Nobody there, but I 'cased the joint' and concluded load in would be through the main front door. Nige arrived next and then our client, Gail, emerged from a lorry parked on the playing field to open up. Its a small hall and we started to set up on the floor with my Bose in a corner. I took some bass off the mic and guitar on the T1 equaliser to avoid corner boomyness. Our dep Martin arrived and we agreed to go for lighting as well. Martin set up his drum lights and also a light rope on the floor in front of the band. I wanted to avoid problems with low light on my set list, so I set up a LED PAR can on the floor and it all looked very Chrismassy.
By this time, Gail's co-organiser Peter had arrived. Peter was optimistic about turn out having arranged for a lot of flyers to be distributed. Time was marching on so we wolfed down a beer and went to get changed in the storeroom next to the performance area. There were only a few in the hall by our 8pm start, so we started off with a couple of instrumentals. “Flingel Bunt” and “Walk Don't Run” to try and attract people in. Despite the Bose in a corner it was a pretty good band sound I thought. We got a couple more people in so there were about 7 in the hall (including the bar man) as we opened up with the usual set 1 start. But as it progressed some more folks did come in and, what they lacked in numbers, they made up for by dancing, applauding and laughing in all the right places as we performed a typical set 1 with bits of added banter. It went well musically and continuity wise with a couple of exceptions. Somehow I managed to get the boys lined up for the Everley's “Walk Right Back” but then started Cathy's Clown – sorry fellas! Then we announced “Words”, but I had lost mine? Nige lent me his and he looked over Martin's shoulder and we played it through to a good response. The rock'n'roll spot went well I thought. We did both the Seasons and Beatles medleys and we wrapped up the set with the Everley's “Dream”. I thought this sounded good vocally but I was so concentrating on singing through the key changes correctly, I found my hands were wandering through the middle 8 chords somewhat incorrectly! We resumed for set 2 with me on the Fender 12 string playing “Travelodge California” and then followed up with the short “Tambourine Man”. For some reason I had had a bit of trouble getting the sound right but then as we began the Searchers medley it started to go a bit out of tune as well. Never mind I thought, I'll fix that before the Eagles. The Searchers went really well, we had all 20 people on the dance floor so we carried on with “Do It Again” and then straight into the Eagles! It was during “Take It Easy” that the tuning slipped quite bad on one of the B strings. The G was also a bit dodgy so I realised it was not going to be a quick fix. I called for a stop to change guitar before “Lying Eyes”. Nige covered with some encouraging banter about the difficulty of playing 12 string and then we carried on with a dancey set through “Moon of Love etc”, “Crazy Little Thing”, “Johnny B Goode” (complete with rampant Drum and Bass solo breaks). Somewhere in there we did “Wonder of You” and “Sweet Caroline” then we wrapped up with “Love is All Around”. During the break they had a raffle and I won - but I wizely elected to put my prize back in. After a brief break we started set 3 with a request for “Let There Be Drums”. Martin hadn't played it with any band before and he did it really well: perfect timing through the verses and run ups before he went into a well judged solo that came out on a rhythm that Nige and I and could easily bring into the run ups and on to the final verse to close. It earned a massive round of applause considering there were only about 25 in the room at this point! Then it was “Dance the Night Away – Do You Wanna Dance” and into the party dance “Amarillo” to “All Right Now” sequence. Then we entered a boy band interlude with Boyzone's “No Matter” which I thought we got well vocally this week and then followed up with Take That's “Shine” which also went really well considering my bad joke about Lidll. It was approaching midnight so I called for “Walk Alone” to finish. Martin sings this so well it got the audience joining in for the big climax. We had such a great response we encored with “Saw Her Standing There” to finish a long night just after midnight. I think we must have played nearly 3 hours with good continuity – not bad with a dep! Martin had fitted in and sang brilliantly (as we now expect!) People were very enthusiastic and complimentary as we packed away. It was such a shame there weren't a few more attending. We were sorry (and a bit guilty) that they were losing money on the dance but we hoped they would make up for it on the Sunday Fun Day. It was a bit chilly as we retrieved the cars from the field in formation and began the load up. After a good night chat with Peter, we finally got away about 1am and I was home by 2am. 
