International Beatleweek Day One
International Beatleweek Day One - Fri 25th August 2023.
4 years ago (2019) I took a little trip to Liverpool by myself, to witness the fantastic event that is Best Fest at the world-renowned Casbah Coffee Club. It’s the annual event at which former Beatles drummer Pete Best & his band play a set, at the place where it all truly began for The Beatles. The Casbah is exactly like it was all those years ago, it hasn’t been moved, re-decorated or anything. The ceilings that John, Paul, George, Cynthia and others painted are exactly as they were.
It was an amazing experience. I had initially been supposed to be playing with my band at the time, but the band broke-up and we never played. I loved being a punter though.
However, it set in motion a 4-year plan that culminated with my current band The TR5’s playing a whole weekend of gigs in Liverpool as part of Beatleweek in 2023.
Firstly, we got asked to play Best Fest in 2022. The 2020 event had already been moved to 2021, then, as the pandemic continued, 2021’s bands got moved to 2022 and our booking got moved to 2023. Got that? Right, we’ll carry on…..
With the one booking in place, we decide that we wouldn’t want to go to Liverpool to just play one gig, so I set about finding us some more.
With some good research and hard work, I manage to secure us another 7 bookings at various Beatle-related venues for the weekend, oh, and a decent-paying social club gig to help us with the finances. Sorted. Or so we thought. We then get contacted by the main organisers of International Beatleweek. They take care of bookings at places like the Cavern Club / Cavern Pub and others. It’s an honour to be asked by them to play. Having been trying for years to get on their books, we have finally made it. They give us 5 gigs over the weekend which brings our total to 13 gigs in 4 days! Amazing! We’re not averse to hard work.
Finn books us a splitter van to travel in (equipment in the back, people in the front) and a townhouse in Wallasey (the other side of the river Mersey because it’s cheaper) as accommodation for the weekend and everything is in place.
We get new business cards to hand out, tour flyers printed, badges to give away and tour t-shirts printed and then the time comes for us to go and play.
We load most of the bits we need (PA, various amps) on Thursday night and then meet first thing on Friday morning to load the rest and get on the road. We leave base at 9am. Richey takes the wheel and we’re on the motorway for the 4-and-a-half-hour journey. A quick pit-stop and we eventually make it to the place where we pick up our wristbands in central Liverpool at about 2.30pm. Traffic has been awful. We’re running a bit late.
After picking up our passes we head through the Mersey tunnel for the first time to get to our accommodation and Finn utters the classic words “Can you get a receipt?” when we pay the toll. Being a business owner, he says he can claim tax back. We laugh. It becomes tour joke #1.
When we get to our accommodation, it is somewhat disappointing. The beds haven’t been made, the bins haven’t been emptied and it isn’t anything like you would expect. We don’t have time to hang around though, Finn calls the owners, we get changed and we’re back on the road to our first gig of the weekend.
After frantically finding somewhere to park we make our way to the Cavern Club back stage just in time to walk on, set up and start playing. It’s a good job we know what we’re doing. Compere Steve ribs us for turning up just on time. We rib him back. The banter has started already. We love this place. We then proceed to play a rip-roaring set to a packed-out venue. What a great start to the weekend.
We don’t have much time to revel in the glory though, we’re straight on to our next gig at the social club. We must stick to the itinerary. Cue tour joke #2. At the social club we meet up with our friend Scott Gosar from Reno, Nevada. He’s written a song called “By Kind Permission Of Mrs Best” that we have learnt and are going to play with him tomorrow at the Casbah Club (all will be revealed why). He’s here to rehearse it with us in the soundcheck. We set up quickly, run through the song with Scott and then follow that with 2 sets of high-energy skiffle and early rock ‘n’ roll, which goes down great. The locals are very friendly and loving it. Richey even wins in the raffle at half time, and we give the prize away to the best dancers in a best dancing competition in the second half. It’s been a real hoot. We sign autographs. Day one complete.
Lucky