#19 Tis the season...

So it's nearly the end of another year so I just wanted to put out a little message of thanks to everyone that's been in anyway involved with my musical activities this year. The only resolution I ever tend to make these days is to try and make sure that the next year was better than the last, even if it's just a little bit. So far so good. This year I had a single get into the top 10 on the UK Singer-songwriter iTunes chart (Shipwrecks), released my second EP (Battles), went on my first self organised tour, played Glastonbury Festival, and got my first ever national airplay on BBC6 music.

A lot of these things simply wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the support of those around me and those that for some reason or another like what i'm doing musically. I say this a lot mostly as I really mean it! There's no record label throwing money at me to make records or organise tours or getting me on the radio etc. And having people sharing links, buying music, liking/following pages etc really is invaluable to a) allowing me to continue doing so and b) my own sanity! ;-)

In short, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! :-)

Here's a free download of a track called "Things you don't know" (which makes the title of this blog make more sense). It's got an email unlock thingy, but I promise not to spam you with stuff. I reckon the mail out will be about as regular as this blog! ;-)

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas & NYE. See ya next year! :-)

Aaron

#18 All good things...

Well i'm not going to lie, i'm a little bit sad today. Last night marked the end of the Battles tour. It's been great getting out of the local comfort zone and playing. Especially with Harry & Naomi in the trio setup. I just would like to say a big thanks to all of those that came to the gigs, downloaded the EP, bought the CD, shared posts, liked/followed pages and all that stuff. I'm about to cook dinner and watch the Iggy Pop lecture about being a creative type in a capitalist world (which I'm predicting might be a little depressing) and the simple fact is that whether you like it or not YOU are instrumental in our successes (or failings come to think of it). Not that it's all you of course, but people power can make or break an artist for sure. "Shipwrecks" only did as well as it did because of those that bought/shared it. Yes I wrote it, yes I had a whole heap of help recording it and making a video for it, but if no one ever hears/sees it then it's difficult to call it "successful" even if you think it's good. So with that in mind when I say thanks to those of you mentioned above I REALLY REALLY mean it! Thanks. :-)

In other really rather splendid news, I got my first ever air play on BBC 6 music! Battles was played on Tom Robinson's Mixtape last night. You can download the podcast from here or you can stream it from the site here. Big thanks to Tom Robinson and the BBC6 Music team. That was the perfect way to end the tour. :-)

So what's next? Firstly, i'll be adding physical copies of "Battles" to the Bandcamp store this week. Keep an eye on the Facebook & Twitter pages for when that'll be in place.

Also we've got another London date coming up! It'll be at The Troubadour on Nov 2nd, check the poster below to see all the other fantastic acts that shall be playing. (Read next bit in a cheesy radio dj voice) Brought to you by G7th Capos! ;-) Tickets are available  £5 adv from here or £7 on the door.

And then it's time to start planning another tour and EP 3... Mwha ha ha. :-)

Laters
Aaron

#17 Release day!

Finally! The Battles EP is now out! It's available on iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon mp3, GooglePlay, and some others that I don't have links for (i.e. Xbox, Deezer, Rdio etc)

Physical copies can also be bought from us at shows and (in a week or two) from Bandcamp also.

I'd just like to thank everyone that has been involved in getting it done. Harry, Naomi, Clare, and Christina Marie for lending their considerable musical skills to everything. Jack & Sam for their hard work and patience with regards to the sound of everything and Ian "King of Pixels" Skriczka for his always awesome artwork skills.

If you like it, then please share these links and/or like/follow the Facebook and Twitter pages etc. It's all these things that really help unsigned artists to further our careers!

So now it's tour time! Here are the dates and locations, so if you're anywhere near then come and say hi. :-)

Oct 4th - The Old bookshop, Bristol
Oct 9th - The Jam cafe, Nottingham
Oct 11th - The Silver bullet, London
Oct 12th - The Convent, Stroud
Oct 13th - Brewhouse, Cardiff
Oct 14th - The Nest, Bath
Oct 16th - The Taphouse, St Agnes
Oct 17th - Bread & Roses, Plymouth
Oct 19th - The Gylly Beach cafe, Falmouth. 

Hope you like the EP and thanks to everyone that has shown an interest in it's development. Time to see how it does in the world all by itself. I feel a bit like a parent. ;-)

Laters
Aaron

#16 Battle stations

So on October 6th I'll be releasing my 2nd EP called "Battles". It'll be available on iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon mp3, Deezer and a whole heap of other digital outlets whose name I can't remotely think of right now. Physical copies will also be available at gigs too which brings me nicely onto my next "announcement". We're going on tour to promote the EP! Harry, Naomi and myself will be playing 9 dates in the UK through the beginning of October. You can see we're we'll be on the image below.

Tour time!

It'd be lovely to see you faces if you're anywhere near the gigs, and if you're not but know someone that is that might be interested then feel free to spread the word. In addition to that, the gig at The Convent in Stroud on Oct 12th will be streamed live via the Netgig service. There's a link to it here: https://theconvent.netgig.co.uk/event/aaron-douglas-trio-uk-trio/. The gig at The Brewhouse in Cardiff the night after will also be streamed on www.bigscottradio.com. 

I'm off to Ireland to do some work type stuff so i'll speak to you next week.....WHEN THE EP IS OUT!!!! Eeeek! :-)

Later tater.

#15 Back in time.

So the last blog I wrote was just before Glastonbury....so yeah....it's pretty fair to say that i'm finding it difficult to write these regularly! Anyway almost everyone of these blogs start with an apology for being so slack and an explanation (excuse) as to why. I'm not going to do that this time though. For those that would like that, read the first paragraph of #14. :-)

So Glastonbury was awesome again. Not as much as last year (meeting Lucy Rose, Matt Corby plus more was going to be hard to top) but still great. The gig was very nice too despite being a clash heavy slot. Since then it's pretty much just been work and the EP.

That's a bit of a lie actually. Throughout August I was Marvin Berry........well, kinda. For those of you that were unaware there was a big Back to the Future event held by Secret Cinema in London during August.
My friend Bobby had been asked to play Marvin Berry for these events. There was a few dates he couldn't do though so he rang me to ask if I wanted to cover him for those dates. My knee-jerk reaction (in my mind) was "I can't fill your shoes! Are you crazy!?". You see, Bobby is a bit of a legend. His originals band are called the "Yes Rebels" and they are so good it's actually disgusting (Check out the video below). :-) Awesome vocals, phat riffs, great songs. He's also the front man in a covers band called the 45's. A cover band for people that don't like cover bands. Think classic Motown, Soul, 50's/60's era music played in the style of the White Stripes or Royal Blood (again totally awesome). Needless to say you have to have a certain amount of charisma to front bands such as these and Bobby has got plenty of it. I've been in rock bands before but usually as the lead guitarist, not the front man. These days I sit down at gigs with an acoustic guitar and play "nice" music. ;-) So the thought of standing in front of 4000ish people and commanding their attention with a style of music that I've never tried singing before was quite frankly terrifying.

Despite all this flying through my mind in the 3 seconds after he had asked me, my mouth opened and I said "Yeah, why not eh?". I figured that either way i'd find out what my limitations were and that in this case it'd be better to try and fail than to write it off without even giving it a shot. And boy am I glad I did! The 1st show was a whole new level of nerves that I've not ever experienced before. This was due largely to the fact that i'd not had a single rehearsal with the band. We got through it although I was far from happy with my performance. The next date was better again, but it was the 3rd when everything went perfectly. There was a great atmosphere in the air that night. The crowd were all really up for it and singing along to all the classics (Earth Angel especially), but when I played the first two notes of Johnny B Goode, the roof just tore off. It was a great feeling to play a rocky gig with such a great crowd. So in short, I can just about get away with fronting a 1950's rock and roll band..........good to know. ;-)

The whole experience was something that I'll look back on in years to come with very fond memories. I met a great bunch of of very talented people and I'm extremely honoured to have been part of something of that scale.

So in other news, WE HAVE A RELEASE DATE FOR THE EP! "Battles" shall be available on digital and physical formats on OCTOBER 6th! Whammy! I'll talk more about that next time though, until then it's ciao for now. :-)

Laters

Aaron

Ladies & gentlemen.....the Yes Rebels. :-)

#14 New & Improved

Hello, it's been a while. For those of you that have been reading all of my ramblings, then you'll know that my life is split into "musician" and "earning enough money to carry on being a musician" periods. The last couple of months have largely been the latter. Not that it's all been hard graft. There's been some cool gigs and nice little developments in that time. I supported Ben Ottewell of Gomez which was ace as it was a sold out gig and the room was full from start to finish. Supporting isn't always the awesome gig you hope for or imagine it to be as most people are there to see the main act and often don't bother watching the support. Not in this case and I was very grateful to have such a friendly attentive crowd. I was lucky enough to play for the Dot 2 Dot festival last month which was also pretty cool. Other bits of good news are that we've confirmed that the trio shall be playing at Harbourside festival in Bristol next month and i've been playing a bit of guitar for my friend (that was on the telly box) Christina Marie. We did a little session for BBC Bristol which you can see below.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=611842982244182&set=vb.102814153147070&type=2&theater

Harbourside Festival is always quite an important one to me as it marks the anniversary of me moving to Bristol and sorting my life out. Also it was my first experience of Bristol as a city and it's music scene which, for the record, is great!

The biggest news of late (apart from one other that i'm coming to) is that WE'RE PLAYING GLASTONBURY! The trio shall be playing on the Small World stage in the Green fields on Sunday at 8:15pm. Fingers crossed we can blag a few other slots too, but very chuffed to be playing on an "official" stage, not that playing backstage last year wasn't awesome. This is just a different kind of awesome! :-)

Official Glastonbury app. Wahoo! :-)

So the final and most recent bit of news is that thanks to Ian from Faultless Design I have a shiny new website! You can check it out at www.AaronDouglasMusic.co.uk so have a look and let us know what you think! Ian has been a total legend with regards to the imagery of all my latest work (he did the artwork for the Shipwrecks single) and is basically a dude so keep an eye out for his new creative venture (King of Pixels) coming soon. :-)

That's it for now, Glastonbury next week and then back to the studio! Hope you're all getting to enjoy the sunshine!

Laters

Aaron

#13 BUSINESS SOCKS!

Aye up ladies and gents, hope you're all well. So since the last blog we've had some gigs! ;-) You'll have to excuse my sarcasm there. I'm sure there's a famous Mick Jagger quote about how being a musician is 5% playing music and 95% sitting around waiting to play music, but I reckon when you're unsigned those figures change to 5% playing, 10% waiting around, 35% scraping money together and 50% sat in front of a computer/phone convincing people to let you play! As such, recently i've spent waaaaay more time in front of my laptop emailing festivals and venues for gigs than I have holding my guitar. Gigs are coming in though so I shant complain! You can find the gig list on the website or here: www.facebook.com/AaronDouglasMusic/

So the first gig since the last blog was the Shipwrecks single launch party. That was a really special gig, mostly down to the songs performance in the iTunes Singer-songwriter chart that week. The whole thing just seemed to create a buzz in the run up to the gig. It was great to see so many friendly faces, old and new, local and not so local. The reaction we got when we played Shipwrecks was just.........amazing. So a quick thanks to everyone that came because it was awesome! Not bad for only our 2nd gig as a trio! On that note i'd like to quickly "big up" Harry & Naomi for being totally awesome and talented also! Having them on board has really helped me work out what direction I want to take our "sound" in, and I couldn't be any happier about it! Last little note about Shipwrecks, Tom Robinson from BBC Radio 6 picked it as one of his Extra Gems last week! You can hear the whole playlist here https://soundcloud.com/tomrobinson/sets/gems20140324

Shipwrecks single launch panorama. The Birdcage (Bristol)

The following Sunday we supported Brother & Bones at the Exchange in Bristol. B&B are smashing it at the moment. They've been touring with Ben Howard and Bastille and get airplay from Dermot O'Leary and are set for big things I think. I met Rich the singer when him, Harry and myself were helping about as crew for a Seth Lakeman gig years ago. It's nice to see them doing well and they played a shplendid set. They also totally bailed me out the next morning as I was supposed to be going to London the next morning and I missed my coach as the initial bus ride ended up in a tree. Nice one drives! ;-) Thanks for the lift B&B! :-)

Last weekend we played at Proud in Camden. Very cool venue, and we saw Keith Lemon in the Morrisons car park nearby......which was nice. ;-)

On Saturday i'll be supporting some other friends that have been doing well recently called Winter Mountain Band. They've been getting Radio 2 airplay too and been touring with folk legend Cara Dillon so looking forward to that one!

Finally we've been back in the studio this week so fingers crossed we should have some EP news for you soon! Wahoo!

Laters :-)
Aaron

P.S. This Saturday my friend Christina Marie will be performing in the final of "The Voice", if you've been following it then please give her a little vote on Saturday. She's a top lass and boy can she sing. You really need to be in a room with that voice. It's something else. :-)

#12 Say whaaaaaaaaaat!?

Hello! Well this week has certainly been interesting! As you may already know a brand new recording of "Shipwrecks" was released as a single last Monday (3rd). On Wednesday morning I found myself browsing through the UK iTunes singer songwriter charts as I was curious to see how far the chart goes down to. As I scrolled down towards 300 (where it ends) I saw Shipwrecks sat at 274. I have a tendency to play things down unless they're amazing to the point of ridiculousness. As such I posted this picture onto my facebook page mostly tongue in cheek.

What followed was quite frankly ridiculous. The facebook post got a lot of "likes" and a few "shares", and within a few hours Shipwrecks jumped up to 95! I posted another picture.

This post got a few more shares and likes than the last one. Shipwrecks moved up again. This time it hit number 40.

At this point the "shares" & "likes" increased exponentially, I started getting congratulatory messages and texts etc, it was all very surreal. Now the realist/pessimist in me decided that top 40 was probably about as good as it was going to get, so I decided that I didn't want to take over people's facebook pages with my updates and said unless something insane happens I wouldn't post again....

Then this happened....

Then it went higher still.

It was getting late by this time so I decided to call it a night. I woke up the next morning fully expecting Shipwrecks to be back in the 100's. So you can imagine my surprise......

Never in a million years did I expect it to hit the top 10. This photo probably got the most attention and within the hour I took this final photo.

What transpired over those 2 days is one of the things I love about the world we live in with regards to social networking, the internet, our ever changing music industry, and people in general. I'm not a fan of most "get me to 1 million likes and i'll....." type things as I believe that in most cases your "likes" & "shares" on facebook don't really hold any gravitas in the real world. For the musician/artist however it really does. The reason I got to number 6 is because of good old fashioned word of mouth. The further it went up the more family, friends and friends of friends, and fans got behind it because it's nice to see friends succeed.

So basically thank you to everyone that bought the single, thanks to everyone shared the statuses to their friends & family, thanks to everyone that got their friends and family to buy it, and massive thanks to the people that haven't got a clue who I am and were just following the instructions of said family and friends! I LITERALLY couldn't have done it without any of you.

We had a little launch party last night and tomorrow we're supporting the really rather good Brother & Bones at The Exchange in Bristol, so i'll give you all the details of those next time around.

The single is still available to download for 0.79p from iTunes here:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/shipwrecks-single/id829587343

Big up yo bad selves! ;-)
Aaron

#11 IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!

So it's release day! You can now download Shipwrecks from iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/shipwrecks-single/id829587343 or from bandcamp here: https://aarondouglas.bandcamp.com

Here's the official video too: 

The "share" is one of the greatest advertising tools in an unsigned artists arsenal so if you like it, share it thank you please! Thanks for all your support guys! :-)

Laters
Aaron

#10 Single

Forgive me father for I have sinned, it's been over a month since my last blog and it should be weekly. Apologies. ;-)

The reason for this is that my first ever single "Shipwrecks" is going to be released next Monday (March 3rd)! As such it's been quite mental getting everything ready in time. We filmed a video to accompany it which will be going up on Youtube this Friday (Feb 28th). I've already talked about the video in previous blogs so I won't go on about it too much here but I would like to display again my thanks and appreciation to all the people that were involved in making it. It was an awesome weekend and I couldn't be happier with the end result. Round of applause for the guys please. :-)

Artwork courtesy of The King of Pixels

So Shipwrecks is going to be available by digital download via my Bandcamp page on March 3rd and also will be available to download via iTunes shortly after (if not the same day). We're also having a launch gig at The Birdcage in Bristol on March 7th. I'll be playing the gig with my trio (the awesome Harry Harding & Naomi Holmes), plus support from Chris Woods Groove and Lukas Drinkwater, not to mention a few special guests! 

Other things worthy of note this month, I have a gig supporting the really rather good James Bay at The Louisiana this Wednesday (Feb 26th), on Friday my good friend Mr Albert Jones is playing for and supporting the disgustingly talented Martin Harley Band on their UK tour. They'll be at The Fleece on Friday so I shall be down there showing my support and in exchange getting to listen to some ruddy good music! You should check them both out! And if that wasn't enough on Saturday i'll be going to watch Bonobo at the Colston Hall! Looking forward to the week ahead fa sho! ;-)

On Sunday 9th March the trio will be performing at The Exchange in Bristol supporting the mighty Brother & Bones! I remember seeing them a few years ago at a festival called Ivylive and thinking "I'd like to be in that band" so really looking forward to sharing a stage with them. Again if you haven't already done so, check 'em out!

And finally, we've got a London gig coming up! Wahoo! Harry, Naomi and myself shall be busting out some tunes on March 22nd at Proud Camden. Times to be confirmed so keep an eye out on the facebook page/twitter for details.

I'll leave you with a little "behind the scenes" video of our time making the Shipwrecks video. Hope you like, see you round the bend! :-)

Laters
Aaron

#9 New year, new music........

Happy new year folks. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and NYE. My Christmas was fairly quiet which was nice. Gave me time to thoroughly batter my writers block into submission! ;-) The days around NYE I headed to Cornwall to do a few gigs with my old band AlBenAza. It was nice to catch up with a few faces i've not seen in a while and play some music not entirely seriously!

It was pretty amazing to see/hear/sleep through some of the storms down that way too.....in a slightly scary way. Two venues/pubs that we've played in are situated on or very close the beach and were literally metres from being washed away! Pretty mad.

Well it's 2014 now so time to get back on it! I've been looking at venues and festivals to play so if any of you that are reading this can think of any then feel free to leave comments. There's a large number of both so it's difficult to play them all........doesn't mean i'm not going to try though! I don't tend to make resolutions as I think if you're going to wait until January 1st to make some "life changing decision" then it either isn't that important or you're probably not going to do it anyway. That said I do see the importance of setting yourself goals. This year mine is simple. Play WAY more gigs than I did last year.

Last night I had my first gig of the year at The Birdcage in Bristol. It was a leaving do "music all dayer" for a friend called Tom Mousey who's off travelling. Since moving to Bristol 2 years ago he's become a very popular face within the music scene and has been responsible for a few very good regular nights and one off gigs alike. Safe travels brother! I also got to catch up with a few mates that i've not seen in a while, one of which had just been on the TV an hour earlier. Christina Marie is currently on the TV program "The Voice". She has simply one of the best voices i've ever heard in real life. Everytime i've heard her sing the room stops what it's doing and listens.......EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! We did a little duet of one of my songs last night and I don't think i've lost myself inside one of my own songs like that in a while. Her passion for music is other worldly and whilst I don't believe her (or anyones) entire career rests in the hands of programs like "The Voice" (she's going to be a star no matter what happens!) I wish her all the best of luck! :-)

Back to gigs (sorry about the tangent!) i've been very lucky to have had the talents of Mr Harry Harding & Miss Naomi Holmes helping me out with my EP over the last few months and this Tuesday (tomorrow) we have our first gig as a trio. Both Harry & Naomi are awesome musicians and complete legends so i'm really looking forward to sharing a stage with them and debuting some of the EP tracks. The gig is at The Exchange in Bristol and we're on at 8pm. For any of you that are in the area and want to come then just add your names to the comments section at the bottom of the blog and i'll add you to the cheap list.

Speaking of the EP, we're back in the studio today and fingers crossed may have the final mixes by the end of the day! I'll let you know how we get on next time.

Till then, toodle pip!

Aaron

P.S. I've been listening to Snarky Puppy A LOT recently. If you're even remotely into any kind of jazz/funk/instrumental music you owe it to yourself to give them a listen. Utter awesomeness. There are better quality clips on Youtube (they did a live DVD) but the energy of this video is so so good. Also if you want to hear the most disgustingly good keyboard solo ever go to part 3 of this video series.