Well February didn’t last long did it! It’s crazy busy at Wagons HQ and the minions are working overtime booking shows, designing new merch ranges, rebranding, expanding the live show, logistical changes, crew expansion, new website.. oh and writing a new album too. Things have escalated over the last 12 months to the point where the writing, recording and performing of music is only half the operation. It’s mental.  We played our first gig of 2019 in an old haunt of ours, Bootleggers in Kendal, Cumbria and it was triumphant indeed!  It’s a venue we used to play the covers set a few times a year to the Friday night punters in ye olden days, so it was cool to return and do what we do now to a packed house.  We played a newly worked set, with two brand spankers thrown in for good measure.  Both went down smoothly, and the temptation to play more new material is strong but with 4 albums behind us, choosing setlist has become a delicate balancing act.  Granted, the old fogies in Fire It Up have been kerbed in favour of recent stuff, but even 2014’s Fight The System only gets a regular look in with Red Dress.  The last two albums take the lions share of the set, and I personally don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.  It’s when you can’t move on from your old staples the alarm bells should start ringing!  We have loads in the bank.

Kendal Bootleggers 28/02/2019 – Photo By Andrew ‘300 mile round trip’ De Wet

Onto the news!  Firstly, summat new!  Baz is gonna chip in with some words each month, the first contribution chronicles the origins of the band, here’s his first instalment of the Monthly Mouthful.  We’re really gonna have to change that name…

BAZ:  God love Adam Thistlethwaite… he’s been squirrelling away at his monthly mouthful for well, months now, and hallelujah he’s granted me some news space!!  God only knows what I’m going to say, I have been giving it some thought though, I’m a fairly boring chap in all honesty these days, family, children, gardening etc, any hilarious yarns worth talking about are probably hugely inappropriate tales of old, the early days of the band, and for now they can remain in the past until someone with authority, and a brain, thinks it’s a good time to let em out haha. I ain’t a singer, I’ve never talked about myself as a singer, or told anyone I am one, being a frontman is something that’s only come through practice and years of gigging, I’d consider myself more a frontman than singer really, if that makes sense, probably not haha, if you’re gonna start calling yourself a singer then (and maybe only in my opinion) you’re gonna put yourself on a high pedestal, and to be quite honest I can’t be arsed with that, I just tell people I sing, or try to ha, it’s all subjective anyway, if you like what I do then ace, if not, equally ace,  I’m not bothered in the slightest, I’m not a singer, merely a ballsy numpty who fell into a position until the man for the job was found haha. My dad was always in bands, rock stuff when I was too young to remember, and early teens he was in a country band, round where I live during the early 90s country music had a real resurgence, I’d go to gigs to watch my dad and just be in awe, I absolute admired the balls of anyone to stand on a stage and entertain people, it’s gutsy, I remember my first ever gig playing bass guitar for indie band ‘Aceface’, side note.. the band I met Phil in, we had practiced about 10 songs solid for a year, we started as total novices, new to our instruments and playing with other people, which is probably why we did ok because we were all at the same level, and progressing together, but looking back even now, we were good!! Really good, first gig was outstanding, hahaha a year learning 10 songs, we slayed em! I was super confident, but when all eyes were on us my hands wouldn’t work properly, I had to focus twice as hard to play, it was the biggest rush I’ve ever had, as we only had 10 songs and a full house of leaping idiots we played em all twice haha, if you search YouTube ‘Ace Face Take Me Out’ you can witness it yourself haha this is before Phil came in on guitar but our very own Bowzer was on lead duties, good times. When fingers Phil joined Aceface it really wasn’t long before we knew we shared a love of classic rock type tuneage, a few heavier cover songs started creeping into the set even then, Bad Company, Foos etc, but sadly the band ended due to commitment issues, no drama, just couldn’t make it work, it was a shame at the time because we’d put a lot into the band and it was sad to call it a day, but hey we can’t complain too much because it opened the door for myself and Adam to start talking about maybe having a crack at some original stuff…. all we needed was a few more idiots with dreams of grandeur… to the pub!!

New sticks.

Back to me then!  So we’ve had a week of live announcements.  The first being the very badly kept secret that we are supporting the Wildhearts on their first original line up tour in 10 years.  Having grown quite close to Ginger and the lads over the last couple years we are super looking forward to it, their crew and fans are just the best people, throw in a reformed Towers Of London into the mix and it’s gonna be anything but boring..  Then arguably the biggest live break in our career, we’ve been invited (along with Status Quo) to open for Lynyrd Skynyrd on their farewell UK arena tour.  We’ve always aimed high with our ambitions but I can honestly say that Skynyrd are one band I’d never dreamt we’d share a stage with.  Just mental, and we’re gonna pop our arena cherry!  The fact Francis Rossi and crew are along too is just the denim icing on the southern cake.

“Look ma, we made it!”

Other shows announced include an open air festival in Romania, and our first headline shows in Germany.  Following our German tour with Thunder next month we’d have (hopefully) broken new ground over there and dig in deeper with our full sets.  Our streaming stats tell us Germany is just behind the UK and the US when it comes to listening numbers, so they know what we sound like, just not what we look like.. let’s hope it doesn’t put em off eh!  Combine this with several UK festivals and our ‘break form the studio’ gigs dotted through the summer months we have all bases covered.

Germany bound with Thunder very soon!

As it’s our first lengthy excursion into another country we’re in full prep mode for Germany, so after writing I guess this is top of our thoughts right now.  The last 18 months have seen a shift in gear for us in the UK, we’re moving up in venue size after 7 – 8 years in the small clubs and pubs, and the offers are rolling in up and down the country constantly, it seems we are in demand and I cannot overstate how much we do not take that for granted.  However the UK is just one small part of the rock n’ roll world, for bands to truly succeed this momentum needs to be transferred into other territories.  The ambition is to take what we are building in the UK and export it wherever we can.  This is why for us there is a lot riding on the German tour, it will give us our first indication to how another culture take to us, it’s exciting and the pressure is on at the same time but we’re confident we can get ourselves a piece of the Euro action!  

Adam T

P.S.  Bristol, London and Glasgow are approaching sell out for our headline UK Tour in April…