gone to the liberty of collecting a few final statistics for you to enjoy.

First off, if you haven’t read any of the Reviews yet then you may be wondering where is a good place to start. Which one is the shortest, to ease you into the experience, or which one is the longest, to dump you in at the deep end (and get it over with)? Let’s have a look…
 

Holy mackerel that’s a lot of words! I started off in January with limited ambition (and limited gigs to talk about) but soon got carried away, especially in November when I wrote an obscene 6390 words! But what does that come to altogether…?
 

 
Or in other words an average 3350 words per month, and 332 words per gig. Whoa! To anybody out there who has been loyal enough to read every single one, I can only offer you a hearty congratulations.
 

Over the year I was careful to keep my mind open for lessons and learnings that I could pass on at the end of each monthly blog post. So to finish off this Review of Reviews, I think it’s only appropriate to collate them all together in 12 convenient lessons for life. Therefore, to send you on your way, here is the complete collection of things I learned in 2024:
 

1. Great Yarmouth is a very long way away. From everywhere.
2. Even if there seems to be nobody around, never leave your clarinet unattended without at least putting the mouthpiece cap on first! Also, if you must connect a laptop’s stereo headphone output to a speaker’s mono microphone input via a TRS jack cable, make sure you set the laptop to playback in mono first.
3. March can be REALLY REALLY REALLY cold!
4. It’s not been a very educational month to be honest, but I did learn that Henley-on-Thames makes for an excellent busking spot with Jelly Roll.
5. Never never NEVER go anywhere near Leeds when the marathon is on. In fact, while trying to get through it for that Jelly Roll gig I did find myself wondering, “Would it be possible for me never to come to Leeds ever again…?” That is, until I remembered I’d have to be there 2 days later with the Dixie Beats!
6. There is no right or wrong way to obtain accommodation for Duxford Air Show.
7. It’s a sousaphone.
8. Brunch can be anything you want it to be.
9. I need to plug my sat-nav in in a particular way for it to work properly.
10. Kelso isn’t always freezing and wet – sometimes it’s merely cold.
11. Football ruins everything.
12. Never travel on 27th December.