mostly david ephgrave

Today, I received word that my dad's gravestone has been laid, along with a photograph to prove it (not that I was in any doubt). It's these things you can be a little unsure how you'll react to; it was like seeing his coffin at the funeral or carrying his ashes casket at the burial. There's a sense of finality and actuality that can be a little unsettling if don't prepare yourself for it. But any time I worry, I remind myself that it's just my dad and I love him, and I needn't be afraid, because there'll never be a reason to be frightened when he's nearby, ever. When the paramedic asked if I wanted to see him when I arrived minutes after he'd died, I faltered for a moment. But I quickly mentally corrected myself, because I knew I had a responsibility to him as my dad, and because I knew he'd need me. He told me more than once towards the end that I made him less afraid when I was there, so I was glad there was a way I could acti...

Of the many – some might say too many – projects me and Glyn have set up, the one I’m proudest of is 'Glad All Over!: A Sixties Celebration ’. (c) Tim Parker The show came into being in a pub; the Spice of Life in Soho, in fact. We met with our friend Rob Maskell to discuss the idea of putting together a show to raise money for one of our Edinburgh Festival runs. Me and Rob had gigged together a lot in the past, and often expressed an interest in setting up our own actor / muso show, in an attempt to put right a lot of the self-perceived wrongs of the various shows we’d worked on previously.   Suddenly we had an excuse to do it. We booked a date at The Queen Mother Theatre in Hitchin that Summer and put together a band. The premise was simple; the show would be a two-hour gig built around a four-piece band who were all singers and multi-instrumentalists, plus three additional female singers. We wanted to cover as broad a selection of Sixties music as possibl...

Would anybody like to go to see a Michael Ball tribute act with me? He’s on in Stevenage next month if you fancy it.   (They should have called it ‘A Load of Ball’; they missed out on a trick. )  The blurb describes the show as 'two hours of Michael Ball bliss’. I might sue them for Trade Descriptions. If nothing else, it’s a good way of rounding up all of his fans in one convenient - and sealable - location.    I’ve got no issues with Ball (or Ball issues) by the way. I actually quite like him. He’s self-deprecating and a very good sport. What I can’t understand is why you’d go to a two-hour sound-alike show, when you could see the real thing just as easily. A Michael Ball tribute is a confusing concept. He's not dead. He’s also a musical theatre performer and not a pop star ('One Step Out of Time' notwithstanding). You wouldn’t be paying tribute to him, but the various shows he’s been associated with. W...

While I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with actor / musician work (a topic I’ve already covered here ), there's one job in that field that I’d still quite like to do: play Elwood in the Blues Brothers. I’ve wanted to do it since I was a kid, when I used to go and watch The Official Tribute to The Blues Brothers at the Gordon Craig Theatre each year. Me and my best friend Chris were obsessed with it – and would spend hours singing along with the soundtrack in his front room, whilst attempting Jake and Elwood’s moves. We knew the album inside out (as I imagine Chris’ neighbours eventually did too). I tracked down copies of the original Blues Brothers LPs, plus a VHS of the movie. The film is patchy at best, but the music is fantastic; John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd surrounded themselves with the genre's finest players. Singing along with the records lost its interest as we got a little older, so we decided to pull a small Blues Brothers band together. We ca...