This Is Music

On getting the band back together…

This week my band Black Night Crash had its first rehearsal for eight and a half years, as we prepare for a show to mark our tenth anniversary. This has caused me to reflect on my involvement with music, and why this feels so massively important. 

I had an invaluable foundation in music, spending a number of years playing cello in youth orchestras. I didn’t always enjoy it at the time, taking up most of my Saturdays as it did, and as I since realised completely scuppering my football playing ambitions. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though: I’m a far more competent performer on a stage than I’d ever be on a football pitch. What it did give me was a huge appreciation of live performance, and that indescribable buzz you get from being in a group producing something that people genuinely enjoy.

That group dynamic is vitally important. I loved listening out, observing, and thinking about how everything in the orchestra would fit together to produce the complete work, and the same goes for all kinds of music. I’ve performed solo in the past as well, but it was never really my thing. I much prefer feeling like part of something bigger, creating and sharing together. 

By my mid teens, I’d realised that playing bass in a rock band was ever so slightly more cool than being an orchestra nerd. Most people of my age were swept up in the tsunami of resurgent popularity of guitar band sparked by Oasis and the like, and me and my school friends were no different, bashing out ropey covers of Supersonic, Live Forever and Parklife (just to show we weren’t biased). From there we began trying to take things a little more seriously, writing our own material and becoming pretty decent, I’d like to think. The high point came at one packed out, sweaty show where the crowd bounced around and sang along with words I’d written in songs we’d crafted. Once you’ve had a taste of that kind of rush, there’s very little that can top it.

Fast forward a few years and we reach the era of Black Night Crash. From the very outset it was deadly serious, all or nothing stuff, meticulously planned. In the end, that level of pressure that we put on ourselves was probably our downfall. Aiming impatiently for 100% professional perfection and large-scale success, we fell apart under the weight of our own expectations. Ultimately, it just wasn’t meant to be, for want of a better cliché.

But that’s not to say we didn’t have fun, because believe me we did. Some of the shows we did were incredible. The festivals, particularly Beached, Middlesbrough Music Live, and Guilfest were amazing experiences, playing to big, new, and appreciative crowds. The mini tour we did supporting west country outfit BlackBud I think we would all rank as a proper time-of-your-life episode. 

For me a lot of the stuff out of the public eye was just as enjoyable. When it was just the four of us in a rehearsal room or recording studio, that’s when I felt the most pride and wonder in what we were doing, pushing each other to create the best music we possibly could. A large part of the live performance is just that – performance. You’re a showman, entertaining the people in front of you right at that moment, which of course is fantastic and a vital part of the whole package of being in a band. But when you’re writing and recording, you’re purely a musician, and that’s when you can drink it all in and live that creative output.

People often ask why I pretty much completely stopped playing music when Black Night Crash finished first time around. I suppose for that I would go back to the second point there. As well as those guys being some of my dearest friends, musically we clicked in such a way that I could not possibly imagine reaching those same levels of enjoyment in the simple playing of music with anybody else. The amount of emotional energy invested in the band didn’t leave anything left for anyone else in any case. At our first rehearsal back this week, we immediately hit upon that winning formula again. Clearly some ingrained muscle memory had us clicking straight away, with a tightness that shocked and delighted us all. Most thrilling was getting straight on with working on some new material, and feeling that familiar old buzz as the creative energy started to fizz once more. 

How far will we take it this time? Honestly, I’m not sure. Right now there’s no grand plan and no pressure. We’ll write, record, perform and most importantly, enjoy it. Music is one of the greatest, joy-bringing life forces, and to be able to create it and simply enjoy it is about the greatest thing a person can do. It’s good to be back.

Black Night Crash play Fibbers, York, on Saturday 24 May. Tickets on sale now.