Another new live video!

I'm trying to make an effort to record and upload more 'content' (Christ I hate that word). I doubt anyone would want to see a video of me just talking about my day and pretending a million exciting things are happening right now with my music, so it's taking the form of more live videos from cool gigs I'm playing this summer. Here's another from Banstock, a festival quite literally a stones throw from my house (if my aim was better).

Hope you like it :)

(Disclaimer: It's not that I'm not doing anything with music, quite the opposite, I just get a bit jaded by supposed 'music industry experts' constantly pushing that you need to be doing Facebook Live videos every time you cook your tea or pack up your car for a gig. I'm busy with gigs, with merchandise making for myself and other people and general musical work. I post about it on various social media platforms on a semi regular basis. I'm just not going to video everything I do for the internet.)

New Live Video

Check out the new live video of 'Used to be my Hero' live from Lechlade festival  (25/5/18). It's a cool festival and you should check it out :)

Halfway through this song Buddy ran up to the stage and stole my drink! I'm being forever upstaged by him nowadays!

Another cool fact; because the headliner for the stage I was playing on never showed up, I technically headlined my first ever music festival stage on Friday night. It's a technicality, but it's still cool!

Brand new live video.

Check out the live video of 'The Day That I Was Meant to Die' from Codfest 7. If you want to see the band in action, get your tickets for our upcoming show at The Robin 2 with The Arrangements, Alex Vann and Dominic Malin here.

Codfest week!

Codfest week is here! 

It's the busiest week of the year for me, rushing around setting up and making sure everything is going to plan. It will all be worth it in the end, I'm sure!

First though I've got the small matter of The Wharf bar open mic night tonight from 8. Come down if you're free.

Sunday is another great free session at The Fox & Anchor too, so don't miss out on that!

See you in the week.

Sam.

a weekend of festivals!

 

Another mega exciting week!

Tuesday is open mic at The Wharf. If any of my muso friends fancy it I can give you a lift, so why not come down and play some tunes? Depending on what time I finish I might head over to the songwriters' night at The White Lion too.

Saturday sees me return to one of my favourite gigs from last year, Music in the Valley at Habberley Valley Nature Reserve for Kidderminster Arts Festival. It's a cool 'semi' unplugged gig out in a clearing at the nature reserve, so bring a blanket to sit on a enjoy it :)

Two gigs on Sunday! First it's a morning trip to The Legendary Llangollen Faery Festival (Kayla has already bought Buddy's faery wings in preparation!) before heading back to The Crown, Codsall for my first gig there since it re-opened. Im hoping to put on some music sessions there in the coming months similar to the sessions at The Fox & Anchor, so it would be great to see you there showing your support :)

See you in the week :)

 

Sam.

11/07/2016

 

Some cool gigs coing up this week.

After having to call in sick last week (massive thanks to Craig Pate for covering for me at the very last minute!) I'll be back at The Wharf in Walsall for open mic on Tuesday from 8pm. As always, everyone is welcome to come down and show their stuff!

Then on Sunday I'm returning to Brewood Music Festival. Two years ago I compered with local hero Will Morgan, but this year I've gotr my own slot on the main stage at 4:20. It's always really well attended, and I'm looking forward to playing. I'm also looking forward to seeing Pete Kent play again!

See you there!

New gigs!

January is always a month of change for me. Quite often it's the month where, if a recurring gig is going to get cancelled, it will get cancelled. This January was not without its victims as the open mic night at The Rainbow and the winter nights at The Fox & Anchor both bit the dust. It's sad, but I do understand that January is often a lean month for pubs and they have to make hard decisions. At the moment it does look like I will still be back at The Fox & Anchor in the summer. I'll keep you informed about that.

The good news is that two new venues have come in to replace the two on the way out. The first is The Grain Store in Wolverhampton.

The usual host there is a guy named Andy Turner, who I worked with a few times last year (see my last blog post where I ran through the gigs I did in 2014). I guest hosted there over Christmas while he was away and he has asked me to help him out once a month. I won't always be playing, but I will be hosting what looks like the third(ish) Tuesday of every month there. I'm hosting next week's gig, if anyone fancies coming down and saying hi.

The second gig that I've started running came a bit more out of the blue. After getting a request for a covers band come in to The Replicas email account we booked a gig at The Plough in Trysull (it's on Friday the 6th of February and is free entry, if you're around). While another member of the band was on the phone to the landlord of the pub he happened to mention that they were looking to start an open mic night and perhaps run a music festival in May. Dan (from The Replicas) sent me a message telling me to get in touch so I arranged a meeting last week and went over to speak to them.

The result was a fortnightly new open mic night on a Thursday night from the 12th of February. I'm looking forward to playing in a new venue. We are also discussing the idea of putting the festival on during the May bank holiday weekend. The owners there seem really up for it, so it should be a lot of fun!

Outside of gig bookings I have been working on guide tracks for the new album ready for the drum and percussion parts to be recorded. I'm starting to get excited about these songs coming together now!

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!

Codfest 4

Codfest kind of deserves a blog post all to itself, so here goes...

For the uninitiated, Codfest is the yearly festival that I help to organise along with a small group of my family and friends. Naturally, the musical side of things falls to me, which includes booking the line up for two stages and running those stages both technically and organizationally as well as performing myself and doing other bits and bobs as and when I'm needed. I think its fair to say it's the longest working day of my year, but also one of the most enjoyable.

This year's Codfest was no exception. With over 600 people in attendance, the crowd was great the whole day, and the talent on show was superb. Its great to be able to showcase the talents of my friends (and also nice to sneak myself and my band onto a bill with such great musicians!) and just generally great to be involved in such a friendly and fun event. It really is life affirming!

I must say a HUGE thank you to my good friend Tim Douglas, who came down to run sound for us, and even bought a stupendously nice mixing desk for the main stage (I'll only drop the name of it if Behringer agree to give me a free one for the advertising, ha!). If you ever need a freelance sound engineer, I can't recommend him highly enough :)

The festival was superb, and it also kicked off a run of a Replicas gig every Saturday night throughout September, which I just know is going to be fun. I know I say it a lot, but I really do love my job!

Crowd-funding?

Since my last blog post I have played a number of decent gigs, with the most noticeable thing being that my CDs have continued to sell well. I played at The Old Stags Head in Penn a few weeks back to an audience of friends and family. It was really nice to see so many people I knew come out for one of my gigs. I know I play a lot so it's a big ask to get people to come out to multiple shows (this is one of the main reasons I don't play ticketed gigs at the moment), but it was really great to see everyone. From there I had a 'best of both worlds' gig the following day at a wedding in Ludlow, where I played solo during the wedding breakfast, then later on with The Replicas.

Last weekend I was back at Worcester Music Festival, once again playing for Lisa Nash of Sun & Stars Management at The Horn & Trumpet. The gig, and indeed the whole day/evening went really well. Considering there are 30 venues around the city all playing live music the venue was pretty full, and the crowd were really appreciative. I sold a good few CDs and make some more friends. I also met up with my good friend Andy 'Brains For Breakfast' Webster, and stayed for his set later that evening. Check him out, he is ace!

I had the quarterly magazine from the Musician's Union come through last week and the main article was on the pros on crowd-funding services like Pledge music and Kickstarter. After reading the article I posted on Facebook about it and got some interesting responses. It seems that the vast majority of success stories are artists who have been signed to a major label or subsidiary label in the past and either left or been dropped, and have subsequently started up profitable crowd-funding campaigns for new albums or tours. That's great for them, but it doesn't really help me and artists like me and doesn't really fit the bill that crowd-funding is being pushed as; funding for independent and start-up musicians. Because these guys have already had major label backing in the past, they have already had a large media machine tell everyone who they are and what they do and most importantly, they already have a relatively large and solid fanbase.

I'm not moaning, far from it. I'm glad that this idea can be used as a safety net to catch great acts who can't stay on a label contract for financial or creative reasons. But for an independent musician who has a modest fanbase, is it all just a little bit cheeky?

Another interesting point is that, with someone pledging a sizeable amount of money to your next album project, at what point are they not a creative investor? It could be argued that someone who invests their money in your recording process, rather than just buying your finished album because they like it deserves a say in how that album ends up looking and sounding. You could technically end up with thousands of producers, and you can't possibly please them all!

 

What do you think of crowd-funding? Drop me a comment or message on this post, or anywhere else you know how to get in touch, and let's have a chat about it.