A couple of weeks ago, Lux Bay played our first gig in 22 months. We’d been practicing for a couple of months beforehand, revisiting every song in our sets to ensure everything would be perfect. Not for us a nice easy lead back into the world of gigging, such as a relatively stress-free pub gig. Oh no – we got back into things by playing the wedding of a good friend of Becci’s. Ceremony, drinks reception, an up-tempo evening acoustic set – the whole shebang! I guess we’ve never done things by halves…
In the days leading up to the gig, I generally didn’t know how I would feel on the day. I was sure I’d be anxious, though I didn’t know to what degree. I was sure I’d be ridiculously self-critical, analysing every element of our performance and stressing all day about getting the songs right, though I didn’t know to what degree. I was sure I’d be conscious of what people would be thinking as they looked at me, though I didn’t know to what degree.
The surprising thing was that I rarely thought any of this on the day itself, which is astonishing. I’m not yet sure if things are getting better and I’m slowly conquering these issues or whether it was just the pure joy and excitement of getting back to doing what we do best after so long away from it but whatever the reason, it was a wonderful day. The wedding was truly amazing – a relatively low-key affair in the garden of the bride’s mum and step-dad’s home. The garden looked absolutely stunning and from the first minute of arriving, we were made to feel very welcome, which always helps. The bride & groom were 2 of the genuinely loveliest people I’ve ever met and their guests were all brilliant. Our daytime set, which is always seen as background music, was warmly received, whilst our evening set, which immediately followed the first dance, had the guests singing and dancing to every single song we played. I do love a good wedding and one of the joys of being part of Lux Bay is that we get to see so many. I compared this one to a scene from a Richard Curtis movie. Two of the groom’s best friends officiated the ceremony and their words were heartfelt and incredibly moving. The vows were personalised and equally as moving. There were laughs, there were tears, and there was a complete sense of love, friendship and warmth throughout the whole day – it was pretty much the perfect wedding for us to be involved with and we felt like an intrinsic part of it throughout the whole day, which is always nice for us.
Becci and I have made a few changes to what we do, which has helped us both massively. We now focus primarily on our acoustic sets as we feel it is what we do best and what we are most comfortable doing. We still perform the odd ‘full party’ set to backing tracks though we are starting to move away from that, purely as neither of us feel like we are born entertainers (despite having received amazing feedback over the years for that set). Having worked together for over 10 years now, we pretty much know each other inside out – our strengths, our weaknesses, our stress triggers, what makes us anxious, and what we need to do to help each other. I genuinely thought there would be more of this during this first gig back though there really wasn’t. Yes, there was the odd minor slip-up, and I played the odd bum note or chord which I quickly rectified without anyone noticing (I think!) though that is part and parcel of every gig and, in the main, everything went swimmingly. It was a truly joyous day – one which we’ll remember and reminisce about for many years to come.
Coincidentally, I saw the attached quote yesterday which ties neatly into the theme of this post. Things usually do turn out okay in the end. All the best characters are flawed (aren’t we all to some degree?) – we are not failures because of this. When things do go wrong, treat it as a simple plot twist before we reach the happy ending. Finally, it’s especially important to embrace our quirkiness, weirdness, complexities and differences – it really is important to be anything but trite. Life would be incredibly dull if the vast majority of us didn’t possess any of these qualities, and they really should be viewed as qualities. It can seem like everything is going wrong at times, especially these days, but the good really does outweigh the bad more often than not. Not always easy to do but it’s incredibly important to remember that every day of our lives.
As always, thanks for reading, stay safe and be kind to yourself and others.
Best wishes.
Mick
