one year since shows (Patreon)

It’s been one whole year since I last played a show. I saw a lot of you on that tour - we ended the run with my biggest headline show to date in Scala, London. I felt invincible that night, like I had come so far and was somehow just getting started. Before we came on stage my manager Claire went out into the crowd with the freckle season broken heart stamp and people grabbed it from her, covering their face & arms with the red ink. When I walked out and looked at the crowd the front row you all looked like a bunch of smiley nutters covered in chicken pox. I wish I could go back and bottle the atmosphere in the room that night, save it up for what would end up being a much quieter year.

I haven’t had a gap this long between shows since I started playing live at 15. My first ever show was a weird seated pub gig supporting my friend Bry in Swords, Dublin. It was 18+ and although they showed up and chanced it none of my friends could get in, so I sat on a bar stool and for half an hour nervously played questionable covers to a room of strangers (and my parents, Mick’s been front row since day 1). I remember being sweaty and mortified, too nervous to move a muscle and ended the set thinking hoW, literally HOW could anyone get up on stage and actually enjoy it.

Playing live became more rewarding when I could play my own songs. For years the nerves remained intense, but the feeling of seeing someone mouth a lyric back at me or give me good feedback after a gig felt pretty amazing - it became a fair trade off. During my last few years of school I’d play pretty much anywhere anyone would have me and I loved the weird little skillset I was building; learning about how to structure a setlist, how different acoustic guitars sound when they’re plugged in, what to say (and not to say) between songs to get the right kind of reaction. It was niche but it felt like my niche, my thing to get better at and fuck, it was addictive. I busked to streets of people who never listened, played support slots to crowds with their backs fully turned.. but somehow even the worst gigs still felt worth it.

After a few years of gigging I noticed the nerves started to melt away a little. The crippling pre-stage nausea became giddy pre-stage butterflies. Some nights I felt truly at home on a stage - especially during the shows where something went wrong. I love when things go wrong. Touring is chaos and anything that can possibly go wrong during your on-stage career WILL go wrong, it’s really just a matter of when. But that moment where the tech fails or you have to start a song again - it can be a brief human moment that brings the room together somehow. Like when I played a support slot in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre in 2018 and I walked backwards while playing guitar, resulting in a pretty spectacular fall over an amp - my guitar string broke and the sound of my guitar suddenly plugging out was as horrific as you’d think. There I was, gracing the stage of this iconic venue with my two legs completely in the air for about 10 seconds, over deafening silence. It was an awkward few seconds, yeah - but when I stood up and laughed it off, the room clapped & laughed with me. The tension was gone, they were on my side. When something like that happens in a show it’s certainly *not ideal* but somehow kills my nerves completely - I guess it’s like: wow OK, the worst possible thing happened and.. I survived. It really can’t get any worse than that now so I might as well plug back in and enjoy the rest of the set.

When I started playing guitar for my friend Dodie I learned gigging in a different way. I was no longer the centre of attention but a cog in a moving machine - playing guitar and singing harmonies alongside a drummer, bassist and string section. I learned how different it felt to be part of a show that was not all about me - a show where I didn’t worry about how many tickets were sold, or what I was saying on stage, or whether incessantly about whether the crowd was having a good time but instead where I could concentrate on my role and filling it as best I could - and shit it made me feel so useful, so focussed. It felt sick for one of my best friends to trust me in bringing her music to life on stage. Playing the same show over and over and growing into that session player role gave me a new kind of stage confidence, one where I relished not being up front but in my corner, doing my thing as part of a much bigger thing. Over the last few years we’ve brought the dodie set on tours across the UK, Europe, US and Canada; I’ve seen a lot more of the world than I would have otherwise and done it all with the closest touring family you could ever imagine.

And now - I miss it all. I miss gross rider food, lukewarm venue showers, soundchecks on 3 hours sleep, days off in weird remote towns. I miss the militant routine you have on tour. I miss crowds - not the punishers but I miss a good heckle, a perfectly-timed joke yelled out by someone in the crowd, the kudos from the whole room. I miss sweaty rooms full of people all gathered to hear music together - and truly, the more I think about that the more pure it feels. I miss setting my guitar pedals up and I miss feeling useful. I miss playing songs with my friends.

Who knows when it’ll come back - truly, I have no idea - but when it does, whether I'm playing my show or right up front at the barrier at someone else's, I'll feel totally present, totally alive. It's gonna be glorious.

(attaching some pictures from that tour last November, taken by Stevie Kyle).