(so is this post)
Some thoughts on singing, change and a question from Priya
“Why are you really here?”
That was the question my yoga teacher, Priya, asked our small group. A short question that should have been easy to answer. Unfortunately, she had asked a singer. We’re not always good at knowing when to finish.
I wanted to answer but needed more time, so I took the question home. Then I found myself wandering back through more than half a century of singing, bands, friendships and changes I hadn’t always noticed. Apparently, my answer needed a support act and an interval.
SingersBitz usually gives you a glimpse into the world of Gordon the Singer. This time, you’re getting a glimpse of the Gordon who puts the guitar down and goes home afterwards.
For years, I treated those two Gordons as separate people. Only recently have I begun to understand how much each affects and depends on the other, and how little sense it ever made to separate them.
You may be thinking, “Well, that’s stating the bleeding obvious.”
It is. But I’ve only just realised that, like melody and rhythm, changing one really does affect the other.
Fix You
I’m trying to bring those two Gordons together. From this blog onwards, you may sometimes meet a little more of the one who isn’t performing. I’m still trying to get to know him myself.
So you want to be a rock ’n’ roll star.
I started young, singing in pubs with older musicians for older audiences. I certainly didn’t imagine I’d be writing about it more than half a century later. Performing soon became the centre of my life. Outside family and a few romantic relationships, almost everyone I knew was a performer.
I can’t remember the first song I sang. In my defence, the internet hadn’t been invented, so keeping a set list for a future blog wasn’t a priority.
Soft summer nights, hide from the lights (or maybe don’t)
As a young soul, blues-and-rock singer, I sometimes confused singing loudly with singing well. I’d hold the microphone at waist level and think it looked impressive. Subtlety wasn’t exactly my strong point.
It got me noticed, but I gave too little thought to whether I was doing the songs justice. I could make myself heard. Making people feel something—other than a ringing in their ears—needed more thought.
By sixteen, I was leading a band. That band kept going for more than twenty years, although it was a bit like Trigger’s broom: the musicians, songs, style, gigs and even the name changed. Somehow, I remained the original part still attached.
I enjoyed most of those years. Along the way, the opportunities and gigs changed dramatically too.
Life’s what happens to you when you are busy making other plans
Life happened. I can’t remember what my other plans were, but I hope they were worth the effort. Changes had sneaked in while I was too busy to notice.
Gordon Webber’s RoadRunners (née The Roadrunners)
A new stage came along when I joined a soul band called The Roadrunners. Having always led my own band, joining somebody else’s was new territory.
I thought I had been offered, and had accepted, the singer’s job. What I didn’t know was that I was a temporary solution while they looked for a permanent replacement. Fortunately for me, they didn’t find one. My temporary job lasted rather well.
Later, the manager of the venue where we regularly played decided to rename us Gordon Webber’s RoadRunners (GWRR). It wasn’t the band’s idea, but the engagement meant too much to us for anyone to argue. Having arrived as the stand-in, I ended up on the label.
Catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Gordon Webber’s RoadRunners played regular late-night Fridays and Saturdays at a prestigious Mayfair nightclub. The original Roadrunners rhythm section remained the core of the band. When the female vocalist left, I brought in the singer from my previous band. I also sourced an ever-changing horn section. Some truly wonderful horn players came down into that basement, and I loved being part of the sound we made together.
The engagement lasted for many years. The nights were always exciting, the audiences loved the band, and a few of the women seemed particularly pleased to see us. I loved singing for them, and it was easy to imagine it would carry on forever.
Alongside GWRR, I took on jazz bookings, putting together a duo, trio or small band from whoever was available. I was the singer and the fixer. “Bandleader” would have suggested rather more musical direction than I was providing.
Those musicians taught me a lot, often simply by letting me listen and work alongside them. Jazz also made me more aware of how much I still had to learn.
I have performed in more countries than I can remember, from huge American venues to tiny Bratislarvian basements, from Varanasi to the Arctic Circle. Looking back, I feel fortunate to have experienced so much doing something I love. There were highs and lows, of course, but between those adventures have been and continue to be the regular restaurant gigs that are essential to earn a living.
Away from music, I also ran a pub and worked as a communications consultant. Those jobs brought another circle of people into my life. Yet, even with all that going on, “singer” was still the answer I reached for when anyone asked—or I tried to work out—who I was.
Turn and face the strange
At the time, I had a very busy social life and what I thought were plenty of good friends. There was real laughter and companionship through the band, while the pub and communications work brought other circles of people I also considered friends.
Then, within a relatively short space of time, all of that changed. Gordon Webber’s RoadRunners’ regular engagement ended after the venue owner died and the Mayfair club closed. I couldn’t find enough other work to keep the band going. I also sold the pub and soon afterwards left my consultancy job to concentrate on singing.
As the band work and day job ended, so did the contact with those friends.
The original Roadrunners members formed another band; I thought it could be a chance to get our snowball rolling, but the band was initially described to me as instrumental, so I understood there wasn’t a place for a singer.
When our former female vocalist later joined them, I found that hard. I didn’t really know what to make of it.
I have a family too, of course, but we have seldom socialised together because I was usually working when family gatherings happened. Mum once pointed out that I’m missing from most of the family photographs—unless I’m on a stage, performing at the wedding or whatever occasion everyone else has come to enjoy.
Most of those early-day musicians are still in my phone. They’re still playing and have bands of their own, working with other singers. I’m fairly sure that if I offered them a gig, they’d be happy to join me, but without that reason to get together, we know little about each other’s everyday lives. Most of my band work now comes from new singers/band leaders, booking me as a dep singer to stand in for them.
I don’t think that the above makes the old friendships false; the camaraderie was real. I had simply wrongly assumed it would carry on without the work that brought us together. I’m beginning to see how much time I gave to working, and how little I left for keeping close to people outside it.
I still love a band gig and the feeling of musicians making something happen together. Whenever I can, I work with the drummer and one of the horn players from GWRR, alongside musicians I’ve met since. We enjoy each other’s company, and I’m learning to appreciate that without assuming every good working relationship must become a friendship.
However, these days, almost all my work is as a solo singer-guitarist. I miss what slipped away, and I’m enjoying what has come along since. Both feelings often turn up on the same evening.
Changes
An unexpected connection between martial arts, cold-water practice and yoga gave me another way of looking at the changes in me.
As a young man, I practised martial arts. One of my favourite stances was Kiba Dachi, a strong, grounded position from which I would hit people.
Years later, during cold-water practice, I was shown a horse stance and slow movements to warm up after leaving an ice bath. The posture had a different name, but I recognised it as the same Kiba Dachi. But with the new name, I was trying to warm myself up rather than hurt someone.
Then, in yoga, I encountered Goddess Pose. Again, I recognised the same grounded stance. This time, the movements are designed to help me to push away unwanted energy/troubling thoughts.
I’m talking about how these practices felt to me. What caught my attention was how a familiar position could serve such appropriate but very different purposes at different points in my life.
Perhaps singing has changed for me in much the same way. I still stand in front of people and sing, but what I want from it—and what I hope to give—has greatly changed.
From the brim to the dregs, it poured sweet and clear
I now use an approach known as speech-level singing. It suits me, though listening back to my performances still gives me plenty to work on.
There’s still room for gusto, especially at party gigs with backing tracks. I enjoy those nights, but I miss the company of a band. A backing track is wonderfully reliable; you just can’t exchange a grin with it when something goes particularly well—or an “oh shit” glance when the bride’s sister asks to sing Valerie.
My ideas about what makes a performance special have changed too. A handful of nights have stayed with me, and they weren’t necessarily the biggest gigs or the most enthusiastic audiences. Often, they were moments when I felt closer to what the song was saying. I might never have lived through the situation in the lyrics, but I recognised the feeling. Sometimes, a look in somebody’s eyes suggests it has reached them too. I can’t always explain why that happens, or make it happen again, but it’s what I hope for now.
I also trained as a vocal/performance coach and enjoyed helping people find their voice. Coaching made me think more carefully about things I had previously taken for granted. Eventually, performing left less time for coaching. Many students wanted help preparing songs for X Factor or The Voice auditions, while I was more interested in developing their singing over time. Neither aim was wrong, but with less time available, I decided I wanted to address the two things competing for my attention and stopped coaching.
If I could give my younger self some singing advice, it would be to spend as much time with the words as with the notes. Who is speaking? What are they trying to say? I used to think mostly about how to sing a song. I’m still learning to ask why. When I listen to someone else’s songs, it’s often the honest, personal details that stay with me.
But perhaps the more important advice would have nothing to do with singing: “Gordon, leave a bit of time to get to know people outside music. You don’t need a gig in common to become friends.”
My curiosity about people has kept growing, along with a slightly overdue curiosity about myself. I’m beginning to ask who I am when I’m not performing /preparing for a performance.
Now, the most important part of the blog
“Why are you really here?”
I thought that working out where I come from and how I had arrived here might give me the answer.
It hasn’t. Not yet.
But it has helped me see how thoroughly I had allowed my profession to describe me. Singing has given me a living, extraordinary experiences and a great deal of joy. I still love it. But I now also want to get to know the me who goes home after the gig a little better.
I’ve spent so long introducing myself through my work that I’m not quite sure how to describe the rest of me.
What do I want from my end verses/encore? (Just realised I’m sodding going back to music refs again.)
Gordon the Singer is still here, and I hope he stays for many more verses and codas. He just doesn’t need to do all the talking.
If Priya asks again, I think I will still be short of an answer.
But I hope I might find out before the fat lady sings.