Sound Check

Yet another backblip - this week's been crazy!

Wow wow wow. Well the day of the launch of our new album 'Eight Days at Sea' finally arrived. So much work had gone into the recording, re-recording, mixing, commenting, remixing (many, many times), choosing of song order, mastering, artwork and finally printing that we were happy to finally be at the stage that we were able to actually put a CD in the player and listen to it. I think that it's a fair evaluation of our sound (with slightly off-time and off-notes still present) and the process was a concentrated version of what it actually means to be in a band. It's such a long process (this one has taken nearly a year to produce), and sometimes it's just impossible to get everyone to agree on certain tiny parts which mean nothing to the outside listener but become so important when it's your song! Overall, I'm very happy with the album, worts and all.

And then there was the launch.

As a band, The Shivering Timbers tend to play in pubs, bars and at festivals. Here, it was time for us to choose a venue, have a proper sound check for a change (which can be a bit of a godsend as there's a fair bit of instrument changing going on - and when this blip was taken... you'd never know I wasn't behind the kit!) and try to 'do it properly'.

I think that, for once, we nailed it.

Whilst our warm-up band Tess Mckenna and the Lucilles was playing, I was hanging around backstage and taking the odd peek to see what was going on in the room. Snuggled right at the back, I saw a familiar face that I'd conversed with many times, but never had the pleasure of meeting in the flesh. I made a beeline and was overjoyed to finally meet my good blipfriend MrRosewarne. I'm sure that you'll all have seen his amazing blips smattered over the spotlight pages, but if you haven't you really, really should have a look. I was quite humbled that he'd taken the time to come and see an unknown band (especially having already seen Leonard Cohen two nights before... the pressure was really on! :) ). Even better - he'd brought his camera along too, which I encouraged him to use (to fantastic results, as you can see here). I wish I'd been able to stick around to have more of a chat (hopefully soon!), but it was time to warm up so I returned backstage.

Before long we were up. We'd decided that we wanted people to be able to hear the entire album live for the first time, so in a first set we played the entire album, in order, with the trombone and trumpet players who had guested on the actual recording. There are a couple of songs on there that we really don't generally play live because they can be a little inaccessible (notably "New Shoes"), but the audience stuck with us, listening dutifully throughout, and punctuating the set with rapturous applause. By the final note of "Bottle of Beer", the set was over, the album was in the public domain, and the applause was cranking. We'd managed to get through it (and people hadn't left in disgust!)!

A quick break to grab another beer before the more dancable set 2 was met with a strange announcement. The venue manager came to tell us that we needed to get people to move towards the stage a bit more because at the back it was uncomfortably busy. He went on to say that in the 20 months that he's been managing the place it has never been even close to as busy as it was at that point. And people were still arriving.

It appears that the promo had been worth it!

We returned to the stage with a more consistently upbeat set, starting with a new song "Weremu" and continuing on with the songs that people that see us a fair bit want to hear. The dancefloor was pumping, the moves were out and the singalongs were being lined up. It was absolutely brilliant!! We had a fantastic night, and were pleased to get called back to the stage twice for encores.

It really truly exceeded our expectations, and we sold a fair few albums too, so hopefully people will actually play the thing!! :)

We've been hit up for a distribution deal, so we'll see what they have to offer (but we're all secretly very chuffed).

Once again, MrRosewarne, thanks so much for coming along and the amazing shots!