When I had my first gig, I was 18 in January in 2007. My first gig that I got paid, I was playing for 10 people in a 250 people capacity venue. The promoter wanted to book me because he liked my music. I played a couple of songs that made people dance. To me, that rush has always stayed the same.
I like to play small clubs.
I never played coffee shops; I just played a lot of coffee shop-sized venues. I took every venue I could get my hands on.
I tour a lot, sometimes like a hundred shows a year.
First paying gig, I got 20 bucks. I played at some really weird venue. I don't remember the venue; I just remember it was the last stop on the A train. It was, like, the Far Rockaways, Queens, and it was an audience of, like, three people.
If you haven't truly died a million times as a comic you haven't gigged enough!
In the old days gigging was everything. The whole of life was about gigs. Everything was about waiting for the gig and then doing the gig and going nuts and then afterwards the party and all the stuff that goes with it. And then that party continues through your twenties and thirties. I'm now 51, and it's still very much in my blood, but I'm really hard pushed... the gig is the party for me now.
Being someone who plays gigs and finding many, many memorable ones in different ways, I guess I'd have to say I don't really have a single favourite one that I could pick out.
My favorite is still the one that I started off with, which is a Les Paul Standard. I've played that at every gig I've ever had. And that's my starting point in the studio.
We fly to the town in the little private airplane, and then we have to get in cars and drive to the hotel and then drive to the gig. So, I want to do a tour where the performances will actually be at the small airports.
I started gigging when I was about 16, and I was way too young to be in the clubs.
Well, I got pretty good and went on the road with a group. We starved. At that time I didn't realize that you'd work one gig in Kansas City, the next in Florida and the next gig will be in Louisville. You know, a thousand miles a night. That was really rough, man.
We built up a hardcore following, but we were really still semipro, gigging over long weekends and the like. So after EMI signed us, we packed in the day jobs because we had to make an album.
I dropped out of college and started gigging around Brighton.
Each time I hit the road to gig, it still feels like I'm going to summer camp.
I remember early on, for instance, having to play wedding gigs, that I hated playing the music. Now I don't have to play music that I don't like. I only get to do what I enjoy, so that's pretty lucky.
Playing live, you can't survive, certainly not in England. We used to work daytime jobs and play gigs at night. It was very exhausting.
I learned everything from my friends and just constant gigging in night clubs, eight sets a night!
I'd been gigging since I was 14, doing little competitions and pubs and clubs and old people's homes.
I must have played every college and university at least three times, and that goes for most of the clubs. I'd be on the road six days a week, go home and change bags, and then be gone for another six days.
You can't call me a Twitter phenomenon or a YouTube one. These things are useful, but so's hard gigging. One year I did 311 shows. I did six in one night alone.
I think it sort of dawns on you that if you're not gigging constantly you're not actually relevant. You may be relevant to a different part of the media now, to television commissioners and editors, but to a young live-comedy audience you're not, really.
I don't tend to set out on huge world domination goals or have anything in mind. I just like to play. I like to gig a lot; I like to write music.
We really earned our keep by going door to door, going to every town, playing in every club.
I don't remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. I had been on the road with Johnny and working gigs and playing a lot of the organ clubs.
