Flying Start

What a start it has been for us in 2012, and things show no signs of slowing day. We are already into double figures for gigs for this year, and I am somehow going to attempt to break last years number of 123 gigs during 2012. So far we have been down as far as Somerset and Tunbridge Wells, we have been up to Leeds and Nottingham, and this week we will be playing our first ever gig in Cardiff. There have been some notable local gigs too. I always love playing at Charters, always such a lively crowd (possible due to the late start time of the bands, and the subsequent drinking hours this allows!) This night was special though and one that will live long in the memory. The big group of Norwegians, who went particulalry nuts for us were most memorable, they later told me they were the Norwegian supporters branch of West Ham Utd FC, over for the game againt POSH, who knew West Ham had such an international following. Seeing them in the local paper the next day hungover and helping to shovel the snow off the pitch still makes me laugh.

This weekend we played at The Brewery Tap in Peterborough, our first official gig there since playing the Beer Fest after party in August 2010. As you can see from the photos below, a few bods turned out to supports us, great fun! And thanks for the food, top quality nosh!

We finished our gigs this weekend at the Dragon in Werrington, another top venue where the staff really look after the band, it was great to see the place once again jam packed to the rafters, My wife Hannah, and our drummer Dave's step mum Sue were both celebrating birthdays, so it was great to see so many people enjoying the night and having fun.

Busy week this week, looking forward to it

RB X 

Congrats To Mike and Alicia

I would like to send our collective congratulations to our former drummer and my closest buddy Mike and his wife Alicia, who last week welcomed baby Lyon Jewkes-Aguirre into the world. Nice one guys, can't wait to meet him.

New boy

If you've seen a new face playing with us recently and wondered who it was, well his name is Dan, or Collins as we call him. Dan is playing second guitar for us for the time being, getting himself back into the gigging mentalitly after a break of a few years from playing. So far the gigs with Dan have been great, he is a top player and gives our rhythm section even more quality, nice having him on-board.

Happy November

It's been a busy few months since I last took the time to write a band update. Since then we have performed at weddings in Norfolk, Cambridge, Peterborough, Shrewsbury and Kings Lynn, along with a host of big pub gigs at O'Neils, Charters and The Cherry Tree to name but a few.

We have the pleasue of playing some stunning places in this job, and it doesn't suprise me when I hear that the competition for wedding and party venue bookings is fierce, it seems that every place we go exceeds the last. Being the band we also get to experience some fantastic crowds and play to some lovely people. I am trying to get into the habit of taking photos of the crowd when they are in full swing, but a combination of trying to sing and just plain forgetting my camera means I don't have too many of these shots to hand right now, but I am trying to remember more and more. The shot below is from our gig over in Norfolk, the wedding of Jenny and James, where the crowd went super crazy from the very first song, it was great night, one we wont forget in a hurry. The other picture is from a gig just last week, Jay and Kerri got married just outside of Kings Lynn, a couple of guys in the band said it was like playing at Hogwarts, but having never seen a Harry Potter film I'l have to take their word for it.

Other notable moments in the last few weeks include our first ever appearance with both Dave and KB on guitars. For those who have followed the band for a while, may have seen Dave come from behind the drum kit to play the odd song on guitar, but it's not a well known fact that Dave was actually Kb's guitar tutor for a long time, so to get both these unreal players together in the band was a monumental moment for us. The quality of the sound we produced as a 5-piece that night at O'neils has persuaded me to go for that line-up again this Friday night when we return to Peterborough's biggest Irish pub.

We also had the honor of being the guest band for the first ever Brewery Tap open mic night in September. It was a great afternoon/evening and one I'm sure that will be repeated when it returns again in October. We opened and closed the night with some of our favourite tunes from the set, and tried out one or two fairly new ones as is the style with the open mic forum.

The Christmas countdown has officially begun, the clocks have gone back, it's cold and getting dark just after lunch. The festive season is going to be crazy busy, Happy November.

RB X

The Close Season

Well the wedding season has almost come to an end, and us hard working wedding band rock n rollers get a few weeks to re-charge the batteries before we hit the road again for the big build up to the always busy Christmas and New year period of the year.

August will go down as one of the busiest gigging months of my life, and that's going some given how busy last summer was. Across my three bands, Children of the Rev, The Mighty Persuaders and Dave and my original band, Fallen Breaks, I played 15 gigs in August, that's one every other day. I am certainly feeling the effects of such a busy month even now, 2 weeks in to September.

It was a month full of fantastic gigs, and I'm not sure I could put a number on the amount of people we have played to. We have been all over the country from Norwich to Portsmouth to Surrey to Suffolk and a few places in between.

September is still a very busy month for us, next weekend we make our return to the Cherry Tree after an absence of a couple of years before helping Charters celebrate their birthday on Sunday aternoon.

Back to the wedding duties next weekend, we are heading over to Norfolk for our our only wedding of the month.

RB x

What a weekend!

For the first time in almost a year we stayed fairly close to home this weekend. The first of an epic weekend of gigs started at The Blue Boar in Eye, just the 20 steps from my front door which was nice for me, we played a storming set and even though it wasn't as busy as it had previously been, we really enjoyed the night. A great way to kick off what proved to be one of the busiest gigging weekends of the year.  

The first weekend in August, for the last 5 years has been the scheduled time for the annual Mudstock festival, organised by Dave (drummer of COTR) lots of bands getting together, dressing like hippies, playing music and drinking beer in a field untill the sun comes up. Sadly due to some unforeseen circumstances it didn't quite happen this year, it was however moved to the Ram in Whittlesey, which proved to be a perfect venue for what was a fantastic night of music for Ramstock 2011.
            Our good friends the High Rollers kicked off the night with a top set before shooting off to play another gig that night. Then my originals band Fallen Breaks played our first gig in a while, as we started the build up to the launch of our debut album. A short break and we were back on stage doing a short Foo Fighters tribute set, this originally started as a little idea of mine a while back just for mudstock, I am on a massive Foo's trip at the minute and it felt great to play some old and new Foo's tracks with Mr Dan Collins returning to gigging on lead guitar after an absence of too long. It was then the turn of The Mighty Persuaders, Spike and Danny joined Dave and me onstage for one of the best MP sets we have ever played, it was an absolute blast. Children of the Rev finished the night off with some of most obscure and seldom seen songs including some Biffy Clyro, Manics and Wings. Great fun.

The weekend was rounded off perfectly with Children of The Rev headlining the Deeping Raft Race festival at the Stage in Deeping. Amazingly despite the impending black clouds gathering in the sky, the rain held off untill we literally rang out our last note of the set. Despite our obvious exhaustion from what was a very busy weekend, we played a fantastic set that was very well received by the hundreds there to watch and enjoy the days events. It was also the first time ever that someone has sat on a chair in the middle of a river and watched our set (See photo below) Big gigs next weekend, on the road again.

RB x

The First Appearance of the Electric Drum Kit

We took our first steps in to the digital age with an electric drum kit gracing our performance at the wedding of Paul and Angie Digance on Saturday night, at the Priory Hotel in Louth. We had a great night, what a brilliant bunch of people, dancing the whole night away from start to finish. Given the residential location of the hotel, we used to the electric drum kit so that we could completely control the volume, and although it was a little strange without the thud of an actual drum kit, the response and performance was exactly the same. The staff at the Priory could not have been more helpfull or accomodating, lovely people. Lessons were also learnt by the other guys in the band as you can see below, this is how you have to dress if you forget your shirt on a Rev gig!

Triple bill next weekend, playing my local pub The Blue Boar on Friday, then Ramstock on Saturday, followed by our first appearance at The Deeping Raft race on Sunday night.

RB x

Rev play to 600 in Camden

It's been a while since Dave and myself have ventured down to Camden to play some gigs, we're use to heading down there with our originals band Fallen Breaks, but it was great to get a Rev gig at the amazing Shaka Zulu club to play to almost 600 people. Shaka Zulu was immense, for me it was like being in Vegas for the night, a two-storey club with african statues and artifacts everywhere you looked. There were people in very life like gorilla suits walking about then chasing you and Zebras on the dance floor, crazy times. We were given the proper rock star treament which was awesome, our own green room with 60" plasma TV, ensuite, and various beverages to consume. Lots of fun was had by all. I must also make note, in all the private gigs and weddings we play, I have never before heard of the 'Silent Disco' this is quite funny and I think a great idea, check it out if you haven't heard of it. And next time we go to Camden I won't be the one attempting to park the van in rush hour traffic..aaaghh!!

RB x

A crazy night in Sandhurst

What a night that was, the absolutely beautiful RMA Sandhurst, for the wedding of Damien and Sarah Mendham. I'd heard very good things about these army going types and they didn't fail to deliver, it was the most packed I have seen a dance floor, and we pack every floor we play. This was a special night and a big thanks goes out to everyone who made us feel welcome. We had the pleasure of the cricket pavillion as our changing room, which was fantastic when the sun finally came out and we could have a chilled beverage on the terrace. We have recently started trying to split the crowd for 'sing offs' in a couple of tracks and this worked very very well. At one point, during Sex on Fire, we thought we had got it so competitive that something was going to kick off! Obviously it was all in good humour. Nice one guys, enjoy your honeymoon and don't forget to write us a testimonial when your back!

RB x

ps. This gig also featured one of the strangest questions of my musical career to date....'"How would fancy gigging in Iraq?"....We'll see if that one pans out.

x

We're so grown up

Would like to say a massive congrats to our bass player Tom and his girlfriend Kate on the arrival of their beautiful little baby girl Tessa. This is the first Child of the Revolution and it was great to finally meet her at the Swiss Cottage Festival gig on Sunday. Despite my best efforts she wouldn't do the rock sign with her little hands but I have no doubts it won't be long before we have her stepping in for either Tom or myself on bass. Congrats guys.

Oh and I got married by the way. Was a brilliant day, my wife Hannah, banned all my musical friends from playing at the wedding, and rightly so, we have gigged every weekend for the last 3 years! so we got the 60's band The Nuggets, they were superb, couldn't have asked for a better day and night. I did manage to sing one song with the band, You Really Got Me by the Kinks, I couldnt resist, and in fact didn't have a choice when I was grabbed and pulled on stage by their singer Karl.

RB x

This one will always be about the Paella

For the second time in 7 days we headed back down to the deep south, well Farnham, Surrey, that's pretty south for us. We had a fantastic night at the home of Chris and Bernadette Evans, celebrating Chris' 60th birthday. I want to say a big thanks to everyone who made us feel so very welcome, and it was great to see everyone on the dancefloor for the entire set. It ended up being a bit of a late start for us, but that was cool, we turned our usual two sets into one long one so as to keep everyone dancing, we didn't want anyone sneaking off during our break! What a brilliant idea the Paella man was as well, I have never seen this at a private function before, and being some what of a paella connoisseur myself, I thought it was fantastic, I strongly recommened it to anyone who is having a private party/wedding. 

We're doing some miles in August, down to Portsmouth (now that really is South!), over to Chelthenam, oh and Peterborough, a little closer to home

RB x

Rev 'the Movie'

We are currently in talks with Tyrannosaur Media about filming a promo video. I have some very good ideas for how I want this to be done and I know the guys at TM are always full of good suggestions and ways of promoting the band. Watch this space and I will keep you posted as soon as I know more.

RB x