#10 Berit’s & Brown, Eurocentral

“Everybody’s got a story to tell, tell me yours” Tom McQ.

The Scottish dates have come to a close, so I thought I’d jot down some creeping conclusions…

Artists and fans alike exist because we think music has intense value. It can make us feel emotional highs and lows, sometimes it understands us better than anyone. Is good music the goal in itself?

Recently I’ve been thinking maybe not. Music feels like just a vehicle through which we try to understand ourselves and each other. A key to enter each others worlds, but what do those worlds look like? What happens there? There the real work begins.

Music won’t ask someone out on a date for you, buy you a bag of salt n vinegar crisps, take you on a surprise trip to Croatia. It can be the soundtrack to your life, but it can’t live your life for you.

At times this tour has felt like a license to talk to people – the soundman, the promoter, the support acts, the bar staff, the woman who works in the shop next door, the waiter at a restaurant down the road, the staff at the place I’m staying the night.

Then there’s the audience we play to. With many the conversation is a little one-sided as they listen (hopefully) to my thoughts and feelings put to music. They might buy a CD and the one-sided conversation can continue. Or they might come up to us after the gig and we can talk properly. So the bigger story has been the people I’ve met and the stories we’ve written.

Our last gig on this run, at the unusual location of Eurocentral, was a classic example. 35 people in a silent coffee shop at 9pm listened as well as any audience yet, and each one felt like a new friend by the end. Iain, founder of Intimate Gigs, puts on nights like this purely for the love of it, and his personality is all over the atmosphere. It was a special gig no doubt about it.

As the night drew to a close, and everyone had gone home, John and I were left sipping beer slowly with the venue’s manager Euan and his partner. We lazily put the world to rights like old friends, even though we’d just met.

There’s an easy way to prove that human relationships are the most important thing there is, even more important than music, because that’s all anyone ever bloody writes songs about.

All Photos by: Jim Armstrong
Postcard Sent To: Bev Medine
Next Postcards To: Daryl Walker, Dougie Scott, Eve Walker, Alex Reg
Thanks to: Iain, Euan and all at Berits and Brown, Jim who took photos, everyone who travelled to such a random place to see the gig, the girl in the shop where I bought purple trainers and the other coffee shop where I stayed so long i nearly had all three meals of the day there.