Album review, Seven Shades becomes an Internet Cult!!

The first fruits of Ariel Publicity!! Well worth a read, it's a nice review of the album and the blog-style means a few others have left comments. Please have a read!

ALBUM REVIEW

Also I've had a song included in a podcast based in the UK. It's 'Money From The Satisfied Man' again from the latest album.

SONG PODCAST: LISTEN HERE!

The last week of my 20's saw just the one gig yesterday (Sunday). Yes, it's the big 30 for me today. Let's hope that the last gig of my 3rd decade is not a sign of things to come. Oh yes, it's another Osset Brewery special!

The Shepherds Boy in Dewsbury. As usual, a lovely pub, good beer, no scrotes, no people. I last played there in March on a Wednesday night-there was nobody there. They said let's try Sundays, still a severe shortage of customers. Worse still, those that are there are totally inept at the concept of live music. It's almost as if they've had a bipass where that's concerned. There are more cheerful funerals. Even in Dewsbury.

Needless to say, not a great afternoon. At one point there was nobody at all in the room I was playing in. I played to a completely empty room. The peak was about 10 people. The posters said 4pm, the managment wanted me on at 3. It made no difference, nobody was interested.

I try my best to think of them as work gigs, they do pay reasonably well. But it's hard on the spot when you've got zero enthusiasm to entertain. It's not like sticking a CD on a jukebox, live music has a human element (obviously), it's very hard work.

On a better note, it seems there's still more local venues to be found for the band. Last week I started booking for January (we have to work around 3 months in advance) and to my pleasent surprise we've already picked up 4 gigs. The target is 6. I also drove out to a couple on Friday night which were new to me, they were fairly promising.

So this week it's my 30th. I'm having a party on Friday-and then it's the start of the PJ Band winter tour on Saturday at the Duck n Drake in Leeds. I'm looking forward to that!

Elsewhere, Paradise Street continues to receive as much attention as I can throw at it. 2 more tracks completed last week, leaving 5 to go. I'm still hopeful of a release before Christmas.

Last week was a very busy one, with 2 more solo gigs. It's a good job I'm used to playing to small audiences as Tuesday at the Travellers Rest, Britannia, Bacup and Thursday at Verve in Leeds were both very thin crowds.

I played 2 short sets at Bacup, it was a wild and rainy night and you have to wonder what chances a pub has of survival when it's as dead as that (on any night). The night was organised by the same team that do the gigs in Hebden Bridge, namely LiveSpace. My sets went well, although I was a little worried about 'Message In A Bottle'. Please tell me you didn't really think I wrote it guys!!

I made a throwaway remark that it was something I'd knocked together recently, and then there was silence....this being Bacup this was hardly a surprise, but afterwards one or two did congratulate me on the new tune. It worried me slightly.

No such problems on Thursday and the small crowd there did at least pay attention. It's a nice venue, a bit young for me, but it went ok.

In between this I went to a Musicians Union seminar on Wednesday in Nottingham. This was entitled 'releasing your own album'. I found it pretty useful, in many ways because it qualified a lot of what I've been doing up to now rather than any new revelations.

The Ariel cyber PR continues it's progress, although at the moment I do wonder who is working who as I seem to be putting in a lot of time on it. On Friday last week I recorded nearly 30 radio station drop-ins ('hi this is Paul Jeffery and both of you are listening to etc etc...) and so I'm hoping this will be worth it. I'll try and update things on here in full, including a nice review I've had. It's early days yet, so we'll see.

The crunch is beginning to bite it seems. Our gig at The Arkle in Morley fell through last week. Apparently some band nights have run at a loss there which is helping nobody, a shame but not a surprise.

My 2 solo gigs did take place, although The Wardrobe on Wednesday was as quiet as I'd ever known it. My set passed off without incident and that's about all there is to say. Last night (Sunday) I was back at the New Inn (Barwick) for the umpteenth time. Scouse Andy provided a really good support act and we did a few duets at the end of the night on 'No Other Baby', 'Saw Her Standing There' and 'Hey Jude'. I played one set straight through and managed to throw in a healthy number of originals. Not a night to set the world on fire but as the saying goes, 'a gig's a gig'.

CYBER PR

I've taken the plunge and joined up with Ariel Publicity for a spot of online PR. This will take full effect over the coming months and should see my internet profile raised considerably. Who knows, I may become something of an internet cult, and also maybe I'll find even more people reading this column. We're hoping for double figures.

You can view my nifty Virtual Press Kit (VPK) and this gives a good overview of where I'm at (sort of). The whole idea is that whereas I can merely keep the wheels moving online they should be able to get things really moving. It's not about looking for a spike in CD sales (althought this would be nice!). It's more about raising my web presence and bringing my music to a wider audience. After all, whereas there's a finite number of people watching live music in pubs (about 10 these days) there's a virtually infinite number of folk online worldwide. And I want everyone's attention.

We shall see in the next few weeks just how things develop. Meanwhile, this week I'll be at Bacup on Tuesday followed by Verve in Leeds on Thursday night.

Have a good week.