Saturday 2 April 2016

Rab plays a fantastic show at Gartmore Village Hall

WE have a pretty lazy morning…I still haven’t quite shaken off the lurgy, so maybe a bit of a rest’s a good thing.

After a late breakfast I pick up a guitar and run through a bunch of songs I haven’t played in ages. It feels good. Margaret asks me about the new song I’ve been messing with in the studio…I explain I couldn’t ‘find’ the vocal melody and it was all over the place when i tried to record it yesterday.

I pick up the guitar and run through it. Works pretty good and sounds fine. So what was the problem in the studio? I think it’s because I was overdubbing the vocals rather than playing the song live….somethingI rarely – actually never – do and that reminds why. I need to play the guitar and sing at the same time, That’s just the way it is.

After the recent interruptions in internet service, I investigate possible causes. We have a fancy-assed Netgear router which doesn’t have a built-in ADSL modem (ie: for ‘normal’ BT Broadband). To get round that, we used our old BT Homehub as a modem and disabled the wireless router…the Homehub, though, I think is goosed…plus, running through two devices could be causing sporadic IP conflcts.

I go onto Amazon and find a cheap ADSL modem for a tenner and  a ethernet switch to plug all our ‘internet enabled’ devices into – they should be here tomorrow (Sunday) with free delivery courtesy of Amazon Prime.

Meantime, Margaret prepares a roast and knocks up a big pile of Yorkshire puddings. Catriona’s coming to stay tonight and we’re having an early dinner so we can get to Gartmore in good time for my pal Rab’s gig there tonight.

Catriona is driving and we get there with time to chat to our friends from the village then settle down and enjoy the show. Gartmore Hall has (fairly) recently been renovated and it;s a nice space for gig. Rab, of course, plays a blinder mixing some of his older material with tracks from his latest I’m Walking Here album. Great songs, engaging performance and an incredibly assured and strong guitar playing.

We bid farewell and head home for a snack, a few glasses of wine and plenty chat before bed.

Margaret’s Yorkies are amazing!