Get there and do the gig through Hell or high water!
If you’re a professional
performer you’re not allowed to be ill or to miss a gig for any other reason
whether it’s your car breaking down, 6ft snow drifts, the world coming to an
end…whatever.
 |
| Pete and Lucy in the 1990s |
I’ve been lucky, I haven’t had
to let people down very often and I have built up a reputation for being
reliable. People know I will turn up and deliver the goods. I’ve done it when
I’ve been feeling really bad. But sometimes dropping out is unavoidable—everyone
gets ill and sometimes other things prevent you getting there, things like your
car getting ill! Nowadays I can afford a reliable car and if it was off the
road I could afford to use public transport (if it went to the right place, of
course!) or to hire one but it wasn’t always so.
Back in ‘the good old days’
when I first went professional I was driving old bangers and money was very
short. Without mobile phones and the internet it was not easy to organise
things at the last minute and outside normal working hours so I can vaguely remember
a couple of times when I was transportless and couldn’t get to gigs. Trains
were often prohibitively expensive—the fare was more than my fee. One occasion
I dimly remember (it must have been about 1980) was a gig in Scarborough to
which I took my daughter Lucy, who was 9 or 10 years old, because there was a
special ‘parent and child’ ticket to encourage parents to take their children
to the seaside by train, which meant that the two of us could get there for a
fraction of the price it would have cost me alone! It must have been summer
holidays and she was beginning to be fairly competent on the fiddle and enjoyed
playing so she came and did a floor spot and probably joined me on a couple in
my set. (Child Labour!)
Here she is from 1989 False Knight on the Road
 |
| A recent picture of Pete |
Usually organisers are
understanding if your excuses are genuine (word soon gets around if they’re
not!) and will rearrange things, but not always. Over the years I’ve had a
couple of occurrences of voice trouble—nothing very serious, just overuse, I
suppose.
It’s usually gone for no
apparent reason and without warning. Twice it’s happened whilst I was actually
performing which is awkward. Once I was at a folk club (Didcot, I think) where
I’d been many times before and it just faded away. Luckily they were quite
happy for me to devote most of the second half to guitar instrumentals and then
have me back to sing the songs at a later date. On the other occasion I was
storytelling at a school in Nottingham. I managed to, just about, get through the morning but couldn’t possibly
have done the afternoon so I offered to charge them for half a day and then
come back and do another full day for nothing. They were very ungracious,
didn’t see why I couldn’t carry on, and never had me back.
On the most severe occasion the
doctor told me ‘not to even whisper for a fortnight’. That is difficult anyway
but it developed into a farce! I went
around with a note book and wrote down what I wanted to say. You wouldn’t
believe the number of times the other person took the book and answered me in
writing!
It’s hard to believe that if
you can’t hear someone they can’t hear you—or vice versa. It happens with phone
conversations; if it’s a bad line and they are very quiet you find yourself
shouting, assuming that you must be quiet too even though you might not be.
 |
| A ghostly storyteller? |
Some years ago I did a very
nice storytelling session for a group of adults with various ‘special needs’.
When I’d finished and was having a cup of tea with them I was aware of a little
group with their heads together plotting away at something. Then they came and
told me this story. I don’t know whether they made it up from scratch or based
it on something they’d heard elsewhere.
'A storyteller had been booked
to tell ghost stories at Halloween. He’d been before but the organiser was a
bit surprised that he hadn’t been in touch to confirm details. However, on the
appointed day he arrived, looking a bit flustered and at the last minute, and
proceeded to do a really good set of stories which went down very well. The
audience loved it. When he’d finished he collected his money, said his goodbyes
and went off. No-one thought any more of it until the next morning when the
organiser received a letter which read:
“Dear Sir, I don’t know whether
you’ll got this in time but I’m just writing to inform you that the storyteller
died a few days ago. Yours sincerely…”'
Coming back from beyond the grave to do the gig is taking things a bit too far!
See Pete's web site
Facts & Fiction storytelling magazine which Pete edits
No comments:
Post a Comment