Sweet notes

I love this photo of our founding member, I love the glint in his eyes, the promise of mischief and adventure, but yet the kindness and reassurance that you're in safe hands. Perfectly sums him up. Don't worry this isn't an obituary, even though the photo lends itself to that, it's the black and white finish isn't it? It immediately speaks of yesterday or yesteryear, of another time, of another era. Definitely not helped by me eulogising about him either, as though he's no longer with us. Which of course he isn't. In a way. Certainly in the band anyway. But he is very much is alive and well and today is his birthday. I've long wanted him to contribute a blog to this site, like the rest of the band, on more than one occasion, but so far he's eluded us. So I thought I'd write about him instead, and maybe when he reads it he'll come running back to change the facts and tell things how they really were ;) But really I hope he reads it and realises how much we miss him, miss his steady hand on the tiller, his calming presence and his dry sense of humour.

My story with the guitar player began a decade before this band. In another band. A very different band; as spotty teenagers, pre GCSE, in a covers band playing Radiohead and REM. It was rather short lived, it didn't really gain us the attention we all craved, from girls, so we quickly upgraded to a rap band which was much cooler and gave us an edge and bought us much closer to the opposite sex. And it was quite successful too, for what it was, we gigged a lot, gained loads of experience and we even recorded an EP at the collage studio, although I'm not sure what happened to it, I don't think we ever pressed it. Our next band was a flamenco outfit and this time we did press an EP and ordered boxes of them, but we never played a single gig so it was pretty pointless in hindsight. But it's all stepping stones, it's all good lessons for when the real thing comes along. 

And the real thing was The Sam Brookes Quartet, which is what this band started life as, named after the guitar player and promising much more than two friends could provide. His theory being "If we call it a quartet we have to get other musicians involved!" As it happened we only ever got one, the piano player, and the rest is history as they say; the band was born, our journey began, much of which is documented in these blogs. And by the way I'm not here to write a chronicle on the guitar player and list his achievements, instead I want to focus a little on the man himself and what he bought to the table, and what we lost when we left, or went on gardening leave.

Sam is the wise old head, the calm and sensible tonic to my wild abandon and Shelley's unpredictability. It's easy to say we wouldn't be in this band if it weren't for him, but it's true, and that's not just cause he founded it either, but because he held it together. Quite literally. We wouldn't have navigated those early years without him. Not a chance mate. It's no secret that the piano player and I (both cousins) have clashed, sometimes spectacularly, often hilariously, it's part of the make-up and magic of this band, it's what makes us dysfunctional and why we changed our name to The Odd Folk. But if it weren't for the guitar player we would have gone our separate ways. Almost immediately. His was a selfless job, he did what was needed with a professional pragmatism. Never showy, no ego; he let me steer the ship, but he certainly kept us afloat, and bailed the water out when we got in too deep. He kept his head when all about him were losing there's. In all our years I don't think he ever even raised his voice. But he was stern and he often had the final word. 

He kept fairly good accounts too, made sure 'the band' always took a cut, so we always had some money in the pot, that's all gone to shit since he left, we all got too greedy and started living gig to gig, sharing money out without a thought for tomorrow. We even started sharing CD sales out too, which is kind of an unwritten rule in music, we should have enough in sales alone to make two new records and pay ourselves to do it, but the sad truth is we can't afford to record a single track and we'll probably have to ask you guys to front it, again. It's not right or wrong, we've lived hand to mouth, most musicians do, it's rare to be in a position to save for a rainy day but with the guitar player at the helm, we almost did; for a drizzly day at least. 

He very much became 'the band', we used to joke while on tour whether the band would let us do this or that, as though it was an actual person, some shady boss that you had to report to. I remember once in Berlin and I was asking whether the band could buy us all an expensive cocktail one night and he just turned to me with his wry half-smile and said "we are the fucking band!" and we all fell about laughing. We had a few cocktails that night!  

He had no ego, which is rare in music, he was almost a kind of anti-ego, he hated the limelight, he famously used to turn his guitar down on solos and take one step backwards into the shadows. 

Musically he was a joy, a great combination of styles, famed for his finger picking dexterity but it's his sweet notes that really leave you weak. They pop up in random places, single notes, almost out of context, against the grain, they're like little whoopsies, that make the hairs on your neck stand to attention and your heartstrings pang. 

This is all sounding too much like a eulogy isn't it. Perhaps I better stop talking about him in the past tense and start thinking about the possibly of him playing music with us again, which are the noises that I'm hearing. He left the band when a combination of babies and business' almost buried him; there I go again, making death references, what's wrong with me! But you get the picture, it's bloody hard to juggle work and play isn't it, it's what's kept us mid-table. In the years since he left (he's recently been overtaken by the bass player in appearances but still stands in a lofty 4th place) the babies have grown up a bit and the business has started to take care of itself, and perhaps there's a urge to don the cape again? But the music has changed a lot, the band's evolved, it's not the same beast that it was, better in some ways, worse in others. It's a transitional period, and quite fitting that it's coming at a time when the piano player himself has unofficially left the band.

Anyhow, that's noise for another day. I just wanted to raise a glass to a dear friend on his birthday! Happy days old boy and welcome home!