A couple of years back I’d taken photos at a Newton Faulkner show and got the gig through emailing the opening act. That act was called James Gillespie. In the following years James has absolutely smashed it, accumulating himself over half a million monthly listeners on Spotify and earned himself (rightly so) a very loyal following. We had a drink and a chat after the gig at The Albert Hall and got talking about music as we musicians do. James suggested I start collecting tour passes of all the shows I do because it’s great to look back on and told me a couple of other little stories and bits of wisdom which have helped along the way. James said next time he was in Manchester we’d have a jam. We exchanged numbers and parted ways.
I’d kept an eye out for whenever he was playing in Manchester and always fired an email off more in hope than anticipation of getting a support slot. He always replied, but it was always a case of “ahh sorry dude the promoters already taken care of all that.” Flash forward maybe six months and I get tagged in a status on Facebook and get chatting to a guy called Sam who was looking for acts to play at a Beer Festival in Nottingham. I fire off an email application and think nothing more of it. Anyway a month or so passes and I get a reply from Sam saying ‘bloody hell mate I LOVE your stuff let me fire some dates your way’. Within those offered dates was a slot at Rescue Rooms Beer Festival and Dot To Dot Festival in Nottingham. This was the start of my relationship with the nationwide promoters DHP.
The Beer Festival fell through as I was booked at someones wedding but I played Dot To Dot Festival and it was brill. It was a stunning day and me, my cousin Mike and girlfriend Lucy watched some amazing acts. We’d just driven up from a festival I was playing in the Cotswolds and arrived in high spirits. We caught a bunch of bands but Kim Churchill, King No One and Elm were personal highlights and my set went down a storm later on. Anyway flash forward another month or so and DHP started emailing me offering support slots in Manchester. I supported a great band All The Luck In The World at The Deaf Institute and an amazing Icelandic singer Axel Flovent at the Castle. I got offered a support with Harrison Storm and The Siennas but sadly these fell through at the agents end and also got offered to support Laurence Fox; which I turned down.
ANYWAY another couple of months pass and I get an email from DHP one day entitled JAMES GILLESPIE SUPPORT – NIGHT & DAY CAFE.
I replied within 3 minutes, got approved by the agent and got the show.
About four days before the show my ear got blocked with water in the shower and wouldn’t clear. It was a nightmare. I was COMPLETELY unable to hear out of my right ear and everything was really muffled. I tried everything I could at home but had to ring the doctors after it didn’t clear on the second day. They sorted me an appointment – but it was for several weeks down the line AFTER the gig. I’d been pushing the gig pretty hard and most of my regulars were coming down for it so I panic bought some In-Ear Monitors (IEMs) and tried my best to clear it but it just got worse.
Gig day rolled around and I was nervous. Not because of the show; I was hyped, I knew the show had sold out (not just ‘sold out’ either it was SOLD OUT – I was turning people away who wanted to come. I’d only just managed to squeeze myself a small guest list. I knew my set, I knew I would go down well, I’d seen from instagram stories that James’ fans were in early at every other show of the tour so I knew I’d have an audience. I just couldn’t fucking hear anything.
I arrived at the venue and said Hi to James who remembered me and said DHP had given him a list and he’d recognised my name instantly and was like ‘HIM’. James had some trouble with his soundcheck and it ended up overrunning really badly meaning that I had just ten minutes before doors opened to get setup. I loaded my stuff onto stage past a very apologetic James & crew. Everyone was a bit stressed… especially me, being unable to hear basic instructions. My panic bought IEMs were an anomaly, I said to the sound guy that I hadn’t used them much before and he helped a bit but then had to rush back to the desk and I had to prioritise just making sure my guitar was plugged in and working. I checked both guitars and couldn’t really hear them properly despite them being as loud as they could be in my wedge monitors and distantly heard a muffled cry from the promoter shouting that she was opening doors. The sound guy’s voice came through the wedges saying “Ok sounds good. You all good mate?” I replied “Yeah.. all good but my in ears aren’t set up.” – The sound guy laughed, swore and ran over and plugged them in and before we could check they were working doors opened and people flooded in. I was rushed downstairs to the backstage to hide until my set time.
I’ve played some big gigs (not that this was massive), but not loads. The weirdest thing for me by far is sitting in a backstage not knowing what you’re about to walk out to. A million things are going round my head… Did my family get in ok? / are people there? / are my in-ears going to work? / did I leave my capo? (which is integral in my set) on my guitar which was now on stage and out of reach until SHOWWW TIMEEEE. James and crew were so chilled out blasting Stormzy in the dressing room and I was like FREAKING OUT about my set. James’ sound guy really liked my guitar playing as I was warming up and we had a quick chat but we mostly kept ourselves to ourselves until the promoter came down to lead me up onto stage. James and co wished me luck and I walked out into a packed room.
I’ve played Night & Day loads over the years, but I’ve never played, or actually been in when it’s literally been at capacity. It really shone new light on the venue and made it extra special. There was a PROPER front row of packed in people leaning on the speakers, people crowded around the side of the stage and a super bright light right on me so all I could see was black apart from a distant outline of heads against the streetlight from the back window. I turned on my in-ears and faintly made out a hissy thin sounding guitar come through them but there was no time to rectify the mix – the time was now and the show had to start this instant otherwise the pause between house music fading out and live music starting would have just edged a fateful millisecond away from the ‘professional slick start’ towards the dreaded ‘uncomfortable, watching a pub band all look round at each other going ‘you ready?’ – so I turned off my tuner pedal completely unaware of if anything was working and started playing.
30 seconds into my set and I’m on auto pilot, things are ok. I’m can hear enough of my bass’y guitar in my ears to know that my guitar was working, I can hear my muffled vocal in my ears so I knew I was just about in tune… then suddenly the transmission to my in-ears crackled, then crackled again louder and suddenly EVERYTHING cut out in my ears.
In-Ears are sound isolating. You put them in and they’re effectively ear plugs which are designed to protect your hearing against the huge levels of sound that you encounter at live gigs. A feed from the desk is then sent with a mix of what you want to hear into your ears at a manageable level so you can perform at your absolute best. They’re amazing. I love them. BUT I WAS DEAF; and in this moment I was blasting my desk feed through both earphones to hear myself through my gammy ears. When everything cut out, I was effectively a deaf man playing and singing on stage in front of 250 people with fingers in his ears.
I remember experiencing that horrible feeling when all the blood rushes to your head and you’re really hot suddenly. Had things cut out just for me or had the PA turned off too? Had that horrible crackle gone out out front? Had my one cool gig this month been cruelly taken from me by technical problems!?! I took one earphone out to see if it had just cut out for me or for everyone – I couldn’t really tell. Everything was like a big mumble. I could hear my voice through vibrations in my head but not clearly. I glanced at people on the front row (who suddenly felt all too close) trying to read their expressions to see if something was wrong… if this wasn’t coming through the PA then I’d be able to read it on their expressions; they’re not reacting like something’s wrong but they’re not smiling either… My IEMS crackled back to life and I could hear myself a bit again. I couldn’t hear the audience until I finished the first song. I struck the final note and they roared into life. Real loud. Big cheers. I didn’t know how far back they went but I could tell it was going really well – or it was going really badly and they had total sympathy and were cheering me on regardless.
In terms of my set.. I can’t remember all that much of it. I was on autopilot. I knew I was playing well. It was like removing my hearing had made my subconscious take over and he was carrying me through nicely. All my jokes landed. I didn’t make any real errors. I played a tight, professional set when the pressure was on. I remember playing Richest Man Alive which got a massive cheer as it was the week when the Tories had just won the election and I’d played the.. “if there’s ever a time where this song is relevant it’s now” card with the final lyric chant of “If wealth was measured in happiness would you share it around” landing particularly well.
I can’t remember at what point I started clocking smiles on faces but I knew fairly early on that from an audience perspective at least things were going well. My IEMs kept cutting out intermittantly but I wasn’t thinking about it too much anymore, I was wearing one ear bud and when it was there it was ok and when it wasn’t I could survive. I still wasn’t sure if it was cutting out on the PA or not but I was still getting big cheers at the end of songs and there wasn’t a panicked sound guy emerging side stage to re-patch things soooo it must’ve been ok. I ended with my usual set closer ‘Still Not The Same’ and when people started cheering at the false ending before the massive outro I was like… Ok. Here we go. I’ve finished my singing; guitar’s my thing…let’s just go for it. I started kicking my stomp box and people started clapping along, front to back, side to side, people whooping along and basically I just fucking went for it for about a minute and a half and drank it all in like a delicious, wholesome, heart-warming cup of hot cocoa.
I came offstage to big applause and every person I passed congratulating me. I don’t have a roadie or any crew, so had to then emerge back onto the stage to collect all my gear – like the most disappointing encore ever. A couple of people on the front row said hello as I was packing down and to be honest I couldn’t hear a word they were saying but smiled and said thank you then quickly excused myself to pack up so James could get on.
I came downstairs to congratulations from James and his team, grabbed four beers from the rider and went upstairs to hang the fuck out, sell CDs and CHILL. It was great. So many people wanted photos and I checked my phone at one point and had 30 new likes on Facebook and 16 tags on Instagram. I think in terms of fan conversion (I don’t like saying ‘fans’ but in terms of people latching on to my music) that gig is to date my most successful show. Everyone who has followed me on the back of that gig regularly interacts with my stuff, listens to the music and buys Merch. Once this coronavirus malarkey is over I’m certain I will see some of them at future gigs of my own.
I bumped into my manager who told me it was the best he’d ever seen me play which made me laugh as I basically spent half the gig wondering what was going on. I passed out my rider beers to my friends who had come to watch and settled in with my family to watch James play.
James was predictably wicked. I mean I’d seen him soundcheck for an hour and a half, I knew he was brilliant. He’s introduced a lot of backing tracks with his music now – when I met him at The Albert Hall it was just him and an acoustic guitar singing cute love songs but now his set was full of massive chorus’, sexy sub drops and room shaking bangers which totally works for him as he can really unleash the power of his voice. He properly bossed it and gave me a little shout out about half way through – I got a good little cheer and a few pats on the back.
After the set I chatted to as many people as I could, had photos with a bunch of people and signed CDs. I gave out flyers at the door as people left into the night fully expecting to find some of them on the floor outside the venue after the gig but I gave them out anyway. The DHP rep came to say bye and said that she’d fed back how good I was to the rest of the team and was super impressed that I was flyer-ing – “if one in ten of those people you’ve just flyered listened you’ve got 20 odd new fans.”
James was having a drink at the bar with some of his mates who bought me a shot of tequila (I think, I remember it being bad) to have with them. They did the old ‘shot in mouth lift it up in your mouth and drink it thing’ and I reluctantly agreed (not really great at drinking) they all did theirs and I tried, failed and ended up spilling tequila all over my face. Thankfully I hid it but some of the people I’d been speaking to had seen it and were laughing at me.
Anyway yeah I got James to sign my gig pass which felt like a nice full circle thing on this story and later added it to my collection on my wall at home. We exchanged numbers again and I said my goodbyes and set off into the night… only to walk back past him having a cigarette outside the venue 5 minutes later on the way to the car with Lucy and a massive bag full of McDonalds – not a discarded flyer in sight.
I got my ear sorted privately a couple of days after the gig by a friendly and stylish ear doctor called Hamzah. He pulled the most massive ungodly and disgusting piece of wax that had been buried deep within my ear canal using micro suction AND irrigation. I can hear perfectly now and have been able to since. As we parted ways I jokingly said “You’re a hero Hamzah” and I suppose in the grand scheme of things, he really is and I totally meant it. I got into my car and clinked around with my keys for a few minutes as it was the first time I’d heard a high frequencies in over a week – I must’ve looked like a toddler at play.
Thanks to DHP, James Gillespie and Hamzah at North West Hearing. You’re all great.
Joel's Side Of The Story 
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