Bank Holiday Weekend at Norwich British Legion

Nige and I had been concerned about this gig. It would be our first with Alex (ex Bad Manners) who was depping on drums. Although we had arranged to bring a spare mic and stand along, it was understood Alex was unlikely to sing much. But our main concern was being able to play a show without Dave that would suit this more elderly crowd. So, during the week, I had agreed with Nige some changes to the running order to include some country (always one of Dave's specialities) and a bit more of Sir Cliff. Like the previous few gigs I had brought along a couple of tennis rackets to serve as guitars - but I expected to use them at this gig! Set up went well on the decent sized stage apart from Alex forgetting the legs to his large tom, but he set it up on the floor and it sounded fine. I had discussed with Nige in the week whether to use the harmoniser or not and we had agreed to give it a try. This meant a bit of fiddling setting levels on the T1 because the output from the harmoniser is much higher than a normal mic. We had a bit of a chat about running order over a beer and then went to get changed in the TV room where we met up with a rockabilly band (called TJ and the ?) who were getting changed for their show in the bar. We got changed into the white'n'black and took to the stage to open up with our usual start playing to a fairly full room. Alex hit a tight beat that was easy to play along with and I thought the on stage balance was good, maybe a tad loud on the drums but Alex soon settled into a groove. We got a good response as we finished “Just One Look”. We introduced the band and said a few words for Dave and then we were off with our old time biased sets featuring: “Around the World”, “Lady is a Tramp”, my 50's sing'a'long medley, “By The Time I get to Phoenix”, “Move It”, “Easily Fall In Love” and the country barn dance medley as well as many of the usual 'favourites'. We were surprised at how well it all worked considering we were a voice down. I used the harmoniser sparingly on some of the 60's stuff (e.g the Beatles medley where Nige covered most of Daves lead parts). The vocals and the band sounded good. Only snag was we were asked to lower the volume a couple of times and although we took it down quite a bit they were still asking for more? But we could now hear TJ's band booming through the dividing wall to the bar and we wondered if it was their band that was creating our noise problem? We did get a couple of ladies up to play the tennis rackets on “Apache” and it earned a great reception. Nige dedicated “Under the Sun” to Dave. As we played on through the long night we dug deep for material and pulled out another barn dance as I busked “Travelling Light – Livin Doll” and a couple of country quicksteps with “Fulsom Prison” and Nige's Jambalaya. The crowd had thinned a bit as we approached midnight and we finished with some rock in the form of “Johnny B Goode” and then “Wonderful Tonight” as the slowey sign off. Leaving the gear set up was a bit of a wrench but it made for an earlier arrival home. On the way home I reflected on the fact that: sure we missed Dave's star quality personality and vocals; but what a good solid job Alex had done and how well Nige and I had worked together to produce a competent professional show.
Sunday was more of the same except we had the sound completely sorted and Nige and I were more confident. The voices held up well despite it being the third night in a row. We varied the show a bit and did a couple of requests including “Lying Eyes” which I sang lead (and used the harmoniser in the chorus) which went really well considering it was one of Dave's specialities. And I think we got a generally better reception than the Saturday. In fact one of the guvnor's tried to book us for another night (we were already booked) but that in itself proved we had done the job well. So we finished with mixed emotions: still a bit down about Dave but quite up because we had completed the weekend successfully; emotionally and physically tired but burning with post-show energy as well. I felt pretty good as I drove home - the decision Nige and I had made to honour these commitments had been the right one.

Broad Farm at Flegboro

I checked out the reverb rack in the afternoon to make sure all was OK after the previous week. While I was at it I took the decision to re-program the reverb to inhibit unprocessed signal under bypass with the aim of avoiding bad signal sums which might have produced some of the feedback the previous week. Roads were very busy as I set off in plenty of time, but I needed the time as there were tailbacks near Wymondham and Blofield which added 20 minutes to the journey time. It was approaching 6:30 pm as I arrived and I was pleased to see Nige parked up. It turns out there was no need to rush because there was an extension to midnight. We got the gear in and I had a word with the guvnor Alfie. He'd heard about Dave but was a bit shocked to hear he was only 51. He agreed we should start a bit later to fit in with the midnight finish. Nige and I had a bit of the usual trouble erecting the Boses but I was pleased to hear the reverb rack working as intended. Martin arrived and soon got set up. This gig is yet another low light situation so Martin elected to use his lights again. I had re-ordered the set list for this gig and spent a couple of minutes briefing the guys before we got changed into the white'n'black. Then it was showtime. The room was about 60% full as we opened up with the usual “Foot Tapper – Just One Look” start. We got a surprisingly good reaction but, playing safe, we continued on with a typical set 1. Nigel introduced the 'Heavily Brothers' as new banter for the Everlys. We still got Martin to do “Lady Is a Tramp” and it went very well too, apart from the guitar solo where I made a bit of a mess of it – I blamed it on being a bit cramped and in the dark on my side of the stage. I had got hold of some Beatles wigs but on this occasion we ran through a more subtle entertainment routine where Nige announces the Beatles while I quietly put on a wig and pose: then they make fun, but eventually I persuade them to put wigs on as well. Then we played the medley – pretty good as I recall and it got a good reaction from the audience. The gig went pretty smoothly. Although we didn't get many dancers we kept the crowd well entertained. One mid-show highlight was “Shine” which we hadn't done recently and it sounded surprisingly good considering Martin didn't know Dave's vocal. It gave me the confidence that Nige and I could pull that one off on our own if we wanted to. By the time we got to the last set many of the family audience groups had gone to bed so we set about doing some more rockier stuff, playing “All Right Now, Can't Get Enough, Status Quo, Midnight Hour, Shakin All Over” and a surprise request for “Walk of Life” which Nigel and Martin had obviously played in a previous life 'cos they were very tight vocally! Actually we were quite enjoying this rocky session and exploring the darker side of our versatility (yes versatility not sexuality Nigel!). In fact I was just about to call “Born to be Wild” when I spotted we were out of time! We decided to wrap up with “Walk Alone” with the remaining audience singing along drunkenly. It went pretty well so we encored with “Saw Her Standing There”. After we packed and loaded, I spoke with the guvnor Archie before we left. He acknowledged that he had expected some folks to head off to their pitches after travelling up on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend; but he was happy with the band, the evening and his season overall. Got under way about 1am and had a good run home getting to bed about 2:15am.

Imperial Hotel Great Yarmouth Golden Wedding

We are still in a state of shock and disbelief despite saying goodbye to Dave at the funeral at St Faiths on the Thursday. Nigel and I have had a lot to deal with and I will be blogging in a lot less detail for a while. It was, of course, our first gig since Dave passed away. Nige had lined up Martin to dep and I had spent some time in the week organising the special music and set lists for this 50th Anniversary do for Pat and Norman Robbins. I set off in nice, sunny conditions with a bit of time to spare so I could deal with the unexpected at the other end - but I was still a bit edgy. I arrived just after 6pm, parked up in the tight hotel car park and went in to meet up with Janine who was organising the room. She showed me the route down an alley at the back to bring the gear in. The playing area was tight so I knew it would be a one guitar gig. Nigel arrived and we loaded in getting most of our gear in the room by the time Martin arrived. I had to set my Bose up in a corner - little did I know this was to generate boomy low frequencies later! Martin soon had his drums set up and once again wisely elected to set up his lights to complement the low light atmosphere that Janine was creating. I got a bit hot and bothered fixing a reverb fault, due to a mains lead being out and then Nige noticed the send lead was in the wrong T1 socket! I liaised with Norman and Pat to check times and re-assure them we would do their specially requested start. By the time we had a beer it was getting close to showtime so we went to get changed in a spare event room. I was flapping a bit and couldn't get my tie right first time and so we were a couple of minutes late taking to the stage. We opened proceedings with “Aniversary Waltz” and then played through the special intro numbers “Too Young”, “Around the World” and “Love Letters in the Sand”. Lights were low so reading the music was a bit of a problem and the on stage sound was dominated by a boomy bass sound from the vocals and guitar, but Nige ventured out front and said it was OK there, so we ploughed on with a variety of songs chosen by Pat and Norman and some chosen or just improvised by the band. I can remember Nige called “Lets Dance” by Chris Montez and we just winged it never having done it before! And that was the pattern for the night music wise. We helped provide a mic for speeches and we judged the fancy dress and played right through to midnight when Martin sang an incredible “You'll Never Walk Alone” which had them all singing along. We got such a great reception that we did “Saw Her Standing There” to encore. We had been so busy during the evening that we had had little time to dwell on poor Dave, but once we had packed up and loaded I can remember summing it up by saying something along the lines: 'Well done boys, it was a busy night and that helped us deal with the emotions around Dave not being there. Sure I missed Dave but I also missed Jenny - I didn't realise how much of my gear she used to move at the end of a night!' But to tell the truth I was physically and emotionally exhausted and I had to stop and give myself a good talking to on the way home - because all the signs of dozing off at the wheel were there and that rarely happens to me. Finally got in to bed about 2:30am. Later in the week, we got a nice email thanking us for our very professional show under the difficult circumstances we faced.

RIP - Dave Lemmon of the Foot Tappers

Early next morning we got the shocking news from Jenny that Dave had been taken into hospital with breathing difficulties in the early hours and had died. Deeply shocked I started to succumb to a cold which got increasingly flu like as the week progressed. Early in the week Nigel and I attempted to go through the motions of dealing with the impact on band bookings before wisely agreeing to cancel the next weekend's bookings at East Runton and Trimingham to give us time to take it in. As I type this on the following Friday, I still can't believe it. Dave was a truly great character and a best friend. We had a similar approach to entertaining the folks of East Anglia and he was a much respected musical confidant with a voice as big as his heart – the whole package of Dave is irreplaceable and the Foot Tappers will never be the same again.

Ringsfield Village Hall 40th Wedding Anniversary Bash

With Dave diagnosed with swine flu in the week, Nigel had lined his mate Martin up to dep. I spent a bit of time organising the dep book and show flow in the week so I was fairly confident as I set off just after 5pm on a warm, sunny afternoon. After a bit of a diversion on a short cut around Bungay, I made good time to Ringsfield and found the village hall where Google indicated and already well stacked with parked cars. It's a medium sized village hall with a high roof and was already full of people who had been celebrating all afternoon. I introduced myself to the celebrating couple Jo and Tony – apparently they had booked us on the strength of an internet search for a local band and liked what they saw on the web site. Tony showed me to the stage. High, wide but a bit ricketty and short on depth? I had all my gear in when Nigel arrived and he had all his in when Martin (our dep for the night) arrived. Martin has a beautiful wood finish Sonor kit. He needed a carpet on the dodgy stage so I 'borrowed' mine out the car and set it down over the gaps in the stage. Too posh for drumming on he quipped! We got set up quickly, Nige and I angled the Boses in a bit to try and get some fold back to Martin who was unable to set up much in front 'cos of the lack of depth on the stage. The sun was beginning to go down as we completed and fortunately Martin had suggested he bring in his lights – this was a good move because our clients wanted to set up a bit of a dancey atmosphere by having the main lights off, with just some coloured table lights providing low level illumination in the hall.
We got organised with beers and I introduced Martin to the dep book which has all the song arrangements set out. Nige and I got changed into the white shirts, black waistcoats and black ties. (Martin was already dressed to go) We hit the stage about 8:15 pm intending to do an hour. We started up with Foot Tapper, a tad faster than I'm used to, but Martin got all the little drum fills and feels in the right place and it felt good. We went straight into the longer version of “Just One Look” with Nige taking the lead vocal line, me doing the usual and Martin fitting in. It all sounded fine and we got an appreciative round of applause at the end. We took a couple of minutes out to introduce ourselves and then got on with “Anniversary Waltz” to get Jo and Tony up to lead the dancing. We followed up with “Heartbeat” which was well played. Skipping “Good Luck Charm” we did “Walk Right Back - When Will I Be Loved” with Nigel filling in well on the banter and, although there wasn't much dancing going on, we got a good round of applause. We wanted to ease Martin in vocally so I got Nige to do his “Beautiful Body” next. Martin fitted in well to our vocal blend and I did my best doing Dave's quips between lines – I can't get his Norfolk boy accent though! After that we thought we'd try a slowey. Nigel had volunteered to do the Bee Gees “Words” and he led us into a pretty good rendition; Martin and I added some gentle high harmonies as the song progressed and, given it was the first time we had ever played it, it was great. It also went down well with the audience and you could see that if we ran it thru a couple more times we could easily add some strong Bee Gee-esque harmonies; improving on the original which didn't actually have much harmony? The audience included a few people of a certain age so I decided to do my “Walking in the Rain” 50's medley next. I was mighty impressed by the way Martin picked the changes up. Although the crowd didn't get the answerbacks, they applauded loudly at the finish, so I announced we would take it even further back in time by getting Martin to sing “Lady is a Tramp”. This was the first time I had heard him sing lead and although Nigel had briefed me as to his qualities, I was mighty impressed. He sings great, but he also gave it a bit of Frank Sinatra voice mimicry as well – a nice touch which the crowd appreciated. Next up was “Rock Around the Clock”. With Nige and Martin uneasy about doing it in Dave's and my preferred key of A, I made a quick decision to ad lib it. I almost regretted that once we got going 'cos I could only make up some nonsense words about 'nose drops off on the floor'; but we got a few couples up and jiving and so it was the right song choice. We followed up with “Summertime Blues” which Nige sang and then “Be Bop A Lula” with me singing as usual. I carried on with Cliff's “The Young Ones”, sightly problematic to read the words and sing with the low light levels on stage, but we carried it off OK. Next we went for “Apache” and the Shadows walk. A young lad volunteered to do the walk with me holding his toy guitar - he did a fantastic job and it earned a massive round of applause. When I got back on stage, Nige had been briefing Martin how to fit in on our medleys; so we decided to do the “Four Seasons” as the 3 Seasonings - Salt, Pepper and Halibut? This is a complex piece and Martin just fitted in as well as anyone could – remarkable! Apart from drumming it well he added some great high harmonies, probably an octave above mine! We were so pleased with the result, we decided to have a go at the equally complex Beatles medley next. Martin covered for Dave's vocal in “All My Lovin” and Nige did the lead on “I Feel Fine”. Again it went as well as it could do and earned a strong round of applause. Looking round we thought we would need a slowey to finish the set. Nige suggested Martin to have a go at “Three Times a Lady”. I had a bit of trouble getting the guitar settings for the start right in the dark, but once we got going Martin sang it really well. Not knowing the Foot Tappers unique song flow, he followed Lionel Ritchie's arrangement which Nige and I fell into neatly - joining in the long harmonised 'aaahhs' section. This waltz filled the floor but we had been on stage for an hour so we took a break at that point. Tony came over said how much they were enjoying it and asked the band to have a drink on him! Another chap came over and requested an Elvis number – I sounded out Martin about doing “Wonder of You”. We had about 15 minutes break and then resumed with “Under the Sun” with Nige taking the lead. I had chickened out of using the 12 string because of the dark so I think we skipped “Mr Tambourine Man” and got straight on with The Searchers medley next. Again Martin fitted in just perfectly and we soon had a few dancers up. Nigel did the lead vocal in “Don't Throw Your Love” and led Martin into “Do It Again” as we finished. This went well and kept the dance floor busy. We had a quick check with Martin that he could do the two Eagles songs and then we were off into them and once again it all went very well with the three voices blending as though we'd been singing together for several weeks not several hours! Looking for some more dancey stuff, Nige led us into “Moon of Love – Beautiful Sunday” with Martin taking the lead and filling the dance floor. As we came out of that we cooled it down a bit by doing “Halfway” and then did the request for “Wonder of You” which again got the right vocal blend and went down a bomb. My memory is a bit hazy but I recall we followed up with a bobbing rendition of “Sweet Caroline” and then wrapped up the set with Boyzone's “No Matter”, which I thought went very well with me taking lead line 1 and Martin lead line 2; Nige had no difficulty with the key change and Martin followed the Foot Tapper arrangement perfectly to close to a great response from the audience. We were under instructions to finish at 11pm prompt so we only had a quick break, resuming with about 45 minutes to go with “Dance the Night Away” followed by “Do You Wanna Dance” - so the floor was filled by the time we briefed Martin to take the lead on “Amarillo” and follow us through the party dance sequence. Off we went; Martin picked up a great rhythm and some great 'Tony Christie' vocals got the audience dancing and singing along. We slipped seamlessly into “Hey Baby” which I think Martin sang lead on and we got the audience doing a jolly sing-a-long in the middle. The switch to the “Twist” went well but, to avoid being sued for causing a bad back, I kept it short and we got underway with “Locomotion” which got them doing the 'chug a chug' dance nicely. On we went with “Hi Ho” which got the arms waving and sing-a-long going and then into “All Right Now”. I had been dubious about this because from the off we'd been asked to keep the volume down. But I think by running the Bose at just under 12 o'clock, no matter how deep we dug the overall volume was fine – so we went for it. Digging deep I even switched to bridge humbucker for the solo. Nige had briefed me that Martin would go for a drum solo at this point and we left him to it. Very nicely done, well paced and inventive, and a great sound. He cued us back in to the last few notes of the guitar solo, but I only realised what he wanted after I just missed it! But we all got together a couple of bars later with the chorus - and he earned a great round of applause for it! We did “Unchained” next as the romantic slowey. Incredibly Martin timed the vocal like the Righteous Brothers, This is very hard to do when you are playing drums (or guitars) and Nige and I had some difficulty synchronising the harmony lines. But, by holding the harmonies back in the mix, I think we got a convincing effect and it went down a bomb! We were close to the end now, so I called for “Johnny B Goode” as the rocking finisher and then we encored with “Wonderful Tonight” taking our leave of the crowd at just after 11pm to a great reception. Martin had done a truly great dep job fitting in like a glove and Nige also, in his usual quiet, understated way, had stepped up and filled in vacant MC and singing roles well beyond the call of duty. As we packed away, we got some nice appreciative comments from people who obviously had enjoyed the show. We got on the road about midnight and although there were some patches of fog I was home by just after 1 am, tired and a bit sore of throat.

Sheringham Social Club

I had a good run over in slightly warmer and more humid conditions than of late. I got great petrol consumption - nearly 35mpg. I was first to arrive and had most my gear in by the time Nigel rolled by. He didn't unload straight away because he had to make a visit to drop off a birthday card. While I parked my car in the main car park Dave and Jen arrived. Despite some twinges in his leg, he was in good shape and we soon had his gear in. I managed to push Dave along the stage a bit as we set up - so I had enough room to set up the Fender XII as well as the Godin 6 string. When Nige arrived he complained of feeling a bit rough – swine flu we thought! Anyway to be on the safe side he wouldn't shake hands or handle any drink glasses. After set up we were testing out the gear and it sounded good; but, because the stage is not that deep, we weren't getting enough foldback to Dave. I came up with the idea of boosting Dave's signal by pushing a bit more of Nige and Dave's mic signal through my Bose and that seemed to do the trick. Interestingly, we didn't take the mic volumes to the limits of feedback and adjusted our overall instrumental sound down just a tad. It is quite a late start here and we had a few minutes before people started to arrive to go through some subtleties on “All Right Now”. Then we set off for a beer and to work the room a bit. We got changed about 8:30pm. Nige and I put on the white shirts with black ties and Dave did a negative by wearing his black shirt with white tie – it all looked good (from a distance) as we took to the stage at 8:45pm for a low key start to a half full room with quite a few oldies (well my sort of age anyway!) around the sides. We started with the usual “Foot Tapper into Just One Look” intro. We had agreed to turn the banter controls down to medium for this audience. Departing from the usual sequence we did some country with “Cheating Heart and I Love You Because” This all went down quite well with an audience who were just at the 'drink and chat' stage of the evening. We got into lounge lizard mode by doing “Lady is a Tramp” which was well received. I thought “Girl From Ipanema” was a little bit hurried and at that point we decided to play safe and revert to the usual “Heartbeat, Good Luck Charm, Cathys Clown, Bye Bye Love” sequence. All very well played and a well balanced sound; and you could see the audience starting to warm to our show . Surprisingly Nigel wanted to swap vocal with Dave for “Beautiful Body” so rather than risk messing it up I called for “Brown Eyed Girl” bantering that Nigel wanted to sing about something brown – I couldn't imagine what! We did the intro fine but, same as the previous night, I made the mistake of falling back to a G chord after the intro riff – it should be F f f f! After that we played it well and rhythmically it felt good. I must say that looking around I could see it got some of the ladies jiggling a bit even if they didn't come up to dance as such. That set the pattern for the rest of the set really. We did a good Beatles, and nicely felt “3 Times a Lady” with the band playing well together and even getting the occasional bits of dancing going. Gordon arrived halfway through the set and got us a round in – we gave him the drinks order from the stage! After about 45 minutes, I think we were doing a good 4 Seasons and at the end Dave said 'right times up' and announced we were taking a break. A well performed set really. The only problem I thought we had was the abrupt end. For me its much more professional to finish on a big slowey and announce it as the last number before we take a break. We came back on after about 20 minutes and started on the 12 string with the Searchers. Once again we had a good band sound and feel; and, as we played through to the Eagles (complete with introductory chicken noises from Nigel), we were rewarded with some dancing and healthy rounds of applause. Next we did “Let There Be Drums” and like the previous night Dave wanted to lengthen it, which led to some confusion. Personally I think it is better as arranged – too much of a good thing means we have to omit other good things. We did “Alice and Halfway” as entertainment sing-a-long preludes to an appearance by Elvis. He arrived in the building sang “Wonder of You” and left 'em begging for more! “Sweet Caroline” and “Shine” got them dancing and as the band was steaming I called for “Do You Wanna Dance” and that filled the floor nicely and kept the dancey atmosphere. As we finished it Dave called for the Hollies Medley to keep things going. I thought this would be a tough call vocally at this time of the evening, but we did a great job and, remarkably, people danced to it. Dave then did another abrupt ending. Apart from the end I thought this must have been the best we had played set 2 (probably ever!). In the break Dave introduced a couple of ladies who liked Billy Fury and requested that next time I sing the right words on a couple of verses of “Halfway to Paradise” – 'I would if I could remember them” I quipped! We resumed with about 40 minutes to go with the party dance sequence which we started with a slighltly cocked up version of “500 Miles”. My fault - I got to the middle break a line early! We had the floor nicely filled with dancing right through to “Hi Ho” when it all turned sing-a-long and arm waving. Like the previous evening we did a short version of “Unchained” which filled the floor and then followed up with a very well received “American Trilogy”. It was getting close to time, so Dave called for “Johnny B Good” which rocked along well and had some of the audience doing frenzied, mad dancing and then we wrapped up with “Pretty Woman” with a well bantered ending where Nigel and I signed off to our bits of applause and forget Dave . But Nige finally did ask the audience to 'give it up for Dave' and we ground to a halt amid shouts for 'more'. So we did “Wonderful Tonight” as the encore and that calmed things down nicely. As we packed up I thought we had done a pretty good job considering Nige was under par and the voices were a bit shot from 2 nights. In fact apart from the abrupt set endings I thought we had played together well, as opposed to playing well as individuals - but not quite together! It was drizzly as we loaded up. Gordon offered me some freshly picked Saphi from his car boot. Not knowing it was a delicacy, I declined - Ms J gave me a right telling off the next morning! I got away about 12:20am shouting goodbye to Nige who was still glad handing passing motorists at that time of night (someone he knew I think)! I had a good run to Swaffham but then got stuck behind an erratic driver so only got home about 2:20 am.