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.
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!
Aye up, hope you're all well and you've managed to get in some of the glorious sunshine (whilst it lasted that is!). This entry is going to cover arguably the biggest and most famous festival on this planet. Glastonbury. This year was my 3rd year at the festival and I have to say that this particular one was far and away the best one of the 3. In fact i'd almost go as far to say that it was one of the best weekends ever! Here's why.
I've always had a "thing" about Glastonbury. When I was a kid (and to a small degree now) I didn't like getting dirty. For me Glastonbury was always a proper "dirty" festival. As far as I was concerned it was always rainy and muddy. As such I decided that the first time I went to Glastonbury would be when I was playing it. This was in part a form of goal I was setting for myself, but mostly childishly thinking that I could turn up in a helicopter and have my own private toilet etc. ;-) 4 years ago I was asked to sound engineer on the street performer stages around the circus and theatre area. Realising that i'd made little effort to achieve my "dream" of playing, this felt like a close second and took it. Despite the weather being utterly gorgeous all weekend, I hated it. The hours we ended up doing were twice that of what we were told we'd be doing. I ended up seeing 2 bands over the whole weekend. Needless to say I was very grateful to be offered work as part of the stage crew for the Acoustic stage the next year. That year was way more laid back and having a better idea of the scale of the festival allowed me to be better equipped mentally in my approach to watching bands whilst also having a job to do. This year I was offered the position of team leader for one of the Acoustic stage crews. So point 1 of it being an awesome weekend: I was given a position of responsibility, I didn't screw it up and nobody died on my watch. Thumbs up then.
Delegating.
The other benefit from working on the Acoustic stage is that there were a number of acts performing on that stage that i'm a fan of that I got to meet and see/hear up close. One of the best performances I saw all weekend came from Mr Matt Corby. The guy has the most incredible voice, his band are amazing, plus he's a lovely chap. Obviously I hate him then...... ;-)
Legend
Other acts that I watched on the Acoustic stage were KT Tunstall, Steve Winwood, and Hudson Taylor. I'd been given a heads up by Janna (my new Glastonbury fwiend) about Hudson Taylor as i'd not heard of them. They were awesome, bought both EP's as soon as I got home. I was lucky enough to meet Harry from the band in the backstage bar after my gig there and it turned out he'd seen my set! He said he really liked it and there was a drunken conversation about supporting them in Bristol so may just have to give him a subtle reminder of this at the London Acoustic Guitar Show next month. ;-) There was another act performing on my stage that caused me the greatest amount of grief I had over the whole weekend. I really really wanted to see Glen Hansard however it transpired that he was playing at the same time as Lucy Rose (on the Avalon Stage). I'd seen Lucy at Dot to Dot festival and i'd not seen Glen without The Frames yet. Damn you Glastonbury clashes, inevitable as they may be, they still hurt. In the end I decided to go to the Avalon stage and see Lucy Rose. And super chuffed that I did too as I watched her from the side of stage and met her and the band afterwards!
I don't tend to get star struck around people as I think we're all the same. No one person is any more important than the next (unless they've got super powers or something..). Despite this I did feel like some sort of school boy with a crush when I met her. "Like I used to" was my favourite album of last year, so getting to hear some of my favourite tracks from it live as well as her new stuff was awesome. Then to top it off she's utterly adorable. I try not to outstay my welcome with things like that so after I got a picture taken with her and the band (also lovely people) and a little chat I left her to it. Before she left the compound she actually made the effort to say goodbye to me. She didn't have to and I wouldn't have thought any less of her had she not have so that was nice........................I don't mind saying I think I fancy her a little bit. ;-)
What a babe. :-)
This year also marked my first performance at Glastonbury. I played in the backstage bar of the Acoustic stage and although it was quite a short set it went down really well so fingers crossed same again next year!
Other things worthy of note, despite Glastonbury Festival being the 3rd biggest population centre in the South west of england when it's on (allegedly) you should never underestimate how easy it is to bump into people you've not arranged to see there. Within the first hour on me being there i'd bumped into about 7 people i've not seen in ages and whom I didn't even realise were going to be there. Similarly you should also never underestimate how difficult it can be to find someone you've actually arranged to meet up with! I should also give a shout out to Mr Ruarri Joseph. I've only met him a few times (from hanging around in Cornwall, my old band pal Albert being his guitarist, and my bass player Harry being his drummer), but he seems like a nice fellow and it was really nice to see him get a standing ovation from a full Avalon Cafe and to find out he had a TV slot on the BBC the next day.
I could probably go on about Glastonbury for the next couple of blog posts however I don't want to rub it in for anyone that wanted to go but couldn't. If it's any consolation to those of you that relates to then count yourself lucky you didn't have to drag this lot across a bunch of hilly fields for about an hour and a half.
These trolleys are rubbish.
Finally here's some EP news. We're going into the studio next week to start it! Fingers crossed it'll all be tracked and recorded by the end of next week. Here's a little question actually. What do you think of purely digital distribution i.e just downloads instead of CD's? Anyone still buying hard copies? Feel free to answer in the comments etc.
At the moment the title for the EP is "A lot to answer for". And here's an acoustic version of the song that was recorded during a photoshoot at the Birdcage in Bristol.
Hope you like it (if you do give it a "share" please!). Next time, we'll talk about a subject close to the heart of the late Bill Hicks. Advertising. ;-)
Till then, toodleoo.
P.S. Whilst typing this I've been listening to "Eavesdrop" from the new Civil Wars Album on repeat. What a tune! Check it out. :-)
