​Since my entry into the world of care-home entertainment well over a decade ago, I’ve played in similar establishments across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, during which time I’ve dodged stuffed meerkats hurled at me mid-song by a passing resident, dealt with melting Mr. Whippy cornets in ineffectual shaky hands when all the staff had vanished to enjoy their own 99s in peace, and ignored (or at least attempted to) a naked man suddenly launching himself across the room just feet away from the microphone. I’ve performed both solo and in a variety of duos, often in the company of canines too, as dogs and music have proved to be a bit of a double whammy as far as the elderly are concerned. Residents who have had pets in the past are often reminded of their beloved companions and sometimes ask if one of my dogs will sit on their lap during the hour’s entertainment (or, indeed, as one confused resident did when she became convinced one of my precious miniature dachshunds was actually hers, demand I return their dog to them!). As for the music, it really does seem to reach all parts of the brain, so that even people with advanced dementia come to life when they hear a song that evokes memories from their distant past.

One lady in her nineties had been in various choirs in her younger days, and she loved to sing ‘Crazy’ every time I performed at her care home. On one occasion, she decided to follow it up with a rendition of ‘Danny Boy’, which I had to play by ear as I didn’t have the song in my folder. Unfortunately I pitched it in a rather higher key than she was used to, which was fine until she got to the ‘I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow’ part... Redder and redder her face became as she gamely attempted to reach the high notes – so much so that I envisaged her pegging out there and then and me being held responsible. But thankfully that didn’t happen: with a sparkle in her eyes, she victoriously reached the highest of high notes, the whole room burst into a deserved round of applause, and the video of her performance that she happily agreed could be shared online went on to get a very healthy number of views!

Towards the end of 2016, I learned an important lesson in balancing different expectations when I was rebooked to perform at a care home well over an hour away from where I was then living. The previous time I’d played there, my long-suffering sausage dogs, Silva and Chilli, who came everywhere with me back then, had gone down a storm, so I was more than happy to drive a considerable distance to perform there again.

This time, however, as the dogs and I arrived in the entertainment room, a vociferous woman sitting on a settee next to her silent friend was letting rip about the fact that the chap sitting on the armchair in front of them had moved it so that he was now facing the stage but was blocking their view. For his part, he just stared ahead passively, apparently oblivious to her loud and ever more obscene complaints directed at the carers as they tried to get her to stand up so that they could move the settee round. ‘He moved in front of us – why should we ’ave to move? It’s not right! Bloody arseholes, the lot of you!’ On and on she went, ad nauseam, to the point that I was feeling nothing but sympathy for the poor carers, as well as for the elderly gent who’d had the apparent audacity to move his chair but who seemed to me to be a bit out of it and unable to engage in any argument with the woman behind him. But I carried on setting my equipment up and tried not to look as though I was eavesdropping on the kerfuffle going on a few feet away. Finally the indignant lady gave in and allowed the sofa to be moved, but she carried on grumbling and the chap carried on looking straight ahead as though in blissful ignorance of the ruckus he’d started behind him.

Firmly siding with him in my mind, I nevertheless decided to go over to the peeved woman and try and calm her down by offering her and her friend their choice of Chilli or Silva to sit on their lap and stroke. As I approached her, her expression totally changed and her face lit up, her beef with the chap in front forgotten as I bent down with both sausage dogs in my arms and she started to gush over them. She doesn’t seem so bad after all, I was thinking as the gent in front turned round and said to me, ‘Excuse me, could I have a word with you?’ Blimey, he CAN speak – and he sounds perfectly lucid! I thought, somewhat ashamed at having made such wrong assumptions about him. But what he then said totally threw me.

‘I’m here to listen to your music, I’m not interested in your dogs. The last time you came, you played for forty minutes and then you took the dogs round. I hope you’re not going to do that again.’ Well! How very dare he not be interested in my darling daxies?! I swallowed my mounting wrath and said, as mildly as I could manage, ‘Well, I’m booked to play music and to bring the dogs, and some people want to see the dogs, so I have to do a bit of both.’ I was now firmly on the side of the lovely ladies on the sofa behind him…

The formerly cantankerous woman looked at me and could see that I was taken aback, so she raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Just ignore the old fool!’ So I engaged with her and her friend a bit more, as they were totally smitten with the dogs by then.

But then I had something of an epiphany, a realisation that I didn’t need to be so hostile towards the old man. I turned back to him and said, ‘I just want to say that I’m very flattered that you enjoyed my music enough to want to listen to a whole hour of it – so thank you for saying what you just said, and I’ll make sure I play for longer this time.’ He then smiled at me and the ice was broken. I looked up and saw a row of carers all looking towards me and smiling too.

Singing for an hour was a bit of an effort, I have to admit – in general, the audience wasn’t the most responsive I’ve ever played to in a care home, though the bolshy lady, her friend, the gent in front of her, another chap in a wheelchair who obviously liked country music, and a lady in the front row did all seem to be enjoying it, so that spurred me on. The last song, however – even though I threw in an extra final chorus and slowed it down a bit – didn’t quite take us up to the hour mark… more like fifty-seven minutes… Damn! I saw the gent look round at the clock and then raise his hand to say something, and waited for his rage at being cheated of three minutes. But this is what he said:
‘As the activity organisers don’t seem to be here, I’d like to say on everyone’s behalf what an absolutely splendid afternoon of music this has been, so thank you very much.’

No one’s ever said such a lovely thing at any of the care home gigs I’ve done – and for it to said by the person I’d have least expected it to come from, by the person I was expecting another ticking off from for having short-changed him yet again – well, I stuttered something like, ‘Thank you so much, that’s a really lovely thing to say!’ and resolved never to pre-judge anyone ever again. I also vowed to try and let bothersome things float over me as serenely as that gentleman had done: he had clearly been completely aware of the cacophony behind him, yet he’d let the carers deal with the situation and hadn’t engaged with it himself at all. Very impressive!

To be continued...
 

‘“Islands in the Stream”? Who’s ever seen an island in a stream? Pah!’

​Edna, a large, loud woman with thickly bandaged legs and a blunt northern accent, spat out the ‘Pah!’ with exaggerated venom. Her room was directly opposite my elderly mother’s, and despite Mum, now in her third year at the care home, being quite frail both physically and mentally, she and Edna had somehow (to this day I’m not exactly sure how) become arch-enemies. Mum and Edna were among the octogenarian audience wheeled or otherwise cajoled into the lounge for the afternoon’s entertainment, and I was there as the entertainer…

In her younger years, Mum had generally preferred to keep herself to herself, so although the dutiful care-home staff jovially encouraged everyone to partake of the communal activities, I didn’t see why anyone should have to change their personality just because they now resided in a care home, so I wasn’t really one hundred per cent behind their continual efforts to prise her out of her raised armchair and into the lounge to sit with all the ‘old dears’, as she disparagingly referred to them.

But I did think that getting her out of her stuffy bedroom every once in a while might not be such a bad thing. So I came up with a cunning plan: I decided to ask the manager if she’d be up for booking me as a ‘country and western’ entertainer one June afternoon, as I knew Mum wouldn’t want to miss that. It wasn’t so much the ‘country and western’ element that she wouldn’t want to miss as the fact that it was her daughter providing the entertainment. That would be one in the eye for Edna!

So there I was in full cowgirl regalia (including a hefty fringed leather jacket and an authentic-looking Stetson) in a sweltering communal living room that, with the radiators full on in the middle of summer, felt more like the tropical greenhouse at Kew Gardens. I already had the makings of a heat-induced migraine as I launched into my opening number, aimed at getting a room full of sleepy, blanket-enfolded OAPs to join in. ‘Country roads, take me home…’

‘Yes! Take me home!’ piped up Edna, ‘I keep asking to go home, but no one listens around here!’

That was my first inkling of trouble in the front row. As I’ve gained more experience as a care-home entertainer, I’ve realised that there’s invariably one resident who’s far more vocal than any of the others. That can be in a good or a not-so-good way. In Edna’s case, it was definitely the latter.

I almost avoided ‘Jambalaya’ as I knew the pickings would be rich on that one. ‘“Filly gumbo”? What’s that supposed to mean? “My ma sheremeeo”? Do we ’ave to listen to this? What’s on’t telly?’ Followed swiftly by: ‘What on earth does “eight days a week” mean? Load of nonsense if you ask me! Nurse, I need the toilet!’

As to how ‘Eight Days a Week’ snuck into a country and western set at all – well, once Edna had shot down most of the cowboy numbers, I’d decided to switch to something that I hoped might be safer. How wrong could I have been?

But I hadn’t spent three decades pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter in clubs, pubs and festivals in the UK and the USA to be heckled off the stage on my first care-home gig by an elderly woman with fairly advanced dementia. So I ploughed on – as much for Mum’s sake as to preserve my own dignity. Mum’s once-resonant primary-school-teacher voice had dwindled to not much more than a little-girl whisper, so although she tried to give Edna a run for her money, only I was aware of her mouth twitching in indignant but ineffectual response to her barbs. I knew better than to engage with Edna myself, so my only recourse was to keep singing, keep trying to involve the rest of the room, and keep trying to will the hands of the lounge clock to move a little faster towards three o’clock, when they’d wheel the tea trolley in and I could stop singing.

By the time three o’clock finally arrived and ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ soared into the ether, my head was pounding and I was sweating copiously in my heavyweight leather jacket. I looked around for Edna, but – thankfully – she was nowhere to be seen. What I did see, though – and hear – was a rather more enlivened room than had been the case at two o’clock. Mum was basking in reflected glory (Excellent! I thought. Exactly what she needed!), and I could hear others still singing some of the songs they’d just joined in with. Even though I already had a suspicion that there would always be an Edna in the room, the palpable buzz right then made me think that there just might be something longer-term for me in care-home entertainment...

To be continued...

Mandy's morning:

Today, when Carol said she was going to the Spar (well, someone has to get the groceries in, after all, and she seemed oddly keen to go to the supermarket), I decided it was the perfect sunny morning to load up the van and head off to a rural spot I’ve discovered on the other side of Wells, where I was able to offload all my baggage among a group of complete strangers. Then, feeling totally purged, my load well and truly lightened, I came home to a nice cup of tea – what a way to take care of yourself!

Funny sort of Spar that must’ve been though – all Carol came back with, besides glowing skin and a strangely healthy look that she hadn’t gone there with (having, I might add, spent virtually the whole morning there!), was a paltry veggie wrap in a Styrofoam box. Where were my custard tarts, my rum, my giant Cadbury’s caramel bar that she usually gets when she does our shopping?

Something’s definitely not right here…


Carol's morning:

The potent aroma of essential oils hits me as soon as I enter the spa, heady scents of lavender and lemon balm. Calming piano riffs play gently in the background and the receptionist leads me to the changing room. This is by no means my usual morning routine.

Usually by now, the dog, Blue, has had a long walk across the fields, and I am immersed in household chores. However, today, Blue was short-changed with a quick round-the-block, long-enough-to-do-his business walk for which I know it will take him several days to forgive me. Unwashed breakfast things were abandoned on the kitchen counter, running shoes left in the shoe pile and admin tasks completely disregarded. Today is a little bit different.

‘In your locker you’ll find your robe and towel, and your massage is booked for 11am,’ the receptionist tells me, in the sing-song voice of someone who definitely does not know the meaning of stress. So, I get down to the serious business of lounging about. I wander from the jacuzzi to the sauna to the hot tub to the steam room and back to the jacuzzi, from where there are amazing views of the Somerset countryside. The bi-fold doors are open wide to the outside and I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin as I wallow in the frothy water. My worries wash away in the bubbles, and just for a few hours I have nothing to do but relax. Bliss. At the appointed time I meet Jenny for my massage and while she diligently works away at my knots, I contemplate how good life is and how lucky I am to be in a position to do this once in a while. By the time Jenny has worked her magic, my muscles are so yielding they can barely support my own bodyweight, so I head off to the relaxation room, wrapped in my fluffy white robe, for just a tiny bit more relaxation. My time at the spa is almost at an end. As I sit there sipping my herbal tea, I briefly wonder what Mandy has been up to this morning. But I haven’t got time to consider it for too long as I need to squeeze in a final dip in the jacuzzi before my time is up.

​I float home, euphoric, mentally and physically cleansed.  I’m so clean, my nails glint in the sun and I smell of sandalwood and ylang-ylang. They even gave me a lovely lunchbox to take home with me! As I put the key in the front door I start to think about everyday things again. Perhaps later on I’ll help Mandy take the garden waste to the Wells recycling tip. But I’ll have my lunch and a bit of a rest first.

After a few breakdowns and difficulties getting replacement parts, as well as feeling increasingly limited as to where I could drive (all cities with low emissions zones were for the most part out), I decided to sell my ageing Nu Venture Rio motorhome at the end of the summer. In its place I bought a smaller, low-emissions-compliant Nissan NV200 commercial panel van with a view to converting it myself into an uncomplicated campervan. By ‘uncomplicated’ I mean I knew from my experience with the motorhome that I didn’t have complex needs in a camper and wanted to have something where very little could go wrong. And finally, after a number of not-so-successful iterations and nights away in the van to find out what needed more work, here is the result of several weeks of careful planning and hard manual labour!
 
After taking out the metal bulkhead (not straightforward as there were some rivets that were very resistant to being removed, but my ever-helpful neighbour Richard lent a capable hand and a powerful drill to get that job done!) and swapping the normal passenger seat for a fold-down one I found on eBay, I watched numerous YouTube videos to find out how to insulate, ply and carpet the cargo area’s walls and ceiling. Then I set to work with some degree of trepidation, prising off the wall and door panels, all the while fighting off severe doubts as to whether I could really manage to complete this project by myself.
 
Preparing the interior proved to be quite time consuming, but it was a very important part of the project as the habitation area needs to be warm and cosy in the winter. Although the base already had a plywood floor, the walls were not plied, and so I spent £170 on pre-cut plywood panels, including four for the rear doors, that I carpeted and then screwed on over the insulation I had put in place.
 
Having completed that task (and patted myself on the back for having done so!), I fitted a curtain rail between the cab and the habitation area and put up curtains for privacy and warmth. Then I bought a rather battered second-hand campervan bed on Facebook Marketplace and did a fair bit of remedial work on it, as well as cutting it down to a narrower size that was more appropriate for this van. Also on Marketplace I came across two old wooden van shelving racks being given away, which I gratefully picked up and proceeded to clean up before topping and tailing one of them to fit, and then painting it.
 
For a power source, I bought the most expensive piece of kit in the whole project, but well worth it: an EcoFlow power pack from which I can run a low-wattage heater, an electric blanket, my laptop and any other low-energy appliances without the need for a leisure battery or gas cylinders (apart from a small butane cylinder for the single-hob stove). Also on board I have a 12-volt cool box, water (without the need for a water tank that could freeze in the winter), a toilet, shower facilities in the form of a Mud Daddy dog shower(!), a work surface that I fashioned from a small fold-up table I bought for a fiver in a charity shop, and plenty of under-bed and shelf storage. For lighting, the interior rear light is supplemented by a variety of battery-powered lanterns and a string of cactus fairy lights (of course!).
 
I bought a simple awning to go over the rear doors when they are open. With a tarpaulin draped over the back, this will provide an area to stand up in, and in which it will be possible to use the shower (which has a hand pump that provides the necessary pressure, and which can be filled with hot water).
 
I feel quite proud of my handiwork, rustic as it may be, and will be taking another overnight trip in the van next week to see if it all holds up to life on the road!

There’s a Facebook meme telling you to pick your three favourite bands out of a choice of around a hundred from the 1960s up to (roughly) the present day. Of those hundred bands, maybe five have women in them. I have no doubt of the gender of the person creating that meme. Nor of the gender of the person who commented that it was tough naming only three, but in the end plumped for the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones. (To be truthful, I have no doubt of his gender because he’s a Facebook friend of mine!) No surprises there, then. But my stomach churned in an oh-so-familiar way when he then went on to deride his ‘least favourite’ of those hundred: Siouxsie and the Banshees. Was it just a coincidence that they were one of the handful of female-fronted bands given as a possible choice? Or was it yet another of those tiringly regular chauvinistic digs that women musicians face every time they play a gig?

A couple of years ago, I bought a Zoom guitar effects pedal at a car boot sale for the bargain price of three pounds. ‘That’ll make a nice present for your hubby or boyfriend!’ said the bloke whose stall it was as I held it up to pay for it. Despite everything racing through my stunned mind right then, I refrained from shoving it back at him and instead merely said, ‘It’s for me, actually.’ ‘Oh, you play guitar, do you?’ he said incredulously. I could have told him I’ve been playing for around fifty years – which was quite likely forty-five or so years longer than him – but I felt no inclination to give him any personal information, so I simply walked away.

‘That’s a really beautiful-sounding guitar you have there!’ is something I hear often from men who come up to me after I’ve played. Only once do I remember it being turned around to: ‘You played that guitar really beautifully!’ From the same school as the hundred favourite bands came a Facebook meme that gave a choice of the ‘fifty greatest guitarists’ to pick your favourite from. If Bonnie Raitt was among that selection, she’d have been the only female listed, and I’ll be an angel from Montgomery…

I was recently chatting to another female singer-songwriter, who spoke of the gig at which she had dared to sing a humorous original song about the signs of ageing we face as older women. She knew from the tumbleweed silence that descended during the first verse that the song had bombed, and knew too that it only got more graphic as it went on, but she was committed to finishing it by then, so finish it she did – as well as any chance of another booking at that club. It’s OK, apparently, to sing funny songs about Viagra, baldness and brewer’s droop. It’s not OK, however, to sing of greying pubes and saggy boobs (even though they do rhyme rather beautifully)…

Sadly, it’s as true as it ever was that for a woman to get half as much credit as a man, she has to work twice as hard and be twice as smart. As the French (who aren’t any more liberated than anyone else) say, ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’…

The following lists are by no means exhaustive and are in no particular order – they are simply some of the female musicians I personally have been influenced by, looked up to, or otherwise known about during my life in music.

This isn’t, by the way, about slamming male musicians, it’s about creating some kind of balance, recognising any musicians who’ve influenced those who followed them, not for their gender, but for their artistry.

I set off yesterday afternoon on a week-long ‘tour’ in the van. ‘Tour’ is admittedly a bit of a stretch - the week is bookended by two paid social club/care home gigs, but in between I plan to take in a folk club/acoustic session/open mic each evening, with the hope of (a) securing bookings and networking, (b) meeting up with old friends in the various music circles I’ve been part of over the years, and (c) generally having an open-road blast. The downside is that this time it’s just me out on the highway - Carol and the pups are holding the fort back home - but we are of course in regular touch, and I gather my dressing gown is being used - particularly by Chilli - as a proxy me in my absence. (Just as well I hadn’t thought to put it in the laundry basket for, well, let’s just say ‘a while’…)

I set off yesterday so that I wouldn’t have to rush this morning to the first paid gig, at a social club in Kidlington, Oxfordshire (where my family home was for forty years). That meant that I could take in the Monday night meeting of Chipping Norton Folk Club, at a lovely country pub in Chadlington, where I indulged in a very nice meal and where they were happy for me to park up overnight in the beautifully rural and peaceful car park. I knew most of the folk who came along to play or listen - first of all outside, and then, when it got a bit chilly, in the dining area inside. It was a really great evening, and I particularly enjoyed chatting with Sylvia, a regular at the club, but who I only learned last night spent 55 years delivering milk in the Witney area (I can practically hear that familiar early-morning sound of the milk float as I write this!), and gave talks about her life at the very same venue I’m about to play at this afternoon.

Speaking of which, I’d better start getting ready to entertain. Kidlington, here I come! 😎

More later…

​As the proud new owner of a 14-fret gorgeous-sounding ‘Little Silver’ handcrafted by Brook Guitars, I’ve reached the glorious end of a long quest for the perfect travel guitar. If you’ve never heard of this West Country luthier before – or, indeed, if you’re saying in a knowing, appreciative tone, ‘Ahhhh!’ – read on!

I first heard of Brook Guitars quite recently, when I was so taken with the outstandingly beautiful resonance of the guitar someone was playing at the Queen of Cups open mic in Glastonbury that I went up to the owner of the guitar afterwards to ask him about the instrument that, I noticed, had ‘Brook’ on its headstock. He told me how he’d had much the same reaction as me when he first heard a Brook guitar and set his sights on acquiring one himself. He went on to describe the extremely rural location of the Brook Guitars workshop in the heart of Devon and the affable – not to mention extremely talented – men who painstakingly and lovingly build each unique instrument right there. I was intrigued, and when I got home I looked up Brook Guitars, and the more I read, the more I dreamed of one day having my very own Brook. What’s more, that deepest-Devon workshop was only an hour and a half from me, so what was to stop me from taking a trip down there sometime to meet the men who make these fabulous instruments and maybe get to play one or two myself while I was there?

If you look on the Brook Guitars website, you’ll see that each model is named after a river in the West Country – Taw, Tavy, Lyn, etc, etc. There are, it turns out, quite a few rivers in the West Country, which is fortunate because there are quite a few Brook guitar models. There’s also, not surprisingly, given the small size of operations and the fact that everything is handmade, a bit of a waiting list for these custom-made beauties. So I also had a look online to see if any used Brooks ever come up for sale. Sure enough, there were one or two, and – again, not surprisingly – it was clear that they hold their value and are very sought after.

One in particular, listed on Reverb, caught my eye – a travel-sized Brook Little Silver, named after a tributary of the river Mole in North Devon. I’ve long been after a small guitar that sounds like a big one, and up to now have been quite disappointed with the travel guitars I’ve acquired and then quite quickly sold on – not only because they sounded too thin, but also because there was a limit to what I could play with just 12 frets up to the neck. When I realised that the Little Silver is a 14-fret model, I decided I absolutely had to at least have a play of the miniature beauty to see if it might be the very instrument I’d been looking for. The seller was Coda Music in Stevenage, Hertfordshire – one of a very select number of dealers who stock Brook guitars. I called the shop, had a chat with them about the Little Silver, and decided that I’d drive there to try it out.

And then Covid struck. My plan was scuppered for at least the next ten days, and I kept looking on Reverb to check that the guitar was still there, worried that someone else would snap it up before I ever got a chance to try it. I finally made another call to Coda Music, and they very kindly agreed to hold the Little Silver until I could get there the following week.

Well, the rest goes without saying, really – for who has ever tried out a guitar, discovered that it has the most wonderful tone, is in fact everything they’d ever wanted, and then walked away from it? Not me, let’s just say… (Incidentally, I’d also recommend Coda Music as worth a visit – a fabulous range of guitars of all types, and very friendly and knowledgeable service.)

Next stop, a visit to the Brook Guitars workshop in deepest Devon to get a pickup and strap button fitted. Given its small sound hole and pristine neck, I wouldn’t have trusted anyone other than the makers of the guitar to carry out that kind of delicate work on it!

​Getting from the M5 to the workshop was quite an adventure, involving crossing two fords and deciding not to risk a rather deeper third one, so having to reverse my little motorhome back along a grassy lane with a steep riverbank on one side in order to gingerly drive over a rickety wooden bridge instead. It also involved a lot of hoping and praying that nothing would come the other way along miles of narrow lanes with very few passing points – as well as, in the end, a call to the workshop to say to the chap who answered that I was ‘lost-ish’ and could he please work out where I was (all I could tell him was that I was in the muddy entrance to a field) and direct me to the workshop from there? Remarkably, he did work out where I was, and it turned out I was actually only a few minutes away by then.

The man I’d spoken to on the phone was waiting for me outside the workshop when I finally rolled into view, and, after breathing a hefty sigh of relief, I parked up, was greeted by him (he introduced himself as Simon), and we went into the rambling old pink cottage where Brook guitars are created. The aroma of sawdust filled my nostrils as we stepped into the first room, and I was instantly transported back to the woodshop in Virginia where I’d happily worked during my very first stay in the USA years ago, when I was a volunteer at a therapeutic community in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ah, the memories!

The other half of the Brook partnership, Andy, took my guitar from me, laid it on the work bench and set about the business of fitting it with an under-saddle pickup (the only type that would work due to the size of the sound hole). Meanwhile, Simon took me on a fascinating tour of the workshop, where it became apparent that absolutely every step of the process of building a Brook guitar is done by hand, or at the very most with the help of basic but customised (by Andy) woodshop machinery such as routers, sanders and planers. It also became clear that each Brook guitar is completely unique, as they use such a wonderful variety of different woods, mostly British tonewoods. So there is no other Little Silver exactly like mine, whose sides and back are made of beautifully resonant walnut, with a Sitka spruce top. (To be honest, I’m not sure that there are many other Little Silver guitars full stop!)

​On the tour I also met Jack, who creates really exquisite inlays as well as doing other skilled and minutely detailed work.

​By the end of the tour, Andy was just about finished with my guitar, and after settling up and having a photo taken for their website, I headed back to the M5, this time by a much easier route thanks to Simon and Andy’s directions.

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So I have the travel guitar of my dreams, memories of an adventurous ride into deepest Devon and a fantastic trip around an amazing guitar workshop – as well as another exciting related project in the making: because the Little Silver is such an unusual size, it came with no case, so what else was there to do but have a leather gig bag made specially for the tiny beauty? I happened upon a leathermaker here in Glastonbury, the talented Effie at SoulHuntress. Together, we’ve come up with a design for the bag, and as I write it's being created. More photos will follow!

Songwriting. You can divide it into two distinct types. There’s the kind where you spill out your innermost feelings, your darkest, most poignant experiences, in such a way that your listeners aren’t embarrassed by ‘TMI’, but can relate and take comfort in the fact that someone else has been there too. And there’s the more calculating commercial kind, where you’d willingly sell the rights to everything about your creation, including the right to say you wrote it, to the highest bidder because it really contains nothing of you – anything that was ‘you’ has been written out, or was never there in the first place.

It’s taken me years and years – and I’m probably not even there yet, when it comes down to it – to fully appreciate the gulf between the two, and to celebrate the fact that my songs fall fairly squarely into the former. Once I am finally there, perhaps then I’ll also know that my own instinct about my songs is more solid and pertinent than the words of someone from the commercial world paid to find something – anything – to take a pop at in them. From there, it’ll be just a small jump to taking subjective criticism of my babies with a pinch of salt, instead of feeling like someone who purports to know more than me about the songwriting business has just rubbed salt into an open wound.

Just recently, I cut the second verse from my semi-autobiographical song ‘Trail of Goodbyes’ when someone in a song-critique group I was taking part in said that he’d been right there with me until the end of the bridge, but that as I started on Verse 2, I lost him – the song was too long. Just one opinion, when there has been so much positive feedback about the song. And yet I took his view fully on board and shortened the song to one verse, one bridge and three choruses. Now I had a song that met the ridiculously restrictive criterion for a radio-length commercial song – a little over three minutes! I was still fairly happy with it, if somewhat disappointed at having jettisoned the second verse that had fleshed out the song and given more insight into the protagonist’s nomadic lifestyle, so I then took it along to another song-critique session for what I hoped would be nothing but praise for my concise, upbeat creation. Well, there was, thankfully, praise – but – and there’s always a ‘but’ at these sessions – as I say, that’s what they’re paid to come up with, even when an ‘and’ would be more justified: ‘Incredible! Sung like you’d really lived those words – and that rugged Americana delivery – not at all what I’d expected from your clipped British speaking voice! BUT…’ I held my breath. ‘BUT – I really wanted a second verse, giving more examples of that wanderlust…’

I was beside myself with fury at having listened to that other lone voice, the shallow opinion of a chap who hadn’t been able to stick with more than a two-and-a-half-minute song! And I immediately went into my studio and reinstated the second verse – with a renewed conviction to stick with my gut instinct about my creations rather than flip and flop according to the whims and fancies of any passing ‘music industry professional’.

But as I made that resolution, I was forgetting another song I’d chopped and changed as a result of professional critiques, rewriting it to within an inch of its life to the point where I no longer sang it because I didn’t really like it any more. I had, however, uploaded the original version of that song, ‘Too Bad To Be True?’, on to a music industry website ages ago, where it lay forgotten until last night, when a DJ from a US radio station messaged me to say: ‘Hi, I came across the song “Too Bad To Be True” – it is so amazing. I absolutely love this song and I will be honored to have it in my rotation.’ I’ve no idea how widely listened to that radio station is, but that’s not really the point. I was going to write to him to say I’d rewritten the song since then and would he play the rewritten version instead, but I decided to listen to the original version once again before messaging him. And guess what? I immediately realised that it was far superior to the badly scanning, forced version I’d re-shaped it into on the basis of music industry professionals’ opinions about what I needed to do with my song. So that US radio DJ will be playing my song in its original version, and the newer version will be consigned to the recycle bin. And I’ll hope the lesson will permeate my grey matter just a little bit deeper, so that in future I’ll trust my own feelings about my creations far more than the shaky, and often conflicting, opinions of ‘industry professionals’.

​All of this is not to say that there has never been any valid criticism of my songs – or, indeed, that there’s nothing wrong with any of them! My point is, rather, that it’s important to be able to sift the useful points that will benefit the song from the ones that will end up actually being detrimental. Often you can only tell the difference in hindsight. But it’s usually possible to go back and reinstate the earlier version when you’ve realised that it was better than the clunky thing you’ve ended up with in an effort to please all the critics, but actually pleasing no one – including yourself.

My virtual world tour of online music sessions continued a few days after my cyber trip to Tallahassee with a worldwide whisk across the North Sea to Norway. Prior to the pandemic, we had just begun planning a road trip there, as I’ve long wanted to dip my toe into any live-music scene we might find and see how receptive Norwegian audiences are to my material.

There were several reasons why I was so keen to visit the country, one being that I have Norwegian relatives – fairly distant, admittedly, but I did get to know them when by chance the head of the family, a senior officer in the Norwegian navy, happened to be posted to Norfolk, Virginia the very same year I was working as a volunteer in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so I spent a lovely, and very different, Norwegian-style Christmas with them at the US naval base in Norfolk. Another reason was that I had a friend who regularly toured Norway with her songs, which got me thinking that there might be an audience for my material there too. And the third reason was that a large party of Norwegian tourists happened to be visiting the Troubadour, the legendary live-music venue in Earl’s Court, the evening I had a gig there in October 2019, and (despite my under-par performance that evening due to the effects of a lingering bout of flu) I sold CDs to some of them that night as well as via my website a while later. Even though the town I posted one of the CDs to, Bodø, turned out to be north of the Arctic Circle, it didn’t stop me fondly imagining playing there in a packed log-cabin-type venue full of newly acquired fans…

But a few months later, just as we started thinking about how feasible it would be to drive our small motorhome to Norway and tour the country in it (probably not very, I realised, once I saw how very long the country is; we'd do better to fly there and hire a vehicle once we arrived), the Chinese city of Wuhan leapt into the news, Covid-19 became a household word, and the world rapidly proceeded to change dramatically, putting an end – at least for the time being – to any such plans.

When the idea of embarking instead on a virtual world tour came to me, Norway was therefore one of the first countries I researched for online music sessions, and aha! (get it? Aha? Oh, never mind…), what should come up, but a weekly singer-songwriter session based in Oslo! Perfect! I was slightly anxious about the fact that I don’t speak a single word of Norwegian, but the two main things I recalled about my distant relatives from that long-ago Christmas in Virginia were: (a) they all spoke absolutely perfect English; and (b) (not really relevant, but memorable nonetheless), they all looked like film stars. The latter point might have increased my anxiety if I’d dwelled on it, but instead I hung my hopes on the notion that all Norwegians speak word-perfect English, so I felt relatively sure that I’d be fine.

So I duly signed up for the next session, on a Monday evening, with the welcoming English title ‘Bring your songs, heart and ears!’, and at 6 o’clock that evening clicked on the Zoom link with a teensy bit of trepidation. I wasn’t the first one there by any means – the host and a number of others were already ensconced in the Zoom room, and for some reason I was slightly taken aback to realise that they were indeed all Norwegian and all speaking in, yes, Norwegian!

​‘Um… is it okay for me to be here, as I only speak English?’ was my opening line.

There was only a very momentary hesitation before I was welcomed in English by the host, who then went on to ask the others in Norwegian whether they’d mind conducting the session in English for my benefit. They didn’t mind, but when I realised that that’s what had just been agreed, I leapt in and said they must speak in whatever language they felt most comfortable speaking in, and I’d be more than happy just to be there and to sing my songs when requested to do so, as long as I was prompted to do so in English!

The end result was a happy middle ground, with some discussion in Norwegian (I prided myself on being able to discern the subject of one particular conversation in that language, laced as it was with ‘screen share’, ‘feedback’ and other seemingly non-translatable terms), but a very generous amount of English. At the end of the two hours I felt that these lovely Scandinavian musicians genuinely hoped to see me there again, and I could equally genuinely tell them that I’d really loved listening to them sing – some in Norwegian (one man’s voice in particular I found very hypnotic), and some in admirable English – and that all of the performances had been full of emotion that I could relate to even if I didn’t always understand the actual words. In return, they seemed very engaged with my song, with my explanation of why I was there – the virtual world tour and all that – and with me showing them how I use the partial capo. The energy level was refreshingly laid back that evening – I think some of the participants were quite tired, so it may not always be so low key, but it certainly helped me keep up much more easily with what was going on throughout.

​I’m looking forward to going back – and even, one day, to putting in a real-life appearance when things return to some semblance of normality and the session reverts to its regular venue in a café in the city.

Towards the end of 2020 I was struck by a pandemic-related paradox: in lockdown, where most of us are doing the responsible thing and staying at home except for ‘essential’ trips out, with any chance of live music having therefore all but ceased, it’s become possible where it wasn’t before for artists to play all around the world, to audiences who previously had no idea of their existence.
 
Realising - albeit belatedly - the opportunity provided by the recent explosion of Zoom-type music events, I decided to embark on a virtual world tour of online open mics and singer-songwriter sessions. My first foray into this internet-based form of globetrotting was, by pure chance, on 1 January 2021, but that gave me a vision for the coming year – a year that has started out pretty much where its predecessor left off. In that vision, this is the year my songs will be heard everywhere across the pandemic-struck world where an online live music session exists!
 
So far, while not stepping out of my log cabin studio at the bottom of my garden in Somerset, England, I have played in Tallahassee, Florida, Oslo, Norway, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it’s been heartwarmingly wonderful! To get to play to brand-new, appreciative audiences is fabulous in itself – and for them to be spread all across the world is the absolute icing on the cake! Tonight I’m performing a 30-minute set in Tucson, Arizona, which I’m looking forward to pulling out my southwestern desert-type songs for.
 
I came across Virtual Open Mic Tallahassee on Facebook. It’s hosted each Friday evening on StreamYard by singer-songwriter Robynn O’Leary and her co-host Adam, and is broadcast on Facebook. The night I first went along (and it certainly was ‘night’ for me rather than evening – it’s midnight in the UK when it’s 7 p.m. in Florida…), there were about five or six other performers, including Robynn, Adam, a heavy-rock duo, a pianist with a big, theatrical voice and a singer-songwriter from Nashville. For some reason my internet connection was particularly unstable that night, which was disappointing, as it made it very difficult for me to join in with the chat between songs. But everyone was so welcoming that I made a return visit to the state capital of Florida the following Friday night, when my internet connection was much more reliable. It was another really enjoyable session, and although the initial idea of the world tour was to visit as many sessions as possible, the friendships I’m forging there have made me think that it’s better to make repeat visits to the same sessions as a way of getting to know people better and familiarising people with my music. And just because it's more fun that way!

​To be continued...