Live streamed gig!

Tonight I''m playing a live streamed gig at The Songwriter's Cafe, The Tree House in Kings Norton. You can listen to the whole show online here from 8:30pm. Let me know if you get chance to listen in and how you think it went!

Codfest 2014

Well the biggest day of the year has been and gone.

For all the headaches I had regarding, well, almost every aspect of the planning of the festival, from bands dropping out, splitting up or turning down slots to licence issues and field disputes, Codfest 5 still delivered an even bigger and better day than any of the 4 previous years. Every year I get to this point and think 'how can we possibly improve on that' and every year we somehow manage it.

The line up was absolutely superb. All the acts performed superbly and I'm especially pleased that the guys who play at a lot of festivals (Gaz Brookfield, Neil Morris, Under a Banner et al) all stated how much they had enjoyed it. I'm also pleased that the line up went down so well with the punters because; A- The audience probably isn't your normal 'festival' crowd and B- I worked really hard on the line up for a long time. I had a lot of acts apply to play and when I was struggling for acts I could have put someone in there who I wasn't really sure of just to fill up the numbers, but I stuck to my guns and made sure I was happy with every one of the acts, and so it's great that every one of them delivered to such a high standard and got such a good reaction.

From a personal point of view I was really happy with my own performance too, both solo and with The Replicas. I can't believe so many people filled the tent for my set! I mean, I know I have a lot of friends there, but it was still really nice to see so many people listening and singing along. I even sold a couple of T-shirts!

T-shirts are here!

I'm delighted to announce the launch of my official T-shirt range. Each one is hand printed by me, so get your order in today and send me a message with what colour you would like. Exciting times!

In other news, I'm right in the middle of festival season, the best time of the year. Last weekend I had a great time at the world famous Llangollen Faery Festival, and now I'm gearing up to this weekend at Bakewell Music Festival! See you there!

Another DIY adventure

A week or so ago I had a bash at screen printing on fabric for the first time and it went really well! So well in fact that I'm going to be releasing some T-shirts in my online store really soon!

I always think that white band shirts are pretty boring. I know they are cheaper when you are buying a large amount of them, so I can totally understand why people go for them. I just don't really like them. The good news is that, as I'm printing mine myself, I can go for whatever colour shirts I can get hold of! But what colour would you guys like? You can answer that question by contacting me on Facebook (or by email if Facebook isn't your thing). I'd really like some help on this one, so your input would be greatly appreciated.

Let me know what you think :)

New Video and a debut!

A new video has landed and I'm excited about it! Not only is it a cover of a great song from a great film, but also it's the first appearance on YouTube of my wife, Kayla.

The song is called 'Falling Slowly' by The Swell Season and is from the film 'Once'. It's great film that I urge you to check out if you haven't seen it already. It was on BBC a few weeks ago late at night and I couldn't help but watch it all, and that's when I got the idea for us to cover this song for the latest round of the BH covers challenge.

As always, let me know what you think of it :)

Nostalgia

Today I uploaded a new page to my website, my 'Biography'. As it says on the page, I wanted it to be more than just a 300 character assessment of my sound and influences, but rather a story of how I got to where I am today. I'll be revisiting it over time to keep it sort of up to date and maybe add more detail, though I want it to be a bio, not an autobiography!

And just as it was uploaded and I finished testing it, I got a message from The Shrewsbury Arms offering me a gig. For those who don't know, this is the pub I used to practice in with my first even remotely serious band 'Too Shrewd', so to go back will be a great experience for me. I'm sure it's changed a lot since then, but it will still be nice. There is a bit more about Too Shrewd in the aforementioned 'Bio' page of my website.

Now that I think about it, my first experience of guerrilla recording was Too Shrewd's demo made in the back room at that pub! I've still got the CD knocking around somewhere. Legend has it that a copy of that recording was submitted into a jukebox in a random pub/bar in Hamburg after the rhythm guitarist left the band to go and work over there. So if you ever hear a version of 'A Little Respect', 'Wishing Well' or 'She Sells Sanctuary' that's not (quite) like the original while on your holidays in Germany, listen out for the bass part and then let me know!

Facebook vs. Twitter

It seems this Vs. thing could become a theme for my blogs. Recently I've been looking at overwhelmingly one sided arguments on the subject of 'what's better for musicians: Twitter or Facebook?'

I say one sided because they all draw the same conclusion; Twitter is better. It all really boils down to this hugely unpopular facebook reach algorithm thing, where you only actually see around 5% of the posts from a facebook page unless they pay to have that percentage raised. The comment section arguments always seem to split into tribal factions around this point, with some people complaining that 'musicians always want something for nothing' and the other side arguing that Facebook moved it's 'free and always will be' goalposts in order to make money with no warning or time given to adapt. I would argue that everyone really wants something for nothing (isn't that what destroyed/continues to destroy the music industries established model?) But also rich people will often (notice I said often and not always) be greedy and when they see an opportunity to make vast amounts of money they will take it. I'll openly admit to thinking the Facebook pages thing would be great forever and so neglected to build my mailing list (as every good little musician should), so have been stung by this. Am I upset about it? Not really. 'The rich will get richer'. Now the young have to get wiser.

Get wiser and start using Twitter more, it seems.

Oh, and it's @samdraisey, if you're interested :)