Four weddings and a...

It has been a bit of a sombre week.

Bushfires are still raging out of control across Victoria, we have had power outages across the state, it is hot as hell and no-one's allowed to use water. The city is still covered in smoke. Closer to home, Chester has been a rather sick puppy, and my sister's friend's housemate died tragically a few days ago. So when I got a phone call to ask if I could play piano at a funeral, I somehow was not surprised.

I didn't know who the funeral was for, nor did I know the singer I was to play with, and I only had two days to prepare. Well, more like two hours when you consider I spent all of yesterday recording and rehearsing, and I had to be there at 1pm today.

So the whole thing was very underprepared and I felt a bit bad for the family. Not that we completely cocked it up, I think we got away with it, but it wasn't the best performance of my life, that's for sure!!

Apologies to Adam who has heard all about it already, but I thought I'd explain why I felt like a complete phoney...

In the first song, Love Me Tender, the singer had a backing track so I turned my volume down quite low and played along. I thought she was finished though and then the thing kept going so I sat there like an indiot with my hands in my lap while she sang another verse!!

I didn't have the sheet music for the second song, so I turned my volume down to zero and mimed. I have never done that before. I’m not sure if anyone noticed.

The third song was the really important one – no backing track, just me and Debbi (who spells it like that??!). And neither of us really knew the song. I barely had any time to learn it in the end, about half an hour this morning.So we got there early and had a practice, and I made her nervous by being not very good. And she wanted me to sing along (with a microphone and everything) and I said I wasn’t sure if I could but she made me do it anyway.

So it got to halfway through the funeral, when Debbi realised that they had printed the words wrong in the program and so we had to do the 2^nd verse instead of the first. I didn’t have the chords written anywhere near the words of the 2^nd verse, and there was no way I could pull out a pencil and do it during the service. So I think I sang the first line with her and then dropped out to concentrate on getting the chords right, which was more important anyway. The stupid thing was, the congregation all sang along during the chorus, which was the bit we both knew, and then they stopped during the verse which was the bit we fudged. Arrrghh!!

Afterwards the deceased lady’s brother, a rather elderly gent, came up to us and sang it how it was supposed to go. But everyone else seemed pretty happy with it and one of the lady’s daughters came up and gave us both a kiss so perhaps it wasn't too bad!!! But I felt like such a fake! Still, it was the best paying gig I've had in a long while…