We’ll keep a welcome….

After seeing a lot more of the M4 than we ever wanted to we made it to the Tenby Blues festival yesterday afternoon.

This is not the set up for any kind of joke but I was slightly delayed by a flock of sheep on the roundabout at Pontardulais that the local police were trying to keep off of the motorway…

What a beautiful crowd you were! We had a great time performing for you. Great to see the guys from the Bird there too.

We’re back out there on Tuesday at the Mardi Blues club in Bournemouth. Hope to see you there!

A slight hiccup….

Hi folks, I know it’s been a while but I’ve had a pc disaster and have been unable to access the website.

It’s been a busy few weeks, we’ve been to Ireland again and had a great time and are really looking forward to Tenby and Bournemouth next week.

Hope to see you at in if the shows!

That was the month that was……

….mostly full of festivals.

You’d like to think that life in a band is full of glamorous locations, exotic people and the sheer hedonism of the fabled rock and roll lifestyle. Well, to be honest, it’s mostly made up of sitting in traffic, trying to find real food that doesn’t come in a brown paper bag and cause disastrous digestive complications, getting enough sleep, remaining sober when all around you are losing their heads as you see the load in/soundcheck times gradually slipping away towards tomorrow, finishing the show and finding the people who were partying earlier have now gone to bed so you have a single sad whiskey all on your lonesome and then getting up and doing it all again the next day…..

But, and here’s the magic that keeps us doing it, it’s that island in time where we hit the stage and the spell is cast. When we feel the music lift us and carry us all to our own petit mort….it’s a journey for us all and we’re glad you’re on it with us.

Wickham was great fun this year, new location for the festival which was a lot more comfortable than last year and all of that mud, a great vibe, very chilled.

Victorious was a little more, er, edgy?

Honeyfest was the ultimate chill, great vibe and the coolest people.

We’d like to thank Sarah at the Mardi Blues club at the Poole Hill Brewery for hosting us. A great venue with a brilliant crowd and with great beer brewed on the premisies. HAving to drive prevented me from sampling more but I’ll be back!

We’re back at the Bird on the 1st and it’s always good fun down there!

To coin a phrase “what a long strange trip it’s been”….keep on trucking.

Ballyshannon here we come again!

So the cat is finally out of the bag, after cancellation and various rumours buzzing around on social media it’s official!

The Ballyshannon Blues festival is going ahead at the end of October and we are privileged to have been invited to play again this year. We’re not sure of the details yet but we’ll keep you posted.

It’s great to see new venues and clubs opening up and the Mardi Blues club at the Poole Hill Brerwery looks like a good one! It’s run by Sarah every Tuesday night and she is getting some class acts there so please, lend them your support. We’ll be there on Tuesday 20th August as well.

We’re really looking forward to a few festival gigs in August. We’ll be at Wickham 2nd and 3rd August(Twisted Tea Rooms 9pm Friday and Saturday night), Victorious (Twisted Tea Rooms, 7pm) and Honeyfest@thebarge, Pewsey, Headline Saturday 24th August. It would be good to see you there! don’t be afraid to came and say hello, we’re not as fierce as we sometimes look!

I’m melting……

Thank you to all of you who braved intense heat in Church Crookham. I don’t think I have ever played anywhere quite that hot before!

Thanks to Monica and Earle for inviting us and supporting us.

There’s some rather exciting news in the pipeline that we can’t share with you just yet. Watch this space.

See ya!

Farewell then Chris Harris…..

Y’all know Chris, he’s one of the most enthusiastic people in the local music scene and has inspired so many kids to take up an instrument and get out there. He’s off to Gibraltar so we were asked to play a short set at his farewell do.

What a great night!

We’d like to thank Chris and all at Quay West Studios for the great job that the crew did on the night.

Pictures will be up on the website soon.

Left to our own Devizes…..

What a gig! Devizes, we love you!

A hot and sweaty gig in a small but exquisite venue in the heart of the most beautiful countryside with, to be honest, a brilliant crowd and management who really know how to take care of the band. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s venues like this that are the absolute bedrock of live music in this country. Looking forward to seeing you all next time!

Just a quickie…….

Ok, stop sniggering…..Just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of our fans old and new at the Bird in Hand, you’re awesome!

Special thanks to Rad who presented Tom with a handmade strap all the way from Poland. A fantastic piece of work!

Check it out on our pictures page.

Onwards to Devizes tonight and the Southggate Inn which (I think) has got the same vibe as the Bird so should be good fun!

TTFN.

No Tambourines……sorry Gary.

Hi folks, we’re back!

It’s been a quiet month gig wise but we’ve still been busy.

This month we’ve been mostly recording a live EP, only five tracks but beautifully rendered with the wonderful engineering and mixing skills of Matt O’Donnell at Untapped Talent in Southampton (check it out at https://www.untappedtalent.co.uk/)

The idea was to attempt to capture the live sound of the band, with all that it entails. There are changes of tempo and other bits and pieces that may not be technically correct but that’s how we do it live, that’s what makes it real. Emotions can’t be quantised and don’t run to a click track or appear and disappear with pinpoint precision.

There were no ridiculous numbers of takes and no layering of guitars and vocals (apart from a few tasteful chords in Devil’s Highwater).

So, what you will be hearing are mostly first takes with very little in the way of studio magic applied, just a little EQ, compression and reverb.

It was great, the studio has a great booth for recording in isolation.

Although it was a bit of a squeeze fitting Gary and his kit in there, Matt’s skill with miking a kit (I think there were fourteen in total!) has captured the sound of Gary’s playing beautifully. All of the dynamics and nuances are there.

Tom was in the booth next and, like Clapton on the Bluesbreaker sessions, he just cranked up the Marshall and let it rip. He was mostly done on the first day and just wanted to go back to lay down the vocals and a couple of solos on the following day.

As for me, I got the bass down along with Gary’s drums.

We had enough time at the end to do a quick version of Too Much Whiskey, one of Tom’s acoustic tracks which has started to become a part of the live set with Si on upright bass.

We are also including One Last Try which Tom wrote and was originally recorded at Metropolis Studios in London. It’s been stripped back to guitars and vocals. Nice.

All in all we had a great time and really hope that you’ll have a listen and that it’ll take you back to a great night out that you had with us.

In other news…..June is looking pretty busy with five shows in two weeks including a farewell show for Chris Harris, a former mentor of Toms who is off to Gibraltar, in Gosport (have a look at Facebook for more info), and who was instrumental in getting us in to the Wickham Festival. Personally I’d like to thank him for the cups of tea that kept making their way to the stage during our shows…..

We’ll also be appearing at the Bird in Hand, The Southgate Inn, The Barge and The Platform Tavern. Check out the Gigs page or head over to our Facebook feed for more info.

Down to the Riverside…..

““Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.”. Neil Gaiman, Good Omens.

It certainly lived up to it yesterday as we trundled off to Gillingham and the Riverside Rhythm Club….anyway.

Let me tell you a story…..

Back at the dog end of October last year we had a chance encounter with a smartly dressed fellow outside a small pub in Ballyshannon, seemingly a million miles from that dreaded motorway of yesterday, and he liked what he heard. That was Andy Davies (no relation as far as we know!).

Last night we played to a small but perfectly formed crowd at the Riverside Rhythm club and had a really great time. Tom’s performance was, as usual, electrifying and there were many compliments for the rhythm section (without whom etc etc) too.

We’d like to thank Andy for making us really welcome and making us sandwiches too (delicious and much needed before the return journey!). Thanks to Chris for the sound.

Hopefully we’ll see you all again soon.

In the meantime we’re considering setting up a crowdfunder for a band helicopter, possibly a Chinook so we can get all our rig in, so that we can avoid the bloody M25…….

In other news….we’re in the studio next week. Watch this space!

It’s been a been a long time……

Time for an update!

So, since last time we’ve not been too busy……. Gary’s been on his holidays, ambling through the west country in a camper, Si has been recovering from a cruciate ligament injury received during an extremely perilous situation in Gosport (crossing the road whilst carrying an amp (don’t worry, the amp suffered no damage!)) and Tom has been playing and writing new material.

As well as all that stuff we had an absolute blast with Monica and Earl from Boogaloo Promotions (find them here https://www.boogaloopromotions.com/ ) at their new venue in Church Crookham and all of the good people who came to see us. What a great and friendly crowd! Can’t wait to get back to you soon!

Pictures and videos will be up here soon.

Thanks to Earl and Monica for their support!

In other news….

RECORDING: Yes indeed, we will be hitting the studio in May to start laying down tracks down for an EP, not sure what’s going to be on it yet or when it will be available. Watch this space!

IRELAND: Sadly, the Festival of Strings in Dublin at the end of May has been postponed. We’ll let you know about the new date and venue as soon as we can.

NEXT GIG: The Riverside Rhythm and Blues Club at the Glassbox in Gillingham is our next show on the 2nd May.

What you see on stage as a trio depends on so many people who you don’t ever see under the lights (you might see an arm appear from the wings with a guitar or a bottle of water occasionally) but without these people we wouldn’t be doing what we do.

So, huge thanks to John, Tracy, Ali and Zoe for all that you do to keep us on the rails and on the road!

TTFN

The devil went down to Devizes…

There’s a large hill just outside of Warminster, Cley Hill, which local legend says was dropped there by the devil who was actually on his way to drop it on Devizes. I’m not sure why he dropped it, perhaps it was too heavy, perhaps he was startled by a pheasant or had a momentary existential crisis and thought “What, actually, is the point of me dropping this rock on Devizes?”.

Well, his crisis was our gain as we dropped some rock (see what I did there?) on the good people at the Southgate Inn. What a great little venue, full of brilliant people and good beer! There’s some new pictures on the website and I am still waiting for the videos to come in of the landlord dancing…..if you want to hear the full joke about the dog, just ask.

So, a little break from the live work now until the end of April to allow us to get into the studio to begin work on an EP and do the stuff we do when we’re not living the full on rock and roll life…..garden’s a mess after the winter, car needs tyres and servicing……

See ya!

Where the music lives….

There are places around the country which, like the clusters in deep space where new stars are born, nurture and support new artists and new music. These grass roots venues are vital if live music is going to survive the onslaught of technology. We are lucky enough to play at a few of them and the Barge Inn at Honey Street down in Wiltshire is such a place.

We landed there a couple of years ago after a relative who lives down that way spotted that they needed a band at short notice (thanks Mandy!). We turned up the following night and played to a rapt packed house. We’ve been back a few times since and, to be honest, we love it. Lenny and his team always make us welcome and the crowd are brilliant!

We’ve also learned that when loading out it’s best to take a sharp right after going out of the door unless you want a dip in the Kennet and Avon canal….

Last Friday night we played there again and it was, as always, buzzing. The crowd were lively, Tom was on fire and improvising all over the place (the rhythm section love these un-rehearsed bits…..) and we all had a lot of fun before heading back over Salisbury Plain under starry skies to some well deserved rest.

So, our thanks go to Lenny for hosting us and to everyone at the Barge who made it such a great night

In other news……we have been invited to play at the prestigious Riverside Rhythm Club on the 2nd MAy 2024. Be good to see you there!

Tickets available via the link on our Gigs page

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR NEWS ABOUT A SHORT TOUR OF IRELAND

Going down……down, down, down to Swanage……

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside, especially when it’s full of blues fans and great musicians.

We went down to deepest darkest Dorset to play at the wonderful electric jam hosted by the ever enthusiastic and welcoming Robin Bibi and his band.

We only played a couple of numbers but what a reception!

You people are amazing, seriously, we need to perform a full show for you. Hopefully see you all in October, fingers crossed.

In the meantime head over to the video page have a look at the videos from the session where you’ll find snippets from The Thrill is Gone, Have You Ever Loved a Woman and Tom’s most excellent rendition of Crossroads with Robin and his band.

All of this followed by fish and chips on the beach. We know how to live in this band!

The Bird in Hand

What a night at the Bird. It was great to see all the old faces plus some new ones! Our thanks go to each and every one of you.

I was chatting with a couple of blokes who had made their way down the M27 to see us, first time at the Bird and they thought it was great too, just what pubs were like back in the day. All it needed was a haze of cigarette smoke….See you all again soon!

PS Gary: I have the picture……what’s it worth?

New set!

It’s been a busy few weeks for us.

We’ve been putting together a load of new songs and getting them rehearsed ready for their debut this coming Friday at the Bird (see next gig page for more info).

Tom played a few songs with Robin Bibi last week. Check out the videos!

Gary went not see the Pineapple Thief and, bizarrely, claimed that the drums were too loud? Really?

Si has been elusive……it’s a bass thing.

Welcome to our new home on the web!

It’s always difficult to know what to say at the start…..this blogging business is new to me so I’m not particularly sure what to write or how much detail to go into.

Anyway, welcome to our new website! It’s taken a little while to create but I think it reflects what the band is about as in no nonsense or unnecessary bells and whistles.

What I’d like to try and do is to give you a little insight into our world. You may only see us for an hour or two at a gig but there is so much more behind that. The hours of solo practice to perfect our individual parts, the lengthy rehearsals to bring those parts together and the work of those around the band (you know who you are!) who dedicate their time, enthusiasm and occasionally cash to get us out there to a venue near you.

So, I’m not going to waffle on too much this time as I have a hedonistic rock and roll life to get on with…….Sainsbury’s here I come.

Mind how you go..