It's been a cracking week in terms of music for me - Supporting Raj Kaul at his gig at the Godiva Festival was a massive thing for us and then going on to play Bass with Tubsy and the Live Experience Band in the evening was... "chef's kiss".
Godiva Festival 2024
Godiva festival then! Raj has done spectacularly well in getting himself onto major shows around the country. Last year in 2023, we played around 14 Mela festivals through the summer all around the UK. Godiva is one of the UK's biggest festivals though and this years headliners were huge names like Paloma Faith, Beverley Knight and... <gulp> Richard Ashcroft of The Verve.
I don't tend to go on about my music influences, but holy smokes are The Verve ever up there. I must have listed to Urban Hymns about a million times and even now retain a deep love for the tracks on the album like, Catching The Butterfly and Space and Time, but obviously the heavy hitting tracks like Bittersweet Symphony, Sonnet and The Drugs Don't Work are magnificent. And Lucky Man is like the ultimate bloke's anthem, it's certainly one of the tracks that has inspired and accompanied my life. So sheesh, to have been on the same stage as people like that is crazy to me.
When we arrived at the site of the festival, we noticed immediately the difference in scope. So much time and thought had gone into the organisation; the staff knew where to be and where to go, which helps so much! There have been times in the past where we were going in circles around sites as the staff gave us differing information. Personally, I like to get checked in, have equipment ready and to hand and just be prepared. To be dashing around beforehand isn't ideal, but I accept it's just life and it's all good! Godiva wasn't like that thankfully and we were in and chilling in the artist tent after about ten minutes, appreciating the chocolate options. Thankfully we didn't have the tent to ourselves or this could have gone badly for me.
The soundcheck went okay, but I felt I was a bit quiet during the track. Without the backing track the guitar sounded nice. With the track playing and with Sunil's Dhol drum, the guitar was barely noticeable. No worries I thought, I'm sure they can bring my level up a touch if needed.
We were on quite early in the show, not long after doors had opened, so the crowd hadn't really assembled yet. Add to that the showery weather and perhaps people stayed home for a little longer. It meant that the crowd when we got on was a little sparse but personally, that's fine for me. I love playing - whether that's to 50 or so or around 10k (as in Trafalgar Square last year), I am in and committed.
The organisers at Godiva had been incredibly gracious to us, squeezing us in at the last minute. It meant that we didn't have time for our usual set - maybe 3-5 songs. Rather we had the opportunity to play one song and then make way for the rest of the acts. It meant though that my guitar level didn't ever get sorted and sadly looking back at recordings, you can't really hear me, which is a shame as I felt I hit the spot with my playing and performance. More than that, we do have the desire to give the best show we can to anyone watching with us. So there's a danger of feeling underwhelmed and like I didn't leave everything I had on stage.
Overall though the performance was great - Raj his usual buoyant and charismatic self, Sunil powering us with the Dhol but with his usual subtle finesse and me just being me and loving life playing guitar with my mates. We were really fortunate too, in that someone had organised some dancers to join us on-stage and they really added to our performance! It felt colourful, energetic and tight musically. Raj's tracks are always inventive and unorthodox, so always good to perform. We did Baan Pharke which is a bit of a crowd pleaser - I noticed people dancing in the crowd - so all said and done, a good result.
It was of course an incredible privilege to play at a stage like Godiva Festival and I'm humbled to be able to say I have done so.
Sukshinder Shinda/Dhagamia
Later on the same day, I'd been asked by Dholki master and Bhangra OG, Tubsy to support his Live Experience band with bass guitar. These guys are super professional musicians who are famous for playing live with some of the world's best artists. Connecting up with these guys was a genuine honour for me.
This gig was a wedding for a couple from Manchester who had managed to get some serious named singers to perform at their reception - Sukshinder Shinda and Dhagamia. We, the band, were their musical accompaniment and this is where the Live Experience are incredible - they know these and almost all Indian/bhangra tracks by heart. Some of the members of the group have been playing professionally for twenty years. It's a really high level and fortunately they took pity on me!
I was given a set list of tracks to get familiar with a few days prior to the gig so I spent time listening and playing along to them. The danger is that live stuff sometimes changes versus the studio recording of a track, so you do have to keep an open mind and have some flexibility. Thankfully, I'm so easy going with stuff like that so this was no issue for me.
The guys were kind enough to give me the keys for the tracks and I essentially improvised some funky bass licks for the tracks. Where it gets tricky is where a song may have stops and signature pieces in them, so for me it was a case of playing close attention to the rest of the band and look out for those indicators in people's faces or playing to try and anticipate those moments. As you can imagine it takes a lot of concentration but it's also a lot of fun and as I had room to maneuver it was good fun to sync up with the drums and keys with the bass.
The show went really well - lots of people up dancing, people invading the stage to get selfies with the singers, people shouting requests, good times! I'm humbled to have been part of it - I take things like weddings really seriously because after all it's a huge day for the couple and their families, so I would always want to give my very best to that.
The only sour note for me was utterly mangling my thumb on the bass strings. I mean total write-off, A&E, reconstructive surgery, bionic thumb man type stuff...
...no, it was a bit sore though! I've been playing bass at church and not really being a proper bassist, I tend to play with thumbs and fingers in a more... orthodox way? Maybe there are secrets to playing bass that seasoned players could show me? I feel like Luke Skywalker when he first tries a lightsabre and nearly takes Obi Wan's head off.
Playing for two hours straight, after the recent church stuff left a serious blister, but as always, it's a mark of honour. It reminded me of the good old days when I was learning guitar with my acoustic and how my fingers were wrecked back then! It also made me remember that plectrums are a thing, so at band practice yesterday evening, I upgraded from organic to plastic and now my thumb is thanking me.
So anyway! Great times, lots more music to come, I still need to finish my own tracks so will get moving on those. I'm excited for it.
If you read this far, holy smokes. The keyword is "Laboratory" - leave that as a comment somewhere and I'll consider getting you a Mars Bar one day, possibly, as thanks! haha
❤️
RAHIX