She expands: “People think it’s glamorous, that you’re just singing for a few hours a night and don’t have to work the rest of the time. They forget what goes into it. First of all, I have to know songs from the ’60s right up to the charts of today, and people underestimate what a massive cross section of music that is in a two, three hour show. And then there’s the crap that comes with dealing with drunk people.”
Using a recent gig as an example of what a tough evening’s work can look like, Winter describes facing eerie “standoffishness” from the moment she entered with her equipment, ”territorial” groups unhappy with her presence. “They didn’t like the fact that I was a woman about to sing in their pub,” she concludes. “Sometimes there’s no other reason.” Afterwards, Winter would change into her gig outfit in a small, urine soaked cubicle before navigating the aggressive advances of locals who were annoyed she wasn’t taking requests. ”I’m not a jukebox,” she informed them with a smile.
In over 20 years of experience, which has taken her from the depths of Bristol to British bars in Tenerife and Cyprus, Winter – a sturdy personality with a stratospheric voice – has been through the mill of these experiences. “You see everything,” she explains. “You’ve sung most of these songs a million times, so often you’re in your own world, just watching or even hearing what’s going on. You see all sorts – couples arguing, police coming in whilst I’m on stage – but you just soldier on. I’ll walk into any pub and it won’t phase me – you’ve got to have thick skin.”
Despite the difficulties, accentuated by the female experience of being in majority male pubs, pub singing remains the circuit where Winter finds her freedom. “I could never go back to sitting in an office, earning someone else’s living. When you strip it back; this is my company, it’s what I’ve worked on my whole life. I’m 40 years old with two kids, but I know on a gig night that I can put my make-up on, put on something nice, and go have some fun. And when stuff is going wrong, I know it’s not me, my voice doesn’t suddenly go bad, it’s the people that change.”
As her set at The George begins, her performance follows a familiar pattern. Winter’s mighty vocals fill the room immediately, but they contrast with the long empty space in front of her. The George is a large pub shaped like a horseshoe, and the majority of its clientele spend the first quarter of her set buzzing in the opposite branch. Singers, Winter says, expect this, ordinarily using the first chunk of their set to trial lesser known songs or play tracks that challenge them. Eventually, pubs tend to drop their guard. That’s when the classics come out. True to the process, by the end of her gig, the crowd is at Winter’s command; the patterned carpet in front of her host to a full mixture of movement which ranges from abstract takes on breaking to gracefully drunken ballroom dance. A success.
