Saddle up, Cowboy, we ain’t done yet…

What’s a guy to do?

Ya know, you spend twenty years on the road, playing anywhere from well meaning folks that’ll toss you a beer and a bite to eat, to huge places supporting legends that pay you less than your petrol money, and then suddenly, WHALLOP – you and your buddy have somehow got yourselves a funky little rock n roots bar, filled with vinyl records and whole heap of ‘next big thing’ being written about you. The world is opening up, Amigo.

Just in time for COVID to hit, and the world to shut down.

Lockdown was, in no uncertain terms, the single greatest six months of my life.

Head out cycling in the morning in glorious sunshine. Spend the early evening cooking and playing guitar. Write stuff. Read stuff. Seize control of your life once again.

I was in a pub, with a cellar full of beer and wine, in a bubble with two friends and our kids. We had a cinema screen with Netflix, Disney+ and Youtube connected to it. A metric fucktonne of vinyl records. And a million worlds to discover. And you know what? Rishi Sunak was paying all the bills.

But lockdown was, putting it charitably, a flaw in our plans for world domination. It was with heavy hearts though that we finally opened the doors again and got on with the process of earning our money.

And so, for the next few years, we set about researching and booking the kind of bands we wanted to see, finding the best beer we could in our local area, building a kitchen that would work in the tiny confines of the space we had…

…and we built something, with the help of the brilliant staff we’d hired, that we could be proud of. And though it occupies 90% of my time, I couldn’t be more glad of my little rock n roots bar. Turns out, now it’s at a point where – if I’ve done my job well – it can continue without my presence, here and there.

You see, a Wanderer’s boots are made for walking. Not just up and down cellar stairs. After five years away from the road, from being the new kid in town to the one that welcomes in happy nomads, those boots begin to itch. You hope that you’ve learned something, something viable, that’s worth taking away from your Friday night crowd, and off into the world.

This is my first blog post in seven years. I look back and scroll through the previous ones and realise that the characters in them are no longer with us. 

We lost Dave, our musical guru and outstanding photographer in June 2020, Jim “The Gaffer” two years later, and Moff(“Bob” from “Moving In Blues”) the year after that. The carnage continues as you get older, children.

Well, sometimes, your dreams and the roads you want to travel become distracted by other dreams and roads – and you’ve gotta follow them, too – but the ones you started on need completion, and they scream out to you, in the end.

For Jim, for Dave, for Moff, and for anyone you’ve lost, follow those dreams, see what’s out there.

See you somewhere up the road.