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We were out on Monday at the Discovery Centre in Gosport for a celebratory evening in honour of World Mental Health Day (10^th). You’ve heard about the fun I had with Give, Gain & Grow, getting their anthem song written and recorded, well this was the first performance of the song in public. The evening started with a great intro from a super smart host Ryan and was followed by a couple of other GG&G members reading poems. Next we saw part of the video that was taken by Nigel whilst we were recording the song and then the whole group got up and we sang the newly written and recorded song live in front of the audience, which included the Mayor of Gosport. Everyone sang really well and the evening was rounded off by a 45 min set from us. It was lovely, an evening full of camaraderie in a lovely venue certainly one to be remembered!

WB are in full mixing mode now for the new album. Andy, Geoff and I are spending increasing amounts of hours listening to the mixes, picking them apart and reassembling them (auditorily not literally). The guys are far more skilful at it then I am, they hear things I didn’t notice and Geoff is just a whizz a getting things balanced up and hearing little knocks and squeaks which I’m sure no one else can hear in real life! My input tends to be more stylistic, things like – bring the keyboards up a bit, bit more organ, no more organ, that’s meant to sound really angry, MORE organ! You’ll hear that on Pointless when the album is out – on the 21^st November – so exciting!

To let our hair down ¾ of us went out last night to perform at the previously mentioned, rather splendid Auckland Arms in Southsea. What a terrific night we had despite lacking our globe trotting drummer! I like playing there as I use the real piano instead of my keyboard so there’s less gear to lug around. It does result in my doing a kind of Meerkat things though because half the time I’ve disappeared behind a wall of PAs and mic stands cos I’m sitting down to play and sing at the piano, then popping up again to do the next song! I do love the genuine piano sound though, nothing like it. The pub was heaving for much of the night, which is great on one level but also makes it really difficult to hear each other so there was also a lot of playing whilst straining like mad to hear what each other is playing which resulted in some interesting effects! It was incredibly good fun though and the audience were wonderfully complimentary.  I enjoyed it even more since I got a lift round to the gig and so was able to have a glass of wine instead of my usual lime and soda, bit more the rock n roll style to which I aspire