That's What Friends Are For...

Hello avid readers...

It's been some time since I have written on here, indeed 19 days! I suppose 19 days isn't actually such a long time, however it feels like an age.

The return to university life has set in fully now after the Christmas break and February has seemed like a relatively quiet month for us as a band. Only two gigs booked in, and after last month's five it seems increadably slow paced. Being away from Nick and Sean in Leicester, presents us with difficulties in keeping the band up to date and ready for action, university work combined with the work we do in the band and keeping down a job to earn cash is sometimes quite a difficult juggling act. That said, we keep on rolling and February has been reasonably productive.

The first thing to mention would be the tracks that we received back from the recording we did in January. They sounded great, it was really nice to hear the tracks recorded in high quality, they have been posted onto our Myspace page and onto our new page on Soundcloud. These tracks have been produced well and really do sound great, however listening to them I think you can tell that they were recorded in a padded, no windowed space and that some of the character in the songs is lost. No disrespect to Ian who produced the tracks for us and did a fantastic job. This in mind, it has inspired us to try and set some time aside to record an EP. We'd like to be able to take our time recording in a different environment and experimenting so that we can produce an EP that shows the band to the best of our ability and quality. More on that as it happens though...

On the 15th February we played at The Vaults in Derby, a venue which we had never played before. It's a brilliantly interesting venue situated under the Slug and Lettuce on Iron Gate. As you emerge down the stairs you are met with the long arched ceiling, closely resembling the Cavern Club in Liverpool, with an atmosphere which longs to be packed out with sweaty audience members crammed in singing and dancing along.

With the gig being in Derby and two thirds of the band travelling up from Leicester logistically the gig was a bit of a nightmare. With Sean's car being on the fritz it was looking as though we may not be able to make the gig. However, being a true Scout I was determined not to let us miss one of the few slots we had in February, and so we decided if I could get hold of equiptment, Sean and Nick could come by train.

Firstly, we needed to obtain amplification! Fortunatly for me, being on a music course there was plenty of help at hand and so I asked Daniel 'Mole' Turner and Ross Labiak to borrow their amps and they obliged. (Thanks again!) Although this was an advantage, I was then met with another problem... transportation of the equipment the short distance from their houses to The Vaults. Being a very novice driver (Two lessons in fact) and not owning a car I again needed to call on the help of friends. In this case my housemate Olivia Ross came to the rescue, after promising her bribes (of which I still need to supply), It was agreed that Liv would drive me and the equipment to the Venue, I would set up and Nick and Sean would meet me there, where we would play. Simple!? Well almost...

Valentines day is one of those days which people either love or hate, being loved up and of that romantic disposition I was in high spirits and made my journey to Leicester to visit my lovely girlfriend. We had a wonderful night and then the following day (the day of the gig) the plan was to wait for Sam (the girl in question) to finish work and then acompanied by her head back to Derby in time for my Sound Technology Lecture and then the gig. Well public transport is not always the most reliable, and on this particular day it was in fact very not the most reliable! At about 3pm we set off (in the miserable rain and strong winds) to the bus stop in Leicester to try and get a bus to the train station. Only to find the bus stop with no timetable and when the bus arrived it drove straight past us with the driver giving a shrug of the shoulders to indicate they were full in a kind of 'what can you do, eh?' type of motion. Well, this was a slight turn up for the books and had knocked the schedule completely out of sync. By this time it was about 3.45 and so we headed into South Wigston, the nearby villiage town to try and get a taxi. Of course with the school run and the rain it was a catastrophy, feeling very damp and stressed we decided to take shelter in a cafe to re-assess the situation. Over a coffee, some Eggs New York (for me) and a Crepe (for the lady), We decided that we were deffianatly not going to be back in time for me to make the 5 O'clock lecture and so decided to wait until the 4.45pm train to Leicester station and then get the next train to Derby. On arrival at Leicester we discovered that the 5.09 train had been delayed! In the end we finally got a train and Arrived in Derby at 6.30pm, 15 minutes before we were supposed to collect the amps and 30 minutes before we were supposed to be at The Vaults. Needless to say we were late.

In the end, Nick and Sean arrived at about 8.00pm and we went on to play at about 10.15. This gig was the most informal we had played in a while and so we had fun playing a mixture of songs and even dabbling in a few old songs from our old bands set with James Brown's I Feel Good. We played until about 10.45pm and then cleared the stage and headed home. The gig was great fun, only a small crowd in there made up of the musicians from the PMMT course and friends.

After that adventure, we're now getting ready to play in Nottingham this coming monday. Luckily Sean's car is better and so we will have some transport, hopefully public transport won't let me down...

In other news, I have been organising the 2nd Gentle-Folks Ball, but we'll save that for a later blog.

Thanks for Reading
Dan

Hours So Far...

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

Total: 11hrs

Total so Far: 91hrs 50mins

Derby, The Donkey and the OBS Finale...

Hello, well it's been a while since I've posted a blog on here and again we've been very busy. In my last blog I mentioned that we were playing the Academy at the University of Derby in the Student Showcase that night (18th January 2011).

The gig that night was organised by Steve Faulkner, a student on the same Popular Music and Music Technology course that I study myself. The showcase consisted of a range of bands and artists and even a comedian who were all students from Derby or the surrounding area. On the day of the gig we travelled from Leicester to Derby in Sean's VW Golf, leaving out at around 3.00pm and arriving at my house in Derby at around 4.00pm. The showcase kicked off at 7.00pm so it gave us a couple of hours to eat, get ready and have a run through of some of the songs. After having a range of microwavable Italian meals and some garlic bread from the local Sainsbury's, we headed off to the SU, with me, a bass drum, a bass amp and an acoustic guitar on the back seat and the boot full with the remaining guitars, a mandolin and amplification required; needless to say the journey to the SU, although only short (10 mins), was not the most comfortable.

We arrived at the Kedlestone Road Campus at around 6.30pm and drove around to the back of the SU Bar and loaded in our equipment through the back doors before heading off to talk to the sound crew about our set time and requirements. Because of the simplicity of our band's line-up, we didnt have a sound check, but had a short line-check when we enbarked upon the stage. The evening opened with Sophie Mapplebeck playing to a fair sized crowd that kept on growing throughout her set. She was followed by Dan Quemby who we watched from the side of the stage whilst tuning up and preparing for our set. As Dan finished we were promptly on stage, set up and ready to play. We played a 30 minute set, that contained the usual 6 numbers, although we had been working on some new material, we didn't feel it was finished enough for us to perform on that night. The sound was good for us and the lighting was brilliant (being used to a few very hot lamps), however the size of the venue put us in a strange position. The venue was by far the largest we have played to date and it felt like it! Not being used to being so spread out,  it left me feeling a little vulnerable and so perhaps I didn't perform to the best of my ability. That said, the gig seemed to go down well with the crowd and overall it was a very enjoyable evening. The whole event was recorded and filmed so we should have some video files online soon and potentially a live EP.

The gig in Derby was follwed by our long anticipated Gentle-Folk's Ball on the 20th January! This night was a big night for us as a band and myself ad an organiser and promoter. The idea for the gig came from sometime in early December when I was looking or gigs for the band. I was put in contact with Gaz Birtles the man who organises the gigs at Leicester's Donkey venue. The venue has been around for a few years and has picked up a reputation as being Leicester's leading Folk, Blues, Ska and Alternative venue. The idea was to create an evening of Folk music that everyone would enjoy and that we would enjoy playing. After obtaining the venue I booked the bands for the night, originally I had in mind us, The Kirkland Turn, Thomas Shepherd and Charlotte Carpenter. After ringing around, Charlotte was already busy and so that left me with a slot for another artist preferably a female singer songwriter, to keep the bill varied. After posting a message on Facebook, Sophie Mapplebeck contacted me and said she was interested in playing the gig. I gave her the slot and had a full line-up. The next thing to organise was the promotions for the gig, I quickly got onto my computer and opened the Image Manipulation program Gimp to design a poster and some flyers which i printed on brown parcel paper and weathered card in order to keep a rustic folk style. The promotions soon began and we posted out flyers at gigs we played (The Crumblin Cookie and OBS) and I speant a day from about 2.00pm until 6.00pm in Leicester City centre wandering the streets to shops and cafes sticking up posters and leaving flyers.

With all that in motion the gig was set and ready to go, but then potential disaster struck. A few days before the gig was due, I had a call from Thomas Shephard to say he wasn't going to be able to make the gig!! This could have been a really bad let down for the night, however he didn't want to let me down and so organised for a friend of his, Adam Dunmoore to play. This absoloutly saved the evening and I would recomend to any band if you can't make a gig last minute get another artist to cover for you and you will save the organiser a lot of stress.

The overall expenses for the gig were for the sound man at the Donkey, costing us £50, with the £3 charge on the door we needed at least 17 people to break even. As the doors opened people began to turn up, at first friends and family, followed by friends of friends and then complete strangers. Possibly the highlight of the night for me was having people come along due to the hard work promoting the event on Facebook and in local listings and with posters and flyers. The night was a success as far as I'm concerned with over 50 people turning up in the end. Although not a hugely large number a very good start for a relatively unknown band on an unknown night. Our set went down well and we managed to reveal our new secret weapon, Trumpeter Craig Neale. Craig had been a follower of us for a while and a close friend of mine for some years. When the idea of aving a trumpet on some songs came about he seemed like the perfect person to ask. I set to work arranging the parts for 3 songs taking a good 10 hours with rehearsals. Eventually we managed 2 of the 3 songs live and Craig has continued to play with us on occasional gigs.

After the Gentle-Folks ball, it was time for my move back to Derby for the start of the university term. It wasn't long though before we had our final gig of January in Leicester. On the 27th January, we played in the OBS Finale, along with the best of the OBS Unplugged events throughout the month. It was a brilliant night of music again organised by Val McCoy. On this particular gig I was suffering a little from being over tierd. Foolishly I had partaken in a rather heavy night of drinking and dancing the night before follwed by a 9 O'clock lecture and then the journey back to Leicester. This was not a good combination!! Although I was feeling rough I managed to hold it together for the performance and really enjoyed the night. We played a new song that we had been working on called 'Nothing Wrong', which went down well and overall we played well, even incuding a bit of audience participation on the final song of our set 'Romeo and Juliet'  with the audience joining in with the 'My My My' in the chorus. We feel the night went brilliantly and now we await the results to find out if we get to play the Summer Sundae festival.

So overall, January has been the busiest month of the bands short lifetime. Onwards and Upwards to February where we have gigs in Derby and Nottingham and hopefully will get those recordings boxed up and labelled and out to the public :)

Thanks for reading!
Dan Wright

Hours So Far...

Planning & Promoting: 9hrs
Travelling: 2hrs 35mins
Rehearsing: 8hrs
Time at Gigs: 15hrs
Blogging: 2hrs

Total: 36hrs 35mins

Total so Far: 80hrs 50mins