Catching Our Breath
After a very busy week at OneTrackMinds HQ
Hello friends!
Welcome, welcome - I trust you’re all very well. In particular, an extra special welcome to all the many new friends we’ve picked up as new subscribers in the last week or so. How are you all doing?
Well that was fun wasn’t it? What a week we had at OneTrackMinds HQ. First off, nothing short of a triumphant return to our old home at Wilton's Music Hall last Tuesday for a sold out show, featuring five of the best stories we’ve ever heard on the show. Alicia MacDonald kicked things off with a very funny story about a not-quite-formalised first romance, and the subsequent yearning/mourning soundtracked by (who else?) Celine Dion. Novelist Michel Faber talked about overcoming a bias against genres of music that are deemed uncool - Christian-themed country music in particular - and the rewards that could be found when doing so.
(Michel also revealed a bit of personal history relating to Wilton’s Music Hall - apparently the balcony at Wilton’s was transformed into a Victorian pub for the filming of the BBC adaptation of his excellent novel The Crimson Petal and The White. How about that?!)
We like to say that a good OneTrackMinds show is one that makes you laugh, makes you cry and makes you get up and dance. Well our third guest last Tuesday, comedian Pauline Eyre, delivered all three in one story, while also paying homage to the woman who inspired her to get into stand up in the first place, Shappi Khorsandi, who happened to be our final guest of the night, and whose Leonard Cohen-themed paean for the good old days of late nights down the pub, wrapped up our evening in the most perfect way. Sandwiched between them was writer, podcaster and Maccabees guitarist Felix White, whose story in praise of the magical mystical powers of Nick Drake was as gorgeously written as his terrific books.
All in all, it was a delight. Huge thanks to all our guests - in particular to Pauline and Alicia who stepped in at very late notice to replace Tom McRae and Katherine May who, no doubt, we’ll get back on the show at some point later this year.
Here’s our lovely crew backstage after the show:
And here, for reasons I’m still not entirely clear about, is a picture of Felix White with a hare, taken by Michel Faber:
And here’s a link to a playlist of our guest’s songs from the night:
After Tuesday’s triumph, we had a couple of days to gear up for our return to the Southbank Centre on Saturday for our first Hidden Tracks show in quite some time - a jazz-themed night of storytelling as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s residency. Hidden Tracks is always such a rewarding part of what we do, because we go on such a journey with our storytellers, many of whom have never told a story on stage in public before.
And boy, did they deliver! Lots of laughter, lots of tears and a barnstorming finale from Morgan Chalmers who delivered the OneTrackMinds Holy Grail trick of performing her chosen song live on the night. It was electric, and capped off a truly gorgeous evening. Here’s the team backstage:
Big thanks to Ahnansé, the creative genius behind the wonderful weekly Afro-Funk live improvised event Steam Down, who kicked things off for us in the most wonderful way. And of course to our wonderful friend Deborah Bankole from the Southbank Centre for working tirelessly and joyfully to make the whole process such a success.
Here’s a playlist of the songs from Saturday night:
Now - with the briefest pause to catch our breath (and catch up on all the things we neglected while in show mode last week…) - we turn our minds to our next show on May 20th. And what a show it’s going to be - our Tenth Anniversary spectacular, returning to the place where it all started exactly ten years (to the day!) since our first ever show.
To make it extra special, for one night only, we’re going to return to our original six-guest format - three stories before the interval, three after - making your ticket 20% better value for money! (I’m not sure I’ve got the maths correct there. But you know what I mean…).
We’ve already announced our first storyteller - our old friend, journalist and author Alice Vincent. In addition, it only feels right that Adam and I get a chance to join the party with a story each of our own. So that’s three out of six guests taken care of right away. Rest assured we’ve got some very exciting targets for those last three guests… Watch this space…
Astonishingly, there are already fewer than 70 tickets available, which, when I think about our struggles to shift tickets over the past couple of years, is absolutely wild. If you don’t want to miss out, then you’d better get your act together, and sharpish…
Some other things to share with you this week…
Another playlist for you - this time from the Write Your Story Workshop we delivered at the Royal Festival Hall’s Clore Ballroom on Sunday morning. We got our workshop participants to listen to each of these tracks in turn, and write down how the music made them feel, who the tracks reminded them of, a time the music brought them into, and a place the tracks transported them to. Feel free to have a go yourself should you feel so moved…
And while we’re writing about writing, here’s some wonderful writing advice from London Writer’s Salon’s founder Matt Trinetti on Substack:
Does reading fiction make us better people? Of course it does!
A book recommendation for you: I came across Swedish journalist Andrev Walden’s novel Bloody Awful In Different Ways because of a quote on the cover which called Walden ‘the new Knausgaard’. Long-time readers of this newsletter will know that is precisely the right thing to put on a book’s cover if you want me to buy it. Bloody Awful is a very funny, painfully honest coming-of-age sort-of-novel based on Walden’s own childhood being raised by seven different ‘fathers’ over the course of seven years. Genuinely, one for the ages. I loved this.
Morrissey has cancelled a show in Valencia because the city’s too noisy for his sensitive little ears. What a bell end. How the mighty have fallen, hey?
Our album of the week comes from former Hot Chip vocalist Alexis Taylor - Paris In The Spring was released on Friday, and it’s very lovely indeed. I’ve been playing it at breakfast every morning since then, and the perfect soundtrack as the spring begins to show itself…
Right, that’ll do… We’ll be back next week. Until then,
KB.
Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here
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