2015 Challenge #1

It has come to my attention that I am pretty useless when it comes to writing a blog!  I often get so caught up in the day to day madness of gigging, teaching, composing, studying, practicing, organising, rehearsing and all the other household and business related chores that I never have time to reflect on what has been happening. I want to try and rectify this in 2015 and have challenged myself to post a blog once a week.  It might be a general update on what is going on, a gig review, teaching idea, cool video, album review or whatever else comes to mind (you get the idea though?).

So I'll start off by giving you an overview of January so far.  After the relatively quite couple of weeks around christmas that I spent with my family in Portsmouth, it was straight back to business when I returned to Newcastle.  'Not Now Charlie' managed to secure a gig at the Cluny 2 supporting our good friends 'The Slowlight Quartet', which went amazingly well and we received many compliments.  This has refocused me on writing more charts for the band so that we can start gigging seriously this year.  Next up was a three day mini tour with 'The Juggernaut Love Band' to Manchester (Matt and Phreds), Leeds (Duck and Drake) and Harrogate (The Blues Bar).  Although it was an exhausting weekend away every gig was fantastic and the audiences were really up for our disco/funk/rock/soul tunes.  I play keyboards for the JLB which always makes for a nice change and was made even nicer by the fact our singers dad was acting as roadie for the trip so I hardly had to lift my gear at all. Bonus :).

January's gigs finish with a Strictly Smoking Big Band gig for the good folks at QDOS productions.  The run many pantos across the country but Newcastle is their flagship show apparently.  We have been lucky enough to play for their cast and crew party for the last 4 years now and it's always good fun, although a 22.30 start time straight after a 2 hour rehearsal tends to test the mind and body on a friday morning.

Hurrah, week one complete. Stay tuned to see if I can get past week two!

Bye
JT