A blisteringly busy week in the South West music scene

By Katie Marie, on Thursday, February 24, 2011

Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography)

Katie Marie covering the South West for a blisteringly busy musical week

Blimey, it’s been a busy old week for me… but a very fun one indeed with oodles of gigs to get stuck into, which is just how I like it.

It all kicked off on Friday afty with a live set on BBC Radio Devon. They were doing a 24-hour charity event called Folk Relief where they were trying to raise money for The Devon Air Ambulance. They had lots of local musical people playing through-out the day and I popped in to play some tunes before having to head on up to Salisbury.

There was shed loads of traffic on the road, but I just made it in time to get in the venue, change my T-shirt, do a (very) quick sound check and then show time!

I was gigging in a cool little venue called Qudos and was joined by the super talented Chris Woods who played guitar and banjo. We had a really fun evening and the owner made us both feel very welcome, so hopefully we’ll be back there again soon.

The next morning I had head off to The Salisbury Arts Centre (which was literally 60 yards down the road from Qudos, Sa-weet!) as I was going to be playing at one of their Live Lunch Sessions.

The arts centre must have originally been a church and the stage area where I was playing was just beautiful. I had the most stunning stain glass window right behind me and the high ceiling meant that the acoustics were amazing. London-based guitarist Rob Johnson played a very kewl set before me and did a nice mixture of instrumental tunes.

Having spent the past couple of days eating nothing but crap and petrol station food it was very nice indeed to be eating a nice healthy Salisbury Arts Centre homus salad for lunch.

Soon it was time for me to do my thang. It was busier than I expected and everyone was really appreciative, plus the room acoustics were gorgeous!

I met lots of really friendly people and sold CDs, all in all it made for a lovely afternoon.

We packed up my gear and headed on the road again as that evening I had a gig with Miquid Licks at the H-Bar in Colston Hall, Bristol. Jane (my sat nav) reckoned it would only take us around 1.40pm to get to there so with plenty of time to kill we thought we’d stop at a pub and have a drink or two.

After driving through the beautiful countryside of Salisbury we came across a pub right out in the middle of nowhere which we decided to stop at. I always find pubs that are out in the middle of nowhere are either full of really friendly people… or slightly strange people. This one was a bit of a mixture of the two, which was fine by me – other than the fact there was a rather strange smell of stale bread everywhere and there were two blokes sat opposite us having a rather in-depth discussion about bodily functions (thank goodness I’d already eaten!).

So we had a couple of drinks in the strange smelling pub and headed off to Bristol. We managed to grab a superb parking space just a few yards away from Colston Hall (which was very jammy indeed) and headed inside the H-Bar to grab some dinner and wait for the rest of the band to arrive.

Having not played bass much at all in three months I was a little worried as to how I would fair playing full on jazz stuff, but it was a very fun gig and nice to be playing the tunes again after so long!

Soon it was time to hit the road and head on back home. The next day I had a local private function to play in the afternoon, which after a few days of motorway driving was very welcome indeed!

However, Monday I was heading on back to Bristol, as Chris and I had a gig at Mr Wolf’s.

Once again we were very lucky and managed to get a space right outside the venue (I love it when that happens…). On this particular evening we were being paid with noodles (as Mr Wolf’s is a noodle bar) and I went with Vegetable Noodles, which were very nice indeedy. There were two other acts playing that evening, Luke Thomas who is an acoustic singer/songwriter and Nick Miller who’s an American singer/songwriter who looped lots of stuff like guitars and percussion. I really enjoyed both sets and Chris and I also had oodles of fun playing. Lots of our friends came along too which was very kewl.