A Life in Music Renny Jackson: from Birmingham to Sevilla

Spanish-British fusion: a long distance conversation

I assembled and edited most of the Lives in Music podcast episode that accompanies this post on the fifth anniversary of the death of a mutual friend, the great Paul Murphy, who both introduced me to Renny Jackson, and encouraged us both, as he did with everybody he worked with, in our different projects. 

One of the things Paul had me do on his Thursday Song Writers Café nights was to interview each artist about their own creative process.

How do songs arrive?

I asked that question of maybe a hundred or more of Paul's guests. I got a different answer each time. Everyone, it turned out, had a different approach. Renny was thoughtful, open and honest.

So it was that I talked at length with Renny, who originally came from Birmingham, before he delivered a charming and articulate set on his brief return to the city. 

To listen to the Lives in Music podcast episode, go here, or simply scroll down to the bottom of this post. 

Lockdown

There's a twist to this series of Lives in Music podcasts. We're all stuck in lockdown, and so I am asking each guest about how it affects them. Now, as you'll hear, Renny is now based in Sevilla in Spain, where the oranges come from. And they have hassles too, just like us. In fact, not quite as bad as us, but enough to put a stick in the wheel of new live projects. The two influences come together in Renny's music.

A 1500 mile conversation

Obviously, we recorded our conversation remotely. This is a step on from Zoom - radio-oriented  software, for a start - but it felt absolutely right chatting, in a very personal way, with someone who now lives fifteen hundred miles away. Tech may have messed us all up in its different ways, but little things like software that lets you straddle boundaries certainly help.

Renny's take on the lockdown in Spain is an interesting variation on what problems face musicians in the UK. We'll also hear the impact Spain has had on this Brit.

Links

Renny's facebook page
The River Roots single on YouTube
Renny Jackson on Spotify

Renny's Lives in Music episode  

The Lives in Music Podcast series   

I've been doing this for about two years now. These are interviews with local 
musicians, looking at how music has shaped them throughout their lives. Series 3 
also looks hard at how lockdown has had an impact. There are some lovely stories. 

To see who's in the list of artists, here's a link to see every episode.

One further footnote: the intro and outro flourishes I'm using in this series of Lives in Music come from Vo Fletcher, who is also featured in this series, along with Loz Lozwold. I asked Vo for a bit of live impro, and this was the result.

The Radio To Go blog
This blog has been going since 2007. I started it to focus mainly on radio stories, as the industry went through convulsive changes. Those changes aren't over yet, not by a long chalk. I then expanded the range of topics to cover local music, another subject close to my heart. I think it was a Destroyers gig that pulled me in that direction. I've banged out several hundred posts since then, and of course deleted quite a few. But if you're interested in thoughts on the local scene and/or radio futures, by all means visit the full topic index on the Radio To Go blog.

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A Life In Music: Gavin Monaghan a legendary producer

The Wizard in his garden

Gavin Monaghan is a producer who commands massive respect worldwide, but who is just at home working with local bands that he has an affinity with. He loves his work. The people who work with him love his work as well. 

Gavin operates from an unassuming but brilliant studio complex, the third premises that he's named Magic Garden. Music of all shapes and descriptions flows from there out to the world. When I dropped by, Gavin was very calmly allowing his clients to work out and freely deliver something exceptional. It's a brilliant skill. Not all producers have it. 

Among his better-known local clients, you'll find Ocean Colour Scene, Carina Round, Paul Murphy, Editors, Scott Matthews, Robert Plant, Nizlopi and The Twang. That's one terrific range of talent. Among his newer clients, you'll find Pagans (Shepherds Of Humanity), Paper Buoys, Methods, Cherry Lotus, The Blinders, HÜDS, and more. 

Above all Gavin focuses on results - it's fascinating to hear how he gets those results, how he got started, and how technology has changed the creative music landscape. Craft skills, hard won and invaluable. 

That patient approach, and the love and nurturing of for new talent from a veteran's perspective chimes with what I want to cover in the Lives in Music series. To listen, you can jump to the podcast site to download and/or stream, or if you like, scroll down to the bottom of this page and stream from the embedded player. 

The story starts, as with many in this series, with a dedicated teacher, when Gavin was very, very young.

Links

Magic Garden facebook page

Lives in Music

The Lives in Music series celebrates people who have spent a lifetime in music. They may be famous; they may be people who have spent their lives working in the background for the love of it. But they all have stories.


Published in Series 2  (series 1 episodes listed here)

1 - Brian Travers of UB40
2 - Ricky Cool
3 - Mark 'Foxy' Robinson of the CBSO
4 - Roy Adams
5 - Gavin Monaghan of Magic Garden studios 
6 - John Mostyn
7 - Stewart Johnson: taking UK Country back across the pond
8 - Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention
9 - Roy Willams (JB's, Little Acre, Weapon of Peace, Robert Plant)

10 - Simon Duggal (Simon & Diamond, Apache Indian, Shania Twain, Desi Beats)

The Podcast

The intro and outro music in this series comes from the great bass player Mike Hatton, who you can hear interviewed in series 1, here. 'Everything Changes' is included in his excellent 2019 album 'Bassic Salvation'.

Subscribe!

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If you would prefer email updates each time a podcast episode (or blog post) is published, you can subscribe to the mailing list. Head here and scroll down to the signup form.

Small steps, big success? A new take on crowdfunding

A fledgling Brum publishing house takes a different tack.

 

Now, a success story. Just under two weeks ago at date of this post, local author JP Watson launched a crowdfunding appeal for his Pound Project. The goal was to hit a modest target, funding printing of a short story and raising funds for a charity that supports new writing. As with many such projects, the more you put in, the sweeter the reward. JP has dreamed up some very attractive options.

Good news: JP met his £500 target in three days flat, and the project is still pulling in funds. Why? because the short story in question comes from the wonderful Paul Murphy, who left us in 2016, having made a huge mark on the cultural life of Birmingham and beyond.

There's lessons to be learned here. I chewed them over with JP last week.

Paul Murphy with Ragman Jones - a last recording

It's been two years now, two years and some weeks,  since we lost Paul Murphy. 

Nick James - you may know him as Ragman Jones - has been putting out songs since I don't know when; I've been listening for maybe ten years. Just recently, he did something very special, putting up a MixCloud file of a session recorded with Paul Murphy, shortly before he died. These songs - and the chat, never forget the Murphy chat - must be one of the last things Paul committed to tape: rare, and very precious. 

The songs are typical Murphy: clear, direct melodies to carry complex subject matter, with beautiful lyrical invention. Just Paul's voice, his guitar and some judicious augmentation with banjo and xylophone. Then there's the stories and chit chat to enrich the experience. It sounds like it was done in Paul's kitchen, with a bit of reverb off the flagstones, and the hiss of the kettle. 

I got that prickle in my eyes...

All credit to Nick: it's magnificent listening. Sure and the levels from song to chat are a bit uneven, but it captures Paul in a way that I tried many a time to do, and never quite succeeded. Nick caught the stories on his phone:

"My involvement was firstly being around and allowing Paul to feel comfortable. I did take a lot of time thinking about how to turn the recordings into something that began to capture the essence of Paul's intent. And the stories - well, for that, I left my phone recording. We were recording conventionally anyway. The phone remained in record mode for almost the whole time. It was initially to create a reverb/echo room mic sound, but when I realised it had been on while we were chatting between songs, I left it running. I thought it would be good to capture 'story telling Paul' and it worked well because he didn't know... So that was part luck and part knowing it would be forgotten about."

Well, what a great thing to do. It also eclipses my botched attempts to do the same sort of thing. Paul and I spent hours and hours plotting and exploring, sometimes with the recorders running, more often not. But I never got anything like Nick's recording. I am so impressed, and so pleased that it's seen the light of day.


Paul Murphy's magic was his positivity and endless enthusiasm, and that combination of evocative songs and fountains of fantastical story-telling. This is how he worked best: relaxed, happy, expansive and hugely, poetically, articulate. He always had the ability to expand and improvise, to work the most unlikely material into something special. That, too, was what made his Songwriters Cafe sessions of a warm summer's evening so magical. Almost up to his death he was exploring, questing, encouraging, writing and planning.

There was always so much to talk about. Paul and I asked 'what if...?', over and over again, across a vast range of possibilities. Possibilities is the key word here. Nothing was impossible round Paul.
 
Thank you, Nick! The plan is to get this material out as widely as possible, to those who would appreciate listening to Paul one more time. I'm pleased and honoured to lend a hand. So check these links...

Links and Credits

Listen in full to Ragman Jones' recording
 
There's lots more Ragman Jones on his website, including a download of the above.
In 2016, I did a Paul Murphy audio tribute when I heard the news. It's Brum Radio's most-listened to item.
Photos: Richard Shakespeare (top, bottom); Ragman Jones (middle).
And check out this Songwriters Cafe blog post from 2012. Behind the scenes with Paul and the Aubergines.... 

See more music posts on Radio To Go

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Dempsey / Broughton

Two generations of UK Folk. Oh, the stories...

Joe Broughton likes to play varied crowds. Here's a clip of his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, shot on Monday 25th. Joe took his 68-strong troupe to blast bleary-eyed morning and evening commuters at New Street station; it was part of Birmingham City University's open day. 
 


Audience numbers? Who knows, but maybe ten thousand people passing through the station caught the blast.

Dig around on YouTube and the like. You'll see Joe with his Urban Folk Quartet, one of the finest Folk outfits the UK has right now. There are festival gigs filmed in Europe in front of audiences in their thousands. That's before you pick up on the specialist fiddle masterclasses, or his own one-day festival, Power Folk, at The Spotted Dog in Digbeth.

And in a couple of weeks he's playing the 60-seater Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath with long time friend and collaborator Kevin Dempsey. So is the Dempsey / Broughton gig likely to sell out? I would expect so.

Thank you, Paul Murphy

We've lost one of the greats. We've lost a friend.

Photo Richard Shakespeare     

Paul Murphy passed away last week. His family announced his passing on Friday. It was a difficult day. The news was met with an explosion, a passionate outpouring of grief which rippled out across the world. Rightly.  

Paul was a wonderful, open, extravagantly talented man with a razor-sharp mind,   boundless optimism, and lively curiosity about anything and everything. There didn't seem to be anything he could not do.

And he told stories. Oh, how he told his stories...

Now, the GOOD news. After the storms, Songwriters Café is back!

A Birmingham institution returns. I'm really looking forward to this. 

Songwriters Café, led by Paul Murphy and Valeria Rispo, is back for a short season starting on Thursday September 4th, and running for nine weeks in all. Opening night is already full.

It's a magical affair. Paul and Valeria have crafted a wonderful, intimate performance space, fashioned below the treehouse Paul built years ago, and now lovingly refurbished. Paul is Master of Ceremonies; he'll do a song or two, and then four acts will each play short sets of around 20 minutes to the invited live audience and a (much larger) worldwide online audience, with an interval halfway though. 

The craft of songwriting

The emphasis is on song writing. Paul programmes a very wide range of talent, from new and edgy to consummate veterans. The trick? You won't know who's on until you get there or you tune in to the stream. But the concerts are always interesting and sometimes unbelievably fabulous. 

Donations to fund events are key. This season you can donate in advance; you then become a member to guarantee a place at each of the house gigs. That's a good thing: it helps to pay for the massive overhaul that the performance space needed. The 2012 season was a soggy affair: it rained on 12 out of the 13 weeks. Then the following winter did so much damage to the old structure, that a costly rebuild was necessary. So remember that when the hat comes round. 

The result is a watertight, slightly larger space, with a few little extra wrinkles added for those who are there on the night, and for the online audience too: this season, the live stream will go out in stereo for the first time.

A second emphasis is on the audience. Songwriters Café audiences listen; they give the performers space and respect. To me, that is so, so welcome. I've lost count of the number of times noisy idiots have disprespected someone up on stage who is giving of themselves. And it's getting worse, not better. Live music from committed talent, young or old, is one of those gifts that you can't put a price on. Songwriters Café supports that, brilliantly.

Laptop-lit: Rispo on chatbox, Valk on Virtual DJ. By Richard Shakespeare    

Online streams

Access is limited: these are private house gigs for invited audiences. But you can join in online, and you'll be very welcome: online audience response is key and very much appreciated. You'll normally find me doing online continuity from 8.30 pm UK time, warming up to the night's events with choice cuts from previous seasons. When we're live, the chatbox is hosted by Valeria. Songwriters Café is also very happy to hear from radio stations near and far who might like to relay the stream, live or deferred. Give me a shout in the first instance.

Tasters from previous years

I'm putting together a taster series of short programmes to celebrate the restart; you can also link to them from the Songwriter's Café website. Here's the first.

And here's the second.

There will be more available as specials, on the Songwriters Café pages. 

To find out more, follow this link. Access is by invitation only; Songwriters Café is a house gig.

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St Pat's! Paul Murphy, Boat To Row and The Old Dance School at the Emerald Village

Welcome 2014 additions to St Patricks at the Custard Factory with Moseley Folk. There's some great local music, too, all free. You might have to move around a bit...

If you absolutely must

As of today, we're two weeks away from St Patricks Day. In Birmingham, as elsewhere, it's a huge deal. But it's especially important in Brum because of the size - and roots - of the brummy Irish community. And it's the third largest St Pat's party in the world, behind New York and Dublin. Crikey.

Of course, it's a huge deal everywhere. And it means different things to different people. I'm not a fan of green beer or silly hats, but lots of people love that stuff, so if that floats your boat, well good luck to you.. There is something particularly nice about the fact that St Pat's in Brum, while a huge knees-up, is also a massive cross-cultural celebration. And everyone loves a parade. If it's got dragons, so much the better. So, of course, there will be a dragon: an Oilliphéist, no less.

What about music? Oh yes, there's tons of music. Details – some details, at least - after the jump.

Cultivating precious talent in Gavin's Garden

Gavin Monaghan's Magic Garden recording studio has quietly grown into a powerhouse production centre, simply by concentrating on doing things well. Really well. 

When you visit a recording studio for the first time, more often than not finding the place is a bit of an adventure. Studios are tucked away in basements, shoehorned into warehouses, carved out of unlikely spaces in industrial estates, squeezed into odd bits of residential homes… It’s all very hidden and exceptions are rare. It’s only in colleges and, sadly, now rarely at radio - like the old Pebble Mill BBC studios - that you’ll walk into something open, airy, shinily well maintained, and above all, obvious for all to see.

So it was with Gavin Monaghan’s Magic Garden, arguably the most consistently successful outfit in the West Midlands. It took me half an hour of driving around odd bits of industrial north Wolverhampton, and even then Gavin had to come out and find me – he’s not on anywhere you’ll find on Google maps or your satnav, and that’s the way he likes it. 

Gavin presides over an operation which has turned out some magnificent work in his 21 years as studio manager and producer: The Twang, Scott Matthews, Editors, Robert Plant, Ocean Colour Scene, Carina Round, Nizlopi, and a host of local names including Khaliq, The Destroyers, Guile, Paul Murphy, and Ben Drummond – who was recording when I dropped by, and who will be the subject of a later post on this blog when everything is mixed.  

Vintage tech lust object

There’s not a whole lot of of room in Gavin’s place, and that’s partly because he collects kit - rather a lot of it - and lovingly refurbishes it. His pride and joy is a 1938 Neumann microphone, which he dug up on eBay; but there are classic pieces of kit everywhere you look. 

Vintage kit fetishists can get their kicks reading the kit list on his Myspace blog. 

Notwithstanding all the appeal of gorgeous old equipment, the heart of Gavin's system is a Protools rig. Above and beyond the love of kit, there’s a love of the creative process. And in the teeth of a howling recession, things are looking good

First question, Gavin: How’s business?

Booming. It’s very busy. There’s always been a steady flow of really talented people coming thought here, I’m pleased to say.

And this comes to you how? Word of mouth?

Yes. I don’t advertise. I’m also quite selective of who I work with. It’s hard to put your finger on what makes that happen, but I’m glad it has. It’s nice that current artists come in as well – we’ve still got stuff on and off the radio all the time - I see that as a continuation, and I try to embrace change as it comes along. But… a good song’s a good song. 

I talked with Jon Cotton at Artisan about six months ago, and he pointed out that the tiny studios have now simply disappeared, because people can work with multi-track software on their laptops, and the big studios are scrapping for movie business. So that kind of means that reputation counts for an awful lot.

Yes. You’re only as good as the people you work with. If I get a great band to work with, I’m at my best. If I get somebody… not so great … they there’s not a lot you can do with that. I do a lot of research. I listen to a lot of brand new music. I try to uncover gems. I’m always all over the internet. I approach bands that I hear and like. If I hear something than inspires me, I get in touch. And I try and put as much effort into a job like that as I would with a major album.

That can’t be cost-effective, Gavin…

I don’t care. I’m not doing this for the money. Never have been. 

On the other hand, we’re sitting here, surrounded by squaziliions' worth of vintage kit, which doesn’t come cheap… 

Gavin (chortles)

… but you’ve got Protools up there as your main system.

I like classic sounds, but you’ve got to embrace what’s going on now. So we’ve got all the modern stuff that you’d want. But it’s a good combination. In an ideal world, everybody would still be recording to tape, and perfecting their craft to the point where you wouldn’t need to endlessly edit your stuff to get it on the radio. Having said that, I’m more than happy.

But I think new cheap kit has made a big difference for a lot of bands. They can get their ideas sorted at home, working on their laptops, and recording acoustically where possible…

Sometimes we’ll work with what they’ve already started in their home studio. We end up keeping some of it – I love that. It brings interesting textures into the recordings.

Capacity is a problem here, isn’t it?

Well, we’ve had all 18 of the Destroyers in…

The chat moved on through technology, music quality and sound quality.

I work with music fidelity for a living. My job is to capture the best possible signal. But if it’s going to be reduced to mp3, and that’s how people are going to hear it, then I’ve got to make the best possible mp3 I can possibly make. 

I had a very interesting conversation a while back about distortion in mastering. Most people want to capture the maximum possible volume, with the minimum possibly dynamic range. So part of that process is to distort it, to clip it, so it’s as loud as it can be on radio.

But radio compresses everything anyway…

They use Optimod, yes. A lot of bands and record companies, if you give them something with dynamic range, will say ‘It’s not as loud as the Arctic Monkeys’ – it’s part of the culture. It’s part of the trend, Music is a fashion-based industry. So if that’s the trend, I’ve got to make my masters the best distorted masters I can!

So once Ben Drummond’s mixed and finished up, who’s next?

We’ve got a band called Arrows – a brilliant band. We’ve just done a Radio 1 exclusive with a Birmingham band called Jaws. I’m doing an album with Johnathan Day, a brilliant singer-songwriter. Paul Murphy’s coming in to do his next album. We’re slated to be working with – don’t want to jinx it, but I’m hopeful – with Dry The River. Hope so. My management’s talking to them and various other people.

Management? How does that work?

I have a manager for my production work. I’m a studio owner, but my job is music producer. There are agencies similar to artist management, who manage producers, My manager’s Sandy Robertson from World’s End in Los Angeles. He’s got about 40 producers and engineers on his books. 

How did that relationship come about?

He liked some of the albums that I’ve worked on. The first Twang album – he loved it. He wanted the Twang for another one of his producers, but they wanted to work with me. And after he heard it, it went from there – he’d been listening to my stuff for a while.

But does he understand you and your range of production chops and styles?

I think he works with such a variety of producers… so, yes. I just want to be working all the time. For me it’s important to work with new bands, just as important as working with major label acts who can line your pockets. If I was in it for the money, I’d be a hell of a lot better off!

Gavin's Magic Garden Myspace page

We do it because we love it. All you have to do is find it

Great, unusual music, there to be explored and enjoyed. Free. Bring your curiosity and a sense of adventure.

Zirak Hamad plays the Daff hand-drum. Amazingly.

I first met Zirak Hamad at one of Paul Murphy’s Songwriters Café sessions. Zirak is a lovely guy, irrepressibly enthusiastic, and a terrific musician. He has a hair-raising background, which makes his current situation all the more remarkable. Zirak is largely responsible for a fascinating new musical development in Balsall Heath, an inner city part of Birmingham: Musikstan, which, every other Thursday, gathers musicians to play together from, literally, around the world. It runs on love and goodwill. 

Entry is free, but you really should make a contribution when they pass the hat around; there are musicians' expenses to pay and the event has running costs to cover. Zirak’s music is great – there’s a Musikstan clip or two to enjoy after the jump. And while it’s a worldwide music thing, chances are you’ll catch some delicious local musical collaborations, as some of Birmingham's finest have started to drop by.


Zirak’s Musikstan gigs are by no means the only music gatherings in town that run on similar lines. Once a month on Sunday afternoons on Moseley, you can catch stunning musicianship, organised by the magnificent percussionist Joelle Barker at the Dance Workshop. On top of that, the City centre Island Bar hosts the Free Love Club, an all-dayer of a folk-ish bent, for free, on Sundays; Sue Fear’s Moseley’s Muso Monday, also (logically) on Monday nights, works on the same principle, there are regular gatherings of different music stripes at the Tower Of Song; and of course there are many more such events.  If I've missed yours out, I apologise - but please do let me know for future reference. 

Here's Zirak, at Musikstan, tearing it up on the Daff hand-drum. I recorded this in September.


Zirak kicked off Musikstan in March of this year. It’s got a clear and simple goal.

Zirak Hamad: Musikstan is about sharing and bringing people together. The business side of music is important, but having music just for music’s sake is important too.  A friend of mine, Andrew Bland, invited us to play at the Old Print Works, and accompanied us on piano.  And it gave me an idea to do something regular. So that’s how it started. Musikstan is based on bringing different musicians together, from different backgrounds and different styles. People are able to ask questions about the music, about the backgrounds and the styles of each type of music. 

In the six months since you started, how has the network of musicians developed, with different people coming in to play?

To start, because I’m a musician, I can bring in many musicians that I know. But then word got out – word of mouth – about Musikstan. Session by session, it developed; musicians contacted me to come and play. We keep it very informal. Musicians are invited to join us, and we leave time for the audience to ask them questions at the end of their set.  We aim to have one musician from Birmingham, and one from outside of the area, because we want musicians to meet and exchange ideas and music, and play together. 

What about your own music?

I have a Kurdish band, and I also have a band called Village Well, which has an Indian tabla player, and a Caribbean steel pan player. I also play in a gypsy band with an Albanian and a Romanian musician…. 

Tell me about your band Village Well….? 

We got the idea in 2010, with a Khora player, me on violin, and Indian Tabla from Pritham Singh. Unfortunately, the Khora player, who lives in London, could not stay with the band, so we added Norman Stewart on Steel Pan instead. This brings all kinds of people together.  Some Kurdish people might come to see me, and Indian people because of Pritham… and Caribbean people because of Norman. So we really are bringing people together through music. 

If you went back to the old country now, after your years in the UK, what would happen? How would people react to you?

Kurdistan has changed a lot since Saddam Hussein’s regime. Kurdish people are more open-minded now. When I went back, I was made very welcome. When I left Kurdistan, I had 24 hours. I found out that a friend of mine – who was working with the Intelligence services under cover – that the next day, they were coming to arrest me, and god knows what would have happened to me afterwards.

So it was: don’t go to work tomorrow, and sort yourself out to get away, because everything was going to end for me. I left Kurdistan straight away. After ten o’clock, they went to my house, and my family said they didn’t know where I was. And that was the truth – they didn’t know where I was, or how I had left. I went to Iran, and then to Turkey, and then  in the end I came to England.

Are your family …OK?

They weren’t. They arrested them and tried to force them to tell where I was. But they didn’t know, because I didn’t tell them what I was doing. So the secret police accepted this - in the end. Now, after Saddam ‘s regime, they’re all right. We have our own government; people are more liberal, and more free…

Did you come to the UK and claim asylum? 

Yes, they gave me asylum. I had to pay a smuggler to get me to the UK. My family supported me, though friends, not directly. We couldn’t use the phone or anything like that….  

So this must have cost your family a fortune in the end.

About 8000 dollars. That’s a lot of money in Kurdistan. 

It’s an extraordinary story, but Zirak might well say that everyone is extraordinary. Now settled in Birmingham, Zirak runs school workshops in middle eastern dance and  music. In 2003, he organised a Kurdish band: Daholl Kurdish Ensemble, as Birmingham didn't have any Kurdish musicians at the time. And his dream is to see Muzikstan become a world music festival in the UK. 

So now he’s  back doing what he loves, which is making music, and working with other musicians. And, as always, this being a Birmingham thing, there’s a lot of collaboration. Paul Murphy has played at Musikstan, as has Joelle Barker, and there’s some mighty collaborations planned for the future. Live, experimental cross-cultural collaborations in an intimate acoustic environment: it’s not something you can bottle. You have to experience it. . Long may it continue

Links: 

Muso Mondays at the Station, King's Heath, Birmingham

Tower Of Song -

Songwriters Café 

Songwriters Cafe 2012 season: feeding the five hundred.

Behind the scenes at Songwriters's Cafe as it readies for the final live stream of the season. The penultimate aubergines have, indeed, been deep-fried.

Thursday 26th July saw the last in the 2012 summer season of live streamed performances at Songwriters Café. This is their third season, and it's been great. You owe it to yourself to catch the last stream this Thursday - see the notes at the bottom of the post for more - if you haven't listened yet. I’ve been working there on a documentary project, and doing continuity on the online stream, playing some of the fantastic performances from previous weeks; it’s been a blast. 

We’ve heard some fabulous music, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. But it’s also a lot of work, especially for hosts and organisers Paul Murphy and Valeria Rispo. And over the course of the season, Paul, especially, develops an unusual intimacy with, er, aubergines.

It starts on the day before the event, when Paul and Valeria work out some numbers. How many musicians? Are they bringing friends, family or partners? How many helpers are coming on the night? What sort of margin for error?  How’s the salad patch looking? OK for beer, wine, juice, tea and coffee? Is anyone lactose or gluten-intolerant? Then it’s off for aubergines and other supplies for Thursday night’s communal meal.

Paul on a roll

On Thursday, work starts early. Bread dough is mixed, kneaded and left to prove. It’s a 50/50 mix of wholemeal and strong white flour, and that’s Paul’s responsibility. So is the main course, Paul’s Aubergine Parmesan. Aubergines (or eggplants, or melanzana), are breaded, egged, and deep-fried – note that some purists insist on shallow-frying, but phooey to that - and layered with Valeria’s genuine home made Napoletana tomato sauce, and parmesan, ready for the oven. 

By six o’clock, Paul has knocked the dough back for the last time, and formed it into rolls, also ready to share space in the oven.

It’s always the same meal. Paul cooks, Valeria fixes the salads. It’s a key part of the evening; the bonding event around which the night pivots. It is hugely appreciated, and is becoming famous in its own right. A three month season of live shows means 13 weeks of aubergine parmigiana, salad and bread rolls. And as the season progresses, Paul’s dish just gets… better and better.

CDs and Teas

The meal is central to Songwriter’s Café evenings. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, your typical gig. When the artists arrive, they are greeted, made welcome, and in good time before the live show, fed a very decent meal. 

It’s late afternoon now. The night’s helpers start to arrive, to man the door, make tea and coffee, dispense drinks, sell artists’ merchandise, light the fires, sweep out and tidy up the performance area, fix any last minute snags in the building, and help with the artists.

From half past six, artists and friends drift in. It’s time for greetings, hugs, catch-ups and gossip, time to settle people down in the green room area, to show them around the performance space, to let them get a feel for the acoustics, to make (more) cups of tea for everyone. Paul and Valeria are working flat out. 

I’m privileged to be among the helpers. This is the point where I record interviews with the artists about their ways to write songs. We do that early, to get that part of the night’s work wrapped up before suppertime.

Now it’s 7.30. Food and drink flows out of the kitchen, ferried up to the decking area outside the Cafe. Everybody settles down around two huge tables for a communal meal. Musicians and helpers, who might never otherwise meet, talk, exchange ideas, and break bread together before the night’s concert. 

The fires are burning brightly now, and the evening gently shifts into its relaxed and magical performance mode. Around the table, ideas and thoughts flow back and forth. Paul is from Belfast, and Valeria from Naples, and neither of them has lost their accent – but that’s just the start. The whole night is a melting-pot of accents and cultures, with stories and ideas from different places and lives, to share and inspire.



Supper over, there’s one last burst of activity, clearing the tables after supper, back down to the kitchen where helpers wash up. Outside, we’re setting up the bar and lighting tealights. The Songwriters Café is ready to open its doors to its invited audience. 

Streaming and chatting online 

At 8.30, Paul is meeting and greeting, Valeria is rigging up the mixing desk, and putting the stream up. I’m hooking my kit up the mixer, ready for web continuity duties as we warm up to go live. 

It’s 8.45. The show starts at 9. We’re going online…

This is a slightly modified version of a guest post I wrote for Chris Bouton’s brilliant and witty A Dash Of Culture blog, which looks at the role of food and its place in our culture. It’s a great blog, and I heartily recommend it.





Links:
The Songwriter's Cafe 
Paul Murphy's solo work can be found here
See also Paul's work with the inimitable Destroyers
Read Chris Bouton's A Dash Of Culture blog
Other live music events which provide supportive platforms for new musicians include
   The Free Love Club,
   Muzikstan at the Old Print Works,
   and Muso Monday at the Station, King's Heath, Birmingham