London-the music

I visited London at the end of April to check out some venues I’d heard about. I was treating the trip as research, not really expecting to play.

I went along to Aint Nothin But Blues Bar in Soho, where Niall Kelly was kind enough to let me sing a couple of songs in the Saturday evening open mic. What a nice club this is, not unlike Brum’s own Tower of Song, i.e. smallish and rammed with music aficionados. I seemed to go down well with my two tunes (one blues and an original) then had a cool time watching Niall and some regulars Jam.

On Sunday I popped along to The Stage Door in Waterloo which is just down the road form The Old Vic. This was a proper singer songwriters night with some rather wonderful talents appearing. Once again the fella in charge, another Rob, was happy to let me join in and do some tunes which everyone seemed to enjoy.

At both of these gigs I was very kindly lent a Guitar as I was travelling without one, so thanks to the lenders.

Finally on Monday night, at the suggestion of Rob from the Stage Door, I visited The Spice of Life. Everyone told me that being a bank holiday it was a quiet night, but it seemed pretty heaving at times to me. On this occasion the bill was full but I had a lot of fun watching everyone else play.

At one point two rather nice people came and sat by me, and clearly being rather more gregarious than me sparked up a conversation, asking if I was playing. I told them who I was and the reason for my visit, and it turns out that they were the singer and pianist from a London band called Midas Touch. When they got up to do their two numbers they were really great, probably the best thing I heard all night. How strange that they should happen to sit by me, and end up being so good, I thought. You can see/hear some of their stuff here