Songs from the Shed

Festive videos and Happy New Year

Last post of the year for me just before I run off to do my Christmas shopping and prepare for indulgences!

I’ve had a great year. Many trips out from Bob’s Folk Show in Jan, Songs from the Shed in June, Roots and Fusion session in Sept and the London Folk and Roots Festival in October.

The year has drawn to a close with me enjoying writing and recording some new songs and a nod to festive spirit in my first ever Christmas song: Little Christmas (Chasing Fairy Lights). The song birthed when I was asked to be a part of a Christmas album of independent artists by Andy Jones who plays in a fab duo called Just By Chance. Andy’s record label Searching For Dandelions released the album in December and it is available to download and is called A Searching for Dandelions Christmas 2.

To add a further sprinkling of festive to my tune myself and the very special Blythe Cooper drew up and created a stop motion animation video of cuteness to warm the cockles on those cold winter days. The video and song have had some great support of which I massively appreciate 🙂

cover artwork to the festive tune by Jo Bywater

I hope you all have a fab festive time and best of luck for the new year. I shall see you in 2013 with a renewed and ever more enhanced creative spirit.

Until then 🙂

Jo x

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

Rockin acoustic with Songs from the Shed

This weekend was a corker!

It began with a very, very early morning start to head down to Clevedon. I’ve had this planned for a couple of months now (since Jan), when the lovely Bob of Bob’s Folk Show helped me to spread my musical name around a tad and I was introduced to Jon Earl through the ever important life source Facebook. Jon runs a show called Songs from the Shed. It’s renouned for hosting a mixture of quality emerging and emerged acts. The one before me was Paul Heaton from Beautiful South/Housemartins. Very excited I was to do this day trip and musical quest and see what this legendary shed was all about.

Jon started Songs from the Shed up a couple of years ago after wondering what to do with the shed in his garden. A pub-based conversation occurred and the direction was to invite musicians to play in the shed, video them and upload it online. Awesome. Well, down the line, 900, 000 youtube views later and whole lotta good reputations brings us to my weekend.

I have to say, I got quite excited. I did my warm up in the back seat of the car in a pub car park and then headed to meet Jon at his ace house down the lane. Jon’s a good bloke. We had a cup of tea and then headed to the Shed. It was extremely surreal but awesome. I literally unpacked my guitar and got stuck into 3 of my songs from Cycle Grace Pulse Break. Jon video’d them on a hand-held camera. No sophisticated mics or even a tripod. This thing is all straight up hand held, microphone on the camera. Happy days. Old school my fave.

The shed is full of things that have been collected or given, there’s loads of things in there to keep people like me interested for a very long time. And the bathroom has it’s own life entirely. I could have spent half a day in there just reading the walls. 🙂

With the patter of rain on the roof we were done and dusted in 1 take each. Time for a cuppa and a chat and off to find fish and chips by the sea! Incidentally it felt like we walked into Fawlty Towers for the pleasure of this but what a cool day!

Sunday was spent climbing Mount Snowdon with Blythe. 2 1/2 hours up and 1 1/2 back down because we were going to miss the last bus for the car! Today my legs are having real issues walking down stairs. Good job I get to spend it sitting on my butt!

Feeling pretty postive about this whole thing! 🙂

Jo x

Live review and Bristol gig update

Quick news-burst folks…..

I have just witnessed a very nice live review of a charity gig I partook in last week for Mr Barry Briercliffe at Studio 2 Parr st in aid of Cancer Research. It was written by Ian D. Hall for Liverpool Student Media and can be viewed…..HERE. Thanks to Ian for that.

I also have 2 gigs confirmed for Bristol in May. I will be playing Friday 10th at The Spring Gardens and Sat 12th at Marlow’s Bar. I’ve sorted these little gems out as I will be recording a session for ‘Songs from the Shed’ on Sat afternoon. I’m looking forward to a road trip and some good music vibes!