THE COUNTDOWN IS ON!

Been a bit quiet on here again recently, so thought I would put fingers to keys to bring you up to date with what's been happening and, perhaps more importantly, what is coming up!

Most holidays are done and dusted - except, of course, for Dave who is currently cruising the Caribbean and not due back for another couple of weeks! Hugh, Chrissie and Paul have all managed to get a bit of sun on their backs over the last few weeks but, of course, the good old British spring has managed to erase most of those memories! There's a few more in the pipeline in the near future, but plenty more fish to fry before then!

 

Gig update - since the last musings on here, we've played 4 gigs - all different in their own way, but all great fun!

• First up was The Old Millstone in Macclesfield; we'd not played there for a while, and it has changed hands recently. Sean has got a good music scene going there now, and it was great to play to a full house - "The most we've had in for one band!" to quote mein host! I'm sure we'll be back there soon!
• The following weekend, we took the tour bus (i.e. the dirty white brewery van), and several cars down to the wilds of Hertfordshire to play at our old friend Tim's 40th birthday party! Tim kindly put the band (and partners) up in a local hotel, and took over his local pub completely for the event, so it was always going to be a good weekend! Picture the scene; 150 people, running buffet and a free bar for the whole evening.........it didn't get too messy, but we all had a fantastic time! Quote of the night was from Tim himself "For my 40th birthday, all I ever wanted was this band in this pub!" Some may say he's easily pleased (or in need of psychiatric care!), but we took it as a compliment, and it was great to see he was standing and reasonably coherent when we went to say goodbye early the next morning.
• The next leg of our national tour took us to Wilmslow! Vicky and Adrian's wedding went off really well, and we wanted to kidnap Steve, the resident DJ at Stanneylands, because he gave us such a great build up and introduction, it felt like we were going on stage at Glastonbury! The only downside of the evening was that the event was in the upstairs suite so lugging all the gear up at the start of the evening and (even worse) down at the end of the evening was a pain - little did we know that this was to become a trend!
 
• And so to last Saturday! We've been putting together our set for the Macc Beer Festival (more of that later), and thought it would be good to "road test" some of it in public beforehand! Dom and John from the newest music venue in Macclesfield - Cabin 5150 were good enough to offer their premises for this, so we duly pencilled in last Saturday for the gig. The Cabin has rapidly developed a reputation for putting on high quality performances from talented performers with their own material, so we weren't too sure how a dreary old covers band would go down; well - we had nothing to worry about!! Once we'd lugged all the gear up yet another 2 sets of stairs (what's wrong with the ground floor?!), and endured a somewhat protracted set up and sound check, we kicked off at 9:30 in front of a full house, who became progressively more animated as the evening went on! Great venue, great crowd and the new songs went down well - all in all, a fantastic night, and many thanks to Dom et al for having us;  I think we proved how good music should be played, and we hope to be back soon!!

Next stop is the Beer Festival - Friday 10 May is the date for your diary (if you don't already have it in). The Great Escape will be kicking things off around 8:15, and we'll be on stage from 10:00 to take things through to a mighty crescendo just before midnight! Further information and tickets can be obtained from the Beer Festival website - all we would say is get them soon, because Friday night tickets sell out notoriously quickly! If you don't want to buy tickets online, there is also a list on the website (and on the poster on the left!) of local hostelries selling tickets.