Beards Create Better Bands?

Another fun-packed weekend was had. The gig with Dry the River/The Bronze Medal and Andrew Oliveri was great fun and we met so many awesome people.

There were more beards in the room then there were at the last supper. We played with the Bronze Medal last year in London and it seems they have upped their game. I remember thinking that they were fantastic back then, but now they really are in another league – that’s music league, although I’d be forgiven by thinking they’d topped the league of bands with the most facial hair. There seems to be a correlation between beards and good music at the moment. In our case the beard growing will probably need to fall to me, as Dan and Jamie can barely grow bumfluff. I’ll let you know how it comes along.

Firstly, on a serious note we’d like to thank you so much to Lyndsey at Gotherini promotions for not only putting on a great night, but for booking us! The gig itself was our favourite yet. Cheltenhamers are such a great, music-hungry bunch of people. The gig was so packed – so thanks for coming down everyone and for giving our music a chance to get to your ears! It was a busy week last week and me and Dan had stayed up for hours on the Friday making 20 unique EP’s to give away. By ‘Unique’ I mean ‘Uniquely unattractive’ – as we did our own artwork. We may be able to write half decent music – but let me tell you, drawn art is certainly not our forte. The effort was there and I think in the most, punters thought our poor attempt at home-made art was quite endearing (thank god). Thanks to those who took a CD and subsequently thanked us for it – it was indeed nice to see our hard work paid off and our music getting into the hands of people who really appreciate it!

So, I’d like to announce that we are going to keep providing you with these sh**y little CD’s and for the remainder of this week we are going to make a ton more for next weekend’s gig at the Vic in Swindon. This time, we will put different tracks on, so they’re going to work like a collector’s item. All we ask is that you don’t leave them on the floor at gigs. This is our worst nightmare. Why not hand it to a homeless guy? Or sell it for peanuts on ebay? As long as we ‘think’ you like them, we will be happy!

Just another little mention for one of our favourite artists at the moment – Andy Oliveri. The BEARDED (I rest my case), folk genius played with us Saturday night and may I just add what a pleasure it is to play on the same bill as him. Andy created a new way of gauging the audiences’ reaction to his music via a thumbs up and thumbs down approach. Clever tactics and no one pointed their thumb even partially downwards , a safe bet everyone loved him (obviously).

Dry the River were also particularly awesome, with plenty of sweeping vocal harmonies sung through hair covered mouths…such an incredible band to have the pleasure to play with.

The gig this Friday at the Victoria, Swindon is promising to be a gooden again. Back in the hometown, it should be a busy night, full of old friends, booze and sticky venue floors. We will be playing full band once again, with the addition of a new cover song we are yet to unveil. We’re hoping that when we play it, we’ll get a bit of knee bending from the crowd. One can hope.

In other news, this wrist is getting even better. Someone drew an angry bird on my cast, so that’s good. It certainly makes me feel better anyway.

Apparently I look a bit like an angry bird too.

Peace.

Broken wrists, Square-mouthed Smileys and Dry The River gig

Okay, so it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, firstly I apologize for this, I do however have a good excuse backed up by a broken wrist via an unfortunate rollerblading accident. This has thus prevented me from typing effectively, not to mention that playing the guitar is next to impossible. I have some serious guitar playing absence anxiety issues, which I may need to see a therapist about – I will write a song about this incident in due course, to make up for the time I’ve spent in the last 2 weeks feeling sorry for myself.

I was going to ask Dan to write a blog, but it probably would’ve contained a lot of toilet humour, silly smiley faces with a square mouths :]  and would contain plenty of moronic terminology like ‘Safe Rudebox’ and ‘Siiiiiick’… so instead, I left him to his pork pies and he was happy.

Finally it seems that my wrist is healing and  I have started writing again, with the help of a midi keyboard and nothing else. All the recent recordings sound like a polyphonic ringtone, but once I can bend my wrist again, I will hopefully make them into something half decent. I am also happy to announce another face in the Old Colours clan. A very talented guy that goes by the name of ‘Loic Wall’. He will be playing my guitar parts for the upcoming shows. My only fear is that he is a better guitarist than me, so I may be out of a job which sucks.

Other news is that we have been on tour, nothing too fancy, just a little visit to the deep south that is St. Ives, Cornwall. There’s something about the Cornish countryside that makes us want to write big sweeping tunes…so do expect plenty of new tracks of that elk to be appearing soon.

In addition, I’m in the process of editing a video which I hope to release in the next couple of weeks. It contains footage mainly of the pretty Cornish scenery with a few sand castles, a patch of grass and some sand. But this was all filmed on my 8mm camera Iphone app – and everyone knows that makes everything look arty and cool.

We have a really exciting Gig coming up this weekend. It’s our Dry the River support slot at the Frog and Fiddle in Cheltenham, where I expect lots of beards and Strongbow cans chilling in a freezer. It’s going to be such an awesome night of music…with Sir Andy Oliveri and the Bronze Medal. I think I’m  due to write a blog very soon about the Cheltenham music scene, as we have grown to love it so much – as well as the people there.

Come on down if you like – please fly us an email if you’d like a ticket reserved as they are flying very fast.

See ya’ll soon.

[DO NOT insert Square mouthed smiley here]

Dry the River, Gigs, Slovakian Fans and our New Tracks

I would firstly like to announce that Dan is Pregnant. So congratulations to him.

Also, we are supporting ‘Dry the River’ at Cheltenham’s ‘Frog and Fiddle’ on the 16th June. I’ve been a fan of this band for a while now, since I saw them last year at Southsea Fest. I remember meeting the lead singer after his miraculous set and through beer-influenced words telling him that I enjoyed it. I’m not sure what kind of impression I made. All I remember was that he looked slightly afraid and he nervously pushed some random buttons of a nearby fruit machine whilst he thanked me for my compliment.

It will be a grand gig and I must say. We are happy to be making a return to the Cheltenham scene. Its packed full of incredible talent and awesome people. For one, we’re playing with Mr ‘Andy Oliveri’, a Chelt-native, whom we have known ever since we first played the Frog around a year ago. He is not only a fantastic performer and incredible songwriter, but he has become a very good friend of ours. We are privileged` to be sharing the bill with him. Also, a band who have been making quite a bit of noise on the music radar as of late, ‘The Bronze Medal’ are also playing – I’m looking forward to hearing their stuff live – especially their track ‘Milk’ – there are some good sounds there I feel.

We have been booking ourselves up gig-wise (no holiday jolly for me this summer then). Other gigs include, a gig at ‘Roundhouse Rising’, Camden and also in June, headline gig for our towns local festival ‘The Big Arts Day’ (Swindon). Please check out our gig listings for full details and to avoid simply trusting my unreliable scrawl to be truth.

In other news, we were reviewed quite randomly by a Slovakian blog. After translating the abstract through google translate we were unable to work out exactly what they were saying, but I think; ‘Their music is extremely catching and pleasing myself’ means something quite positive – so I’ll take that. If any of you speak Slovakian, please feel free to enlighten us. You can find the review here:

Hudebni blog

Also, we have just come out of the studio after recording 2 brand new tracks. They’re currently being sent off for mastering and should pop up on here sometime very soon.

Finally, I have a box of watermelon flavored Nerds. Anything water melon flavored is good in my view.

Peace.