Mandy Woods
  • Home
  • Gigs/Reviews
  • Homelessness
  • Albums
  • Wags Lyrical
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Photos

The (Second) Night I Met Max...

10/7/2017

0 Comments

 
Although people often assume that all my songs are directly about me (and that I’ve therefore had a very tragic love life), some will know that I’ve sometimes taken their problems/stories/issues, rather than my own, and crafted them into a song instead. But as far as I was concerned, that’s all it’s ever been – me writing about myself or about others – never the other way round. Until recently…

I was back on the south coast the other week, for a gig at the lovely Under Ground Theatre in Eastbourne, to be followed (had the weather held up, which it didn’t) by a day at the Eastbourne tennis tournament. So I took the opportunity while I was in the area to revisit some of my open mic haunts from when I’d lived down there. Which was how I came to be at the Brunswick in Hove on a Monday evening.

I’d booked a slot ahead of time and had arrived at 8-ish, chatted with some of my old open mic pals, and was sitting at a table enjoying a beer when a young chap named Max got up to sing. Immediately he reminded me of a talented Oxford-based musician who plays at the famed Catweazle Club in Oxford – the way he moved his head (that was similarly sparse in the hair department), his delivery, the way he seemed to be gearing up to let rip (though, unlike the Oxford chap, he never did really give it some and thump the heck out of the poor guitar!). So it was firmly in my mind to tell him that when I got a chance to go over to his table later in the evening, and recommend that he pay a visit to Catweazle one Thursday evening to see his doppelganger in action.

Before I could do so, it was my turn to get up and sing a couple of songs, which I did, and then returned to my table… at which point Max came rushing over to me and said, ‘Are you Mandy Woods?’ I couldn’t deny that I was, so I said yes, at which he practically shouted, ‘Wow! This is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me! I can’t believe it!’ I was a bit gobsmacked myself at his reaction, which I couldn’t quite understand… until he explained, and then I was even more gobsmacked – on several counts!

‘You and I sat on a settee together at the Catweazle Club in Oxford three years ago,’ he said. ‘We chatted for ages before the show started…’

I couldn’t believe that here was this chap, who I’d been about to mention Catweazle to, now telling me that we’d actually met there three years ago! But I began to recall the evening, and him, and our in-depth conversation. He was a student at Oxford Brookes back then and I think I must have been bestowing my crone-like pearls of wisdom upon him about songwriting or whatever. Anyway, back to his story:

‘I played in the first half, and then it turned out that you were weren’t going to be playing until the second half, and so when I had to leave in the interval because a group of friends were waiting for me, I was gutted that I wasn’t going to hear you after all, and never thought I’d ever get to meet you again – and now here you are, somewhere completely different, and I wasn’t even going to come along this evening as I was so tired after work today!’

It was an amazing coincidence, I agreed, and I thought that was the end of his story – but it wasn’t, oh no, it wasn’t at all!

‘Anyway, after I’d left Catweazle that evening without hearing you play, but after our long chat, I felt so guilt-ridden that I wrote a song about you – called “The Night I Abandoned Mandy”!’

​It was my turn to be slightly overwhelmed – that someone – and virtually a complete stranger at that – would write a song about me!

‘I’m a bit disappointed that it’s not my best song by my standards,’ he went on, ‘but it was written from the heart.’

We would have talked more, but the next act was on by then, so he went back to his table and I decided that because I’d found out that the Neptune’s open mic was also on that night, I’d go along there too, as I used to host that one when it was only monthly and it’s very dear to my heart, as are the lovely regulars there. So I told Max I was going, as I thought he looked like he wanted to talk a bit more – and he asked if he could come along as well. So he did – and guess what he sang there as his first song? Yes, ‘The Night I Abandoned Mandy’ – my song!! And for all his protestations about its quality or lack of, I found it to be a lovely, quirky, sweet song – and it was about me! Someone writing about me – now there’s a novel turning of the tables!

Here’s Max’s (and my!) song:
http://feat-tiger.bandcamp.com/track/the-night-i-abandoned-mandy
0 Comments

    Author

    Mandy Woods

    Archives

    August 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    July 2017
    May 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    April 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012

    Categories

    All
    Angello Sound Studio
    Arran
    Bayonne
    Bazaar Cafe
    Bluebird
    Bluebird Cafe
    Brook Guitars
    Butterfly
    Butterfly Spirit
    C2C
    Calamity Jane
    California
    Cam
    Campervan Adventures
    Camping
    Cannes
    Carol Mac Photography
    Catweazle
    Cayman Islands
    Charity Shop
    Coda Music
    Copy-editing
    Corona Virus
    Country Music
    Covid-19
    Cowboy Hats
    Cowgirls
    Craft Fairs
    Dachshund
    David Naylor
    Deadwood
    Distinctly Blue
    Dolly Parton
    Doyle & Debbie
    Eastbourne
    Felix Macintosh
    Fisherman's Wharf
    France
    Freelance Work
    French Riviera
    Fringed Jacket
    Germany
    Gigs
    Gilet Jaunes
    Gilly Spencer
    Glastonbury
    Guitars
    Haight-Ashbury
    Handmade Guitars
    Hollister
    Holy Isle
    Homelessness
    Keith Urban
    Kibosh
    Kitten Kaboodle
    Las Vegas
    Le Mans
    Le Pilier Rouge
    Lesvos
    Lfest
    Little Silver Guitar
    Live Music In Norway
    Log Cabin
    Log Cabin Living
    Mandy Woods
    Memory Stick
    Mouans-Sartoux
    Musée Matisse
    Musee Mecanical
    Nashville
    Needle Felting
    New Life Abroad
    Nice
    O2 Concert Venue
    Oslo Open Mic
    Pandemic
    Peacock Butterfly
    Penny Arcade Museum
    Petula Clark
    Phantom Power Supply
    Pick-ups
    Proofreading
    Randy Moods
    Renegade Of The Road
    Rhinestones
    Roulette
    San Francisco
    Sausage Dog
    Scène Ouverte
    Scully
    Scully Jackets
    Seacliff State Beach
    Self-employment
    Self-reliance
    Social Distancing
    Social Separation
    Song Critique
    Songwriting
    Soquel
    SoulHuntress
    Southwest France
    Station Inn
    St Tropez
    Teaching Guitar
    The Chase
    Tigersonic
    Too Bad To Be True?
    Toyota Campervan
    Trail Of Goodbyes
    Under Ground Theatre
    Usa
    Virtual Open Mics
    Wags Lyrical
    Women's Centre
    Youtube
    Zoom Music Events

    RSS Feed

Mandy Woods