gigs

Travel and touring to Bristol

This weekend I spent in Bristol.

2 gigs. One at Spring Gardens Tavern which happened to be closing down the day after! Friendly, music supporting staff with a great sound system. My fave grungy kind of venue. They only play CDs from acts that have played there so I slipped them a copy of my ‘Cycle Grace Pulse Break‘ for future sonic pleasure ;). I was last on the bill for this one so really had to monitor my beer drinking speed. I managed this successfully but made up for it afterwards. This meant the tourist day of Bristol was had with a faint headache…

Saturday was tourist central. After a leisurely walk into the city we headed to an event called ‘Feed the 5000’. For us this meant free tasty curry and salad in the sun. What it also meant was that all of the food used came from sources that had been rejected by supermarkets because they weren’t the right shape etc (potato, carrot rejects etc…think of the Raggy Dolls but food!). Awesome. Sunny day on the grass. We also managed to soak up some Davinci arwork in the museum and some top grafitti in Stokes Croft including a couple of Banksys. Topped off with a coffee in Cafe Kino. That eve came gig number two at Marlows.

Swanky hotel bar with an awesome slide Blues guitarist playing when we arrived. I want a stomp box and a Cigar Box Guitar now :). I had a great response from the audience, job’s a good un! Cheers to Mark Venus Music for giving this out of towner some gigs.

Loved Bristol. We were also very hospitably put up for the two nights with the Callan family who very much looked after us 🙂

Sunday was spent with an early(ish) start toward Forest of Dean for some cycling and a cruise upto Cannock Chase on the way back to Liverpool for a second installment of Red trail mountain biking. Failing to realise the trail was 21k of severe uphills and awesome downhills by the time we arrived back at the car at 8pm I was absolutely broken.

In bed by 10.30pm. It’s been a while since that happened!

Next gigs are IPO Festival in Liverpool:

15th May @ Cavern Club

18th May @ Cavern Pub

Rock on! 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 🙂

News & a Comp to win my CD!

Hey all,
If you are on my mailing list you will already have read this. Arguably it’s worth another read anyway…:)

*FIRSTLY: I’ve received some great feedback/reviews from my album so far this year. (www.jobywater.wordpress.com/reviews/)
One in particular was the magazine FATEA. This prompted them to request one of my tracks for their Autumn showcase sessions. As of 1st August my song ‘Disclaimer’ will be featured along with other artists for a 3 month period: http://www.fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk/

*SECONDLY: My songs ‘Disclaimer’ and ‘Let Go’ have also been chosen to be featured on the ‘Women of Substance’ radio playlists for the next 3 months www.womenofsubstanceradio.com

*THIRD-UP WORD-UP: GIGGAGE.

Awhole list of gigs over the next couple of months

There is also very serious talk of heading to Hamburg and Berlin at the end of September.

*FOURTHLY: COMPETITION #1 – 2 copies of my album (plus badges) up for grabs: For the people who can best describe my music in 1 or 2 sentences! Inbox me with your offering. Don’t be shy. ENDS 12th August!

Extra-curricular nuggets…

WHISC:I recently began volunteering my online skills for Whisc (Women’s Health Information Support Centre) on Bold st. Liverpool.
They are a great bunch of ladies offering support to women in the forms of a drop-in service, training, reduced price holistic therapies (I have Shiatsu massage there once a month and HIGHLY recommend it) & beauty treatments to name but a small percentage of who they are and what they have to offer. They promote positive mental health and are a charity. Further information can be found @ http://www.whisc.org.uk
Also join them on Facebook and Twitter.

Its been a great month so far, thanks for reading and best wishes and good vibes to you all.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog at http://www.jobywater.com
See you around! 🙂

Jo x

Unsuccessful transport, Walls and Music

Yesterdays day of giggage (both my own and Roger Waters) left me with my Sunday feeling most re-motivated, lighter and perseverant. Important qualities for an artist i think! It’s easy to view the oceans of amazing creative talent sometimes and feel overwhelmed, self-doubtful and wonder what it is that makes what i do so special that people would want to take notice of it. Important questions to have clear answers to as long as that doesn’t inhibit what it is you do..(or is that survival of the fittest? hmm..). It turns out that my answer is that i have a passion, a huge creative drive and then a duty. Result.

International Pop Overthrow gig at The Cavern was awesome, top crowd and i always love playing on bigger stages with lights., or is that my ego…not sure :). However, a good sweaty gig, a happy responsive audience and CD sales is a combo I like. I was even asked on the way to the gig if i was Spanish., it sounds a lot more exotic than Wakefield that’s for sure so I may even adopt it as my 3rd nationality (1-Yorkshire, 2-Scouse, 3-Spanish :)). For the evening I headed off with some friends to Manchester after i acquired a last minute-ish ticket to go see Roger Waters do ‘The Wall’ at the MEN. That was immense., epic with a whole lot of epicness for desert. Projections, surround sound and a wall made of fold-up cardboard boxes…:) (i love seeing the bits when the pack down shows even if it did immediately turn the solid wall structure in my head to a stack of cereal boxes..).

I wanna do that!

Other than that my day was interspersed with me getting on the wrong train (i haven’t done anything like that since i was 13, or driving to London on the motorway by going North from Liverpool a couple of years ago) and us breaking down on the motorway……twice!

Saturday….good for music/bad for travel

🙂

The ‘where did my hour go’ Sunday muse, gigs and reviews.

Well in all honesty considering I’m bearing a hangover, post 80’s-themed birthday party of friend, even if that hour hadn’t been taken against my will for season transition reasons it probably would have been lost in sleep anyway…the phantom hour of spring. The positive is that it kicked me right into gear to appreciate the beautiful peaceful Sunday vibe and do a little writing, (motivated by ‘Tick tick tick. That’s the sound of your life running out’ :))

GIGS AND REVIEWS. Last week brought me 2 great gigs and this week has brought me 2 great reviews!

Friday 18^th I played in Vinyl Basement on Lark Lane. FESTIVAL EXPRESS, run by two great people Terry Gray and Hayley Blackledge. It was noisy but I knew it was a music loving crowd, this gave me greater license to be louder and more dramatic 🙂 Eye of the Tiger! It paid off. I sold a CD before I’d even put my guitar down and got some great feedback in the way of a guitar geek convo about tunings etc, love it. I love playing gigs on the Lane (most of the time), it’s like being at home; it’s where we filmed the vid for WAVE. There’s a proper buzz of creative talent around here AND it’s just round the corner from my house, perfect. Terry ended the night with some ace covers like James ‘Sit Down’, Candi Staton ‘You got the love’. Tunes that I had 7inch vinyl singles of when I was growing up. Ah shame he didn’t do Betty Boo!

On Monday I was at Studio 2 Parr St for Women’s Poetry evening. Run by Val Walsh it comprised of a varied group of ladies doing original poetry. All ages, all styles. I went down tired and left completely inspired. I played Ropeladder and Disclaimer totally unplugged and babbled nervously to my fully-attentive audience. Great! 🙂 These are the kinds of gigs that remind me of the roots of why I started writing songs, by way of expression and creativity. It can be easy to get caught up in the momentum of the business side of things. Grounding. I sold more copies of the album and had a great conversation about following your passion. I was recommended a book last year called ‘The Davinci Method’ which I found very inspirational. It had a quote:

‘Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and then go do it because what the world needs is people who have come alive’ – Howard Thurman.

This really motivated my direction at the time and I ended up using it on my album cover.

The two reviews this week were awesome. The first one came on Friday by way of NERVE magazine in Liverpool by Richard Lewis and the second courtesy of Eddie Cooney for the national music magazine R2 (found in WHSmiths etc). I have to say thanks to these two gentlemen and also very glad they enjoyed the music. It’s a great motivator and it does feel that my time spent posting CDs, researching and emailing is all paying off bit by bit.

Ace.

So rounding things up…

At this ‘ere party last night (in amongst people dancing in a circle wearing neon plastic in the synthesizer-infused air) a conversation was had by someone who has my CD. It was brought to my attention that I should ask people what their top 2 fave songs on CYCLE GRACE PULSE BREAK are. Great idea! My thinking is that I can do this and whichever song comes out #1 will be my next music vid…..watch this space, I’m gonna be needing your cooperation, or if you read this and feel like replying now please send me an email.

Right, I’m gonna go see if I can find this lost hour because I’m starting to miss it and I don’t want to wait until autumn to get it back..

Until next time!