What We Did During Lockdown 12/01/2022
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Like most musicians, throughout lockdown I was asked regularly to participate in various online performances and activities. And like everyone else I struggled to get to grips with different apps and platforms, battling to find ways of overcoming the poor quality sound of live streams, all the while doing my best to pretend there was an audience in the room. For me the novelty wore off very quickly, I dreaded being asked to do another performance to camera, and so the challenge became trying to keep myself interested and amused, and stretching my abilities as a video editor in the process. Below are a few examples that I particularly enjoyed:

This was done at the very beginning of lockdown 26th March 2020, when everyone was desperately wondering if there was a way to play together simultaneously on-line from various locations, there wasn’t but everyone seemed to assume that we had found some way of doing just that. We hadn’t, I filmed and recorded myself playing solo on my phone, send that to Max and Johann in Stuttgart who filmed themselves adding bass and drums, and finally to Giulio in Italy for cavaquinho. Max mixed the audio and I edited the video.
When my local newspaper asked me to contribute something for the VE Day celebrations on 8th May 2020, I thought it would be much more fitting to do so in the guise of my busking alter ego The Stranger On The Saw. I knew the world and his wife would be doing versions of We’ll Meet Again as the wartime sentiments rang true for the current covid restrictions, but I’ll Be Seeing You is such a great song I couldn’t resist. I thought I’d try to film myself playing guitar and use that as the accompaniment for the saw, but I got carried away and added bass and drums also. I’m no drummer and had to do a number of takes to get a performance that was anywhere near usable.
The Hullabaloo weekend in Sandown is a weekend festival that takes place each year in Sandown and does a brilliant job of using the arts to draw attention to the natural environment of the Bay Area. Forced to go online they managed to get funding for contributions from the Arts Council, I wasted no time in volunteering the services of myself and my good friend the wonderful Jon Thorne who should have been on tour with Lamb. One of the regular Hullabaloo events that I miss each year is the Dawn Chorus walk led by environmentalist Ian Boyd, and 2020 would have been the perfect time to hear the birds in all their glory as there was so little noise pollution from traffic on the roads and in the air, so I set out with a microphone and laptop in the dark and recorded the most glorious concert of song which I condensed down to a 10 minute soundscape of highlights. I gave this to Jon who composed a stunning piece of music that beautifully underpinned and intertwined with the natural dynamics of the dawn chorus, which he performed entirely on double bass. I then added a few minutes of musical saw echoing key phrases of the birds, as well as reciting the names of the birds identified in my recording by Ian Boyd.
The folk club that runs monthly at Quay Arts managed to keep going through lockdown with a series of online evenings that also acted as fundraisers. Asked to contribute a set I thought I’d have a bit of fun accompanying myself for four numbers each paying tribute to recently deceased music legends, John Prine, Dave Greenfield of the Stranglers, Little Richard and local folk singer Andy Jackson.
In easter of 2021 I was asked once more to contribute a set to another on-line fundraiser and this time I decided to go electric and play a selection of songs from across my career, Devil On Your Back, Emily, Slow Gin, Home and Vapour Trails.
In early 2021 I was asked if I’d be interested in contributing a film or this wonderful online festival put together by my friends at Artecology. Part of an ongoing project to bring the natural world to the Glades shopping centre in Bromley, I was asked to both provide a soundtrack to the weekend’s programme of various online films and activities as well as making a short film of my own. Aimed at young people and for potential use in the classroom, I tried to break down the creative process into four different areas demonstrated by the making of a linoprin. Don’t think I’ll ever make a Children’s TV presenter, even though I am wearing dungarees, but I enjoyed making this film with my daughter Alice behind the camera.