Story time

Many years ago, I lived in a remote village in Tanzania for a few months, with the wonderful Allie. Our flat was pretty basic, and we cheered it up with a mural, drawing a map of Africa and writing out song lyrics in chalk on the walls.  The song we chose was from one of the limited selection of albums we had with us (this was before streaming!). We picked a song called “You Belong to Me”, from the Ally McBeal soundtrack, a compilation of covers by Vonda Shepherd, the singer in the show. The lyrics felt meaningful to us, as they talked about seeing the world while staying loyal to your partner back at home - and we both had boyfriends in England who we were missing. I went digging through my old photos to see if I could find one which showed that wall - unfortunately I could only find one with me in standing in front of it (looking about 12 - I was actually 18!). You can just about make out the lyrics if you look closely!

Nice story, but how is this not a massive tangent with zero relevance to my Open Mic Challenge? Well, it turns out that this particular song popped up again in my life, as part of the challenge, in a rather lovely way last Sunday (16th - yes I’m over a week behind on my posts!). You may have noticed that I've used the word ‘performance’ rather than open mic when alluding to that Sunday in other posts. That word was carefully chosen, because it wasn't an open mic as such - although  I am damn well counting it, as it was rather more intimidating than the open mics have been!

In an earlier post (5th January), I mentioned meeting Kieran at the Magic Garden open mic. We stayed in touch afterwards, and he invited me to his gig at the Spice of Life last Sunday. Of course I'd have loved to go, but had to fit in an open mic that day! So I made my excuses to Kieran. Foolishly though, I added a tongue in cheek “unless of course they do open mic slots at the gig ;)” (Which obviously, they didn’t!). Foolish because his comeback was to suggest that instead of doing an open mic slot, I could join him on stage for one song during his gig. That way I could go to the gig and also tick off my second “performance” of the week (albeit not quite the original plan to play my own songs). That was clearly a silly idea, as our option to learn and rehearse something would be a few hours on Sunday afternoon - and I'm obviously not a massively experienced performer either. But it also sounded kinda fun - and I guess I love silly ideas! - so suddenly that was the plan! 

So we met at 3pm on Sunday to prepare, with no plan whatsoever at that point about what to play. We needed a cover where we both knew the words off by heart - and with a guitar part we both knew or could quickly pick up and easily remember. We had no idea how much overlap we had in our music tastes (we'd only met once before!). But fortunately I am a bit of a ‘lyrics machine’ - and know a lot of songs off by heart - so was hopeful we’d be able to find something.

So this is how these two stories connect. Kieran starting mentioned covers he could play that I might know - and after a couple of very obvious and boring options (Wonderwall and the like) which we both firmly rejected, he said “oh hang on, there’s a cover I played recently at a gig - not sure if you know it - it’s from the Shrek soundtrack?”. I didn’t really know that soundtrack, but the song was called “You Belong to Me”, and turned out to be another cover of the same song. Kieran may not have been expecting my excited response: “Yay, I had that song written on my wall in chalk!!”. So it was the obvious choice!

I didn’t know the guitar part but the chord progression was super simple and easy to learn, so I added some basic finger-picking to Kieran's guitar. While I knew the melody and lyrics well (with some adjustments for the Shrek version), the really fun part of having two voices is adding cool harmonies. So we had to write some! And, of course, I'd have to remember them well enough to sing them that night - after listening to tons of other songs in between at the gig. That was a bit of a tall order! But, as mentioned above, I love silly ideas :D. We didn’t overdo it - just added harmonies in the last section. I had such a fun afternoon figuring out our version. I love playing and writing with other musicians - and it’s particularly fun and inspiring when someone with a great voice and guitar skills is up for jamming with me!! It makes it super easy to be creative :) 

Happily, by six-ish we had come up with something we were both pretty pleased with. I asked Kieran to quickly record his part on my phone, and cycled to the Spice of Life with my headphones in and that track on repeat, singing the harmonies over his melody to cram them into my brain. (I had a little chuckle every time the recording restarted, as he'd messed up slightly at the start, and muttered “oh shit” under his breath before carrying on :).) 

Arriving at the venue, my guitar didn’t want to play ball at first during sound check but after some tweaks seemed to be working fine. Then the gig kicked off with Anouska (below left), followed by Anna (below right). They were both utterly fabulous - and it quickly highlighted the difference in standard required to play this sort of gig vs an open mic. After being blown away by Anouska’s set, I leaned over to Kieran and said “Um, do you think maybe it’d be better if I didn’t join you after all??”. But he was having none of that! So for the next hour or so I had the opportunity to quietly regret my life choices ;).

Kieran was on after Anna, and our cover was the fourth song (and his only cover). When the time came, despite the soundcheck, my guitar wouldn’t amplify - and after a couple of tries to get it to work, we ended up deciding to just do it unplugged! The Spice of Life’s music area is fairly small so could work for an acoustic performance - and in some ways it took the pressure off to have no microphone to worry about. I think our little duet went ok. I’m pretty sure I sang all the harmonies as we’d written them, (although Kieran would need to confirm!). I only played guitar for part of it - Kieran was playing the same chords anyway so we my guitar part was a nice to have. As my poor brain wasn’t 100% confident I’d get ‘em right as well as remembering those harmonies it just seemed safer to let him carry that part in places! 

The final act (whose name I’ve annoyingly forgotten) was playing his first gig in 11 years! He had a lot of people who’d come to support him - including his mum who he announced had come all the way from Spain! (Although it later transpired she was visiting anyone rather than having come specially). All in all, it was a very special evening, and I felt humbled to have been briefly on stage amongst such an amazing group of artists.

Thanks for reading! I’ll leave you with a video of one of Kieran’s songs, a beautiful one which I really loved.