The Girl Done Good

K did her first public performance the other night, at a local 'Open Mike' night.

It wasn't a full house, but it was still a major hurdle to cross. Knowing my aversion to public speaking, I was well impressed by how well she did.

She kicked off with 'Autumn Leaves'. Then reprieved with her own song, 'Devil in Your Hair'.

For a quiet house there was tons of applause, so she did Audioslave's 'Like a Stone' as an encore. That went down a storm, so she sat down but was dragged up again, to sing 'Billie Jean' with another guitarist (whom she'd never played with) doing backing guitar. Then the Beatles' 'Across the Universe' with the same guy. Finally, still not off the hook, she was called back to close the evening with 'I'm Going to Haunt You'.

She did really well and enjoyed herself a lot; professional as a cucumber, no one could believe it was her first gig, and she was implored to go to a bigger open mike night in Maidstone, and to another in a working men's club on the Isle of Sheppey.

I don't know where she got that kind of courage from (but it wasn't me). Proud parents we may be, but watch this space!

Thea Gilmore

To a gig at the Zebra Bar last night. I happened on Thea Gilmore in 2001 when 'Rules for Jokers' came out, and we haven't stopped playing her since, and K sings her spine-tingling ' 'I'm Gonna Haunt You'.

The audiences here are sedate, respectful and perhaps not the easiest to warm up. Joan Coffey had that job and did it well, ranging from sweet-voiced colleen to someone who could round up sheep. Her well-structured lyrics seize you with a strange sense of deja vu; 'Sometime' is still going round in my head.

Thea's own set was just....superb; the sort of gig you never forget. That makes you glad you've been standing for three and a half hours, because a chair would have been a shackle. Supported by husband/producer Nigel Stonier (vocals, guitar, harmonica), who has written for the likes of Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne and Sandi Thorn and sung with Martha Wainwright, and by the multi-talented Fluff (vocals, violin, guitar), who has played with the Incredible String Band, Nick Harper, Waking the Witch and others, she held us hostage from start to finish, here the plangency of Nick Drake, there the soaring, spine-tingling purity of Sharleen Spitiri. We didn't want it to end.

But one thing I don't understand. Average age of the audience? Probably over 50. What's that about? Was there something better going on in this two-bit town on a Monday night? Were they all racing each other in nicked motors on the ring road? Popping Es in some techno house? Brains addled by their iPods? Doing their homework? Glued in front of Celebrity Makeover Academy Factor on Ice? Eating burgers? I wouldn't have classed this gig as folk, but even if it was, when I were a lad folk clubs attracted all ages. Everyone is into Roots Blues now. Well, Folk is our Roots; it's raw and unmixed, unplasticised, undigitised, un-Walshed and Cowelled; un Ken Bruced and Woolworthed; it's soul-food red in tooth and claw, vegetables with muck on them; love, lust, honour, courage, sorrow, grief... God save the singer-songwriters.

Oh, what's the point?

Martin Stephenson and Helen McCookerybook

To Whitstable on Saturday night, to see Martin Stephenson and Helen McCookerybook.

It was a beautiful, mild evening. We parked on Middle Wall and crabbed through Squeeze Gut Alley to the Horsebridge. On the beach and the sea wall near the Pearson's and the Royal Oyster Stores there were clusters of people standing with drinks and cameras, watching the sunset over the estuary, as if it was the tropics. We bought a drink and it was almost perfect and to complete the moment, to the SS's chagrin, I blagged a rare cigarette off a couple standing nearby. They wouldn't take anything for it, but wound up next to us at the gig, our new best friends (thanks Michelle; here's to Limerick and original sin!).

Helen opened, quickly winning over the audience. For Freight Train she pulled the promoter/sound man on stage to accompany her; he looked thrilled and terrified in equal measure, clutching a guitar as if it was a fig leaf and singing rather well. Martin Stephenson joined her for several songs too. It was the first time we'd seen Helen perform, beyond parties and people's sitting-rooms; she was confident and relaxed, and her set was flawless.

In the break we visited the bar and looked down from the Horsebridge Centre's balcony at the fizz of laid-back provincial night-life below. (I once wrote a design brief for new development in Whitstable. It suggested weather-boarding, seaward-facing gables, balconies and external staircases, and maybe someone read it, because much of the newer stuff has these and the town has hung on to its quirky character).

Martin Stephenson gave a stunning performance and provided a masterclass in audience-connection. The stage had been erected between the two doors, so that any comings and goings couldn't easily be ignored. And there seemed to be many comings and goings, individual and group. No one escaped Martin's quick (but malice-free) wit. A smiley man with protruding teeth sitting near the front had a magic phone which leapt repeatedly out of his pocket and clattered on the floor like a spawning salmon (we saw him later on an ancient bicycle, wobbling home down the High Street on the wrong side of the road, shedding things). In the front row a small boy slept on his mother's lap. When he woke near the end, tired and disoriented, Martin turned whatever song he was doing into Postman Pat and sang it right through in a magical little concert for one, and no child has ever smiled more widely (there is something strangely endearing in a rock musician knowing all the words to Postman Pat).

You can't pay an audience a bigger compliment than to give the impression that you are enjoying yourself and don't want to stop, and that's the impression Helen and Martin gave us.

Thanks guys.

Eric Clapton, Robert Raymond, Rachel Carns, and Hannah Scott

If we'd sussed when we booked tickets for Clapton in Nottingham that he would be playing five days later in Hyde Park, it'd have saved a long drive. It was a good gig though, especially as Uncle John had arranged a prime-sited executive box - not very rock and roll, but nice to be able to stretch one's legs, sup cold beer or wine, and have well-found loos all to ourselves.

The openers, Robert Raymond and the Family Band, were electric, putting heart and soul into their set (K reckoned they stole the show). Their Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was magic.

Clapton, on his magic carpet, was worth going for, inevitably. And long overdue - I last saw him with Cream at Wembley in April 1967, along with the Troggs, the Move, the Kinks, the New Vaudeville Band and Geno Washington (some gig, eh? Well, it should have been, except I couldn't hear a thing for teenage girls screaming). But there was something minimal and lacklustre about him and his band. There was no spark, no sign of enjoyment, no interaction with the audience. Except perhaps Abe Laboriel Jnr who drummed his big cotton socks off. The single encore (for which the punters had to work too hard), 'Got My Mojo Working' was enriched by the return of a bouncing, leg-waving Robert Raymond on his pedal guitar.

We were intrigued by Eric's rhythm guitarist who, K pointed out, was playing his guitar upside down. It looked like a left-handed guitar, being played left-handed, but strung right-handed. A quick Google showed that this was Doyle Bramhall II, who has toured before with Clapton with his own band, Smokestack. There must be a story behind his strange technique.

By way of contrast, my ordered debut album from Hannah Scott, 'Till Angels Fall', arrived today. With a personal note of thanks and good wishes from Hannah, and a kiss. Bless! I love it when artists are that approachable and appreciative. I had a similar response from Rachel Carns of Twin (King Cobra), who is fêted enough not to bother.

If you haven't come across Hannah, visit her MySpace here, then order her CD; it's really good and she's destined for great things.

Andy Fairweather Low

To an Andy Fairweather Low gig in our local theatre on Saturday. Andy is not immediately recognisable as the wry-smiling, mod-idol lead singer of Amen Corner that many people remember (Bend Me Shape Me, Hello Susie, (If Paradise is) Half as Nice). I don't just mean that he is 40 years older; I mean he doesn't look quite like you would expect an older version of his younger self to look. And then he sings in that characteristic, melodious but slightly strangled high-register, and you know him instantly.

Andy is a self-effacing giant in the world of rock and roll, a musicians' musician. Still remembered mainly (and fondly) for Amen Corner's three brief years and for his 1970s solo hits like the hauntingly worded Wide Eyed and Legless and the funky Reggae Tune, he has played with a long list of greats, including Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, George Harrison, BB King, Bill Wyman, Van Morrison, Linda Ronstadt and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters. He has performed and recorded with Eric Clapton for over a decade, played a leading part in The Concert for George in 2002, and most recently released a superb, bluesy album, Sweet Soulful Music, in 2006 - his first solo album for 26 years.

As the gig progressed, it dawned just what a stunning guitarist, songwriter and singer he is. Supported by his band, The Low Riders - Drums, Paul Beavis (Thea Gilmore); Hammond Organ, Richard Dunn (Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, Neils Lofgren, Van Morrison); Bass, Dave Bronze (Procol Harum, Dr. Feelgood, Clapton, Concert for George) - this was a treat. On stage and at the signing session afterwards, Andy came across as a pleasant, modest bloke with a dry sense of humour and a genuine interest in his audience. A lot more dineable than the average rock star, I doubt he's ever smashed anything at the end of a performance. We have tickets for Clapton in a few weeks time, but I suspect the belting intimacy of Saturday's gig may prove to have been the bigger treat.

Andy Fairweather Low is touring Wales, England and Scotland until August. Tour dates here. If you have the chance to see him, you really won't regret it. A new album, The Very Best of Andy Fairweather Low - The Low Rider, is released on 23 June. We haven't stopped playing it.

Addendum: AFL's web site has some good tracks on. Find them here.

Battle of the Bands

K's boyfriend's band was playing at the Forum in Tunbridge Wells last night, in a 'Battle of the Bands' gig. We took her and Bob over there and, faced with limited choices (drive home, then back again to collect; go for a meal and spin it out as long as possible; see a movie) we chose to do the gig.

Blending in was not going to be easy. At the British Superbikes meet at Brands Hatch the previous week it had been a doddle. All one had to do was affect a limp, neck the odd beer and remark 'uphill blind camber' or 'dual stage fuel injection' at intervals, and you were indistinguishable from the real thing.

At the Forum, though, there would be a bit of an age gap issue. The kind of stuff I wore to gigs last century might have been fine for Motorhead or whoever at the Leas Cliff Hall, but it was never going to wash here, where the average age would be about 16 ¾. Buggered if I was going to wear a hoodie either. Could I pull off aged rocker, mind-blown but unbowed? Talent scout? (astrakhan coat and cigar - or have I seen too many Ealing Comedies?) Shave my head and go as a bouncer? Stop washing, wear bum-crack jeans and make like a roadie? Or should we just be Darby and Joan, looking as if we'd got the wrong night for bingo? Whichever, I imagined the offspring were going to want to walk in several hundred paces ahead and then have nothing to do with us until slipping unobtrusively back to the car at close of play.

I may have overdone the parental wind up on the way - "Is it going to be a cool jig, then?" "Will there be a nosh pit, because I'm feeling a bit peckish" - but in the event it was fine. There was time for a preparatory jar in the Pantiles, and the Forum was not quite as I'd imagined. Once the largest public lavatory in Europe, it has the ambience of...the largest public lavatory in Europe. (There are lavatories attached to it, which must make it the only lavatory ever, big enough to have its own lavatories).

The audience was undeservedly small - there was one valiant attempt at crowd surfing but, as it involved a crush at the stage only one person deep, it came out more like a pole vault. The very competent sound man was squeezed into a space above the bar, which he reached by climbing a ladder, and the bands shared a drum set. I like the Forum. It reminds me of tatty folk clubs in back rooms in Falmouth, in the days before the likes of Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh turned talent into a commodity.

Cabaret Doll played a cracking set and deservedly won the contest. For a quality head bang, visit them here.

Eating the Band's Nuts

Saturday saw the arrival of the first summer weather I've had this year. And possibly the last. We were invited to a Carribean party ('Flowered shirts, grass skirts, or whatever you were wearing as the ship went down'). Good party, although I felt oddly compromised as the only sailor.

Best of all was the steel band. There were chairs and a table close by the gazebo the band was playing under, with drinks and dishes of nuts. We sat down. We drank the drinks and ate the nuts. The band watched us and beat hell out of their pans. It was as if they were trying to tell us something.

Later they took a break, and joined us at the table. 'We've probably been eating your nuts', I joked.

'Yes, you have', they replied. Not joking.

The band was named Nite Blues. The double and bass pans were played by twins who had come over from Antigua round about the early 1970s. They came from a very musical family. Every child (and there was a history of twins and triplets) was allocated an instrument - in their case, trumpet and sax. Each of the twins wanted to play, and was better suited to, the other's instrument, but they were not allowed to change. Instead, they evolved a unique act in which they crossed arms and blew their own instrument while keying the other's. It went down well.

The lead pan was played by an English-born girl who told us that she was shortly leaving for Ghana with her three children, because the UK was no longer a safe or suitable place to bring them up.

Nite Blues opened the very first Notting Hill Carnival, and have played for Sammy Davies Junior, Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, to name but a few.

They wanted K to go back and get her guitar, but she had a go on the pans instead. She did rather well, so they forgave us for eating their nuts.