The all new but comfortingly familiar:
An old friend of mine, Gavin Thomas, that’s him in the middle row down making the shhh face, started a small revolution with his open mic sessions at the Kings Head in Guildford. Open mics had always been, shall we say, of variable quality. Gavin’s idea was to curate the event, inviting the best performers rather than leaving it to chance, making an effort to provide great sound and lighting. The results were spectacular! Artists loved it because they had a great on-stage experience and a listening audience and audiences loved it because the performers were so good. His weekly events spawned many annual festivals including One Winter’s Night, an incredible show at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre featuring the best of the best of these artists that has so far raised nearly £100,000 for charity.
In 2018, as this community of singer songwriters flourished in Guildford, I decided, along with my co-organiser Peter Crutchfield, to create a similar monthly event at the Farnham Pottery. We wanted to present these wonderful artists to a new audience but the commercial set up was different. Pubs pay organisers to run these events but they’re free to the audience. In our case, we had to pay to hire the venue so we needed to charge for tickets. Promoters everywhere know this is a risky proposition but we needn’t have worried. On our opening night, 150 people came to the show, we couldn’t fit them all in the space. Since then we’ve sold out more than 50 shows, presenting over 120 different artists. Aside from being able to pay the venue, the added bonus of selling tickets is that we could also pay the artists, sadly a rare phenomenon in the contemporary music world, and make a generous donation to charity from the profit.
So to Grayshott. I live in the village, we have a vibrant folk club, jazz club and very popular classical performances in the church. There’s clearly an audience for good music and I wondered, is there an audience for our singer songwriters? I think there is but we’ll soon find out! The lovely people at the Fox & Pelican have provided me their back room, an intimate space for an audience of 50 people, we have 3 shows planned; 12th September, 17th October and 21st November. Come and join us at the Grayshott Acoustic Showcase, see what I’m talking about, we have some amazing guests lined up so if you love James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Ed Sheeran or Adele, come and see what they would have sounded like before they were famous. I promise you will not be disappointed.
Jim
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