A short, vaguely music-related story with no pictures.

Sam and I were approached after a gig by a guy we’d both been aware of since the beginning of our set. He was sat at a table on his own, paying us his full attention throughout the show, whilst all else around him whirled. I’d had vague thoughts as we played, to him as much as anybody, that he was a journalist or someone in ‘the business’ in some way. At the end of the show he came up to introduce himself and told us a bit about his background whilst we packed up. His name was Jay and he was a fellow musician, from the North, staying in one of those £18/night cupboards at the local Ibis Hotel. He was down to mix his ‘Real World’-recorded album in Bath somewhere the next day and had been tipped off to come and see us that night by his ‘friend in the know’, he said.

“What a prick?!” He lovingly teased his pal and posturing, local ‘contact’, Steve, in his absence. Not because he felt that he’d been served up a duff lead in coming to see Sam and I play that night. Far from it, and in spite of the many gins he’d had, he assured us, he’d absolutely loved the performance. He proved it, in as much as you ever can, by heading out to the nearest cash point and returning with the money to buy both of our albums. Whether this proved that he really was pissed or that he really loved our music was, as always in these circumstances, hard to tell, but we happily gave him the benefit of the doubt.

We talked some more and he offered to buy us both a drink. As we finished getting our gear together he went on to tell us that he was 30 years old, married with a daughter and was living ‘off the musical roadmap’ up in Leeds. His career highpoint to date had been touring with Lou Rhodes from Lamb around Europe. We were duly impressed but he dismissed himself repeatedly and endearingly as a ‘nobody’. He raved about the reception though that he’d had on that tour and bemoaned the many UK venues (like the one we’d just played in) where the audiences were customarily inattentive to the singers on stage. “Germany?!” He exclaimed a few times. “Silence! You wouldn’t believe it…”

We were all enjoying each others company by this time and he persisted in his bid to buy us both a drink somewhere. The bar we were in was closing around us and I tried in vain to get him a double gin, returning instead with another complimentary pint of Sunrise which we shared, in mock-ceremony of our new-found friendship. It was obvious to all of us, when we were finally done packing up, that there was much more that needed talking about. Sam, though, was still feeling the effects of a lingering cold, so we packed her off in her van and headed out, just the two of us, in search of one of Bristol’s many, central, late-night bars.

“These aren’t the kind of places where you tend to just have one beer”, I told him, wondering out-loud what I was getting myself into on a Tuesday night. “We’re not having one beer”, he said, matter-of-factly. I too was beginning to relish this sense of night freedom and Jay’s genial company. The time to go home on time, in any case, had clearly passed. It’s a rare thing to meet another guy, who’s not gay or motivated by some other personal gain, and after all of 10 minutes decide to hit the town together. I felt a rising elation from this sudden camaraderie and sense of timeless, yet fresh, exploration of life and the city’s midweek, midnight streets.

“At home I hardly ever go out, barely even drink”, he said at one point, whilst persuading me to have another black zambuca with every round of beer he bought.

“Shall we get a little short each to go with these, Henry?” He’d say.

Hell yeah, I was thinking, unable to remember the last time I’d felt like a shot with my pint.

Each bar closed around us, sending us on to later and later haunts. From ‘Mr Wolf’s’ we found ‘Mother’s Ruin’ before finally arriving at ‘The Den’. This latest of the late night boozer’s had been recommended and brilliantly described to us by Mother’s Ruin’s Kurt Cobain meets Garth from Wayne’s World barman as ‘like being at a credit card launch in Sweden’.

“It’ll only be there a couple of months at the most so go and check it out”, he told us knowingly. Jay and I didn’t need any persuading, we were having a whale of a time by this point, and the description was more than buying online drugs enough to lure us in. It didn’t disappoint. It was a cavernous, old bank with a 60-foot high, painted-domed interior, lit only by the taps on the bar and completely and utterly deserted apart from a gothy-looking, student bargirl. We tried to temper our drunken enthusiasm, for everything basically, especially the place, so as not to repel her in any way. She seemed both amused and yet still a little wary of us in spite of our efforts.

Back in the centre of town, with Jay complaining by this point of excessive drunkenness, we said goodbye. For some reason we only managed to exchange one email address between us, his. I remember him waving his phone around in the street despondently, the screen was smashed or something, rendering his phone out of use. He didn’t know his number. We arranged, in our stupors, that I’d email him and that we’d meet up again the next night, ‘to go and see some indie band’. Jay’s idea not mine but I was up for it. I emailed him when I got home, some hilarious recap of events no doubt, as I guzzled take-away chips, ecstatically, for the first time in some time.

I woke up the next day marvelling at this ‘wild night out’ in the company of a random, but wonderful, stranger. As it turned out I was busy til late that night so I wasn’t able to see him. I didn’t hear anything from him for the next few days and presumed him back in Leeds with his family, nursing, and possibly trying to hide, the wounds of his excess. Since then – and it’s been over a month now – I still haven’t heard anything from him. This I have found both hugely amusing and a little disconcerting, particularly in the week just after. It lead me to formulate many colourful, if slightly paranoid, theories. No, he hasn’t stolen anything off you, identity or otherwise, as far as you’re aware at least… Perhaps he was just an extremely artful alcoholic, stringing together benders ingeniously from town to town with any hapless co-pilot he could find? Finally I got to thinking that I may have made the whole thing up. Done a ‘Fight Club’. Conjured up a powerful, imaginary friend and, in an advanced state of schizophrenia, taken myself out, on my own, for a riotous midweeker on the black zambucas?!

“Shall we get a little short each to go with these, Henry?”

Hell yeah

Quite a bit has happened since I last wrote anything up here. I moved to Bristol in May and hit a super-vibrant cultural scene in the area known as Stoke’s Croft. I’m living in the heart of it on Picton Street and have begun working closely with Samantha Marais (pictured with me above). We’re singing together now as ‘Sam & Henry‘, and have also set up the ‘Coexist Music Collective’, working with some brilliant local bands and good friends including Tom Bellamy, Something Of The Night, Troubadour Hook & Bex Baxter.

I’m excited about some new songs I’ve been online prescription writing this past 6 months or so and am planning to arm myself with a video camera and field recorder to bring all the Bristol action and personal triumphs I’m experiencing to you via this site and others.  Meantime, keep an eye out here and at www.samandhenry.co.uk, join either mailing list for gig updates and come and see Sam and I play live at one of our numerous dates this month, including one in London this Saturday, 16th October at 7pm, back at the old Unity Church of ‘boy who never learned‘ album launching fame.  Back by popular demand…!