60/60 – Jenny Lind, Hastings – 11/8/24

This was it – gig number 60 in the series. We’d shared it around on social media that this was our final gig in the challenge, and it was lovely to see some of our fans, friends and family turn out on a Sunday afternoon during Old Town Week. There were a lot of other music events going on in the town, the band coming on in the evening after us (Los Twangeros) was on their third gig of the day – so we were really pleased to have an audience. We picked up our friend, Alex from Polegate Station on our way over to Hastings as he was putting together an archive of photos with Q & As to mark the gig. It was pretty quiet when we arrived at the pub and we got straight on with setting up. We had decided to use the in-house PA but would take our own in future as this really is set up for louder bands, with high speakers so the sound quality for us wasn’t great despite Dylan, the sound engineer’s best efforts. We had a decent number of people throughout the afternoon but they come and go in a pub, many of them saying thank you and smiling or waving at us as they left.

Hastings is a really friendly place and we are looking forward to moving there. We had lots of chats as we arrived, in the break and at the end. And the Jenny Lind is a good music pub, people go expecting music and we’ve played there several times. It’s one of the few pub gigs we do – here plus the Stag in Hastings and the Royal Oak in Tunbridge Wells which are both known for music and our own local, obviously. There’s a decent basic fee for playing music at the Jenny and they pass round the ‘jug’ with a card reader which tops it up, plus we get a free drink each of course. Parking isn’t too bad – you can unload on the double yellows outside then there’s usually a space up the hill towards Ore which is about 10 minute’s walk away. Parking in the road is time limited so when we’ve parked there we’ve had to set an alarm to remind us to go and move the car. If we hadn’t been stopping somewhere en route on the way back we would have taken the train as it’s not too far to walk from the station and we were travelling fairly light without the PA. We took the merch box but no sales and no sign ups but we did spread the word about our Grove theatre gig and told people about the 60 by 60 write ups.