Wakey!Wakey! - Tuesday October 11th 2011 - Night/Day Cafe, Manchester

Wakey!Wakey! is a band started by Michael Grubbs, a singer and pianist from Virginia. One of my friends introduced me to their music because she heard it in a TV show called One Tree Hill. I love their record Almost Everything I Wish I'd Said The Last Time I Saw You... because every song is just so different.

We were late for the concert, doors opened at seven thirty and we stumbled in after getting lost in Manchester at about ten o clock, but luckily they'd only played about two songs when we walked in, I'm guessing they started that late because there were two support acts and I think the venue probably had no curfew.

I'd never been to Night/Day cafe before, and it's a really special place; basically just a bar with live music sometimes, but there are posters and shirts and signed things all over the walls, and I felt oddly welcome even though I don't think I spoke to anyone that worked there. It held about eighty people that night, I think

Michael Grubbs played a keyboard, there were an arrangement of other musicians as his band that seemed to wander on and off the stage at will. He wore a plain white shirt, his hair was messy and everything about the show was so relaxed. He shouted across the room to a singer who'd opened for him, who was in the crowd, interacted with the audience, took pictures and told so many stories sometimes it seemed like he was forgetting to play songs. I laughed so much during a story he told about a karaoke bar in Toronto that there were little tears in my eyes.

But it didn't touch the music. Everything was perfect, the whole band in sync with each other and the violinist was particularly amazing in "Take It Like A Man".

Before we go to shows together, my friend Becky and I always predict little things that will happen, and I said he'd play an ironic cover of a song like Rihanna's "Umbrella". I was partly right, but it was "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper, which is even more awesome.

"Light Outside" had to be my favourite - it was two or three songs after we got in and I remember hearing those first few notes and just grinning because we hadn't missed it during the time we weren't there, and because so many people in the room were singing along with the song I love, and save for my worst days.

He did a meet and greet type thing afterwards, and as we stood around a few metres from him I didn't really feel starstruck or nervous, maybe because although I knew his music I didn't know much about the person until that day. I was planning what I was going to say to him and I had been throughout the show. About a really crappy night I had, about things being better and going home after everyone was gone and sleeping and listening to "Light Outside" and not knowing how to feel, but how that song made me feel like someone knew.

I didn't tell him that, I chickened out. But I did get my video camera and ask him to say something for my friend, who'd introduced me to his music and couldn't go. I still have it on my camera. We took a picture, he signed my ticket and we went home.

I wished I'd told him about "Light Outside" and how it's mine, because he wrote it and deserved to know. I kind of told myself that it was the situation, just like what's happened with me meeting heroes before, that the backs of bars and studios with people around are places for signing tickets and spelling names but it's hard to stumble out the words you really want to say, and I'm not sure he would have known how to reply.

I hope that Wakey!Wakey! stays at this level of fame forever, because it suits Michael Grubbs' charisma, to be able to tell stories and to sing songs.