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It’s Saturday night, and the Camden Assembly is lively. The band on stage is preparing for a rock set, plugging in guitars and keyboards. As they’re tuning up, a soft melody emerges, and the guitarist cautiously approaches the mic. “Hi guys, I’ve got terrible news. On the way here, our singer died. But fortunately, just moments ago we met an old man in a pub, and he’s agreed to stand in. He’s got quite an interesting story to tell.”
A hunched-over figure with a white beard and wearing a blue jumpsuit shuffles into the spotlight, thanks the guitarist for the introduction, and gets a round of cheers from the audience. The venue quiets as he bends into the mic. He introduces himself in a scratchy West Country accent as “Old Man Jenkins”, a graveyard worker. As he recounts the story of noticing blinding light radiating from inside a damaged grave, psychedelic music swells, alternating between eerie calm, spooky wobbles, and chugging rock. The crowd is drawn in, and becomes invested in the characters and the story, chanting and shouting as the music builds and the plot thickens.
Old Man Jenkins is a character created by members of the Sportsman. His character is one of many that emerge that evening. Will Markham, who plays the organ in the band, describes the importance of spontaneity. “When we started out, we made a deliberate plan to not prepare anything whatsoever,” he says. “We’d just show up and come up with whatever comes to our heads.”
These fully improvised gigs could only last so long as crowds grew and tales intertwined. Now that they incorporate costumes and more elaborate plots, the gigs require a degree of planning and practice. Still, their characters emerge in the same way they always have, in basement jam sessions in Waterloo, or during days of nonstop recording sessions in rural Wales.
The band certainly gave the crowd plenty to digest. “Old Man Jenkins” meets many people on his adventure through the afterlife, including Henry VIII on a hunting trip with Margaret Thatcher, and a crashing encounter with an online gambling Jesus Christ, backed by a rock composition of the Elven March from Lord of the Rings. But there are quiet moments too, an eagle soaring to lulling melodies, before gunshots bring the eagle down.
This odd night out in north London is just a glimpse into a much larger trend. From small gigs at Crick Crack Club’s venues in Cranborne, Dorset, and Bristol, to festivals across Wales and the Midlands, adults are turning to shared, in-person rituals of music and story.
The Sportsman’s storyteller, Sebastian Hervas-Jones, feels there is a cultural shift in how audiences engage with music. “I think there is a craving for more long-form content in an age characterised by extremely fast TikTok videos,” he says. “People want to sink their teeth into something.”
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