I tend to fret a little when I haven’t been somewhere before. It’s something that used to stop me from going to events I wanted to, and I’ve missed gigs because of it.
Outwardly, I’m aware that I can appear fairly confident, but in reality I’m really quite shy. Ask me to introduce myself to other grown-ups and I’ll die inside. Ridiculous, I know.
Whilst I’m in admission central, I have to confess that I haven’t been to the Brudenell in more than six years, despite there being around a million gigs that I’ve wanted to go to. And that’s kind of how I ended up at the Duchess on Sunday night.
I missed going to Dan Le Sac at the Brudenell last week, having made boring excuses to myself along the lines of “it’s a school night” and “I’m too tired”. Then I saw his tweet saying it was his favourite night of the tour. I felt like a bit of an idiot. So when he offered free tickets to York, I emailed straight away.
The night didn’t start very well. I managed to get one of the few non-replacement bus service trains of the evening and, as I was slightly early and thought I knew my way round York fairly well, chose to walk to the venue. Mistake. It was utterly freezing and I got myself a little lost (the three couples I asked for directions were all tourists, who’d have guessed it?), but worse still, when I got there the bar had no gin.
To say the gig was sparsely attended would be kind. As Dan has admitted himself, the tour’s not sold well at all. He told me that the promoter wasn’t terribly impressed with his decision to give tickets away, but it was important to him to “get more people in here”. He spent most of the support acts’ sets running the merchandise stand and couldn’t have come across as a nicer person in conversation.
On stage, it was all about fun and, despite the small crowd, it was a full effort performance. The music was far better live than I’d thought it would be, and the vocals, mainly provided by Joshua Idehen and Sarah Williams White, were gorgeous.
Still pleased with myself for going, I found my way back to the station without getting lost. The Duchess is now off my fear list, which is handy as I’m going back for Admiral Fallow in a few weeks. Tell you what though, I’m not sure how I feel about the last train back to Leeds from York being at 23:12. Someone needs to sort that out.