Well, we certainly have been busy little bees. Busily bustling around, working hard, crashing into windows, getting into rooms and then being super confused about how to get out - classic bee stuff.
Photo by Bethany Gabbitas
So, if you are like us and short on time we have condensed three gigs into one blog! Of course the blog itself is now three times longer and therefore more effort and time consuming. So we have been even nicer and condensed it further into convenient bullet points.
Gig of our dreams, joint headline at Doncaster Roots with Peet Jackson. He was awesome, we were ourselves - make of that what you will. Classic Kootch. 3/10. Beth told too many jokes. All not funny.
Sharrow Festival at The Lescar, Sheffield. Full day of awesome bands. We like to be martyrs because we have a LOT of equipment to carry. Woe is us. Outdone by a double bass. Double basstard, are we right?
Meersbrook live, Hagglers Corner, Sheffield. We also like to be the biggest divas. Outdone by a band that did their soundcheck while the first band should have been sound-checking. They then packed up and went, where? Nobody knows. Were they on the bill later in the evening? Had they just wandered in off the streets for a cheeky soundcheck then went home? Your guess is as good as ours. Outdone again by the next band both refusing to play, or get off the stage. Extremely well handled by the sound engineers - they were awesome. Seriously, whatever they were paid needs to be trebled. Everything smooth sailing and a really good laugh from there - Beth told more jokes. Still not funny.
One thing we have learned over the string of these recent gigs is all musicians owe their lives to good sound technicians. From Graham at the Heights of Abraham - that smiled as he kissed his pension goodbye when his bass speaker blew in the torrential rain. Stuart Palmer who told us straight: you have a £15 pick up, you’re gunna have a bad time (and then Peet Jackson who said: Errrr, Stuart, it’s actually, errrr, the right channel isn’t on). Silk and Custard at The Lescar who subtly added some extra reverb on our soft song The False Bride (yes, we noticed, thank you). And Cait and all her team at The Hagglers Corner who did an amazing job when we suggested we make up some time by doing the soundcheck on the fly. It’s not easy to do that. Flies are small and as we mentioned before, we have a LOT of equipment. Fair play to the fly though - it just said ‘boy, I’m just glad you don’t have a double bass’.