Show Time in Tela, Honduras

Luckily, no confrontations with an Iguana this time..

Gig Day.

I wake up a hot, sweaty, nervous mess as Pete sends through the day sheet, and I see what we've got in store for the day.

• Pete & Chris head to venue 12pm

• Leon picked up from hotel 3pm

• Leon set up and soundcheck guitars

• Joss to venue 5pm

• Full soundcheck/rehearsal

• Food

• Doors 7pm

• Support 7.45 - 8.15

• Joss 8.45 - 10.30pm

It's already noon, and Chris and Pete have left. There are missed calls on my phone from Pete. I've woken up late; the time difference and tiredness must have caught up with me. I was feeling groggy. This is not a good start, on the most important day. My first gig!

I run to the toilet and I'm pissing out of my arse and my stomach is churning. Maybe no more watermelon juice for me, or indirect tap water for that matter. We went for pizza last night at the local Mayor’s house. My first experience eating pizza with refried beans instead of tomato sauce, Monterey Jack Cheese, ground beef and Jalapeños. It was delicious, and the Mayor was very proud of his new pizza oven. I refused to accept it was the pizza that gave me the shits.

I have two hours to prepare and get into a decent mindset for the day. In hindsight, I realised I had put a lot of pressure on myself for today to go well. I couldn’t eat because I felt sick, but I was relieved that an iguana wasn't waiting outside my door; that would have completely derailed me!

Pete came to pick me up, and we were on our way to the venue through the sleepy northeastern countryside of Honduras. I was a wreck, but excited and somewhat better than when I had woken up. We arrived at the venue on a ‘land that time forgot’, almost deserted seaside boulevard, lined with with palm trees. The sides of the roads had this vintage, ‘Formula One, style red and white edging and the kerbs were bright yellow. The venue was a beautiful blue and white disused building, with glassless windows and was partly rubble.

I walked into the venue space, and it was pandemonium. There must have been about 50 odd people scurrying around, very stressed, putting out chairs, setting up lights and setting the right, or wrong thing up. What stood out was that there were even electricians bringing electricity into the building. I got the feeling that half of these people weren't trained in what they were doing. But they were doing a fantastic job, as Pete kept everyone in order and made sure things were perfect for the sound check and show.

“What the fuck is this? If I sit here, what can I see?”

Pete sits in an audience chair that is right behind a pillar.

“If I had paid to be here, I'd be fucking livid if I got this seat” he says to one of the venue managers. Quality over quantity. Needless to say, it was sorted immediately.

“Where's the fucking stage carpet? Do you know who you're working with tonight?” Pete continued. This guy is good, I thought.

The carpet arrived immediately - almost magically - and Gaffa taped down. Those of you who don't know, Joss performs in bare feet. So band members can sometimes enjoy the luxury of a lovely Persian rug on stage when we perform. I considered going barefoot too, in this heat, but decided against it, wondering whether my bare feet could hack my pedal board on a 2-hour gig.

I start to set my gear up and I realise I've left my power supply for my pedal board at the hotel. Fuck! I tell Pete. He sends me off immediately in a car to the hotel to grab it. I'm now almost numb with stress and nerves.

Luckily the power supply was in my room at the hotel.

On the way back to the venue, the local driver, who didn't speak a word of English, nor did I speak Spanish, stopped on the side of the road and left the car.

“15 minutes”, he explains using his fingers.

He then leaves, walks towards a single-pump petrol station, located on this concrete wasteland surrounded by nothing but shrubs and a few corrugated iron shacks - albeit closed - selling cigarettes and soda drinks. He then disappears completely.

Confused, I look around and can't see a single soul anywhere in this deserted part of town. I realise I've got no phone signal, I'm on my own, and then those words ‘Honduras - murder capital of the world’ creep back into my head.

The sound of cicadas gets louder, the heat gets hotter, and the air increasingly muggy. The concrete is emitting those thick heat waves, which I used to only see in Western films. This guy has been gone for 25 minutes now. I get out of the car to take a breath to keep myself calm.

I had a blissful, mindful moment for about a minute or two, as I became aware of the scenario I had found myself in. I was nervous as hell, a tad sick and stressed, but weirdly, I appreciated the fact I was standing by the side of this road, in this unsure situation, on the side of the road somewhere between Tela and San Juan, potentially late for soundcheck. Music had brought me here.

Music will be what Music is - an exciting, thrilling and full-filling nightmare.

After around 40 minutes, the driver returns, gets in the car, says “sorry sir” and drops me off at the venue. I have and will never know what that guy did or where he went in that half an hour. I had 15 minutes to get set up and get ready before Joss arriving.

Joss arrives, walks on stage, and sits down next to me. I’m a hungry, stressed and a nervous sweat-ball. We go through the first song of soundcheck/rehearsal.

Joss stops us, a few bars into ‘Harry's Symphony’.

Cue crippling self doubt thoughts and anxiety.

“Fuck is that the right song? Did I mess it up?? Am I good enough?”

Sweat was dripping down my back, torso and legs, as my nerves and insecurities from the past years started to rise up and get the better of me.

“Can we turn the fans off, please? Let's have it nice, peaceful and quiet, I can't hear the intricacies of Leon’s guitar.”

Phew.

I look around, and there are about 6 industrial-style fans along the sides of the venue. And they clearly weren’t working for me either. These fans are like what you see on the London underground in the summer. The organisers were worried we Brits would be too hot. I realised the lengths people will go, for a Grammy-winning artist and anyone associated. I was more used to thinking I am lucky to get 2 beer tokens and a Sainsbury’s meal-deal buy as out from a promoter in the UK. I come to Honduras and its 5 star hotels, police escorts and industrial fans! I Jhest.

The sound check finishes successfully, and I'm glad I went to get the power supply as the Dubby effects for the songs on the ‘Water for Your Soul’ album sounded great. It really filled out the sound, adding a new dimension to what is just an Acoustic Guitar and Vocals, in a huge room. I started to feel more at home and comfortable.

I walk backstage and am given the option to go back to the hotel before the gig. I decided against it, as I've already been back, and now I'm here and want to soak up the atmosphere and get to grips with it all before the gig. I found that usually helped with my pre-gig nerves at the time. Plus, I may not leave my room for fear of either falling asleep or having a face-off with a purple monster.

What then ensues, though, is the hard bit. It’s that period of time, between sound check and the gig, where adrenaline rises with the nerves, time slows down, anxiety kicks in, and you’re gagging to get on stage and release this pent-up nervous energy. You start worrying about whether you remember the songs, but you can’t seem to load them up in your memory. Your hands are sweaty. Then you start to worry whether your gear is going to malfunction, or if your guitar is going to break a string. You're hungry, you should eat, but you can't because you are wired on adrenaline. I had not eaten a thing all day. My stomach churned.

Those 2 hours felt like 5 - sitting on the lone sofa in an almost empty backstage hall, with a bottle of ‘Agua con Gas’, surrounded by people running around, doing last-minute preparations for the show.

Stage time. I stepped onto the stage to check and tune my gear. I gazed out at the 500 clear PVC seats. They had turned on the lights. It was a sea of blue. The audience were trickling in. Everything was set.

Now, from here on in, it is all a bit of a blur. The main thing I remember about the gig was how amazing Joss was. How much she puts into her show. If you're in the audience and not 100% involved, you will be, whether you like it or not. And you'll like it. Period.

She was up and down that aisle, singing to people. I think she even got a dance out of the local Mayor. She was incredibly endearing to the audience, and she treated everyone with full respect, including myself. I felt comfortable and valued. Her performance from start to finish was 110% consistent for the full journey. Even as a duo, she was wailing away as if she were with her usual 9 piece band in a stadium in Rio.

Credit: Stokography

I jumped on it, rising to Joss’s performance, weaving in and out dynamically, supporting harmonically and rhythmically. I even started adding melodic colour where I could, adding sense of spontaneity. Those extra bits I had tried in my hotel room the day before seemed to work. Not only did i feel this was needed to give the set something special, but it just happened naturally, as we vibed onstage giving the audience as much as we possibly could.

Credit: Stokography

Those hot and sweaty 1.45 hours felt like 5 minutes. Technically, I remember my performance being quite rough and ready, not 100% to my liking, but I didn't fuck it up. I had remembered all the parts, but my tempos were all off, likely down the nerves and the day preceding. It wasn’t the kind of thing I'd ever seen accompanying a large pop artist like this. At least to my ears. But that can be seen as a good thing as much as a bad thing. But we had vibe, and the audience gave it all back.

At the end of the show, I walked off stage feeling like I was on drugs, drenched with sweat and met by Pete with a bottle of ice-cold local beer, condensation dripping from the bottle. I was enjoying the beer so much that I missed a call from Joss, who was back onstage with Aurelio, to come join them for the collaboration song they did the day before. I walked onstage to a round of applause and blagged my way through their song, which I had not learned. Aurelio’s beautiful song had been echoing round my head since the collaboration we filmed the day before. I sang the song in the back of my mind so much, that I had worked out the the chords for the song without a guitar in my hand.

I felt blessed to perform with Aurelio and his band. Aurelio Martinez is a Garifuna singer-songwriter and politician. One of the leaders of the genre, which originates from the Afro-ethnic Garifuna people in Central America and St Vincent and the Grenadines. It was such a pleasure to join them. The guitarist was playing some beautiful lines; surf tinged washes of melody and vibrato, his hand on his whammy bar for the duration of the song.

My performance personally was a blag and nevertheless a joy and an inspiring experience. I don't think I could be heard as there was nothing to plug my guitar into, or at least I didn't think so. It was all a bit of a rush, everything was blurry, so I just played along unplugged, enjoying the moment. I have a vague memory of Chris trying to fix this issue with a mic, bless him. I got a smile from the guitarist as we tried to lock in with each other. I don’t think he could hear me. Probably a good thing.

I remember getting a huge hug from Joss after we exited the stage.

“Well done love! We did it! You were so good!”

I got a big pat on the back from Pete as we all swapped compliments, all feeling a lot more confident, and relieved, that the duo had worked.

I had a photo taken with one of the sound guy’s, who looked like a spitting image of me.

---

It was a quiet journey back to the hotel, the cool night had drawn in. I was sitting in the back seat looking out of the window, enjoying the peaceful and calming glow from the moon, and how it cast a beautiful white stillness to the shacks, trees and shrubs as we drove back through the outskirts of Tela. I was enjoying the cool night temperature, drying off in the moving breeze as the car meandered through the moonlit streets. I noticed we were driving swiftly past that petrol station where I had waited for that driver to come back after disappearing, which now felt like a week ago. I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment, as if i'd come full circle, and now i’m much calmer.

Pete, sitting in the front seat next to the driver, was on the phone texting. Once done, he turned to me.

“How'd you feel about the show Leon?’

I mumbled some nonsense that probably didn't make any sense in my state of post-gig adrenaline comedown. Pete turned back, looking through the front windscreen, which was now covered in night insects.

“You’ve got a drink on me back at the hotel mate. If you're not happy, Joss is happy. And I’m happy. Well done mate… that’s a fuckin relief!”

We arrived back at the hotel, and chowed down on some food and local beer. That sarnie could not have gone down quicker at this point. I had a game of fussball with Joss. I tried to let her win, but failed.

Pete patted me on the shoulder as he went off to bed. Gig 1 done. I slept well that night. And the diarrhoea seemed to have faded away. I recommend anyone travelling with this particular issue, go out and get yourself in an adrenaline fuelled situation. Take your mind off it.

---

I woke up, no iguanas at my door. I went for a swim in the hotel pool, then went to the beach with a tea, and sunbathed on the beach until our lobby-call. Today we were to catch a flight to San Salvador, El Salvador. Stop number 2.

Gig 1 done! Feeling good :D

One cannot explain the feeling you have after getting through and achieving something big like that, especially in these surroundings, the morning after a nice sleep. I hadn't felt like this ever before. As the sun rose from the east over the beach, glistening on the broken morning waves, I felt genuine and liberated.

‘Thanks Joss’ I thought.

A local tribesman rode past me on the beach and waved hello. I waved back in absolute awe, love and appreciation for my experience in Tela, Honduras.

“Fuck me, you've caught the sun ain't ya?”

Pete took a photo of me, as an alternative to a mirror, whilst we awaited to check in our baggage at San Pedro airport. I was bright lobster red on half my face, right arm and right leg. That morning sun had got me. I didn’t care.

Quite a journey it has been so far. And we were only 3 days into the 3 week run. 1 of 6 countries. Another 5 more to go. I already felt like I'd been away for a month.