Further developments into the world of Folk...

It's been 13 days since I last posted on here and alot has happened since then, so much in fact it's difficult to know where to start!

I think it's best to start in chronological order, so lets begin on the 11th January. A while ago I was contacted by Ian Bettridge, a third year student at Derby Uni, who needed to record for his final recording project. He asked us whether we'd like to record and of course we jumped at the chance. We travelled from Leicester to Derby on Monday 10th and stayed at my lovely student house where we chowed down on a brilliant curry with all the extras and lager, whilst watching Shameless, a good relaxing night before a day of hard work.

We were booked in the studio from 10am until 4pm, plenty of time to get recording, and so we got up at 9am and prepared to leave the house. Little did we know, whilst we were busy styling ourselves for a day of windowless, headphone wearing music making and eating our Weetabix, a traffic warden was already at work along the street and had clamped Sean's VW Golf!! It turned out that Sean's tax disk was out of date, a fact that we actually knew. To cut a long story short, Sean had been waiting for his tax disc to arrive for some time and actually had a reciept to say his car was taxed, however that didn't stop us being clamped and having to pay a fine of £260 to have the car realeased!!! This of course put us off schedule and so we left the car and made the 10 minute walk carrying our gear (luckily no amps or drums) arriving in the studio at about 10.45am.

From then on the day was very successful, we recorded 2 tracks, firstly we recorded 'Romeo and Juliet' as a multitrack recording, layering the different parts up, proving that the rehearsals we'd had payed off as we all knew what to play without any real problems. Whilst recording the harmonies we managed to get Sean singing, however Nick was suffering with a bad throat and so Ian kindly recorded the higher harmonies for him. After this, we recorded 'By The Water', as a live recording with us all in the same room surrounded by different microphones and sepreated by blue sound isolating boards! Overall the day was brilliant and we got some really good recording done, due to be avaliable soon. Thanks again to Ian Bettridge!

The tracks that where recorded can be found here at: www.soundcloud.com/davenportfolk

Following the recording, we came back to Leicester again and had a few days before playing at the Crumblin' Cookie's Unplugged 2 event. The Crumblin' Cookie is a small cafe/bar that as well as serving the usual beverages to the public, hosts all sorts of artistic nights, from Poetry Brothels to Comedy Nights and of course gigs. Although the venue hasn't been designed with a stage etc the atmosphere within the place is brilliant, with artists and audience mingling together amongst local art work on the walls. We really enjoyed playing here and the gig went well. We hadn't rehearsed as much and so there were moments between songs where we were deciding what to do next, however in this environment it seems almost like the right thing to do.

So, onwards and upwards again... We have our next gig tonight at The Academy at the University of Derby, as part of the student showcase. It's looking like it will be a good night with an audience into the hundreds, so a nerve racking experience but I'm sure we'll have fun! Also news from the OBS events!! Our performance in out heat was so good that we managed to get into the Finale on the 27th January!!

Our next big gig following tonight is The Gentle-Folk's Ball, a night which I have organised personally, so means quite alot. I have speant all week getting posters up in shops around Leicester and getting flyers out there, so now all we can do is hope that people come along, more on that in the next blog!

Thanks for reading!
Dan Wright

P.S Sean managed to contest the clamping sucessfully and get all £290 back, no mean feat!!


Hours So Far...

Planning & Promoting: 2hrs
Travelling: 4hrs 15mins
Rehearsing: 4hrs
Time at Gigs: 3hrs
Recording: 5hrs
Blogging: 1hr 30mins

Total: 19hrs 45 mins

Total so Far: 44hrs 15mins