About a month ago I was asked to play keyboard for the Rachael Warwick band: New Jack Union. Rachael is a UK country/rock artist, perhaps more rock than country, signed to Impressive Records and with a great album called 'Anglo Americana'. As a result of this offer I can now say I've performed my first overseas gig, in the South of France this weekend just gone. It was at a country festival in Lavardac, which is near Agen. The show went well and was a very useful experience for me. The next show is this coming weekend at Eurodisney in Paris, so going to be a busy week in general.
Computer trouble holds up new EP
The new EP, 'Get The Drinks In, first mentioned in these pages a while ago, has been held up due to computer problems in the studio. This first occured literally as we were about to put the bass parts down, having done the guitars the week before. SInce then it's been no end of a job sorting out what is a simple component failure. The company who designed and manufactured the PC have been utterly useless and unprofessional, and I am now waiting for the local Computer Shop to pull it's finger out. All in all, a month's recording lost and am not too happy about it. Hopefully I can get back on track soon.
2nd Album underway:
.....that's not to say that there hasn't been any recording at all over the past month. I can now officially announce that a well-known local singer/songwriter is producing my 2nd album and that the 1st track is almost complete. And it sounds bloody fantastic. More news to follow soon.
Paul joins the Internet 'Jukebox Jury':
In addition to already joining several music upload sites, I recently stole myself to join the famous garageband website. My page on there is now up and running. Similar to mixposure, the site is review-based. But whereas mixposure invites only voluntary reviews, this site is structured so that you must review tracks in order for the same to happen to yours. More interestingly, the reviews are thrown at you so you don't have a choice of track and are unaware until later who the artist is. It's a bit like walking into a pub and playing to 20 people completely at random. So may like you, some may not.
On Mixposure most reviews are very positive, on garageband this is not necessarily so, and you are getting gut reactions from the 1st or 2nd listen. Please read my reviews for the Cold Cold Day Sing Version here. As you will see, most have been good, one or two not so good! Overall I'm very pleased as the standard of track is extremely high on there, and I've got a current rating of 3.7 out of 5. In future more tracks will be posted for the critics to pick apart!
In case you can't wait, here are a couple of tastey reviews....
I like the vocals, and the music fits with them
The song and the vocals match, witch doesn't seem like a crazy concept, but it is often foreign to artists. Great job with this song. I would enjoy this band live, I'm sure, if you make it out to LA.
really good tune. Really catchy but not comepletely predictable. The vocalist has the voice of a star. -A really nice natural rasp but not in a painful way. Bridge is cool but I was hoping the vocalist would go off a little. Love the backing vocal in the outro as well.
And with that I'll be off...
