-
The Time Has Finally Come…
On the 27th June our debut album will finally be released worldwide on the legendary Blue Horizon label. A week earlier, on the 20th June our debut single “Gulf Of Mexico” will also be available across the globe. It’s already started doing the rounds over the airwaves and on the net ahead of it’s release and has gained some great reactions.
It’s been an amazing few years to get to this point, and a real testament to that old wisdom that persistence and hard work really does pay off.
From our days starting out, running nights at the Nottinghill Arts Club and playing at venues to only the soundman we’ve always had a great time. We owe Adam Callan and his dad Alan (Swansong Records boss back in the day) a great deal. Ads was our first lead guitarist and a fine one at that, but after successful stints running nights and DJing swapped his guitar for the much vaunted job of A & R impresario for Virgin and Relentless and now heads up a management company in spite of his youthful years.
When Ads left we really were in a quandry but Billy, Genie and I never once thought about packing it in and instantly set about putting into place a new axeman. We had a record deal brewing in the pipeline and to have dropped the ball at that point would’ve been pure madness.
I’d heard about George from various people, and he’d come with the reputation of being one of the best young blues players in London. It was pretty obvious how good he was from our first audition with him and there seemed to exist a great chemistry between all of us. We asked him to come and sit in at a gig with us (at Monto Water Rats) and we’ve never looked back since.
Label legend Seymour Stein had shown interest in us right from our college years when a cruddy demo we’d made found it’s way onto his stereo. I remember recieving a call from him and being completely shocked that he seemed so interested. It’s not everyday that you recieve a phone call from the man that signed Madonna, The Ramones, The Smiths, Talking Heads etc etc (the list goes on and on) and to have someone of his calibre show faith and enthusiasm for what we were doing was an incredible compliment.
Seymour’s vision was to send us out to Louisiana to live in the swamps and soak up the Cajun atmosphere, and the “real deal” blues, soul, rock n’ roll and zydeco of Lafayette and it’s environs under the watchful gaze of Swamp Pop legend CC Adcock.
Our time out there was incredible and we even managed a brief, two week sojourn to Chicago to record with Alt Rock legend Steve Albini (he of Nirvana, Pixies fame).
I cannot ever begin to overestimate what our time living and breathing music in that environment for 3 months did for us as a band. It transformed us completely and we will forever be indebted to the people we met along the way whilst out there.
On returning to the UK we set about touring, finishing off our record and eventually becoming the first European signings to Blue Horizon, run by legends Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer.
The past year really has indeed been a whirlwind and our album launch party on 30th June @ Ginglik is akin to us placing a marker down in the road to show us how far we’ve come since tunes like “Batman”, “Hello Everybody” and “The Weasel Is Out On The Town Tonight” once graced our sets.
It’s also a marker that indicates how much much much much further we still have to go. We will never ever rest on our laurels and assume that success will come to us. Similarly, we will never ever cease to aspire to write the best tunes humanly possible. We want each album we release to constantly see us evolving as better musicians, better performers and better writers. We want to gain new fans every time we play live, have a song played on the radio or are promoted on the net.
After this album’s release party we embark on a summer of festivals and touring, heading out to Italy to play at the Formula 1 and an east coast tour of the states in October. We hope also to get a chance to record our second album this summer as we’ve got a plethora of tunes ready that we’re all itching to get down.
We’d hope to release our second album early next year and move the whirlwind we’ve been experiencing this past year up a few notches on the Beaufort scale, with new places toured and many new fans gained.
A huge thankyou for all of you who have supported us these past few years. A huge thankyou too to all those that have worked with us, the soundmen, engineers, musicians, producers, pluggers, label bosses, DJ’s, all who have helped us a little along the way. The journey has only just begun with this release and long may it continue.
X Ned/Genie/Billy/George
Loading...
