So we cart the kit up to Toms’ Loft Studio for a rehearsal for the forthcoming frolic in the form of the Fantastic Romantic Valentine Cabaret in the Totnes Civic Hall on the 14th February.
We are playing as a kind of house band for the night with a series of short spots through the show on a dedicated stage. The evening is going to feature over 30 performers and the time slots are tiny- the show is going to be at breakneck speed – imagine Jools Hollands ‘Later’ on amphetamines!
It’s a veritable whos-who in the land of Narnia; amongst others there will be Sam Richards, Sam ‘n Dave, Gabriel Collins, Jackie Juno, Dakini Kat, Peter Walters, Clive Donovan, Heather Mullin, Greg Shepherd, ourselves and loads more.
So that means we have to condense all our song performances to 3 minutes each, that’s quite a challenge as our songs tend to build and develop and our shortest song is just under 5 minutes. It was great to do this as a real lesson in discipline, it also makes the songs we’ve chosen very sprightly and guarantee they certainly wont be boring. So after banging our heads together and a little bit of technology we’ve cracked 3 minutes on five tracks – (we’re due to play four but there’s no harm having a spare…)