When the accordion player announced he was having a baby this year all the usual fanfare of love and support rippled through the band, and while we all clapped him on the back, I quickly did the maths. 9 babies born in 10 years, what a pity it wasn't 10, cause that would be really spooky; I almost had another just for the symmetry! As it happened I didn't need to, the bass player beat me to it.
10 babies in 10 years! You just can't write it! Which, by the way, is a ridiculous saying. Just like 'you can't make that shit up'. Because quite clearly you can; you'd just make it up, but I don't know why you'd bother. Making babies up would be weird.
We certainly haven't made ours up; just to endear ourselves to you, or to make it even more remarkable that we have achieved what we have with kids in toe! We're more likely to lean on it the other way; we haven't achieved more because we've had so many kids!
But then 7 people having 10 kids isn't especially groundbreaking when a group of friends hit a certain age. Baring in mind that one person had 3 of them, it means the other 6 had 7 kids which is hardly anything to write home about and wouldn't make much of a blog!
And I'm only counting the 7 regular bandmates here; cause if I counted all the musicians we've used and all the babies born it wouldn't even make a headline.
20 people had 15 babies! You wouldn't buy that paper.
Maybe I should change tact and talk about... oh wait there is nothing else to talk about! 'We're empty of both adventure and anecdote'. I wonder how many times I can shoehorn the bass player's saying into a blog without him citing plagiarism!
And there is something to be said about having kids, and the effect that has on your life and work. Kids have largely shaped our trajectory and with each new heir that is born, so we are further restricted. Ooo wrong word. Enriched. That's better. But you know what I mean; kids dominate your lives and rightly so. The old way has come to an end and there is a new focus. It's universally acknowledged that having them makes it harder to advance your job and career, and that your work could be sacrificed for up to 5 years. Well we've been churning them out for 10 years now, that means our whole existence has been sacrificed, or maybe 'confined' is a better word. Sacrifice makes you think of slaughter, and we're only a folk band after all.
But has having them really mean't we've not achieved our goals? Kinda depends what our goals were? We've under-achieved in that we're not a famous band, but I don't think any of us set out to be one. Otherwise we'd write a pop song and all the dress the same and use auto tuner and buy 'likes' on Facebook. And we've certainly over-achieved in terms of adventures and making memories. And anyway I think our jobs have restricted us just as much, if not more, than the kids. I certainly try not to let children get in the way of this enterprise, because, let me tell you, without this I wouldn't be half the parent I am. As I have said many times before, the 'release' that being in a band gives - or any hobby for that matter - is so important to your mental health and therefore the health of your children. But I have let work get in the way, because let's face it, this isn't a particularly profitable enterprise, despite our best endeavours, cause we haven't had the time to make it one. Why? Because work and babies got in the way. And there's the rub.
We've all dealt with our babies in different ways; I'm famous for swanning off and leaving mine with their long suffering mother without much any warning, I've never been very good with calendars, every year I diligently start a planner in January and by February it's lost and we're back to "By the way we're gigging this weekend... in Belgium!"
The drummer, whose son is as old as the band, is the opposite of me, he's incredibly good with calendars, I can message him in January with a gig offer in August and he already knows whether he is free or not. His reply is instant, almost before I've even sent the dam message; PING! "I'm not free it's my weekend with the boy". Occasionally the gig offer is a good one (we do get a few!) and so instead of running the gauntlet of changing childcare, he will simply bring the boy along. Archer has sat through half a dozen Odd Folk gigs, sometimes even up on stage next his dad, and he once joined in on the hi-hat.
The bass player thankfully knows his way around a calendar and has invented a method to help us choose gigs, The 3 P's; PROFILE, PROFIT and PLEASURE. As long as you get two of them you're alright. If you get all three, fuck, you do the gig at all costs, you take the kids with you if you have to, bring grandma too. We don't often get all three though. Getting two is hard enough. Mostly we just get one, and it's nearly always for profile, or "exposure" as they call it! "People die of exposure!" says the drummer. We've stopped chasing that avenue so much these days, ever since we did The Great British Bake Off Finale for no money, taking two days out off work and kids and driving to a secret location in the arse end of nowhere - so secret I can't even remember where it was - only to get unceremoniously dumped onto the cutting room floor. I think you saw a flash of the bass players red hair for a millisecond, not quite the "exposure" we'd all signed up for. Although we did sell a CD to Mel and Sue, I wonder if they ever played it?
The guitar player; the founder and leader for half of our life, had his first child and lost his footing, starting missing a few gigs here and there, had his second and promptly left the band.
The accordion player, who himself is a replacement for the guitar player, is now about to join the father's club and the jury's out on how he will juggle music and children. Although he is pretty good with a calendar and could rival the drummer in a punctuality contest at least.
10 babies in 10 years. I can't stop saying it. I can't believe it hasn't been picked up by the press. Surely if we can't make it with our music, we can make it with our stories. This is 'How NOT to be in a Band' - have loads of kids, loose your calendar and die of exposure.
On a serious note with every new addition there is a small part of me that sinks a little further into my seat, in a purely selfish sense perhaps, like I know how hungry I still am, and I can only hope my bandmates keep a stomach for it too. Having lost one of them to the pitter patter of tiny feet; once bitten twice shy and all that.
But mostly kids have bought us immense joy, at being able to share our music with them, write songs for them, take them to festivals and wheel them round in barrows, like we were all those years ago. Watching their faces look up in awe as we take to the stage and feel that heady mixture of pride and embarrassment that this is their dad. Watching them mimic us with tennis rackets as guitars, dancing around in an imaginary world of sound. As much as kids have bought a joy to our music, so music has bought a joy to our kids.
And who knows, now they outnumber us, perhaps someday they'll take over from us too, when we finally become The Old Folk ;)
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