Tuesday 19 June 2012

An adventure to find Tim Burgess

Wow, my fist blog in how long? Well I hope I’m back for a while now! All of my exams are over and I’m officially done for summer (except the weather isn’t all too good).
I have so much to tell you guys and may blabble on a bit so bare with me … this is going to be a long blog.

Let’s start from the very beginning. This all seems so long ago now; I left you with the 2nd issue of Woodnote almost being released. Well it was based on The Charlatans this time. I had an interview with Tim Burgess and I’d got a few reviews off friends who’d been to gigs and festivals - like the Hacienda Oiso. Put together it looked ace. I’d informed Tim about it and he told me to bring it to his book signing. So I went along with all of this and took down a fair few copies (saving one in my bag for Tim). Before the gig, Nik Void had sent me a message saying that she’d passed one of her records to Tim to give to me (the perfect opportunity to meet my idol!) It was all very exciting! We arrived an hour before the event and my mum managed to persuade the guy on the door to let me and my sister in to go and find Tim. She said something like ‘’She has a fanzine for him, and he has a record for her,’’ and without even checking if this was true, he opened the door and we set off on our adventure.

This lovely man found us, looking rather lost, and asked what we were doing wandering around and I just replied ‘Looking for Tim Burgess’’. He seemed to be suspicious but then led us backstage. It was like a rabbit warren behind those doors. We ended up all over the place, on the stage, back stage, down many winding corridors and then we eventually ended up at ‘The Green Room’; the sign on the door staring right at me.  I asked my sister what on earth was going on and she just looked at me and said ‘We’re going to meet Tim!’ My heart was in my mouth. I was so nervous! I was going to see my legend in flesh and totally didn’t want to get start struck! The guy knocked on the door and it opened … then he just left us! Mark was stood right in view. The room was bare with a sofa (which Tim was draped over) under the window on the far side. I felt like I was in the film ‘Killing Bono’ where the two brothers walked into a room where Bono was led out on a sofa. Without introducing myself I was greeted by Tim saying ‘Heya Abigail’. It was so surreal I was really taken back. He knew my name! Totally buzzing we spoke about Woodnote for a little while. He said he liked the name and that it looked really good. We asked where we could put a few so people would see them and take them. Tim led us out of The Green Room and back onto the stage where a gathering of people were. He called someone and asked them to bring the record that is for a ‘friend’ of his. Oh yeah! He did it, he called me his friend! It was rather odd, I felt relaxed in his presence even though I was so excited and shaking with nerves. We had photos on the stage as he’d promised and then he left us in the hands of another awesome guy who took us to find a place to sell the zines.

I think I sold around 40 of them that night, and Tim said that he’d must have signed about 20 of them! So overall, Woodnote was a huge success!


We arrived home quite late and I felt like I was on another world. The night couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned it! Then, just to make things even better, my dad offered to take me to the Tellin’ Stories gig in Manc a few weeks after. Who would refuse a proposal like that?

So three weeks later, off we headed again to Manchester to see The Charlatans once more……



My sister, Tim Burgess (with Woodnote) and me!

No comments:

Post a Comment