#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

#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

#7 Lights, camera.....

So last time I mentioned that I was going to be off to Cornwall to record a music video. Last weekend we did exactly that. A friend of mine called Lee came up with a great idea for a video for "Shipwrecks". As such whilst we were in the studio recording the new EP we also put down a new version of Shipwrecks to be used in the video. It's a bit bigger than the previous recording I tell thee! Strings and all etc. It seemed a bit pointless to put Shipwrecks on the new EP as it was on the previous one, so Shipwrecks is going to be released as a single at the beginning of next year. We're then looking to release the EP shortly after that.

So how was it? It was awesome. No stress and everything just seemed to go right. When Lee came to me with a location idea I new straight away that fate was sticking it's nose into our business. The location (between Launceston and Tavistock) had a massive influence on Shipwrecks so for Lee (who was unaware of this at the time) to go off and find the "perfect filming location" slap bang in the middle of those two places was ridiculous. The cottage was utterly huge the surrounding area was beautiful. A perfect place to get away from it all. We've all already started planning a return trip. ;-)

Knowing that the next day was going to be a long one, we sorted out room allocations, bought supplies and had a nice meal courtesy of Ben & Paulo before getting an early night. Saturday was indeed a long day. We were up by 8am, moving the furniture around and getting make up done etc. Yes, I did say "getting make up done". It's amazing what an HD camera will show up so you need to be prepared. ;-) We were filming until around 9/10pm. It's mad when you think that all a whole days hard work will be condensed in 4ish minutes of actual footage. We had a little "wrap up" party as the scenes we had to do the next day were all fairly easy and some of the guys would have to leave Sunday night.
Ben, the drunken genius that he is decided that at around 6am he should make sandwiches for everyone so that we all had something to eat when we went to film the beach scenes. He also laid the table in preparation for breakfast (despite nearly missing it). He's nice like that you see. Captain fate wasn't finished with us yet it seemed as on the Sunday we kinda lost track of time filming the last bits at the house and were in danger of losing the light to film the final scene. When we got to the beach we were treated to the most beautiful sunset to see let alone film with. Perfectly timed.

Bude Beach

Big thanks to all the team Lee (director and creative genius), Ian (Photography and visual genius), Sophia (Demon and Flame stick genius), Helen (Evil Ex and Lion King genius), Paulo (Catering and drum genius), Evie (Nice new girl and Make up genius) & Ben (Acting coach and drunken genius) for all their hard work. It was good fun and it couldn't have been done without you. :-)

Keep an eye here or on the Facebook page (www.facebook.com/AaronDouglasMusic) for release news.

In other news my Analogman King of Tone pedal turned up this week. There's a 9/10 month waiting list for these pedals due to demand and the fact that the guy that makes them refuses to go down the "factory produced" road. It's nice knowing that you've bought something that hasn't been put together by a robot. Anyway it sounds epically good so i've finally been able to put my other pedal board together. Roll on the full band practices!

Oof.

Anywho, that's how for now. See ya on the flip side.

Laters

Aaron