I remember when a couple of December bookings had been cancelled on me sitting thinking ‘this is the busiest month for musicians; if I’m ending up with not much now then the January slump’s going to be about enough to assure me I can’t do this professionally.’

Well, from the 1st of February … this week was pretty much non-stop: band practice Monday evening, band practice Tuesday evening, band practice Wednesday daytime, opera rehearsal Thursday afternoon / evening, opera rehearsal Friday afternoon, opera performance Friday evening. The coming one is shaping up interestingly: band gigs Wednesday and Saturday, then music video shooting Sunday. My favourite, though, is in three weeks’ time, when my weekend runs: Friday 20th – gig with The String Project; Saturday 21st – gig with The Filthy Spectacula; Sunday 22nd – completing music video shoot. All I can say is, the video company had better have good coffee and a good makeup artist after gigging two nights running and the second one in London!

I’m not complaining really, of course. Getting a steady supply of gigs is half the battle of staying the course semi-pro (the other half, so far still somewhat shakier, is getting paid a good amount for them), and at least that seems to be working on about a 4/5 jobs a month level for the moment – and let’s be honest, that might well be the most I can easily fit around my part-time day job. And it can certainly only be good that the trend’s upwards from 2014 into 2015; whether it’ll stay that way it’s too early to say, but here’s hoping for not too many more anxious waits for anything suitable to come up!