Song Surgery

“So is this place haunted?” asked the piano player as we sped up the M5 towards Shropshire. He looked apprehensive, so I played up to it. 

“Yep, it’s riddled with ghosts and they particularly like paintball selling keyboard players!”. He smiled dismissively and then he paused, “It’s not though is it!"
I looked at him with the straightest face I could muster and slowly nodded.
“Stop it! It's not!? ... Is it!?"

Belan Hall 1882

This place was Belan Hall; an old shooting lodge nestled in the crumpled green mountains of Mid-Wales. It was built in 1882 and once belonged to Neville Chamberlain. A good 5 miles from the nearest village, it was an isolated retreat set within its generous acres and empty but for a neighbourhood of sheep. All the fields that slopped up to the mountain ridge were dotted with the little fluffy beasts. Some with lambs, some lone rangers, all of them eating the green, green grass. "Baaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrr" they said in unison all day long. This was a forgotten land, kissed by a 100 sunsets and washed by a 1000 years of rain.

We were to be spending the weekend here rehearsing our set for the giggles we had scattered over the summer. Rehearsing our set, or performing surgery on our set as I liked to call it. It had become apparent that many of our songs needed operating on, to remove the tumours and broken bones and nurse them back to good health. Many of them, old men now set in their ways, needed a little fresh air. New endings, new beginnings, new songs really! We needed new songs but had decided against spending the weekend writing all new material as appealing as it sounded. The problem being that adding a handful of new half-made songs to our existing list of half-made songs meant that we would just increase the problem, we’d have loads of songs but none of which were polished!

The Maid of Cledon

We entered the house at dusk but already inside it was pitch black, the walls were clad in dark wood and all the curtains were drawn. We unloaded our belongings into the various rooms, all of us a little wary of the room at the top of the tower, if there was a ghost it was most definitely up there! Eventually the drummer bit his lip and took the room, traipsing slowly up the winding wooden stairs and entering the master bedroom. “Is it haunted?” he called down. “I don’t really know” I answered, “there’s some rumour about the maid of Cledon that went mad and killed herself but I don’t know if it’s true!” He didn’t answer so I continued, "Supposedly at night you can hear her walking the corridors and ringing the service bell!" Still no answer and I couldn't resist, "Apparently she killed herself because the old master of the house was a drummer and the constant tapping sent her mad!" 

Back downstairs and we busied ourselves unloading instruments and food and boxes of Ale. We set up our gear in the drawing room, lit the fires to warm both the house and the water system and the weekend unfolded.

Surgery was grim, some songs were put through the mill; I thought we’d lose them. But we stitched them up and they pulled through. The other way we looked at it that brought us no end of amusement was to treat them as football players all trying to impress the coach in order to be picked for the summer tournament. Who would make a late dash for the plane!? And it worked; when Stormy Weather was initially left out of the first squad, alarm bells were ringing, so we gave him a run out to prove his worth, and boy did he do that! It was primal, the mood, the flavour, the tone; with the drummer bent over completely immersed in the song, he looked like an old man in a boat on a stormy sea, hunched over, bailing out water. The guitar player’s solo hitting all the sweet notes, the piano player totally absorbed in the atmosphere of the song and I nearly cried at its end. It was working! We played our hearts out, our best music, our best performances, ironically miles away from all of you lot! We played for ourselves and the ghosts were dancing!

Outside the rain continued, fine rain that soaks you through. We watched it from the window; it suited us, no distractions. We threw another log on the fire and ploughed on. We threw another song onto the operating table and gave him an XRAY. A broken foot, he needed some new boots. The bass player was the physiotherapist who taught him to walk again.

Good food, good company, and no arguments. The weekend was a resounding success. In our eyes anyway! You may well come and see us soon and think we’ve butchered our set, given the old men new limbs and they’ve lost their way! You may think the facelifts have turned them into cartoons! We’ll soon know as the boos ring out! There’s no rest this month, it’s 9 gigs in three weeks, in three countries (if you count Cornwall’s recent upgrade!)

The maid of Cledon never did come to haunt us, nor the old women in the rocking chair as another family member had threatened us with! Though as we pulled away and chanced a look behind at the old lodge I swear I saw a young girl at the tower window, she was smiling and holding our new set list!

“It's pretty Goooooooooood!” she cooed.

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