Meanwhile in France
Plus a date for your diary
Touring remains the most perfect cover for spending time with interesting people in interesting places. It is, to take an immediate example, the reason I now find myself under a great lime tree just outside of Angoulême, surrounded by a number of very French-looking barns, some highly exuberant goats, some crowing roosters, and the owners of the above - Patrick and Cathy - who have invited me here to perform some concerts.
Endless neighbours have brought round endless rustic crates of home-grown vegetable produce in what I’m being asked to believe is a completely normal everyday wholesome rural way. Quite evidently it is instead a carefully-orchestrated ruse involving the whole village. There is a 100-year old wooden kitchen bar of the kind you'd be quite proud to spend a lifetime behind, tea towel1 over your shoulder, attending to whatever topic, mood or situation is in front of you that day, and the scattering of lunch crumbs it left behind afterwards. We have walked and talked and put the world nowhere close to rights. All around is peaceful and calm.
As much as I love all this stuff, I am here for one reason and that is to wreak absolute bloody havoc on stage. I want you to feel elated one minute, and desolate and alone the next. I want to make you laugh, think weird new thoughts, lead you into the deep dark forest and out the other side. I want you to go home glad for the raw connection to life and meaning and each other which is available to us at every moment. I am miserable if I don't achieve that.
All this might sound incredibly pompous, maybe it is a bit. But it's mostly not about me, or doesn't feel like it is at the time. I'm just trying to do justice to the concept of people getting together in a room and sharing something. Someone spent £50 on a babysitter. It might be someone else’s last ever gig. Our ancestors worked hard so we could be here. I don’t want their ghosts muttering away at the back by the bar about how they toiled the fields for this lazy chump. I want them to say “this fella seems to be giving his all to whatever modern nonsense he’s playing.” Miserable gits.
Anyway, under that beautiful lime tree on Friday I felt a little off the pace, sluggish of brain and spirit. The songs had their moments, but too few for my liking. So, predictably a minor funk ensued, and not the good kind with Bootsy Collins on bass. It passed soon enough with help from excellent company and floofy dogs.
On Saturday I played to a full room at a nearby music venue, The Green Man Inn, and things seemed to fall into place again. I was back in the game. My new songs sound like my best. More new friends, more good memories. So I'm leaving with some satisfaction. My thanks to Nat and Charlie who hosted that one, and Patrick and Cathy, and all those who joined for these gigs. I hope to come back one day.
Finally, a date for your diary.
More on that very soon
Love Jake
I didn't intend the connection, but since you're here
https://jakemorley.bandcamp.com/merch/some-things-are-like-other-things-tea-towel
You painted a beautiful picture with your words. I'd love to see you in California. There is a really good promoter out here named KC Turner. I keep thinking you should contact him and see what happens: https://kcturnerpresents.com/home Who knows?