I would like to use this fantastic opportunity given by Musos Magazine as a kind of therapy session – somewhere where I can muse (Musos – joke – yes? – no? – it’s as good as they’ ll get) on our problems, our barriers and our methods of getting over or round them. Maybe if other bands read this – they can help us and our experiences can help them – and together all of us are stronger. Bruce Springsteen once said to me (he was talking to about 80,000 people at the time – but I could’a swore he was looking straight at me) “Nobody wins unless everybody wins”.


So, our first steps as a band was to get as many gigs as possible. It didn’t take long to realise that there are plenty of gigs out there – so long as you play to nobody for nothing. There were loads of promoters offering us really useless gigs that always cost us money. You wonder why the pubs even bother to let the promoters run the nights – until you realise – 4 bands on – each band has 4 or 5 members. Each member buys two or three drinks @ £4.00 each. The pub makes £200 it wouldn’t have made otherwise. The bands get nothing. The promoter might get a few people paying to come in.


Step back. Not worth it – paying to see bands these days is a tricky business – and you can’t expect your fans to pay to see you every time. We live in South East London – New Cross/Deptford to be precise. The great thing about this area is – live music is thriving – we just had to find a way to make it pay a little so that we could keep going. We opened our own club in a local friendly pub. They had a house PA and allowed us to run a night every month. Didn’t make much money – but it was better than running all around London playing in pubs where the only audience was the next band waiting to go on. We got tighter as a band and picked up a few residencies in local pubs that pay reasonable rates for good live bands playing the sort of music we play. This grew and we ended up with about 10 venues we play at almost every month. We did this during 2009 and 2010.


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