Lucky breaks and empty ballrooms

It's a grounding reality for every fledgling band such as ourselves that the endless hours of weaving melodies around poetical ramblings must be supplemented with a day job. Hard to believe, but true.

Yesterday, a work colleague voiced his concerns about his own band, saying that people just don't pay into gigs anymore and that it is becoming evermore difficult to get that one big 'lucky break'.

I know that being in a band is high followed by low and sellouts balanced by doubts. But I have never believed in a 'lucky breaks'.

If you are going to make it 'big' then things have to fall for you, to an extent, but only because you have put yourself in a position to be noticed, and the more often you do that, the more chance you have of it working.

You can't expect people to pay £5 to see an act they've never heard of on a piss-wet Monday evening, and much less expect a stray record company big cat to wander into a big empty ballroom spattered with 12 of your mates only to shower you with money and whisk you off on a world tour.

I explained to this chap that the low points were half the challenge of being in a band and asked if they'd done their promo properly. Had they enquired about support slots with bigger bands? Surely, if you seize your chance and really play well and hit it off socially with a bigger band when you support them, then they may just offer you a tour.

Had they badgered national radio presenters and their favourite artists, celebrities or sporting heroes via Facebook and Myspace etc? Surely, once you have someone in the public eye on your side and they can mention you in the press or play your song to millions of people then you've opened a huge door for yourself.

"You seem to at least have a business brain on you, we could do with someone like that," came his response.

A business brain? Hardly. I don't sit at home with action plans and spreadsheets working out the best time to catch Steve Lamacq on his lunch hour for an impromptu verse of Killing Me Softly.

I work purely with what every single singer-songwriter should have: an overwhelming sense of naivity.

Sure it may be unlikely that Kasabian will read my message and say 'shit, these guys are good, lets get them on tour'. But then again, why the hell not?

It's also unlikely that Russell Brand will recieve the CD, let alone listen to it, like it and then mention us somewhere in the great celebrity ether - but if you don't believe that it can happen then what's the point? But if it did happen, it wouldn't be a lucky break - because we would have put ourselves in that position in the first place.

Personally, I'm none too worried yet for knockbacks or the odd empty gig. I love playing music, meeting different people and dragging our mates out for a knees-up, safe in the knowledge that if that cult classic album eludes us and if we fail to leave a long-term legacy then we can always aim for a Christmas Number One!

Dan