Songs, stories, and the spaces between.
Half the room came for the football, the other half wanted Oasis, and the landlord wanted 'just a bit of music, love'. A fond, practical look at the peculiar craft of the UK pub gig — reading a distracted room, timing the right cover, and learning to love an audience that never planned on becoming one.
Every small venue has a guitar behind the bar, in a cupboard, or leaning against a radiator. Playing it for twenty minutes can undo a decade of habit — and show you which parts of your songs are actually yours. A field note on high action, slipping tuners and the strange freedom of an instrument that owes you nothing.
Half the songs on this autumn's run were written on trains — between the trolley run and the tannoy apology. A tour diary about window seats, delay announcements, and the particular rhythm of writing at speed, with five prompts you can take on your next journey.
A wet Tuesday in Sheffield, a familiar coat in row three, and a setlist that quietly rearranged itself. On why one face in a small room can change the order of a night, and what that teaches about nerve, audience and the letters we write in the dark.
A song changes the moment someone sings it back — sometimes with the wrong words entirely. Kate Knight on the misheard lines she has quietly adopted, the ones she gently corrects, and what those slips reveal about writing choruses with a little breathing room.
I plan small-room gigs around the last train home, and it has changed the way I write a set. This is a practical, personal note on hard stops, platform dashes, rail replacement buses and why a deadline can make a show kinder.
Kate on the kitchen-table ritual that happens long before a new song meets a paying crowd: the kettle, the biscuits, the friend who says the chorus arrives too early. A practical guide to low-pressure testing, reading real silence, and knowing when a song is ready for a UK stage.
The support slot is a strange little apprenticeship: thirty minutes in a room that belongs to someone else, with a crowd still deciding whether to look up. Here’s what I’ve learned about warming a borrowed room, pacing a short set, and why the opener is often the most honest gig of the night.
The bit between sets isn’t dead air — it’s a room deciding whether to stay. A practical, personal note on picking interval music for small UK gigs, reading a half-at-the-bar crowd, and getting them back in without a cowbell.
The walk-off, the wait, the second surge of clapping: a wry look at the encore ritual from the corridor behind the stage. What it costs a solo performer, why rooms still love it, and how to end a night without pretending the ending was an accident.
The encore gets all the attention, but the closer does the actual work. Notes from a decade of small rooms on choosing the last song, reading a crowd at ten o'clock, and why leaving people lifted is not the same as leaving them merely finished.
A battered notebook sits by the merch table at most of my shows. It is not a mailing list and it is not a feedback form. These are the notes audiences leave when they think nobody is reading, and what they have taught me about the room.
Most of my songs start with a sentence I didn't write and can't quite shake. Here's how a line overheard in a till queue turns into a chorus, three exercises for trying it yourself, and an honest note about where close listening stops being polite.
Doors at half seven means the real work starts at seven. A quiet look at the half-hour before a small show — the checks, the kettle politics, the tape, the sitting still — and why a bookshop, a village hall and a city venue each demand a different version of it.
Why some between-song introductions land and others ramble — and how I learned to edit stage patter with the same ruthlessness as a lyric. A humorous deep dive into the craft of the thirty-second story, with small-room examples and rules for knowing when to speak and when to say nothing.
A funny, practical look at the merch table as the truest portrait of a gig — from hand-stamped lyric sheets and misprinted totes to the card reader that saves the night. Notes for independent UK artists on making merch feel like part of the work, not an afterthought.
Every show I play comes with a list of names, and every name is a small decision about what kind of room I'm trying to build. This is what goes through my head when I'm holding a pen next to a capacity figure — the van driver, the note-writer, the plus-one, and the person I have to say no to.
Church rooms, British Legion clubs, arts-centre corners and a hall with a stage that's really two risers and a piano: this is what I've learned about making the smallest stages in the UK sound like somewhere you'd want to be. Load-in, borrowed PAs, lighting, seating and the caretaker who decides everything.
Five rules I've landed on after years of sharing stages above and below the headline slot. On soundchecks that don't run over, merch tables that don't turn into turf wars, and why the opening act is the whole point of a good night in a small room.
I keep every running order I've ever written, on the backs of envelopes, hotel notepads and one regrettable paper tablecloth. Reading them back is the closest thing I have to a diary of the last ten years of playing live.