I struggle the day after shows. After the high, and the interacting with many wonderful people, comes the low, and the barely being able to get out of bed or leave the flat.
I finally made it out just after seven pm yesterday evening, and something very lovely indeed happened.
I walked straight into Queen Mab, who performed at my show last night, and our mutual friend Hel, better known as international cabaret star Selena Mersey. They were both outside a bar where they’d spent the afternoon watching a friend’s script read-through, and had meant to go home hours ago but ended up having an enormous conversation about everything and nothing.
It was so lovely to see them both, and as I stood there, and talked about Duncan from Blue, and watching The Matrix in Woking at 6am in 1999, I felt something important, which is that Brighton now feels like home. [1]
I was so proud of this show, and so honoured that friends from outside Brighton came down to see my band. This was one of the reasons for booking a Friday, as opposed to the usual Wednesday, though not the main one: it was to lure a couple of bands down from York and London, for whom a weekend was really the only way I was ever going to get them on, what with jobs, dogs, and other responsibilities (children? Do they need taking care of?)
So why was I a proud Mary? Well, for one thing, The Highchurches are sounding great. We’ve really grown a lot tighter through regular rehearsal without the pressure of gigs impending, and as soon as we hit the stage, I knew we had this. Like a lot of people in the fragmented universe sometimes known as the arts, I suffer from major imposter syndrome. Based on last night, fuck that: we sounded great, our songs are great, and we played and sang beautifully.
There were a couple of last-minute changes to the bill. Lorna Rose Treen and Holly Spillar had to pull out for reasons medical and filmic, and so a big thanks to Lachlan Werner and JoJo Maberly for being available and for a Brighton show as well.
Leslie Bloom was once again our glamorous host, and Guy the Sound Guy was once again our sound guy. I really enjoyed taking my increasingly customary position by the door, standing next to the sound desk, watching how the room reacted to our dizzyingly all-over-the-shop lineup.
It was a slightly strange audience, to be honest. There were some lovely regulars, who I am now calling The Highchurches Ultras, plus some familiar faces from the Brighton alternative comedy scene. But there were also some people who, I suspect, had never been to an alternative comedy night before, and so I got to watch about half of the room be totally baffled by Leslie Bloom’s tales of passion with Kenneth Brannagh and other bits of world-building by my favourite host on the Brighton scene.
Ah well. Room slightly warmed up, it was time for Charlie Vero-Martin, who is trying out some stand-up at the moment, rather than her customer character comedy.
She wanted to film the set as it’s a work in progress, so I awkwardly grabbed her phone and sat near the from, mainly recording the back of a man’s head. “Sorry, it’s hardly Kubrick”, I apologised during the break.
Charlie is a hero of mine, and though this new material probably needs a bit of work, I particularly enjoyed her taking apart the concept of witchery and witchdom… to a room in Brighton.
Next up was JoJo Maberly, a replacement for Holly Spillar as suggested by Leslie’s alter-ego, Simon Topping.
It was an excellent suggestion. I keep forgetting I’m running a comedy, music, and *musical comedy* evening, and so it was good to maintain that part of the deal.
JoJo leans very much in to her background, as a nepo baby in an incredibly claustrophobic-sounding posh village, where everyone is either the vicar or the fifteenth consecutive head of the local committee to be from exactly the same family.
Her songs are brilliant, her on-stage persona immediately recogniseable, and her loop-pedal work far superior to that of Ed Sheeran, who had the pleasure of knowing her when she was a baby.
Closing the first half was Lachlan Werner and oh sweet jesus.
He’s so brilliant, and I’m very much enjoying the rich backstory and world-building of his latest double-act, with a sea-lion (crucially, not seal) replacing the witch Brew (though god knows what she would have made of Charlie’s set).
In case you’ve not seen him before, Werner is a self-described “poof ventriloquist”, and he is fucking hilarious. His material veers between classic variety to queer existentialism. You could just as easily imagine him on a music hall bill in 1899 as you could on a Luxury Gay Space Communist cruise ship in 2037. He toys so much with the artefice of what he’s doing, yet it all feels so terrifyingly real.
Please see him.
Time for a break, and for a jarring shift in tone.
The first act of the second half was Queen Mab, the musical alter-ego of Brighton writer, performer, and promoter Hattie Snooks.
Snooks being one of the all-time brilliant surnames, in my opinion.
Hattie has been working on her new album via her folkie conservatory The Court, writing a new song for each new changing of the season and waxing of the moon.
She debuted some of these for us tonight, though unfortunately I missed about half her set, as I was dealing with a drug dealer from some undefined Eastern European country who kept trying to gain entry to the venue to… well, to sell drugs.
Big thanks to the Quadrant bar staff for helping me deal with him so professionally.
So I wasn’t able to swim in the Mabverse as mindfully as I’d have liked, but such is the lot of the jobbing promoter / singer / bouncer / ticket inspector.
Time for The Highchurches.
Guy the sound guy was trying out a new sound set-up for us, which was extremely bluegrass in its style: one beautiful, old-school, central mic, for us to lean in and out of while playing, supplanted by a couple of high-up mics to capture Ros’ fiddle and the wholeness of the thing.
This was some proper, expensive equipment, so when Lachlan whacked the mic and said “helloooo, is this thing on” in the first half, Guy nearly had a heart attack.
Fortunately the mic survived and we sounded… great?? It was clear from the very first tune that everyone was up for it, both audience and band. I’d even prepared setlists, so I can share that below:
So many highlights, so here’s a blurry paraghraph of them: high fiving Martha after she and we totally nailed the opener, Hymn for the Ruins; the laugh of recognition at the “killing pets for fun” line in Doris Wu; the riotous, seemingly never-ending chat about fisting; the gorgeous outro to Even Keel met with a similarly gorgeous silence; debuting our new song Doggerland as a future folk song about the “Year 4000… not 3000.” and a guy telling me after that it made him feel sad and happy all at the same time; Ros’ social worker friends chanting “Ros, Ros, Ros!” between the songs, much to her annoyance; and a triumphant Harvest Moon and Joy in the Morning to finish.
Having the space to move around the stage without having to worry about cables felt unbelievably freeing, and I felt very in tune with both the rest of the band and the audience. It was just generally very good indeed.
We’re on a bit of a hiatus now, as Martha prepares for her Brighton Fringe show at the start of May. But look out for us after that – we might even start playing in venues that aren’t The Folklore Rooms.
And yes, recordings to come…
[1] Although Hel is moving to Leeds to do a Masters in September. Fuck’s sake.
jamesofwalsh 