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.

Hold on to your lover cause your hearts bound to die

In a bid to try and get more use out of this blog, I've decided to try and not force myself to write about myself every bloody day. So, instead, I was thinking I want to write about songs I love and try and work out why I do. I find that I get very fixated with songs, to the extent that I can listen to a current obsession on repeat for hours to hear everything in the song.

The first song I've picked is one of these songs. Around two years ago, my brother sent me an email with a link to the video below, saying that the woman's voice is one of the most unique you'll ever hear, coupled with lyrics that seem to be ripped from a hole deep down in the heart of a small town.

I was intrigued, so I pressed play and had a listen. At first the vocal tone grated on me, but as the opening lines weaved around, I was frozen and didn't want to click pause.

"And you know the sun's setting fast, and just like they say nothing good ever lasts. Well, go on, kiss it good bye, but hold on to your lover cause your hearts bound die"

From here the song tells a tale of a woman spending her life in suburban town somewhere in the America (although it could be anywhere, even Scotland), only to watch the connection and longing to the town fade away. In the end she decides that she has to leave, although with some degree of reluctance.

Now comes the personal part. This song means a lot to me because of the link it has between me and my brother. This was one of the first songs that, in 'adultlife', he and I found a mutual admiration for. Both of us were both living away from our home town at the time, and with the content of the song dealing with the fading away of what makes a town a place you can call home, it barged its way in to my life. 

I've always been interested in what can make a place feel like home, whether or not it's the peoples, the buildings, the memories, or even just as another song says "wherever I lay my hat". There are many places in my hometown that I have fond memories of, but revisiting the places fill me with dread. The bricks and mortar may be the same, the same people may be there, but it can never live up to the nostalgia. On the other hand though perhaps that was all there was in the first place?

Our Town by Iris Dement doesn't provide definite answers, but it does paint the perfect picture of the final days before you leave.

Gigs and Clubs Schemers

Today is PRS day for many musicians, i.e. the hard grafted royalty payment for the songs that they have written and played live finally comes through for the previous three months. As an unsigned artist yet to play the big venues of the country (the Barrowlands, Carling Academys etc), this usually means that for every 30 minute slot in a venue deemed a pub or a club by the PRS you will earn roughly a fiver.

How this works is that after you have played a minimum of 10 'gigs' (I'll get on to that in a minute), you submit a spreadsheet containing these 10 venues you played in and a 'standard setlist'. PRS then collate all this information and then send out the cash a few months later. Easy, simple, and fair. Or is it?

The 'standard setlist' is the part that really pisses me off. I have a great irritation for those bands that I'll pay money to go and see who have a stale, static setlist (say Green Day 1995-2004), and as a result I always push for any gig that I play to have an interesting and dynamic set list. Thus, if you saw me in June at The 13th Note (30 minute stage time), the show would be completely different to August at The Vale (1hr 15 minute stage time). Not in the eyes of the PRS it wouldn't.

For all the PRS know I could have registered. say 8 songs (content, lyrics, music, existence not important) listed them alphabetically and then submitted a list of the venues I played in and happily received my fiver per gig.

What about when I put in a spur of the moment cover of Chris T-T's The Huntsman, or Springsteen's No Surrender? PRS would love to show that they care about collecting the royalties for each performance of each members works, however, due to the 'standard setlist' the gigs and clubs scheme doesn't have scope for this. Extend this idea to where someone played one of my songs at their gigs (say El Bastardos or Roscoe Vacant, or after just a lawsuit about Peter, Jimmy Richards), would I get what I was due as a songwriter?

This isn't to mention the fact that the PRS don't seem to have any fact checking on the list of venues that is submitted to this scheme. I could, with my list of 8 songs, go through the local gig guide, find out venues that have gigs running (or open mic nights, hell that's where original work can be performed), sit in my underpants and compile spreadsheet upon spreadsheet of 10 gigs that I hypothetically played.

A few months later, a fiver would come in for each of these and I could do my Christmas shopping. I guess, if I did it well enough, I could probably give up my job and have the life of a struggling musician, with the PRS paying the bills (step further, I could possibly get the council to pay for this as I wouldn't have a real job anymore).

You may have read this and thought, well Dave, why are you complaining? If it is how you say it is, then the PRS are giving out free money and you'd be a fool to reject it.

 The main thing that pisses me off with this system is that, yes the PRS are giving out free money to those who claim to have written music, but without the validation checks, it devalues the idea of being a songwriter. This isn't me saying that to be a songwriter you need to make money out of it. I'm coming from the same lines as the arguments about TV music competitions and the like. It creates a devalued and simplified notion of what it is to be an artist who writes music, plays proper shows, travels the country and puts in hard work.

Is this all worth a fiver?