From Dundee to Newport

Rather than clogging up the Dave Hughes Music (TM) website with a diary of every gig I do, I've decided to write them up in this blog. I'm taking inspiration from Chris T-T here, who has his main website news feed and also Blognostic (and now the awesome Songnostic) as more personal blogs. Hope you enjoy, I'll try and make it as interesting as possible.

Yesterday I went and took the massive 10 minute coach trip from Dundee to play in Newport. This was the first gig I've done in the East Coast of Scotland since I moved up here, and in front of a totally new audience. An old friend of mine, Dominic Venditozzi, puts on these completely unplugged gigs in a wee cafe in the town. I met up with him a couple months back to talk about places to play up in Dundee, and he invited me along to play a few songs.

Newport is a lovely wee town, the type of town you can walk from one end to the other in 10 minutes. It has quite a few hotels which double as the local pub, a really good smelling fish and chip shop and a co-op. Perfect for the settled the life. I found myself looking in the estate agent's window and saw a 3 bedroom cottage with "outer shed/workshop" for around £135,000. This is now my goal for the next year.

Anyways, I got to the cafe and found a large-ish crowd standing outside the locked doors, a few kids carrying guitar cases and adults with boxes of wine. This was very helpful in giving me an idea of what type of show this was going to be. Around half seven, Dom showed up and opened the doors, put down a masking tape sqaure to mark the stage and the gig got underway.

Around 4 acts played before me with everyone doing 2 songs each (except for the main headline act, Sarah Collosu who was booked for 30 minutes). Nervousness set in as most if not all the other acts played a softly softly style of acoustic music, much associated with the new-folk scene that's going around at the moment. I rattled through my mind trying to work out which songs of mine I could play that would fit the night.

Eventually I had the revelation of "fuck it", and just played songs that are representative of what I do, namely The sinner and the saints and "I want something". I don't know how well they went down, people clapped, and there was a softly softly sing a long at the end of I want something. Later on I was asked up again, and played "never took the time" by way of apology.

Time was getting on so, in the absence of having a car now, I had to go and find the bus stop for the coach back to Dundee. So I said my good byes, gave apologies to Sarah who's set I was going to miss and left. A 15 minute wait in the cool night air was only made longer by the Midges. I got back to my flat around quarter past midnight, had some leftover cake and went to bed pretty content.

Today I am getting the bus from Dundee to Glasgow, then the train to Ayr followed by a local bus service to Failford in the South Ayrshire valley for tonights gig. I can't wait.