There are better photos from this night.
Cleaner ones, probably. More obedient ones. The sort of images that do what gig photography is traditionally supposed to do: make everybody involved look a bit larger than life, slightly mythic, touched by stage light and importance. Ever so slightly holy.
This isn’t one of them.
Which is exactly why it felt like the sort of right place to start.
This blog is for the stories my images can’t quite hold on their own. The train journeys, the waiting around, the low-level embarrassments, the bits of accidental comedy, and all the small indignities that somehow sit behind a photograph without ever quite making themselves visible. Or at least not obviously.
This one starts with TTSSFU, aka Tasmin: an English singer-songwriter and guitarist based in Manchester, whose online presence has always slightly bewildered me. She has a gift for posting the most unflattering photos of herself imaginable, ranting about authorship, and sarcastically showing support for Cardiff FC, the context of which I still have not learned and now feel too far gone to ask about. Her Instagram stories always seem to sit somewhere on the line between sincerity and sarcasm, which is usually the best place for anything to sit.
Our first interaction began with me asking how to pronounce her artist name. She sent back a straightforward explanation, which was almost disappointing in a way. I’d been expecting something more egregious. A week later, while out drinking, I saw she was playing locally at Hebden Bridge Trades Club in a few days and did the only sensible thing possible: messaged at half two in the morning asking if I could shoot the show.
Not the most professional outreach of my career, admittedly, but spontaneity felt correct here.
Twenty minutes later: “Yeah whatever, I’ll sort that.”
Much more on brand.
Later came: “r u good at photos or rubbish”
I replied, “rubbish,” to which she said it didn’t matter really.
Again, reassuring in a way that wasn’t especially reassuring.
By the day of the gig, Tasmin had been making jokes on her story about The Strokes. She’d bought a leather jacket that looked like something Julian Casablancas might have worn during his indie sleaze fashionista era and described herself as “strokesmaxxing.” Almost subconsciously, I followed suit. I put on my own long leather coat, because it somewhat felt appropriate but I think I hoped it might disguise the nerves. Underneath I had on a tight Cardinals t-shirt and black suit trousers, which meant I looked less like a serious photographer and more like Christopher Eccleston after saving Downing Street.
I felt like a right twat, but I couldn’t blame anyone except myself. After all, every item involved had come from my own wardrobe.
I forked out the eight quid for the train from Huddersfield to Hebden Bridge. Student finance was getting tight by this point, but what could I do, I had already decided this is something I wanted to photograph.The train journey itself was offensively uneventful, which in hindsight is useful because it sets a healthy standard for all future posts, many of which will almost certainly be complaints about train travel. But this one wasn’t dramatic. No cancellations, no biblical delays, no suffering worth romanticising. Just a dull little journey into Calderdale.
I arrived at the venue during soundcheck and immediately started downing pint after pint of water, half to justify my physical presence in the room and half to distract myself from the creeping nerves. People started piling into the bar area ready for the show. At some point I ended up in conversation with a couple of older men who had mistaken me for someone in the support band, which I can only assume was because of my generally crap clothing.
I didn’t correct them. Somewhat through nerves, but mostly because one of them was doing almost all of the talking anyway. He told me how many times he’d seen Tasmin, how much they’d spoken before, and generally carried himself with the quiet confidence of a man who has confused familiarity for importance. At one point he mentioned seeing Tasmin in a band called Duvet, which suddenly sparked a memory: I’d actually seen them before. More than that, I’d photographed them a couple of years ago. It was one of those odd little moments where the dots connect much later than they should have.
By the time I tuned back into the conversation properly, he was describing a band he’d been in when he was younger and some support slot at The Cockpit. His mate had, by this stage, contributed roughly as much as I had. We made eye contact in a way that seemed to briefly acknowledge the know-it-allness of the situation. I made some excuse and escaped to join the queue.
I was about seventh in line, which meant I had plenty of time to stand there dreading the bit where I’d have to say I was on the guest list. I hate this part. It always makes me feel like a child trying to convince somebody I’ve been invited to a party. While I was waiting, Tasmin walked past with a friend and told the people on the door she was heading out for food.
Then it was my turn.
The guy on the door complimented my Cardinals t-shirt, which was nice of him, though not ideal timing given the queue forming behind me. We did that awkward mutual appreciation thing where two men say they like the same band while both being dimly aware this exchange should probably be happening at another time. Then he asked for my name and couldn’t find it.
So, instead of handling this like a normal person, I said, “Oh, it must be because I’m on the guest list bit.”
He checked.
Nothing.
He reassured me it must be a mistake and said to get it sorted, but by that point I’d already gone bright red and was mentally halfway to the Pennines. I scurried off and left the venue. Definitely an overreaction, but I was embarrassed all the same. I messaged Tasmin. No reply, which was entirely reasonable seeing as she was out eating, but reasoning wasn’t doing much for me at that point.
Whenever things like this happen, my brain does a very useful thing where it shuts itself off entirely and sends my body wandering in whichever direction seems furthest from the source of embarrassment. So I drifted down the road, somewhere between panic and sheepishness, until I spotted Vocation in the distance.
I love Vocation. I’d never been to that particular location before, but there was still time before the support act and I was still waiting to hear back, so I thought I may as well kill some time with a beer. I was already waiting on her for a reply from earlier that day too, when I’d messaged asking if we could maybe do some portraits beforehand. Tasmin, I understood by now, was not exactly governed by urgency when it came to messages.
Inside, the place was much more restaurant-like than the other Vocation I’d been to before. Slightly less “casual pint” and slightly more “small plates central” No matter. I stood at the bar and pretended to study the menu, despite already knowing exactly what I wanted before I’d even walked in. Bread & Butter. A crisp 3.9% pale ale, and, more importantly, the cheapest thing I could plausibly ask for other than water. I haven’t fact-checked this, so don’t hold me to it.
The person in front of me was asking detailed questions about each drink. They mentioned at one point that they normally liked cider, which felt like a rookie mistake because the bartender promptly directed them toward a sour instead, one of the pricier options available. When they finally paid, I noticed the card machine was one of those aggressively modern ones with a giant screen displaying every outcome in huge lettering, seemingly for the benefit of anyone within a five-mile radius.
I stepped up and ordered my drink with the quiet smugness of somebody pleased to know what he wants.
Then came the payment.
CARD DECLINED.
Followed, for good measure, by INSUFFICIENT FUNDS ON CARD.
Cheers for that. Lovely stuff. As if I needed everyone behind me to know I was a brokey.
I mumbled out an apology and started scrambling to transfer money from my savings, burying myself in my phone and trying to disappear into the complex activity of typing in my PIN number. Then the person behind the bar tapped away and the screen changed to STAFF DISCOUNT APPLIED.
Bold, I thought. Bit presumptuous to assume I even had the funds for that.
Before I could explain that I was still moving money around, they reached down and paid for it themselves.
I didn’t even get the chance to say thank you before they were on to the next customer. I stood there holding the beer I’d wanted all along, but now in a state of total paralysis, cycling uselessly through variations of “I can’t let you do that,” “Are you sure?” and “I’m sorry.” They carried on serving. I carried on mumbling my apologies.
I made an exit to the toilet and just sat in there for a minute with my pint, transferring the money into my account for reasons that were no longer clear to anyone, least of all me. I couldn’t bring myself to go back out and sip it normally in front of the person who had just rescued me financially. I have never felt so emasculated.
Then my phone lit up.
“apparently its sorted”
The most nonchalant message imaginable. To her, basically administrative. To me, a divine intervention. A reason to leave this ego-slaughterhouse immediately.
For the record, the toilets were actually quite nice.
I sank the drink, abandoned what had once felt like an exciting little tangent, and offered to buy the bartender one back on my way out, as a tip more than anything. They said, “it’s fine, don’t worry about it” which somehow felt like one final blow. A very kind thing had been done for me, and I did appreciate it, but appreciation and self-respect were not especially aligned at that moment.
Anyway, yeah, Tasmin played a good set or whatever.
The whole band were class. I met the lads after and they were good craic. For some reason I never quite made it round to saying hello to Tasmin herself, partly because the bloke from earlier was busy hounding her and dragging his poor mate around with him, and partly because my self-esteem was still somewhere on the floor of a brewery toilet.
Still to this day, I haven’t actually met her.
But there was this moment, the one in the photo at the top, which I think encapsulated the evening better than any of the more obvious hero shots did. I took those too, of course. The ones more flattering, more legible, more conventionally useful. But this is the frame that stayed with me. A night built on self-deprecation, awkwardness, and making a fool of yourself, all somehow condensed into one image. Not a perfect photo. Just the right one.
The next day I got a message from Tasmin:
“would you wanna do it again some time”
So I guess it was worth it or whatever
