200 gigs!
Posted by Chris Hornby on August 13, 2019 Our Blog | Tags: eggs, First Dances, Musicians, Requests, Weddings | No comments
Favourite songs. Everyone has got one. Are you brave enough to ask the band to play it?
What do the Spice Girls, Whigfield and the Kings of Leon have in common?
No, they’re not privy to a devious offshore tax avoidance scheme. They’re all artists that people have requested we play.
Before I begin, we love it when people come and ask for a particular song, and we especially love it if it’s a song we actually know, but sometimes we get asked for the oddest of songs. Some songs, however, make it into the set list and remain there!
Someone requested Wannabe by the Spice Girls, which on it’s own is a smashing pop song, but not really in our wheelhouse… same with Take That and the Kings of Leon (however I can almost imagine Andy singing oooooooooooooooooooooooooh THIS SEX IS ON FIRE in front of the mirror)
Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac started as a request and we play it all the time now. Whiskey in the Jar was requested by someone who promised they’d come and see us the next time we played that venue so we went away and learned a version, to only be stood up the next time we went there! We still play it out of spite, mainly.
First dance songs are a rich vein of unusual requests, but we’re more than happy to give most songs a go, and we’ve got to admit we’re quite good at making them work now. You’re the One by Kodaline was probably the most contemporary song we’ve learned for a wedding, and after we’d played it for a first dance we then inserted a rock and roll version of it into Johnny B Goode to finish the night off, which went down a storm.
This weekend saw us play our 200th gig together (a lovely wedding in Brighouse), and we learned Two Hearts by Phil Collins , which happens to be a favourite of Haitch’s, and we think we’re going to keep it in the set as it fits well with our style. That reminds me of our first wedding when we played a rather nervous version of “It Must Be Love” by Madness, which sounded great, but we quickly realised that any misstep is going to be really obvious if all eyes are on the bride and groom.
Here’s to the next two hundred gigs, and probably 200 more song requests….
