We’ve got a lovely house gig in the E5 area of London this coming Saturday 16th April. I’ll be doing a set with Danielle and Matt and possibly Storme followed by the lovely Gemma / Woodpecker Wooliams.

All unplugged and surrounded by comfy cushions, candles, tea and cake. Yay!

There’s more info on the Wupadupa website about how to come along to the gig:

http://www.wupadupa.com/blog/116-Wupadupa_House_gig_on_April_16th.html

After a lovely gig in Bracknell last week at Folking Live, I’m now about to travel upto Norfolk to do a gig on a beautiful looking boat. Yay and ahoy there!

Benny from Weston Green is also playing so it should be a great night. If anyone in the area is free then please pop along.

Fri 1st Apr 2011 – The Albatros Sailing Ship, Wells-Next-The-Sea, Norfolk, UK. Onstage about 8pm ish.

Benny from Weston Green and Nigel from Sugardrum playing on a boat in Norfolk. Yay!

Nigel, Beth and Storme will be chatting and playing some songs on Kingston Green Radio on Monday 14th March between 6-7pm. The show will be available to listen to online and on 87.7FM in the Kingston Upon Thames area as part of Kingston Paint the Town Green. Yay!

As we’ve got a house concert or house gig tour planned for the Spring, I thought I’d write up a quick guide for anyone planning to host one.

House Concerts are a great way to see artists perform in a relaxed and intimate environment. They are also a great way to meet new people and share a unique musical experience.

Here are a few guidelines if you are planing on hosting a House Concert in the UK. These ideas are based on our own past experience of hosting house concerts; please feel free to let us know in the comments section below if you have any further advice you’d like to offer.

1. The key to remember is that it is your home so you should remain in control of who and how many people come to the gig. With that in mind do not post the address of the venue with any promotional material for the concert. Instead, just mention the approximate area, e.g. SW London and provide an email address where people can send a message requesting they add their name to the House Concert audience list.

2. Make it clear that the only way people can get in to the concert is if their name is on the audience list and to get on this list all they need to do is to send you an email request. If there is still room on the list then you let the person know and then and only then give them the address of the venue. Also mention that if they want to bring some other people then that’s fine but they must ask you first to see if there is still room and under no circumstances must they publicise the address of the venue.

This way, when people arrive at the concert, you only need to let people in who’s names are on the list and you don’t end up with 100 people turning up to watch a concert in a living room that only has room for 20

3. Allow time for each artists to perform for around thirty to forty minutes, and then have a suitable amount of time between artists for people to talk to each other and the artist to sell CDs or other merchandise.

4. Decide in advance if you are going to provide refreshments for people and make this clear in any promotional material. It’s nice if you can make people some tea to drink or offer some cake or biscuits. Also, let people know in advance if you wish the Concert to be an alcohol free event.

6. Instead of charging people on the door, pass around a Magic Hat encouraging people to donate money to the artists playing that night, to cover costs or to donate to a charitable cause.

7. Feel free to just invite a load of your friends to the gig; just make sure they know what sort of music they are coming to hear as it’s not very nice for say a quiet acoustic artist having to deal with requests from people wanting some upbeat music to dance the Charlston.

That’s about it. Remember, the key is to remain in control as it’s your home, to have some fun and enjoy some great music with the company of some lovely people. Do please let us know if you would like us to play at a house gig you are hosting.

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For the past couple of years I’ve recorded a musical Christmas card to send out to my friends. Here they are grouped together in a free mini EP type thing.

http://soundcloud.com/sugardrum/sets/merry-xmas-1

Hope you all have a fun Chrismas!

x

So, I recently opened up our home and invited a load of lovely people, some who I knew and and some who I didn’t to come and hear us play, along with Carrie Tree and Storme Watson. It ended up being a wonderful and magical evening.

Thanks to Liz and Vera for the photos, more to follow plus videos and audio recordings once I find the time to get them off my camera.

We’ve got a few gigs coming up, sort of a mini tour and our last gigs of the year…

Sat 20th Nov: House gig along with Carrie Tree. See www.wupadupa.com for more details. It starts at around 8pm, is in SW London (zone 6) and if you want to come along then you’ll need to send an email to the Wupadupa crew organising it at …. or just let us know via the contact page.

Sun 21st Nov: Up and Comin’ Variety Show at The Comedy Pub, 7 Oxendon Street in Leicester Sq. Doors at 7pm, starts at 7.30pm, £3 to get in. They have a website at http://upandcomin3.weebly.com/

Fri 26th Nov: Acoustic Haven, Bowden House in Totnes, Devon. A beautiful old house in Totnes run by a group of lovely people. Also playing are Faye Houston and Billy Bottle. Tickets avail in advance from Drift records in Totnes or just turn up on the night but best to reserve tickets if you can in case they sell out.

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So, whilst driving through Cheddar Gorge one of us suggested to stop and do a guerilla gig. A quick park of the car, and a short climb later saw us sitting towards the top of a grass bank, that looked much less steeper from the ground

The view from where we played at Cheddar Gorge

Looking down from our guerilla gig at Cheddar Gorge

We perfomed one song there to a group of ramblers far down below, then moved to a slightly less steep incline to do a few more songs. Twas lovely to be playing outside in the open air again.

A slightly less steep place to perform

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Thank you to all the people who stopped to listen to us at the many guerilla gigs we did around this years End of the Road festival and for all the wonderful feedback we received from people afterwards.

I think my two favourite gigs were on the top deck of the doubledecker bus that served tea and cake and the last gig we did in the woods on Sunday night, to a small crowd of appreciative listeners.

Hopefully we’ll manage to sort things out in time to get to also play on one of the main stages at next years festival.

xx

Big thanks to Glastonbury Podcasting who recently played a recording of our song “Motorway Song” on the September Edition of their show.

You can find out more about them and listen to the show at www.glastonburypodcasting.com

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