If you've ever been to one of my gigs the chances are I played 15th & P Street preceded by some rambling tale of our time living in DC and our special relationship with the bar on this particular corner. That was more than ten years ago, I've been back once or twice since then but I've been planning a special trip for a while, not so much to revisit the city but to reconnect with the people that inspired my musical renaissance.
When we arrived in 2012 songwriting and performing had almost disappeared from my life. My twenty something optimism had been stretched into thirty something desperation, my debut novel about the poison Eurovision chalice went unnoticed by the literary world and when the Beeb eventually cancelled the radio adaptation I shut down my music brain to concentrate on making some proper money from my day job. It turned out I was good at it which is how, twenty years later, I found myself in Washington DC on a 12 month, all expenses paid boondoggle.
A few weeks into our stay, some friends invited us to a gig at an Irish pub in Bethesda called The Harp & Fiddle to see the Mary Ann Redmond Band and this changed my life. They were good. I mean they were jaw dropping. I'd been in bands and seen bands but these guys were in a league of their own. Mary Ann is a great song writer and a fantastic singer, Derren Blessman an extraordinary drummer, Mike Tony-Echols an amazing bass player and Dan Hovey a world class guitar player. So, and I've probably bored you with this story before, I introduced myself in the break as a visiting English singer songwriter to provide some credibility for my gushing review. Point made, contact established I sat back down and was somewhat surprised in their second set to be introduced as Mary Ann's new best friend from England and invited to step up and play some songs. Now I know this wasn't really a personal testimonial, Mary Ann had been playing that gig every Sunday for ten years so she was just trying to break the monotony but the reaction of the audience and the band to my impromptu performance was overwhelming. Probably as much to do with my Englishness as my songs but they loved it and it occurred to me that maybe I really was an English singer songwriter after all.
So for the rest of our stay I took every opportunity to work with them, I appeared as a substitute at gigs on many occasions, recorded an album with them (Sneaky D) and made a plan to quit the day job when I got home so that I could resume my creative endeavours. And so it came to pass. We got back to the UK in 2013, I left the day job in 2014 and I've been writing and performing ever since. All of which brings us to up to date, I'm back in DC for a couple of weeks, I'm going to some gigs by the band, hang out, maybe play some some songs again, who knows but mostly I want to spend time with them all, catch up with their stories and share some of mine. A lot has happened, watch this space!
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