“The cards aren’t always kind,
Some they fold, but I always felt
That even if you’re bluffing, son,
You play the hand you’re dealt.”
It has been the cruellest of years for the cruellest of reasons, and 2020 has cost so many good people their lives or their livelihoods, so reflecting on this last 12 months would seem like the last thing any of us wanted to do. Yet this year has taught me so much about resilience and togetherness, and most importantly the ability of the human spirit to transcend separation, that it is worth picking over the ashes before we scatter them to the wind.
It started routinely enough, in fact I drove more miles in the first 3 months than even last year when I never seemed to stop. The mischief and mayhem hit Sheffield, Portsmouth, Belper, Otley, Hull, Nottingham and Ashton-under-Lyne before arriving at the King’s Arms in Salford knowing Lockdown was coming and this was likely the last show for a few weeks.
I finished that night standing in a circle of people singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ unplugged in the company of friends and comrades unsure of when and if we would see each other again.
These moments you tend to remember.
Then came 23rd March and THAT announcement.
To be honest, I knew it was coming weeks before, having followed the spread of the virus from Day One. That helped, because I’d been able to imagine a world with no gigs and make a mental list of what would need to be done in that eventuality.
Top of the list in block capitals was KEEP PAULINE GOING.
We Shall Overcome‘s heart and soul is Pauline Town and The Station Hotel in Ashton-under-Lyne. Losing them was unthinkable, but as the daily food parcels and rehousing operation relied on gigs to fund it, and with no live music, not only was the work there impossible, but without any income, Pauline was in grave danger of becoming homeless herself.
So we hatched a plan.
WSO ISOLATION FESTIVAL took place on Easter Saturday run in one Facebook group from a couple of laptops raising more than £28,000 to ensure Pauline‘s work could continue uninterrupted and meet the growing need as redundancies, furlough, and zero hours reality bit. It was a monumental effort of concentration and focus behind the scenes and would not have been possible without the solidarity, friendship and patience of Matt Hill and Pete Yen, nor the willingness of that fantastic roll-call of artists and the staggering generosity of everyone who threw in a donation.
The festival taught me a vital lesson in the psychological dynamic of live streaming. It wasn’t about the artist- it would always feel wrong to us, singing to a phone screen or a laptop with no response- it was about the audience.
We knew the festival would live and die on how much people felt a part of it, how much of the experience they could share with others. To this end we focused on the comments thread as much as the stream itself, encouraging people to use emojis and to type choruses in quotation marks to show they were singing along. We also asked for photos of makeshift campsites and bunkers which were shared all day creating a genuine festival atmosphere. Of course we were lucky, the experience was still new to everyone, but we gave it our best, and I’m so proud of what we managed to achieve that day. I sat there as Billy Bragg sang knowing I was exactly where I was meant to be, at that time, in that place.
These moments are rare in life.
It was unforgettable.
And it set the tone.
While WSO ISOLATION FESTIVAL was a genuine one-off, I decided to hold a series of fundraising gigs under the banner ‘Live From T’Shed’ and the first took place on Saturday May 2nd.
Running from a dedicated Facebook group I tried to encourage the same sense of belonging, of being in a venue around friends, that we’d had on April 11th and I have loved each and every one of them. So far there have been two all-requests shows and four dedicated to the history albums when I played ‘No Pasaran’, ‘Never Be Defeated’, ‘Headscarves & Hurricanes’ and the ‘Potter’s Field’ songs and spoke of the stories which inspired them. Each had a dedicated GoFundMe and each a cause we were playing for.
So far, those six live streams have raised more than £12,000 with a further £1000 from a WSO Songwriting Workshop. This money helped grassroots campaigns and frontline support networks up and down the land including Mesopotamia Cafe in Nottingham, Black Country Food Bank, Orgreave Truth and Justice, Hatfield Main Memorial Garden Fund, Hull Unity Shop and many more. If you missed them they are all archived on my YouTube channel. You can start here….
Or in the Facebook group under the ‘Announcements’ tab here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/joesololivefromtshed
Even the WSO Washing Machine Workshop which proved such a surprise hit…..
Though some of that fundraising was done in the face of a crisis of my own.
After catching water in buckets for months, from a series of leaks in a fatally damaged roof, T’Shed- my rehearsal room, recording studio, and now only venue- gave a great crack and the central joist snapped leaving the ceiling hanging precariously and in grave danger of collapsing completely. After securing the funding through one of the streams, Mark and Alfie McKay came to the rescue and transformed my beloved home from this:
Through this….
And this…..
To THIS….
So I have a new home, safe and warm and dry thanks to the solidarity of people up and down the land. I cannot thank those who donated enough as this genuinely means the world to me and I owe you big time on the other side of all this.
Just wonderful.
The ‘Live From T’Shed’ gigs were not the only gigs I did this year, and some weeks have been so busy I don’t know where I found time to actually drive to shows before!
Continue reading “2020: That Was The Year That Was.”
Joe Solo 