#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.

#8 A Christmas Carol 2: Scrooge McDuck buys a music venue

There was a small part of me that was worried that I might not really have anything to say in this post. As Christmas gets closer things start to slow down to an eventual halt. If i'm honest that's one thing I do dislike about Christmas. I don't like doing nothing. I've recently learnt to find time to read so i'll probably spend most of Christmas doing that and making a stern effort to punch my writers block square in the face. There's not a whole lot to say about the EP or single yet as even though they are further along than when I wrote my last blog, there's no major "new" developments. The down time does give me a good amount of time to look for gigs however and it was last week that I found the inspiration for this particular blog.......Venues & promoters.

Some of you might have seen the posts going round on social media in which a musician (or creative type) writes a witty letter to a venue owner/promoter arguing/explaining that they should be getting paid for what they do, or a sarcastic analogy as to why they think the amount they've been offered is borderline insulting. Something occurred to me the other day when I was the receiving end of one such insulting offer.

Why do you never see a post or letter from venue owners/promoters to musicians? Is it because they don't need to defend themselves as there's plenty of gullible bands/artists that will take the offer if you say no. Is it because they don't care or don't know that artists feel this way? One of the posts that I've seen breaks down how much it actually costs to go out and gig. Now to be honest I think that one is aimed more at people that might not necessarily have ANY idea about what a musician does. It broke down fuel, rehearsal space rental, instrument care, etc. I'd like to see a similar breakdown for "opening a venue". As the Flight of the Conchords famously once sang "What are your overheads!?". I'm not naive. I know bar staff, sound engineers, door staff etc need paying. Electricity, alcohol, general maintenance and upkeep all require money. I just wonder why it's the musician (from what I can see) who ends up getting the short straw.

To put it into context here's one of the "offers" I got last week. Tickets are sold for £5. Once you gotten 10 people to buy tickets you then get paid £1 per ticket sold to someone that is there to see you. If you're lucky (or well known enough) to bring 50 people then additional sales get you £2 per ticket. If you sell less than 10 tickets you get nothing and may not be invited back. Now bearing in mind that there are 4 other acts (with the same deal) on this particular bill.

I did once say how crap I thought this all was to a promoter once and his argument was that doing it this way meant that the bands make an effort to bring a crowd and the venue isn't empty. Although I can see the point he was trying to make this doesn't create a scene. If you could have a venue that people knew was going to have good live music on certain nights, then you've got a crowd of people that are loyal to your venue instead a crowd of people that will just follow a band around to other places. Imagine if you had a group of loyal customers in every weekend and then you book a band that has got a large following! Oh! It'd be like Christmas! ;-)

It is possible. Chris who works at The Barrelhouse in Totnes has proved it to be true. When you get there you get sorted out with a meal, there's a place for you to stay, and you even get a bit of booze! Then there's the PA. It's epically good. Unless there's some sort of heinous catastrophe, it'll probably be one of the best sounding gigs you'll play in a venue of it's size (150 cap). And then you get paid a reasonable amount! The whole experience is so pleasurable that I look forward to playing there and more importantly I look at Chris as a friend, not "the promoter at the Barrelhouse". The venues i've played in Europe have a similar attitude so why is it that a large number of UK venues don't? You'll be lucky to get a free drink in most places.

Anyway, it's close to Christmas so i'm not going to get too ranty but if anyone that reads this is a promoter or venue owner (or knows one) i'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are. Especially if you're involved in "£1 per ticket sold" type shenanigans.

Finally, I mentioned a while back that I played a song for Elixir Strings when I was at the London Acoustic Guitar show and here it is! This is going to be the title track of the next EP. Feel free to give it a share if you like it.

That's it for now, hope you all have a shplendid festive season and remember.........support your local music scene. It needs your help more than the X-factor does. :-)

Toodles

#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

#6 Big weekend...

Well.

That was some weekend.

It was my birthday on Friday. And on Saturday. And on Sunday too as it happens. Ever since I became too old to get the latest Optimus Prime as a present i've not made too big a deal of my birthdays and had it not have been for all the gigs i'd booked around it, this year would have been no different.
As a little birthday "warm-up" we went to see Reef at the O2. They were the first "big" band I ever saw live, my old band (Freerider) supported them on their 1st date of their 10year anniversary tour (which is where the beginnings of AlBenAza were formed), and over the years i've ended up having various dealings and random acts of chance involving them. I've supported "StringerBessant" (Gary & Jacks other project), AlBenAza had a gig once were Dom was drumming for us and Reef's current front of house engineer recorded half of my first EP. Anyway, they absolutely smashed it and it awesome to see them again.

The Friday was my actual birthday and a few friends and I went to a venue called the Stag & Hounds to watch the Plymouth based band Moriarty. Having lived in Plymouth before Bristol, I know Matt (the drummer) but i'd not yet seen them. Annoyingly every time they'd played Bristol, i'd either be giggin myself or working away. It was nice to finally catch them and played a corker of a set with some banging riffs. if you get a chance to see them, do it.

Despite trying to take it easy, shots may have become involved so when I woke up the next morning I can't say I felt 100%. After composing myself I drove down to Totnes to support Dizraeli & The Small Gods at a sold out Barrelhouse. It was great to be back down that way as the Barrelhouse is a great venue and I got to catch up with some friends as well. The gig was awesome too. I'm my own worst critic but that was probably the first gig i've done where I was really happy with how I sang. I'd been listening to the Dizraeli & The Small Gods album on repeat all week and I have to say seeing them live is a must. The album is great, but there's definitely and added layer of awesomeness when it's right in front of you.

Sold out!

The next afternoon(!) I drove back to Bristol to play the Shakespeare for the Totterdown arts trail. The arts trail is basically a load of artists displaying their art in venues and house in the Totterdown area. I got back just in time to catch The Montgomerys who were awesome and another band i'd been meaning to see but just not got round to. Considering by this point my hangover had developed quite nicely and Ben the bar manager had greeted me with a shot of sambuca & tabasco, I managed to get through the set and I dare say I felt like I sang better than I had done the previous night. The night was completed by the Lewis Creaven Band. Seriously, these guys can play. Lewis is probably one of, if not the best guitarist i've ever seen in real life. Get them in your life. :-)

So that was my birthday weekend. Thanks to everyone that came to the shows, bought me drinks, and sent me messages. I'll now be hibernating for a few months. ;-)

EP news! We are in the latter stages now! We should be starting the mixdowns this week and then it's just mastering and artwork to go. Whoop whoop!

Finally, we're off to Launceston at the end of this week to film the video for a single. Quite excited about that so i'll let you know how that goes next time around.

Laters

Aaron

P.S. Moriarty won "Best Video" at the South West Music awards on Friday night. Check it out below.