Gig last night with Craig

I haven't kept too many people in the loop on my cajon playing. There's a tonne of stuff about them on my website. And I have been playing a lot of gigs lately with the cajon. But last night was something else.

Craig, the legend from St.George Shire (hahahah), has a bucket load of good old fashioned Australian folk songs he recorded just as good old vinyl was being phased out, and CD's were the latest fashion. Sadly, he spent $4,000 on the record when it would have cost $40,000 to produce the same thing on CD back then.

When he got all the copies to distribute, people were buying CD players and throwing out their old record players on the street.

He later put his songs on CD, but the spark had fizzled, and people were listening to other stuff by then.

If you were to ask me "What's Craig's music about?" It's Australian folk. Good, honest songs about Australia's past and present.

I'm not in this video, but here's a sample of Craig's stuff.



Last night we played a couple of songs at Allawah Pub, which holds an open mic night courtesy of a good friend of mine in a neighbouring music school, Village Guitar. Which you might remember I spoke about when looking for a new career about 8 month or so ago.

Well, Craig and I were up there and we played two songs. We played them well. We played them so well than we won People's Choice award. And we were called up for not just one encore, but we did two more songs, finished up, and we were encored again.

People couldn't get enough of us. I wish someone got a recording of the night, but no one did.

What they did do however was sing along to the songs during the encores. There are two things a performer loves to hear the most. Applause and the crowd singing along. Amazing stuff.

Ah well. The night was enjoyable, and that's an understatement. Everyone was pumped up.

I love it when a gig goes that well.

The Sando gig

Made it to the Sando for my first paid gig with Craig lat night, early it turned out. But it was okay because I ended up meeting some other good bands. One of which was Satellite. They were fantastic. I liked them a lot. Kelly, the singer apologies to me before getting up on stage saying they were going to be a bit louder than us. They were, but they were also awesome. They rocked.

Little do they know I listen to metal but seldom play it. I like hearing it but find it boring to play.

Met another guy, Andy who was on after Craig and me. At first I thought I may have booked us into a rock gig, which is weird because we'd get up there and play some acoustic stuff when people are expecting something a little harder. But Andy made it much better by arriving in the nick of time, because he double booked himself at the Gaelic Club last night too. So he raced over and played his set. Good acoustic sound, I can't wait to here more of him.

Craig and I played well. Audience input says I need to play more percussion. Not sure whether that means I suck at it or I need to do more in the beats department. Craig and I recorded ourselves and we both felt I should have played less than what I did, so I've held back a lot.

And by the time we left, even though the Chocolate Dog may have been shut.... I was really hankering for some good Mexican food, the cafe up the road had a massive serving of nachos of which I ate every corn chip, bean, the guacamole and meat.

The waitress had a breakdown, not sure why. But the kitchen staff came out and handed us the waiters book and said "write down your order please, the waitress is having problems"

The waitress came back, crying, but still serving. The guy next to us spoke to her, but before he did, he looked at me and asked, rhetorically, "What did you say to her?"

I love the blame. First I had to take down my own order, then I get blamed for a waitress crying. Nice. I'm surprised at myself for not blowing up about it. But I guess I'm in a different place now.

I enjoyed everything about last night, the bands, the music, the people, the cafe, nachos.

It was truly Bizzaro World, the friends that said they'd turn up didn't. The ones that said they can't make it, did. I had to take my own order. I didn't go off at a stranger for blaming me for something I had no involvement in. Weirdness all around. I hate being blamed for things I didn't do.