In May 2024, I spent two and half weeks with one of my favourite singer song writers, Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding), on his first UK tour for some time. These two articles provide some insights into how the tour came about. It might prove useful to anybody considering undertaking a similar venture. This second piece covers matters of finance, the gigs and some final reflections.
The money
There’s an old music industry joke which goes something like “How do you make £1 million in the music business?” Answer, “Start with £10 million!” The finances of the tour were a bit like this, except two orders of magnitude lower. The venture did make some money but if all the hours Wes and I had been accounted for, the hourly earnings would have been well below the UK’s minimum wage. For Wes and me it wasn’t about the money, but I did want to make the tour to make a profit. The key to this was the accommodation, the cost of which has soared since the pandemic. The routing and venues were such that we were able to stay at my residence, friends’ houses, or in rooms kindly provided to us by the promoters. There was only one night where we had to pay for our lodgings and that was in Manchester. It was a bizarre place, an Airbnb with strange décor, which was unnervingly spotless as if somebody had cleaned it up to erase all traces of a recently committed murder. The owner was an odd character who felt the need to show us where the gas and electricity meters were, despite the fact that we were only staying there for one night.
Organising the tour, which included negotiating the deals with the promoters and venues, certainly gave me an insight into just how tough it is for musicians, especially bands where profits may have to be split. Making a living from music has always been precarious, however, in recent years it seems to have got even tougher.
The gigs
The tour commenced at Canon Frome Community Farm in Herefordshire on a Friday. I met an understandably bleary eyed Wes at 2 pm at Ledbury railway station. He’d been up since 5 am. Fortunately the threatened train chaos, (a result of the preceding three days of strikes), failed to occur, and we were off. I had my arm twisted to be master of ceremonies. After a well received performance (by Wes not me), we found ourselves outside in the darkness staring at the Northern Lights with my friends and a possibly tipsy Ellie Chowns who, two months later, would be elected the Green Party Member of Parliament for North Herefordshire.
The routing took us to Wes’s hometown of Hastings for the next gig where many years previously he’d busked at the memorial in the centre of town. The Bullet Coffee House was sold out. It’s run by Vicki Duffy and Ben Thompson, the South Coast’s answer to Don Arden, who’d convinced Nick Salamon of The Bevis Frond to come along. He delivered a perfectly formed four song support set. Towards the end of Wes’s set a slightly disbelieving face was staring intently through the window. It turned out to belong to an American fan of Wes, who’d lived in Hastings for 20 years but had not known he was playing. At least he got to hear the last song.
From Hastings it was up to the Kitchen Garden Café in Birmingham. A partial closure of the M25 motorway entailed a detour through suburban Surrey, including Cobham, where Wes used to purchase albums from Threshold Records, then owned by the Moody Blues. A couple of days later in Bristol, Wes was joined by Liam McKinnon playing the cajon. Wes then took a few days off to attend the Ashburnham Song Awards where he presented an award in honour of his mother.
The tour reconvened with four appearances in Oxfordshire for which Wes’s old university friend David Lewis came along to duet and provide backing vocals on a few songs. David is not only a lovely chap and talented singer songwriter who’s released five of his own albums, but is also Professor of Anthropology and Development at the London School of Economics. An instore event at my local record shop, Pop Classics, was described as a “masterclass” of how to carry one out by owner Damian Jones. Before an appearance at the Wood Festival, we travelled up to Henley to take some photos of Wes and David in front of the gates of Friar Park where George Harrison used to live. Wandering into Henley to get an ice cream, Wes bought an acoustic guitar from Oxfam, and he and David commenced busking a set of the Quiet One’s songs in the middle of the town.
At the Wood Festival we were joined backstage by a feathery friend who’d managed to build their nest in the side of the stage even though they didn’t have a backstage pass. Appropriately Wes sung a duet entitled ‘Old Man and the Bird’ in which David Lewis played the bird. A small cast of young children were dancing in front of the stage and as Wes said “it was like a production of Godspell performed by the cast of Bugsy Malone”.
From Oxfordshire we headed south-west via Thomas Hardy’s cottage and Chesil Beach to Portland where Kevin Good had organised a gig. Wes was joined by Paul Quinn, a master of the Hammond organ, whom he’d last seen when he was 18, just before Paul was expelled from their school. Paul’s playing was fantastic and complemented Wes perfectly, you’d never have guessed that they’d never played together before. I cheekily asked Paul if he’d come up to Reading to play the next day. To my delight he said that he’d enjoyed it so much that he do it. The next night I found myself squinting into the lights at South Street Arts Centre as I introduced them to the largest audience of the tour.
The following day it was off to a sold out gig at the Green Note Café in Camden. David Lewis, who was supposed to be supporting Wes, had been struck down with the norovirus. Midway through the first half Wes asked if I could source a nine volt battery for his guitar pedal. Fortunately there was a Co-Op just down the road from the venue. On my return I spotted the only celebrity audience member of the tour, Clare Balding, who was having a crafty cigarette outside during the break. We have a mutual friend so I thought I’d say hello. Seeing me clutching the batteries she immediately said “You must be Darren!”.
The tour then went north to Great Easton where we were hosted by the aptly named Springsteen fans, Johnny and Mary. From there it was up to Manchester where we were reacquainted with Neville Judd. He’s an all round good guy, as well as being the world’s number one David Bowie fan, not to mention Al Stewart’s biographer, who knows Wes and had been at the Reading and London gigs. An obstreperous sound person made the event the low point of the whole fortnight but, despite that, the audience enjoyed it.
We were on safer ground as we pitched up at Americana UK’s esteemed editor Mark Whitfield’s house in Liverpool. Before the gig we took in the sights: Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and John Lennon’s house. Rather fittingly the last place we visited was George’s childhood home, where Olivia Harrison had unveiled a blue plaque the day before.
The final two gigs took place in Scotland. One of the 10 members of the audience at the Edinburgh gig was under the impression that he was about to be witnessing the American, progressive rock guitarist John Wesley. Despite this, he certainly seemed to enjoy the concert given the amount of merchandise he purchased. The tour ended on a high at the Doublet in Glasgow which was packed and thanks to a talented support act, Cormac Nagle, actually had audience members under the age of 30.
Final thoughts
I think that Wes saw the tour as a slightly quixotic and eccentric endeavour, which to a certain extent it was, far removed from his more orderly agent-arranged touring in the USA. How my friends in the audiences laughed when Wes thanked me for organising the whole shebang by claiming that despite being a civil engineer “I had the heart and soul of a romantic poet”. But he was right, there was a certain element of romance involved and if you’d told me 20 years ago I’d been putting together something like this I wouldn’t have believed you.
There are many moving parts in organising this type of thing, however, one Mancunian sound man aside, it all came together and was thoroughly enjoyable. Humour was good throughout, without a single word spoken in frustration, and I realised that’s vital to a tour as well. If anyone reading this has the opportunity to organise an event for one of their favourite artists, don’t hesitate, do it. And that’s my perspective. Wes might have a completely different one!
I’ve been eagerly waiting for this, and it doesn’t disappoint. Many thanks.
Thanks Paul, glad you enjoyed it.