The show must go on!
Alex Hart
Thirty-five-year-old Alex Hart has been making music in and around Plymouth for almost half her life.
From playing pubs and clubs in the city to touring America with some of the biggest names in British music, her career has taken her a long way from her Mid-Devon roots.
These days, she has a new travelling companion on the road - her young daughter, Wren.
We met up with Alex at The Barbican Theatre when she was still getting over a bout of the dreaded lurgy, 24 hours before she was heading off on yet another tour.
Sitting in the auditorium, we chatted about the journey she’s already been on.
When Alex arrived in Plymouth when she was just 17, it was - as the saying goes - ‘for the love of a good man’!
She’s been here ever since.
“I absolutely love this city and I think it’s done so much for my career,” she tells us.
She started playing violin when she was only about 10, and by the time she arrived in Plymouth she was already beginning to find her feet as a musician.
She formed the first Alex Hart Band, played weddings and gigs around the city's pubs and clubs and eventually had her own residency at a popular Plymouth nightclub.
“I was just gigging around all the pubs and clubs,” she says. “And as I grew older I got into playing at Annabel’s in Plymouth. I had my own little residency there.”
Plymouth was becoming a place to learn her trade.
She met musicians, played jam nights and worked with Barney Dine, whom she's known since she was 14. She wrote and recorded an album with him, toured the South West with him and his band and, as Alex rather cheerfully puts it, eventually “stole” Barney’s band.
But the musical opportunities didn’t just happen in Devon and Cornwall.
At 18, Alex was travelling to London to write and record with Neil Stainton and his wife Cass. Neil became her manager, while Cass brought another unexpected connection: she’s the sister of Dragons' Den investor Deborah Meaden.
It's a small connection in Alex’s story, but one of those wonderfully unexpected threads that seems to follow her around.
One of the London recording sessions took place at Fisher Lane Studios, owned by the legendary band Genesis.
It was there that one of Alex's most unlikely career twists began.
From Plymouth to dance charts
One night, after the serious recording work was done, Alex suggested the band have a bit of fun.
“I was really obsessed with this song called Wish I Didn’t Miss You by Angie Stone,” she says.
“And I said, ‘Oh, let’s just have a go. I really want to sing it.’”
They'd had a few drinks so started jamming.
“It was just a bit of fun, but it was like the best part of the journey for me,” Alex smiles.
The serious album was completed, but the Angie Stone cover was still sitting there too.
Then a dance duo from Essex got in touch.
“We hear you've been working on this tune,” they said. “We want to use your vocals and release the track as a dance song.”
Alex didn't really know very much about dance music, and freely admits she doesn't particularly like it either - but it all went ahead.
The resulting track reached number two in the dance charts, was played by Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1 and was heard around the world.
Alex was very pleased, although perhaps not entirely convinced that she'd suddenly found her musical calling; “I was a bit gutted because I thought, why isn’t it in country Americana music?”
“You can’t get everything,” she laughs.
An unexpected invitation
By the time Alex was about 23, she was working constantly as a musician.
Then she was asked to sing on a recording session at Middle Farm Studios in Newton Abbot.
“I'd never heard the music before,” she says. “It was a prog record.”
The session was completed in a day. Alex went home and looked up the man they'd been recording for.
“It was Martin Barre from Jethro Tull. Obviously I'd heard of Jethro Tull and I thought, ‘Oh my god, this guy is really famous.’”
The next message came that same night.
Martin wanted her to come back to do more vocals the following day. Then, during that second session, came the question that would change the scale of Alex's career again.
“What you doing in two weeks? Can you come on tour in Europe?”
Alex had never been on a big tour before but she needed not persuasion.
“That was the beginning of this amazing journey with Martin,” she says.
More than 10 years later, the journey’s still going. Alex has travelled across America with Martin twice, as well as touring extensively in Europe and the UK.
“I’m due to go to the States with him again soon. A lot in Europe, a lot in England. We've got a tour this winter as well.”
For someone who started out playing weddings, pubs and clubs around Plymouth, it's been quite a journey.
A curry, a pint and an audition
But perhaps the most wonderfully Plymouth story of all happened much closer to home.
In fact, it happened downstairs at the very venue we're chatting in now.
Alex was working at the B-Bar at the Theatre, serving food and pulling pints, in what was also a Thai restaurant.
Devon folk star Seth Lakeman walked in one day to order a takeaway.
“He didn't really know me, and I didn't know him that well,” Alex says.
He ordered his food and we started chatting. Seth was due to go on tour and was looking for a female singer.
“Do you think you'd be up for it?”
“I was just like pouring pints going, ‘Yeah, I think so.’”
Seth left Alex with a copy of his Pilgrim’s Tale album and said he'd come back the next day with his guitar.
Alex went home and learned the whole album overnight. The next day, she was back behind the bar when Seth arrived.
“I was on shift behind the bar on my own again,” she remembers, “Just me and one chef.
Seth came in at midday - guitar in hand - and there were already a few people in the restaurant which gave Alex a bit of a challenge.
‘You guys going to be all right for 10 minutes? I’m just going to go and sing a song with this guy.”
To be fair, that’s probably not such an unusual thing to hear if you were a regular at the B-Bar.
Alex chose to perform Bury Nights from the album.
“I sang it and I thought it went really well” she says. “And Seth was like, ‘That sounds great. Let's go for it. Let's do the tour.’
“I was like, ‘Yes, I got the gig!’”
That was just before lockdown. Alex has now been part of Seth Lakeman's band for nearly seven years.
And once again, a chance encounter in Plymouth had opened the door to something much bigger.
From bar to stage
It seems particularly appropriate that the Seth Lakeman story happened here.
The Barbican Theatre is an intimate little venue, with a main auditorium of around 100 seats - plus a bar downstairs with its own smaller performance space.
It is the sort of theatre where even if you sit in the back row, you still feel part of what's happening on stage.
For Alex, it was once somewhere she worked behind the bar.
Today she's sitting in the auditorium talking about the career that grew from all those years of playing wherever she could.
She still has a connection with the theatre today, sometimes helping to book acts for the programme.
And there’s been another significant change in her life since those early days.
Alex became a mum last year.
Her daughter, Wren, has already been on six tours with her and is travelling with her again this week.
Inspiring others
Throughout her career, Alex says she's been told that having a family would make life as a touring musician very difficult.
“I've had so many people tell me if I want to have a family, it's going to be challenging.
”If you do, it's going to really affect your career and your life.”
And that bothered Alex.
“I was thinking, well, it's like any other job. I need to earn money. This is just what I'm good at and what I do.”
Wren was born last year, and Alex has taken her on six tours already. “She's fit in really well,” she says.
“It's hard, you know, but it's something that is just, yeah, the most magical time.”
Alex says she knows musicians who’ve been frightened to start families because they're worried about venues not booking them when they're pregnant, or managers not taking them on because they think they won't have the time.
“I think it's sad to see female musicians that are older and never went into having a family simply because they were too scared of those things - and then they regret it.”
Alex and her husband decided to do it their way. “I’m not getting any younger,” says the 35-year-old mum. “I wanted to do it now and kind of show others it's okay. And it is okay!”
The show must go on
There’s one small complication with today's interview. Alex isn't feeling 100% which she laughingly blames on Wren.
She's full of the lurgy, and tomorrow she's heading off on yet another tour.
We had offered to postpone, but Alex wasn't having any of it.
She's a working musician, she has shows to play, and a sniffle isn't going to stop her doing the job she loves.
“I've got to do warm-ups anyway because I'm away on tour,” she says.
So, despite feeling a little under the weather, Alex reaches for her guitar. And the song she's chosen is one she wrote for Wren while she was pregnant.
At the time, she was anxious about bringing a child into what she describes as her ‘crazy life of music’.
Today, though, that life includes a small travelling companion.
Alex has crossed the Atlantic, toured Europe, shared stages with some remarkable musicians and built a career that began with playing pubs and clubs around Plymouth.
And tomorrow, she’s back on the road.
Because in this business we call entertainment, whether you’re feeling 100% or not, the show must go on!
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