229, Great Portland Street, London
229, Great Portland Street, London – Monday 3rd February 2025
2025 was always going to be a good year wasn’t it?
Having played an awesome gig at Dingwalls in Camden (to 500 people) at the tail end of 2024, followed by very well received sets at Shepherds Bush Empire (to 2000 people) and Southampton’s Engine Rooms (to 500 people) in January 2025 we were really on a roll when we got approached to support the legendary ‘Stray Cats’ bass player Lee Rocker and his band at the brilliant 229 on Great Portland Street in London. We worked out the logistics and bit the arm off the promoter, this was one hell of an exciting gig to be doing!
Eddie arrives to pick me up early in the afternoon on the day. We’re taking all the equipment up in a van. We load everything in and head off. Traffic seems to be fine at this time of the day so we make it to the venue, at the end of Great Portland Street, in no time at all. The venue have reserved a parking spot for us out the front of the building and gig representative Alex meets us and gets the barrier taken up so we can get in.
We stroll down a couple of flights of stairs to the venue and are greeted by Lee Rocker’s band already on stage soundchecking. Alex shows us to our dressing room and introduces us to 5 or 6 guys who are working as crew. They all then proceed to help us down the stairs with all our equipment. Fantastic! That was a really easy load-in!
Due to work constraints Ted and Buzz are unlikely to get here for the soundcheck so I set about setting up Ted’s drum kit for him. Not something I’ve ever done before but I know roughly what I’m doing so I give it a good go. I send Ted some pictures, he congratulates me on a half-decent job and points me in the direction of a couple of bits I’ve missed. Done.
When Lee’s band have finished their soundcheck Eddie, Rusty and I set about getting all our gear up on stage (it’s a very high stage!). At this point I inform the soundman, Al, that our drummer and bass player might not get here in time for the soundcheck. He looks perplexed! I tell him it will all be okay but he requests that we ask Larry, the drummer from Lee Rocker’s band if he wouldn’t mind playing drums for us in the soundcheck. This we do, Eddie goes off to find him and Larry happily agrees. What a gent!
As we’re continuing to set up Buzz calls me. He’s outside! I inform Al that our bass player has arrived and we will be able to do a full soundcheck. He is happy. Buzz quickly runs in and sets up and when all the instruments are sound checked (Larry having adjusted Ted’s drum kit to be more like he thinks he might want it!) we ask Larry if he knows “Twenty Flight Rock”. Of course he does! We run through that. It’s sounding great. We have a monitor soundman as well tonight (Andre) so a quick adjustment of our on stage levels and we ask Larry if he knows “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby” by Carl Perkins. Of course he does! We rattle through it. Excellent stuff. Soundman Al is such a stickler for wanting to get the sound right he asks us to do one more song, this time with Rusty playing her electric ukulele. We decide amongst ourselves to play our original song “Showdown At The Ace Café” and despite Larry having never heard it before (he gets the brief from Eddie of “It’s just got a shuffle beat”!) he absolutely nails it and everybody is well chuffed. Soundcheck done!
We head to the dressing room and relax with our rider of cans of pop and alcohol-free beers. Alex makes sure we have everything we need. We do. We speak to Fabio from “The Peawees” who is part of Lee Rocker’s crew tonight, he is setting up their merchandise stall (T-shirts only!) and we get out our CD’s and free badges / patches. Hopefully we’ll make a few sales tonight!
As I’m getting changed Ted arrives just before the doors open. He’s had a good journey to get here too. Ted comes in, gets changed himself and climbs on stage to get his kit adjusted ready for our set.
By this time the doors have opened and the 600 capacity venue starts to fill up nicely. Eddie heads to the merchandise stall (he makes several sales before we’ve even started!) and we get accosted by lots of people who have come to see us tonight. There’s lots of other people we know here too. This is clearly the rockin’ place to be on a Monday night!
Time comes for us to hit the stage and we hit the ground running with “Let It Rock” from our debut album ‘A Triumph!’. The place is jam packed by this point. The reaction is incredible. Despite not being a strict rockabilly styled band we are very well received. In fact as someone tells us afterwards “When I go to see Lee Rocker, I don’t want to see Lee Rocker Junior as the support act”. We play a set containing mostly our original skiffle and rock ‘n’ roll styled songs, apart from our version of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock”. There’s lots of dancing, there’s cheering and there’s people singing along to our songs, particularly the repetitive “Everybody’s Screaming”! Then, it’s all over too quickly. What an amazing gig!
We clear the stage as quickly as possible and Eddie heads off straight away to man the merchandise stall. The rest of us pack up and enjoy chatting with Lee Rocker and his super cool bandmates. Lee kindly poses for photos with us and then it’s time for them to take the stage.
They launch straight in to the ‘Stray Cats’ classic “Runaway Boys” and the roof comes off the venue! This is a masterclass of rock ‘n’ roll and rockabilly from one of the greats. From then on there’s no letting up, there’s classic after classic delivered with skill, aplomb and passion. We get “Bring It Back Again”, “Rock This Town”, “Stray Cat Strut”, “Rumble In Brighton” and all measure of other goodies in between. Everywhere we look around us there are people dancing, smiling and singing. The atmosphere is electric.
After a short encore it’s all over.
Eddie, Ted and I are still hanging around the merchandise stall when there’s a surge of people keen to buy our album. There’s a rush on! So much so that all the free badges and patches have gone and then we sell out of albums. Amazing! We could have sold more. It seems there’s some real love for us here tonight.
We’re just about to start loading the van and head off into the night when there seems to be a bit of argy bargy at the other end of the merchandise stall. It appears that a kind hearted soul has been selling some T-shirts for Lee Rocker when nobody from their crew was there to look after things. He has no intention of pocketing the money, he wants to give it to Lee personally but Lee has already left. He also takes umbrage when he’s accused of stealing the money. He’s not happy. Eddie has to keep vouching for him and after many minutes it all calms down, he hands over the money to another member of Lee’s crew and eventually he leaves.
Then, that’s it. We load up (with the help of our friend DJ Vince Rocker Eavis) and we hit the road. Tired but very very happy. The TR5’s are on a roll!
Lucky