Weekly Photo Challenge, Story

***There’s a music player at the bottom that you can pop on if you like to accompany the music themed post***

This weeks challenge was surprisingly difficult solely due to all of my posts being photo stories – seeing as I’ve not been out shooting this week I had to have a rummage to find something that hadn’t already featured on the blog!

So we’re heading back to last August and Bristol for my photo Story
– Wednesday 2nd and Bedminster to be precise.

My little brother Seb was performing in a competition across Bedminster called ‘World Musicians on the Run’. By across Bedminster I literally mean right across Bedminster – 12 three song sets in 12 different venues. Here’s the poster from the website.

Seb rolled snake eyes so off to Lounge we headed. I’m not convinced Lounge were ready for Seb to arrive as we quickly had to drag a few tables and chairs out of a corner so he he could set up and play at the slightly surprised looking diners – but play he did.

A quick 3 songs and a wander down towards Ashton Gate brought us to El Rincon – a lively pub full of locals ready for some live music.

You may have noticed that it’s quite a long way to the Rope Walk from El Rincon but they’d already thought of that – a man with a van was waiting to ferry acts back down to the start. Amusingly, there wasn’t enough room in the van for everyone to sit up front so we threw Seb in the back with the gardening equipment – here he is looking like he isn’t sat on a used tyre with a rake for company.

The Rope Walk was a nice pub but a little quiet. Nevertheless, Seb belted out his three songs to the bar staff then off we went.

We found Cafe Grounded a little further up the street but again this was fairly quiet. Unperturbed, Seb found a spot in the corner and played away to the bar staff and a couple in the corner who looked slightly confused at the constant coming and going of musicians.

Viva la Mexicana, unsurprisingly, was a colourful mexican restaurant and it even had a few people in it.

Another colourful restaurant next with the Mezzaluna. Again fairly quiet but they had plants everywhere which gave me the chance to take a slightly different photo finally!

Off we pottered to venue 5 – the Steam Crane. The Steam Crane was absolute chaos. If you were beginning to wonder where everyone was well this is where they were. The Steam Crane had a blues night in full swing that was punctuated every so often with a musician from WMotR – there was a lot of jostling from musicians trying to get on but the crowd were certainly up for it.

It doesn’t look quite so busy in the photo but I had to hold the camera above my head to see anything and I couldn’t get any closer!

The North Street Standard was venue 6 and it had an industrial theme. There were quite a few people hidden within, and all interested in the music, so a now slightly hoarse Seb (with a freshly re-strung guitar) gave the crowd a few tunes. If I remember correctly the chap with his arm up was requesting a song as Seb exchanged a bit of banter with that table in between songs.

With that, Sebs race was run, as there was only time for one more set with The Hare being the final venue. This turned out to be a lovely quiet pub with a few locals sitting about so Seb pulled out a few of his more chilled songs and brought the evening to a close.

So that was World Musicians on the Run 2017. No idea who won or even if anyone voted but it was certainly a different way to spend a Wednesday evening.

It’s quiet interesting seeing the photos from back in August as my editing style appears to have changed. They also seem to be an interesting mix of wonky, slightly out of focus and noisy but I’m loathe to change them as I can see what I’d do differently now. I’ve also just realised that they weren’t exported for web viewing which explains why they took so long to upload – if this page takes forever to load give me a shout in the comments and I’ll swap them out for lower res versions.

If you want to hear some of Seb’s songs there are links to his stuff over on the right and he assures me there is another song nearing completion so keep an eye out for that – I think he’s even on twitter now!

… well I didn’t expect that when I pasted the link in but here’s an embedded soundcloud player with a photo that you now know was taken in the back of a van.

Doug