The Stumble Inn – Review.

Posted by TTBoom on Mar 17, 2015 in Blog | 0 comments

The Stumble Inn is one of our favourite venues outside of Burton, as we always have a good night there with plenty of local followers popping in to see us play.

We all arrived around the 7.30 mark to discover that a child’s party was going on upstairs,  and were informed that it was scheduled to finish at 9 pm, which meant that we could not set set up the pa or desk as this would block the stairs, so had to agree a bit later start with the landlord.

Those of you who have been to the Stumble will know that the playing area is a bit compact and bijou, although much to our delight the usual 2 fruit machines that usually occupied the area had gone.   We noticed that a pull down screen had been installed for projecting live footie on, and considered it for mounting our backdrop on, but after careful inspection decided that the two screws holding it up to the plasterboard might not be man enough for the extra weight and so elected for putting up the backdrop stand.

There was a good crowd in and a steady flow of arrivals,  I suspect a few of them were staying on from the Rugby and were in good spirits as England has just beaten Scotland in a close battle.  Anyway they seemed to all be well lubricated.   Whilst we were setting up more  and more were coming in and we soon had a full Stumble to play too.

The playing area is served by 3 double sockets,  one stage right and 2 stage left,  which were in a bit of a state,  one not working, one not switch-able and 2 with fascia damage around the pin holes, leaving us with just one usable double socket.  It would be a real help for all bands in the future if the damaged sockets could be replaced.

Again quite a few Boomers  had come down to support us,  thanks to Laura and Ady,  and  Kevin (Cohen the Barbarian) and his long suffering missus  and all of Mark’s mates – and all those regulars.  A big thank you to you all, you made it a great night .

We finally cracked off around 9.45 without a sound check  to save time,  and all seemed fine.  The sound was great and we were all on our game, the only incident was the switch battery change x 2 by Mick and subsequent change to cable mike which also had a connection issue!  Something to put right for the future, anyway it gave me a chance to deliver Knocking on Heavens Door to fill the gap whilst Mark and Mike sorted things.  We soon had people dancing in front of us and having a good time,  often bumping into our mike stands and one particular lady who was well lubricated encroached on stage and clearly took a shine to Mark and Mick.

As the night progressed everyone was really getting into it,  many up on the tables including the landlady Kerry,  who was shouting and whistling with the best of ’em.  Special thanks go to Kevin (Cohen) and his for acting as our bodyguards and keeping the stage area clear, and especially looking after Ruth who was struggling a bit with all the jostling.

We played through to midnight, but weren’t allowed to stop,  loud chanting for more lead by the landlady gave us the go for a couple more which went down a storm with everyone was singing along,  the landlord Martin, even said that “we were on our metal tonight”  kind words,  the Stumble Rocks.

The Stumble lays on a great selection of beers which are really well kept, and again were sampled by Ruth, although she was disappointed that their own Songbird Brews were not on,  as she had had them before at previous gigs and knew how good they were.

We are back at The Stumble in June and are already looking  forward to it hopefully with a couple of new numbers to give an airing to.  See you all then.