If someone had told you on New Year’s Day 2020 that within months you would question if it was safe to hug your friends and your family, what would you have thought? Would you have believed that it would be illegal to leave your home unless to buy food or take exercise? And now that things are better and a little bit more like the world as we knew it, does it feel like things have changed forever?
Have we learnt anything? As human beings we attach meaning as a way of processing information, perhaps. To make sense of the world around us. Each of us has different likes, dislikes, preferences and passions. Here at Visit Saddleworth we write about a variety of things, to share our love of what is happening in our local area, be it local business, local artists, or simply just a photo of the landscape which surrounds us. We share music too. Local musician Jake Fletcher has been streaming live gigs from his studio every Saturday evening since the lockdown of our country began. For many, those evenings of watching him play, sing and engage with his audience through responding to comments on a Facebook stream has been a source of comfort, joy, conviviality and maybe even the one thing to really look forward to all week. The one thing indeed that might keep the viewer, sane connected and able to enjoy the thing that many of us hold so dear and take for granted: watching live music.
Week after week Jake has been on our social media channels, playing songs and asking his viewers what they would like him to play. He tries hard to get through them all. But he can’t. There’s just too many! Familiar names pop up each week. From friends, family, fans and loved ones, people interact with each other in much the same way as they would in real life, saying hello, sharing jokes and discussing music. Wednesday night has recently been added to our live streams now that Jake is able to perform with his band members too: Adrian Gautrey on Hammond Organ and Ben Gonzalez on drums. During those early stages of lockdown, Jake even donated a proportion of his voluntary donations received from those live streamed gigs to The Cavell Nurses Trust- a national charity helping nurses and other related healthcare workers who need financial support. Jake had kept his fans and viewers up-to-date with how much money they were helping to raise and that the nurses had been in touch to say how much it was helping them.
For those tuning in, it seemed scarcely believable that there would ever be a time this year that live music would be back, yet all of a sudden Jake was able to be back performing in one of his regular venues, The Cheshire Tap in Altrincham. It may appear strange to say it, but being there to see him play in the pub, seemed so normal and so right that in a mere matter of seconds, it felt like those live streams had all been a dream, that we had never been kept away at all. And for now, he is doing both: his gig in the pub and his online gigs too. The Cheshire Tap this Saturday just gone was much like his gigs on this site: popular, busy and electric. People were smiling, singing and swaying. Basking in the sunshine with their families, their dogs, their children and all the while Jake sat perched high up on his chair singing from just inside the doorway as his songs filled the air outside. He played everything from Bob Dylan to Natalie Imbruglia and his three hours of music was seamless, never faltering and showcased such a range of vocals, instrumentation and genre, that there wasn’t an empty seat from the moment he started to the time he left.
The atmosphere a few days ago was just as warm as the sun, and as people gathered to celebrate being together, you could see the happiness in their eyes. And as the cheers from the neighbouring pub spilled out onto the courtyard where we sat, it felt like Altrincham was celebrating the return of Jake, his fans, its customers and a sense of coming home, back to where we all belonged via Saddleworth where his music still plays every Wednesday and Saturday evening at 8pm.
