Back from Tour. Sore Throat.

Greetings good people.

We are now officially back from tour and it has been a roller-coaster couple of weeks, filled with beer, beautiful people, best friends and bloody good times. We made a little tour vid, which you can watch HERE.

Also, before I start and forget – you can see a live video of us performing pretty much most of our set on our home leg of the tour – Swindon. Watch it HERE.

We kicked off at Four Bars Cardiff and what a delight the music scene was there. Our support band @FirewoodIsland were spectacular – really do go and check them out, not only were they incredible, they were also flippin nice people too.

We got well looked after by @Bluebox promotions and @Fizzievents – the guys were awesome, it was like being one big, happy musical-loving family for one night – plus we got endless Twix bars on our Rider – so I was overjoyed (naturally). The night ended with Dan and our friend Josh in their underwear. Unsure how this happened, it was an interesting night.

Next stop was Bristol @thecanteen, with an equally great evening. Props to our new friend and sound guy, Ben. What a legend – I’m sorry Ben for putting my face in your food.

Swindon was amazing! We cannot thank enough our wonderful friends plus the other awesome new friends we made for coming down. I’m gutted however, this was certainly  my big chance to stage dive into a trusty crowd, but unfortunately I was wearing a skirt and no one wants to see that. From now on I will wear a pair of tracksuit bottoms under any dress. Adidas Poppers, 3 stripe, Orange.

Support came from great local artist @BillyJon and the immense Oxford-based, soundscape swirling band @TheSeaTheSeaHQ. What an utterly grand night, complete with non-existent flesh coloured boxer shorts and an unfortunate lunging incident.

Salisbury, OH SALISBURY, You guys never fail to amaze and astound us. Never have we felt so loved. As soon as we turned up at the venue, we were greeted by some friendly faces and the warmest west-country welcome ever! The people of Salisbury seem to know the lyrics to our songs better then we do, and when we came to play ‘Hannah’, I scarcely had to     sing. Made my job pretty easy to be honest. We cannot wait to venture back the @Themusicbox soon!

Finally Friday was a little more hipster, a little more drunk and equally as fun! Dublin Castle is an uber cool venue and so many of you loverrrly people came down to see us and then Sunday we hit Bristol once again for the Harbourside festival.

Hungover, but equally as pumped, we hit the stage down near Thekla. It was great playing in front of a brand new crowd of people – thank you too to the wonderful sound dude, the festival was wonderfully organised and we had a great day!

Yesterday we arrived back from the final leg of our tour; Fieldview festival. We were more than privileged to play the greatest and last ever festival in Little Somerford. We had an absolute blast of a weekend with our friends @Britishharlem, @Colourtheatlas, @thecadburysisters and @tothemoonmusic. My personal favourite moment was Ben Altieri (of British Harlem) commanding the audience into a circle to climax his amazing set – then Andy Vincent (Colour the Atlas) showing off his ridiculous, but let’s be honest, extremely impressive ‘Worm’ dance skills in the centre. It was an incredible weekend, sewn up by BBC Introducing Gloucester, bringing us together with other local bands for a live session, interviews and acoustic performances. We’re gutted that this is the last ever festival and are thankful to the organisers for enriching our lives for the last 7 years with not only one of the most unique festival experiences, but one of the most well-organised ones too!

So that’s the last of my mushy stuff. I’m still a little hungover and frankly would much rather be sitting in-front of the box watching re-runs of Fraser, eating onion rings than typing on this blog right now. So I will leave you.

But before I do, a quick update of our plans for the next few months. We are writing our new EP, planning a winter release with a tour! Also, I am putting my head down with Jamie to think of new ways to put our Old Colours message out there. I’m thinking something a little bit Guerrilla, but trust me, this will be good once I get my creative brain into gear. All unsigned bands will know that creating music you are proud of is one thing, but actually getting it out there to the wider market – well that’s the tricky part.

I will let you know how I get on.

GOD BLESS UNSIGNED MUSIC.

Peace.

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.

Old Colours Launch gig: 25th March 2012

What an awesome weekend!

I must admit, we had cut it a little bit fine to practice for our first gig. Six brand new songs and 2 brand new musicians can be a little daunting when you give yourself about 24-hours to prepare for a gig! Driving down to Swindon Saturday afternoon was a little bit tense and we hadn’t eaten all day -mainly out of laziness, partially out of lack of resources. After a quick visit to McDonald’s drive-through, we were feeling a little better.

As we got to the venue, we were greeted by a few familiar faces from the good ol’ Swindon music scene. I have to holler at my buddy Rich Millin – back from Berlin for a few weeks – what a pleasure it was to see your face!  Charlie Bath and her new band ‘The City Marshalls’ along with Matilda were our support and it was not only a pleasure to watch them perform, but also grand to catch up with the lovely people!

We opened the set with a pretty nervous bit of banter, whereby myself and Dan thanked everyone for coming about 5 times consecutively…then Eth brought up the fact that Swindon Town had lost earlier that day (probably not the best way to win over the crowd). After that, we whizzed through the set – keeping the speaking to a minimum, sticking to thank you’s and the standard: ‘this next song is xxx’.

It seemed to go pretty well. I saw a few feet tapping, which in my book, is always a good sign and in addition to this, we were absolutely chuffed with the turnout!

So, thank you so much everyone for coming along – it meant a hell of a lot to us.

One more thing, Samuel Bates – you make me sick – literally jamming with us for 2 hours and then proceeding to just turn up to play keys and sing backing vocals perfectly. And, Robert Hawkins, you are a gem – cello lessons please?

Bring on more Gigs!