A month of Fridays

May was a month of Fridays, with each Friday offering an interesting experience in a different part of the world.

Firstly, I was at Bradford Irish Club for a JATP jazz night (JATP stands for Jazz at the Priestley - where jazz nights in Bradford used to be held).  It was a brilliant gig - one of my favourite of 2011 so far.  I was playing with my 'Northern' band - a group of musicians that I regularly work with when I do gigs further north than the Hatfield tunnel!  They were on fine form: Dave Walsh on drums, Garry Jackson on bass (who coped with my difficult charts amazingly, despite not having played with me for over a year - he was depping for Gavin Barras) and Dan Whieldon on piano.

It was so enjoyable, particularly at a point during Tea for Two where Dan was playing an amazing stride piano solo and I thought it would be a great idea for the band to drop out and give him some space so that the audience could hear exactly how brilliant it was... except that at the exact moment I signalled to the band to stop, Dan decided he'd had enough and his arms were aching by this point, so he too stopped!  What followed were a few bars of silence, Dave Walsh laughing his head off at the drums, and Dan resignedly geeing up for another chorus of the stride solo.  He said afterwards that he thought his arms may have fallen off!  Nevertheless it was my favourite part of the gig, and showed not only what brilliant musicians I was sharing the stage with but also what great fun we had up there.
The promoter (the excellent Martin Powell) clearly had great fun too ("an absolutely wang dang doodle of a jazz gig") and his review is on THIS page.  Scroll down to the second paragraph and you'll see me there.

The following Friday we were back in Yorkshire, and this time at Wakefield Jazz Club.  My Northern band were joined by Dave O'Higgins which was so thoroughly enjoyable.  Dave has recorded on both my albums (new album due out in September - write in on your shopping lists now!) but we haven't played together since May 2010.  It was my first time there, although Dave had played many times before.  The club had got a new gallery of photographs all around the room, including one of Dave, and they even had a selection of fridge magnets for sale!  Here's a photo of Dave in front of picture of Dave holding a picture of Dave.  That's now on my fridge.

It was a great gig, a great club, and a privilege to play there.  I was presented with an extravagant bunch of flowers at the end which was so delightful - although I had to travel home with them on the coach at 2 in the morning, which wasn't so delightful!

The next week I was performing just outside Swindon, in the church at Highworth.  What a building!  Such lovely acoustics, and so lovely to have a grand piano there.  We had an hour or so to kill before the sound-check so found a pub for a cup of tea, and wandered past this lamp post:

Fame at last!


And for the final Friday in May, I celebrated all that hard work by getting on a train at St Pancras and ending up, 12 hours later, in Nice.  Very nice!