Cycle Grace Pulse Break

Revamp, Songwriting, Radio & gigs 2015

This weekend whilst I was soaking up the vibe of Halloween, Day of the Dead and trying to write a Christmas song I also took it upon myself to update my website.  It’s still a gradual work-in-progress but is now much snazzier and more organised 🙂 ACHIEVED!

To celebrate this, I bring news..

Last month was the return of Liverpool Acoustic Songwriting Challenge.  I had intended to enter this for  a couple of years now but 2014 was the year I actually put it into action.  The challenge was to go to View Two Gallery in town (Liverpool) and pick a piece of artwork to write about.  This was a really interesting undertaking for me as I haven’t written many songs in this way before.  I enjoyed it a lot and here is my offering below.  I have been selected as one of the 10 finalists and will be performing at the finals on 21st November at View Two Gallery, Liverpool.  There are some really strong contenders among the other finalists and it will be a great night. So…if you fancy, come along and see what’s going on!

 

In gig news…. I have been confirmed as a performer at January’s Great British Rock & Blues Festival in Skegness.  This is very exciting for me!  I will be doing an hour long show on Sunday 25th Jan on Blues Matters stage @ 1.15 – 2.15 pm.   Hope to see you there!

 

Finally…Last week marked the return of the one and only Bob’s Folk Show.  Bob was one of the first to hear/play my debut album Cycle Grace Pulse Break in 2010 and has been an encouragement ever since.  His show is always a great listen of folk and roots artists and the first one (including my track Chopping Wood), can be heard here..The show is every Tuesday at 9pm., go and check him out. 

 

That’s all for now…stay warm and creative!

Jo x

Gigs with wet feet #1 – Beverley Folk Festival

There’s nothing like rolling up to a well organised busy festival where people know exactly where you need to be and what time… I have to thank Beverley Folk Festival for this 🙂 Adorned with passes and maps we headed off to our accomodation (a little tent) and after surveying the land and carefully selecting a spot we put up the tent and headed off to see what was going on… It was busy, great!  We stuck around to watch Gretchen Peters and then I went off to warm up for my gig.  As every British festival experience (mostly) there is always a chance that it will rain..it rained a lot and in the space of watching a gig inside by the time we returned to our tent it was half on a puddle  :/  My new trainers were now a little bit wet and no longer green 🙂

My performance was on the Area 2 Stage in the Wold Top Marquee.  There was a really chilled attentive vibe in there, a great stage and bails of hay for people to sit on…and it was warm.   I met some great guys running the stage – Sam Pirt and Vinnie Whitehead, who were also performing and it just was a really nice gig.  I played, and spoke to some lovely people afterwards who came to buy my CD and chat about blues.  I also met the host of The Fox’s Den Show – Bill, who came to say hi and I’m very much looking forward to my now booked live session in October.

After this it was time to chill with some real ale and watch the rest of the days music.  I have to say I was a bit gutted I wasn’t here on Friday because the Proclaimers headlined and that would’ve  been a good end to the day…but I seem to have survived.  Even though me and Blythe had to shimmy our tent off a puddle in high wind a good time was had…

Check out my gigs page to see what’s going on next this summer!

Here is a vid of my performance of Scratch the Surface from said gig –

Songs from the Shed session now online

I had a fab time when I headed to Clevedon to meet Jon Earl and record my 3 songs in the shed.  There has been some amazing talent in the shed before me and it was an honour to be involved.  The videos are now online! www.songsfromtheshed.com

I recorded Wave, Scratch the Surface and Disclaimer….all now on the vid page, all now online.  Enjoy 🙂

Jo x

We made a video for Disclaimer

A few months ago I decided I’d like to do a video project for another one of my songs (making the video for ‘Wave’ was such a success and lots of fun with my friends at Soundworx Media). Seeing at ‘Disclaimer’ is a well-loved favourite at gigs it was a no-brainer.   I sent a message out into the ether and after meeting a few potential Videographers I decided Mr Dominic Boyle was to be the one….

Dom is a recent graduate from Edge Hill University. Armed with his awesome camera and a few meetings in Bold St Coffee, we headed out into the streets/coffee shops/parks of Liverpool and thus ‘Disclaimer’ aquired visuals. Dom has been a superstar to work with and it was a great experience.

You can find him in these places: 
Youtube – Poetry in motion: Vocal Media
dom.f.boyle@gmail.com

Have a look and see where we got to in the vid! 

Jo x

London and Brighton mini tour

Last week was awesomely busy.  There seem to be a lot of people inspired to learn to play guitar for the summer.  This for me is very good.  This means I have been spending increasing hours in the first half of my week meeting new guitar students.  This is good!

Jo Bywater Guitar Tuition 2012

Interspersing my increasing demand as a tutor came a nice little couple of days off for my long-ago-booked gigs in London and Brighton.  These two gigs have been on my list for a few months so I was very excited when they finally arrived.  With the National Express and Mega Bus as my chosen method of rock n roll transport I headed down to Greenwich on Wednesday towards The Pelton Arms.  The British summer has so far being a British summer at its best…this of course means a lot of rain.    This meant that en route to gig I got absolutely drenched.  I stayed in a hostel near Deptford Bridge.  Round the corner from the hostel was a piece of paper stuck to the wall that had ‘Cardboard City’ written on it, with an arrow pointing down the road.., this did make me question whether I had made a mistake..

So…London…my gig was with Icarus Club run by the lovely Phil Dearing.  Very friendly and supportive.  I sold copies of my album and had a return invitation.  This I take as positive.  The bar was some decent real ale and a pay-what-you-want for food deal on a Wednesday. 🙂 I played and ran off into the night towards the Cutty Sark and onto cardboard city. All was well.

Up early and I jumped on a bus to Brighton.  Pre-gig I met one of my good friends Mark M Thompson from uni that I haven’t seen in a few years.  We obviously hit a few pubs and pints of beer and had the quickest catch-up, compressing 6 years into 3 hours.  Knowing I had to sober up a tad in order to play a gig of decent caliber we headed for some food, bid goodbye and I again ran off into the rain towards the Brunswick. 

A friendly gig where I also got chance to see the fabulous ‘The Finds‘ headline.  Very tight band.  The sound was great and there were a few familiar faces from the Pool there too.  Unexpected and very welcome.  I met some really nice people who like my music too.

I stayed the night in another hostel in which at 4am a massive fight broke out upstairs by seemingly somebody who was very upset about his bed…  The morning hit and I took a long walk down the sea front, had an espresso in the Alchemist Cafe and begun my 9 hour coach journey back to Liverpool.  On our stop off at London a guy tried to get on the coach with a Tarantula….he couldn’t quite grasp why the driver said no….:/

Done., looking forward to many more trips and gigs!

x

Threshold Festival and LSMedia

A great weekend was had as I reminisce with a very welcomed cup of coffee in Oomo, Smithdown Rd….

This weekend was Threshold Festival, held in the Baltic Triangle of Liverpool.  I had the pleasure of performing for Mellowtone on Thursday night for the festival press launch, my artwork prints were on display all weekend in the Blade Factory and I also performed a gig I loved in the cafe of the Nordic Church on Saturday early eve.  Both gigs had great audiences and reminded me of the plus points of the Liverpool music scene.  Much like last year it was a perfect setting for seeing artists all in the same places, ones that I don’t really see much because everyone is usually out gigging in different places.  There’s a great spirit and energy and there’s nothing like having a long list of bands to go see whilst swanning around with beers in hand.

Threshold had to do a quick re-shuffle this year as the arranged venue of the CUC had announced its closing. When all is said and done, to manifest something of this size in such a last minute effort is an acheivement and a half.  Hats off to Kaya, Chris and the rest of the festival crew.  I hope it returns next year!

As for this week….I will be heading to LSU on Wednesday to perform live in session for Mr Ian D Hall’s radio show on ICON.  Good times!

Jo x

Bob’s Folk Show session

This brings me to Feb 2012… already. Tuesday (31st Jan) I headed down to Chertsey on the train to play on Bob’s Folk Show (www.radiowey.co.uk).

I’m fairly new to radio sessions but 2011 brought me a spurt of them and after booking in for this session in October last year I realised it had arrive pretty quickly. I’m mostly pretty confident and chilled with this situation, the worst thing that tends to happen to me if I think about it (which I try not to..) is that I start to think I’m going to forget my lyrics whilst live on air 🙂 .. it’s not happened yet…

I REALLY enjoy journeys and so heading down via London with a coffee and a book and my guitar was great fun for me. I get all philosophical and creative. I felt like a muso…:) a proper one. So… Bob’s Folk Show.. I met Bob in Chertsey and we headed to a pub where Keith Moon used to drink.  A beer, a halloumi sandwhich and some good old convo about being independant and sticking it to ‘the man’ we then headed to the radio shack which is next door to the hostpital in Wey. Awesome 🙂 proper studio, bit of vintage about it,  I loved it. Bob’s massively into his music so we chatted and he introduced me to some artists he liked and then we did 2 hours of his show. It was fantastic to have the opportunity to play 9 of my tracks live inbetween listening to some fab independant musicians.  Great show, great bloke and I’m looking into sorting some gigs down in London in the next few months.  I stayed in a hostel that night in Pimlico and as I arrived at midnight (after Bob very kindly drove me after the show) I had the amusing situation of having to negotiate making my bed in the dark whilst 12 other people were sleeping. I like random. I woke up pretty early and walked out the door to see the Thames and for a little saunter across London . It was a beautifully lit morning…

If 2012 is all like this I will be HAPPY! I urge you to check out Bob’s Folk Show. If you’re into decent, high quality acoustic music that’s not generic…..

Jo x

Festives, newness, Southern Comfort and Lime

As my final mail of 2011 I mainly wanted to say thank you to everyone who has supported and enjoyed what I’ve been upto creatively this year whether it be music or art. Cheers! And thanks to those I’ve shared the gigs with. It’s been a great and varied year. My favourite!

2011 started off with my album released and ready to gig. I spent the year sending messages to magazines, reviewers and radio shows and got a significant amount of positive feedback. All the reviews i’ve had so far are on my website and I’ve had some great local help from Seven Streets, LSU, Liverpool Acoustic, Radio Merseyside, Nerve and this month Good Vibrations gave me my final review of the year.
Nationally I had positive reviews from FATEA, R2, MU Mag, The Girls Are and Americana.  In terms of radio I had a fab experience on ICON Radio,  KVFM and  ‘Folkscene’ on BBC Radio Merseyside after being invited by Mr Stan Ambrose. As his only guest I had the whole show and had my entire album played. Definately a moment of pride and acheivement. There’s has also been great support coming my way from Bob’s Folk Show to the South!

Over the last 12 months my gigs were a little chocolate box of mixture.  December culminated in two great gigs, the penultimate in LLanberis, Wales after which I went mountain biking in Snowdonia and the final gig of the year at Sound Women in Huddersfield, which was preceded by a traffic-laden, 4 hour journey from Liverpool!

Work – wise I’ve spent an incredible time building up my guitar students and also taken on more commissions art-wise. The most recent two being illustrations for a childrens book and a painting for a present I’m half way through for a customer in USA.

My plans for 2012 are of the writing kind. New music for the new year and the forming of a tour, possibly Europe. I’ll definitely be gigging as ever around the UK. Plans for the capital city are afoot. 31st Jan I will be playing live in session on Bob’s Folk Show. http://www.radiowey.co.uk

My album Cycle Grace Pulse Break is for sale at http://www.cdbaby.com.jobywater2
My blog and updates are as ever to be found at http://www.jobywater.com

The shows I’ve done and art I’ve created will very soon be on the site!

Again, many thanks and I wish everyone the best for the end of 2011 and most definitely 2012!

See you there

Jo x

12 Bar Club and Bob’s Folk show

After an awesome gig and day of art-perusal in London a couple of weeks ago i find myself heading back down there for a nice social chill and a gig on 16th October. Lucky, lucky me booked myself a slot at 12 Bar Club on Denmark st. Door £5.  I’ve also just organised a date to perform in the studio on Bob’s Folk Show on 31st Jan 2012. Though it’s seemingly far away I’m pretty sure i’ll be there pretending not to be nervous quicker than expected :). Bob will be playing one of my tunes on 11.10.11 for those who want to tune in! I listened to the show last week and there were some great artists on, definitely recommended.

I also have 2 tunes (Let Go & Disclaimer) on the playlist at Women of Substance radio for the next 3 months.  Happy Days!

Currently spending much time teaching guitar, drawing illustrations and analysing the world down to its quantum physical particles.

Bring on the Autumn 🙂

x