I was expecting to tell you about Guitar Club summer performance of ABBA Take 2, a rerun of the set we did back in April this year with some extra songs and we had been practicing to that end for quite a few weeks, but it was not to be.
TWO WEEKS before the date for the performance one of the female vocalists was suddenly not going to be available. So, what do you do, the show must go on, so it as decided we would do some John Denver songs, which are not on the face of it so complicated.
We started with a list of six but in the end, we only did three, see short video extracts taken by my wife, I am at the back and you can just see me between the guitarist and singer at the front, I wasn’t hiding deliberately.
The songs we did were
- Take me home country roads – repeated at the end
- Annie’s Song
- Leaving on a Jet Plane
Those of you that have played with others will know there is a world of difference between playing a song by yourself and playing with other guitarists, especially if they are all of varying abilities, it is a whole different ball game. To do this with only four practice sessions and then not everyone being able to attend each one, was asking a lot. The evening before, a difficult decision had to be made and it was decided we would just go with the ones that were comfortable with.
As it turned out, although we didn’t do many songs, they can all basically be classified as campfire songs and the audience was encouraged to sing along, which they did, with great enthusiasm, in the circumstances it worked out quiet well. So, we ended up being the warmup band for the other group from club that followed us with a much longer set of songs. I think the audience enjoyed the evening overall at least I hope so.
Michael
. Must be a great experience to perform with other musicians 
.