I must admit I was pretty terrified...

when I arrived at The White Lion in Walsall on Saturday. I'd arranged for The Robert Lane band (which is me, Matty Pinfield and Mick Jeynes) to perform at the St George's Day Party. The White Lion is a biggish pub and when I visited it a couple of weeks before and took part in the open mic session it had a fairly big crowd, well into the music so I was confident the band would have a good night.

As fate would have it a very big Stag Party had descended on the pub just before we arrived. They, naturally, were drinking a lot and making a lot of noise. At various intervals signalled by some secret and incomprehensible code word they would all lie on the floor or climb on each others backs and jump up and down.

Once we had set up one of the Stags grabbed one of the pub's microphones and mimed away to whatever was playing on the jukebox, throwing the mic stand around, really thrashing about in his rock star mode. He stood on an unsecured monitor which moved and he fell over. All part of the fun. Once he'd finished he turned to us and enigmatically cried "beat that, you c***s!" Being as I am an eternal worrier and at heart a dedicated pessimist, this worried me a little bit. I was not very secretly hoping that the party would move on before we kicked of, but it was not to be.

My original plan had been to have Matty Pinfield and Lucy Philips (the talented violinist who plays the on Very Own Way) start the night with one of their lovely acoustic guitar and violin duo sets. Faced with the most boisterous crowd this side of The Marquee Club, we decided the best thing would be to just play our heaviest blue and rock tracks and see how we got on. So we kicked off with Leave My Kitten Alone, smashed through The Who's The Seeker and kept going through everything loud in the set. We agreed later that when we started every note was played through fear, which was then replaced by elation when these Stags turned out to be lovely and big fans of what we were playing. They recognised and joined in with a lot of the covers, they listened and jumped around to the originals. Matty smashed his kit and gave himself blisters, Mick was loud and funky as hell and I windmilled and solo'd within and inch of my life. It became hysterical when I'd be playing away and open my eyes to see them all lying on the floor or Piggy backing around the pub.

The Stag leader grabbed the mic again, flashed his mates and asked us to play a Metallica Track. We settled for a bit of Led Zeppelin and him and some of the others sang the same verse a hundred and five times, and that was the end of the first set.

The one remaining sober looking Stag told me he thought we were very good and not to be offended, but they were moving on. I assured him this was not a problem. This left a much more subdued but attentive crowd for the second half of the night.

After a break I played a few solo tracks and Lucy joined us for Very Own Way and some jammy covers. Mick, Matty and I played the night out and that was that.

All in all I had a great night and was pretty proud of this little band for being able to take anything and win such an intimidating crowd over. Mick and Matty played great and I was very pleased we had worked up such an eclectic repertoire!

Chronic Ape

The very lovely people at Chronic Ape have been kind enough to do a nice little piece about the Twenty Two EP, which I'm very grateful for.

Have a look at the site, they have a whole load of interesting music and cultural news being added all the time by a range of excellent contributors.

Upcoming Gigs

I've just added some new gig dates to the Live Page. I'm playing solo shows at some of my favourite venues, including The Yardbird in Brum and Stratford's Cox's Yard.

There's some dates with the band in Walsall, Birmingham and Bridgnorth in the next few months too.

On Tuesday 29th March I was thrilled to once again support Edwina Hayes at The Robin 2, Bilston. If you've visited the blog before you will know all about Edwina, if not she's a wonderful singer well know for having a song featured in a Cameron Diaz film. See her website for more info and to hear some of her beautiful music.

I arrived at the Robin at the same time as my good friend Sam Draisey, who was also performing, and his girlfriend Michaela. Me and Sam have played together many times all over the place but hadn't seen each other for quite a while. So the pre gig hanging around for once was good fun as we caught up and exchanged stories about being in the highly privileged position of a west midlands singer songwriter. Or something like that. This chat was only briefly punctuated by our sound checks.

The doors opened and the audience began to arrive. By sheer coincidence an old school mate walked in and we had a quick catch up. Turns out he's a big fan of Edwina...

...who now arrived having travelled all the way from her home in East Yorkshire and did a brief sound check. She came to say hello to Sam and I and happily remembered me. A little later she appeared again to offer us some sandwiches, which we had managed to miss by not venturing back stage...


Sam performed and went down a treat with the audience, a proper music fan audience. And why not, he's great! My favourite lyricist on the circuit. Then it was my go, and the lovely crowd were again very appreciative. Despite the very very bright lights I was able to make out my girlfriend, having only just finished work in Wolverhampton, arrive halfway through the first song. So that completed a good line up of some of my favourite people!

After a short break Edwina performed, and we were all yet again floored by her beautiful voice. She gave us a number of fabulous originals and very moving interpretations of great songs by other people.

She's also just genuinely very nice and witty which makes for some great stories and banter between the songs. With Edwina the whole gig feels like she's performing in front of dear friends, and indeed judging buy the reaction of the audience she truly was. It's easy to understand why she gets so many requests to perform at weddings/birthdays/engagements.

As always the sound and vibe at the Robin was great, I like playing there alot.

What a lovely night! Shame it's such a drive home, but I had one of Edwina's cds to listen to so it wasn't so bad.