17th November 2019

Winging it at the one rehearsal.

I was piling up the pressure on myself by adding an unfinished song that I had written about some of the memories of Jimmy and Pete and specific things that were said and done.

 By now we had the venue booked. It was the Three Counties Hotel in Belmont where Paul had had his birthday some time ago. We booked the staging and Paul had sound and lights. 

  We had set the date for October the 5^th, a ticket agency was found, and of course extra security was arranged. After all, this was Hereford-England's wild West!

 I had a guitar rehearsal with Paul Cheshire and Paul Cobbold. 'Chesh' was a friend from Hereford back when Jimmy Scott was still a kid and Pete was getting into his first band. Paul Cheshire was a key man. 

Another guitar rehearsal saw me requisition a guitar player, Matt Warren, who I had used on my first track in Paul’s studio about two years ago. He is a young man with talent and good feel.

 These rehearsals were spread over the best part of a month. In reality, three rehearsals of about 5 or 6 hours in total. 

I had learned a lot. I had also done the unthinkable again. On the last guitar rehearsal, I had got another one of my songs into my 'set'. This was a slow acoustic song. I played it on my 2008 Martin guitar with mellow bass to accompany me and the two guitarists playing small roles to give the song some atmosphere and shape. The song was called 'Postcards'. It was again about Jim and Pete and how they are still, fantastically, in my life. 

Now I am singing and playing guitar on three songs. How did that happen?! I guess they just needed to be sung. It felt like they were desperate to escape!!

 A full band rehearsal was called for late September. Everything was loaded in and set up by a small group of us and the organisation of the rehearsal got underway. I had never fronted a band on guitar in my life. I needed to get 'my sound' but I didn't know what it was.

 We played the Steve Winwood song and I could hear very little that I liked. We were playing to a wall some twenty five feet in front of us, and I simply had trouble hearing my guitar or voice. In the middle of the rehearsal, my amp blew a speaker and started to flap a little (not that I noticed during the run-through).

 By the end I had to make a few split decisions. The show date, my debut in my home town, was coming up soon. There was no way I could just busk it. 

I had organised a projector and operator from the Friends of Lyde who were the beneficiaries of the show. I wanted as many pictures of Jimmy and Pete as I could get and some live pictures of them in concert.

 It wasn't long before it dawned on me that there were a few key people who should have their pictures up on the screen with Jim and Pete. One of them was my long time tight friend Bryan Morgan. He had driven the van and set the gear nearly fifty years ago and on October the 5th, show day, it was the third anniversary of his death.

 Meanwhile I set out to finish lyrics to my two self-penned songs. I had to improve everything, and fast. 

M.D.C.