Charity Christmas Album 2014

So, the launch was a really fun night! Thank you to all those who came down and an equally as big thank you to all the great acts that played. You really put on a great show!

The Charity Christmas Album is now out and available from my online store. Get yours now for just £5. This year's chosen charity is the British Heart Foundation. I'm sure you will agree it's a hugely worthy cause.

There are 6 tracks on the album this year. Mine is a duet with my wife Kayla and I think it's the first time she has sung on a record (it won't be the last; trust me!). There are also great songs from Christmas Album new-boys Brains For Breakfast and Josh Briggs. Those of you who were at the Oxygen Thief gig earlier in the year will remember Josh I'm sure. He blew us all away that night and his Christmas song is a lovely little reminder of everything we love about Christmas. 'Brains' is a long-time friend of mine whom I have gigged with loads and I had great fun recording his track with him. It's also ace, by the way.

Alongside the new guys are Christmas Album stalwarts Natch and Dom Malin, but excelling once again within their own individual styles, showing that, as always, the Christmas Album is a hugely diverse release and always has something for everyone. I love this about the albums, that not only do they catalogue some of the artists I've worked with during the year, but also show how diverse they are and how Christmas can mean so many different things to so many different people.

We also have a re-released track on the album from Bryony Williams. After debuting on last years Christmas Album with her song 'Christmas Time' (now entitled 'Don't Feel Like You're On Your Own') she went away and re-recorded it, adding extra instruments and depth to the sound. Why don't you compare the two and let me (or her) know which one you like the best.

Anyways, my new show is at The Fox & Anchor on Sunday. If you don't want to buy one online, come and get a Christmas Album from me then. It starts at 7:30.

Christmas Party!

You have have seen me banging on about this for a few weeks on social media, but I thought I would put an update on here as it's only a few days away! I'm really pleased with the line up for this year's Christmas party and hopeful that people will come out and enjoy it.

Just in case you missed it, here is the poster;

You might have seen these around the village.

I've got a lot of work left to get it finished, but I should be releasing this year's Charity Christmas Album on the night too. It's a little bit light this year, but it's still got some great tunes from some of my favourite local artists

See you on Saturday.

Exposure: another dirty word?

I've just seen this article from The Daily Mash pop up on Facebook and it got me thinking about playing for free.

It's very tongue-in-cheek, as everything for their website is, but it raises a valid point about playing, and asking others to play for this myth of 'exposure'.

'Exposure' is word that plagues hard working musicians everywhere. I see gig adverts all the time that all say the same thing; 'we can't pay you, but you will get exposure to a new audience'. That's all well and good if you know there are going to be a lot of people there who have never seen you before. I played at half time at a Wolves match last season for exposure to over 26,000 people (if you measure 'exposure' purely in terms of Facebook 'likes', I still only gained about 15 new 'likes' directly from that gig). I've also taken support gigs for more established artists who play similar styles to me because playing to an audience that enjoy similar music to mine is good 'exposure' for me and my music. These gigs were also great fun and in the case of the latter I've often sold more than my fair share of merchandise to cover the costs.

My main problem with this comes from the idea that all gigs are like this, that all gigs have masses of people attending who are all fans of the sort of thing you are doing and want to hear music that is new to them. We all know that this isn't the case and that actually most of the time you end up playing to an empty room and getting evil looks from the promoter for not bringing anyone with you. 'Why would I need to to re-expose myself to people who are already my fans?' I hear you ask. 'Surely if I was just going to play to my friends and fans, I would just put on my own show'. Well that's because in reality there is no 'exposure' on offer. It's just a buzzword used to mean 'the venue/promoter is doing this on the cheap and lazy and so can't/won't pay you'. I've ranted on this blog about promoters like this in the past so won't go into it again, but if you fancy a chat about it you can find the original post here.

I don't want to fall into the trap of this becoming another 'poor, down-trodden musicians' post where I sanctimoniously go on and on about how musicians don't get paid enough and it's all so terrible. I put on open mic nights myself where other musicians don't get paid to play. I get both professionals and people who just do it for the love of it play at them and they do it for a variety of reasons. I guess what I'm really getting at is that real, genuine exposure to an engaged audience of people who like the style of music you play, regardless of how big that audience is, is vital to musicians at almost all levels. My issue is that that, in the majority of cases, this is simply not what is on offer.

If you want to see me 'exposing myself' (in a musical way...) I'm hosting open mic at The Rainbow in Coven tomorrow night (Wednesday 29th October) from 8:30. See you there :)

Update

Ok, so we've established I'm rubbish at updating my blog...

I'm currently sat at a gig in Wednesbury (I'm posting in between acts, I'm not a prick!) and I thought I would write a quick update about what I've been up to recently.

I've decided I'm not playing live enough. At least not as much as I used to. So for the second Thursday in a row I'm at SOMEONE ELSE'S open mic! This time it's The Roost in Wednesbury hosted by David Young (check him and his band, The Midnight Chorus out). Needless to say I'm really enjoying playing to new people and seeing new and old friends play.

Any open mic nights going on near you? Let me know and I'll come down one of the nights :)

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!