The BlueYellows - YouTube Debut!

Humankind Remix

I love the shear variety in our gigs. This photo is from in front of the stage at the Sandbach Christmas Lights concert, not long before we went on. The children here, including Soul and Alba from our entourage are meeting Alex from CBeeBees, who has just been doing storytime sessions with them. In the background, against the van, are Emma and Simon from the band and the sound-man for the day, who I think was called Allan.

Towards the centre, bending down towards little Alba, and next to his wife Steph, is our talented friend Jose Manu Munoz Arteaga (sorry for the lack of accenting here, how do you do that on an English keyboard???). As well as being a film-maker and musician, Jose has a wonderful talent in sound-mixing and has produced the music for some big theatre productions in Spain.

You can here his remix (with all the "cotton wool" taken out of the original sound) of Humankind here

In other news, we're delighted to be playing a concert for the Green Party at the wonderful venue of Alexander's Jazz Theare in Chester. Dayve Dean and Phil Maddocks should help to make it a wonderful evening!

Hope to see you there!

Boxjam II was an absolute B L A S T

Arriving at the gig in the afternoon with Hayley & Em from the band (simon wa to turn up later) for my solo part of the event, the atmosphere at the acoustic stage was really mellow and the audience were really a considerate bunch of people who were there to take in the music and enjoy. Thank you if you were one of them! I cajoled the 2 of my band-mates present to join me for “No Tobacco, No Jesus” at the end of my solo set.

The whole event was wonderfully organised and there was a decent crowd at the electric stage, some cool bands on, belly-dancing and some random and fun, fez-wearing, heart-bearing goings on. Big thanks to you if you came, and to the organisers, Simon, Mat, Tina, Toby, Spoons! Looking forward to Boxjam the 3^rd already! X

(The pictures are courtesy of Tina Newbury of Simon J Newbury Photography).

Boxjam!

Our first Birthday gig,in effect (with The BlueYellows, that is!). I'm playing at 5pm to do an acoustic set followed by the full band at 7.15 pm. Loads going on, check out the poster...

BTW, thanks to Dayve Dean, Mat, Nigel Stonier & Thea Gilmore for asking me to play some songs at Acoustic Sunday, part of The Nantwich Words & Music Festival, when I'd only turned up to as a music fan rather than a performer. Thanks guys!...

I did go home feeling sick with caffine overdose, quite something for me, as you will know if you know anything about my usual coffee intake, but this was couter-acted by the warm glow of having appeared at one of the best kept secrets of the UK festival scene, as I say, thanks X

By the way here's a lil' pic of us from last year's Boxjam, our first ever as The BYs !

New LIVE! Radio Session track.

You can listen to Love Limpet, live from our Cat Radio Session here

More comming soon!

August bank Holiday gigs in Alsager and Northwich

Hayley and myself played the acoustic tent in Alsager on the Sunday, thankfully the heavy rains cleared and the sun came out just in time for substantial crowds to arrive by the time we were on.

The following day, all of The BlueYellows closed the Northwich festival (which included a strongman event and funfair, a proper English-style carnival of old you might say!). We might get some photos from Northwich up soon but in the meantime here's a couple of pics from Alsager and one of my new guitar, the best I've ever owned... A Robert's Firebird. I'm a happy bunny :) !

See you soon x

And talking of the radio...

Since the last post, we have broken our summer hiatus to make a couple of further appearances (if you can "appear" on the radio); I appeared on The Dayve Dean show on The Cat-fm solo and played The Day I Die, Back in The Real World off the Happy Juice album and Galleries.

The band was also invited to play a live set for the station's Dayve Dean sessions.

Live set for The Dayve Dean Sessions for The Cat- FM;

Killing Me
Galleries
The Owl and The Willow
Love Limpet
Just Like Nero
You want My Head

The performance was at Orchard Studios and mixed by Dan Logan who as well as being a producer, is an accomplished percussionist who plays for Dayve and Thea Gilmore among others.

Our Session/Interview on Moorlands Music 103.7fm

Paul Oldfield was our friendly and ebullient host who probed us with his questions and made us feel relaxed in the studio (and the pub afterwards!). Thanks Paul :)
See the station website at http://www.moorlandsradio.co.uk/ and all the other photos are here!

The Hop Pole

Thanks to all who came, especially those who made good use of the especially springy pews in bouncing along to our songs (!) in this intimate venue, and the generosity shown by the landlord and Tony, who booked us.

The Next thing is a live session on Moorlands Radio on the Paul Oldfield show (103.7FM) next monday 7-9pm).

Tune in if you can, peeps!

Middlewich 2010

Thanks to everyone who came, especially those of you who had a long day and came to both our daytime, acoustic, and our more full-on evening one. We had a couple of technical issues but the energy coming from you guys really made any other problems seem like a minor issue. Next stop, a return to Crewe and the intimate environs of The Hop Pole. Should be good! x

Audlem Festival - Thanks to Phil Baker/Audlem.org for the photo

Gorgeous village and lovely crowds, thanks to all who came....I played my own solo set in the afternoon which included some songs which we don't do with the band such as a cover of Six Blade Knife, plus my own songs like The Day I Die, City Of Indifference, Back in The real World, The Picture Paints itself.

And Here's the set we did with the band, pop-pickers;

Killing Me
Galleries
Cry Cry Kill
Lazy Sunday Afternoon (cover)
Minute in The Sun
Beachcombing
The Owl and the Willow
You Want My Head
Jolene (cover)
Love Limpet
Humankind
Farmer John (cover)
Feels Like Sunshine
Just Like Nero
These Boots Were Made For Walking (cover)

Bank Holiday Monday - The Audlem Festival!

I am playing a solo set from 2.30-3.30 in Blues Alley...

Then we have our full BlueYellows Set from 5-6PM at The Bridge Inn

(not sure if this is outdoors in a Marquee or in the pub itself, but I’m sure you can find us! )

Hope you can make it x

See http://www.audlemfestival.com/

So the Summer gig list looks like this;

May 31st Solo Gig, Audlem Festival, Blues Alley. 2.30pm

May 31st The BlueYellows, Audlem Fesival, 5pm

June 6th Solo acoustic show, The Burslem Arts Trail (sometime between noon and 3pm)

June 18-21 The BlueYellows at The Middlewich Boat and Folk Festival (several shows)

June 19th The BlueYellows, showcase performance the Middlewich Folk & Boat Fest,
The White Horse, Middlewich, 7pm

July 9th The BlueYellows at The Hop Pole, Crewe

July 19th The BlueYellows interview and live session on the Paul Oldfield Show.

August 29-30th The BlueYellows at The Northwich Festival

More shows being organised as I write, see you soon x

Coming Soon!

The Beat Route

So I strapped my guitar on for the start of the set and Plonk, it droped straight off, breaking the plug of my guitar lead (& giving me a painful lump on my shin). So thanks to one of the nice chappies from Path to Perdition who leant me his. Anyway t'was a proper old-fashioned lil' rock club and we'l be back again sometime.

Set;

Killing Me

Galleries

Cry Cry Kill

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

The Owl & The Willow

You Want My Head

(I'll be Your) Love Limpet

Humankind

Farmer John

Just Like Nero

These Boots Were Made For Walking

The photo is another one from the Sandbach transport Fest, Thanks to Bob Burgess.

Sandbach Transport Fest 2010

Thanks to eveyone who came to this, we had some weird technical issues which resulted in both mine and Emma's amps making peculiar noices and generally being out of control, Emma's reverting to some sort of "Pixie" setting every few seconds! But we had fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it, here's some pics from the event, appropriately we played on the back of a truck!

Sandbach Set:

Killing Me

Galleries

Lazy Sunday Afternoon (Marriot & Lane)

You Want My Head

HumanKind

Just Like Nero

These Boots Were Made For Walking (Hazlewood)

*****Also STOP PRESS ETC....Exciting news, we also have our first BlueYellows track for you to hear. It's "Humankind" and we recorded it on the 7th and 21st of April. Hear it at http://www.reverbnation.com/blueyellows and at http://www.myspace.com/blueyellows *****

Peace and Peas to you all x

Spring Gigs and Debut CD ? (note time confirmation for Sandbach!)

Hi all, just a quick note to say we’ve not been lounging in the Easter sun too much, we went into the studio on April 7th and recorded a version of Humankind. We’re going back on the 21st with a view to maybe recording a live track.
We’ve got some Spring gigs coming up including our fist festival of the year;

Sat April 17th Sandbach Transport Festival, Sandbach 1-1.30

Fri April 23rd, The Beat Route, Congleton with bleached Wail, from 8pm

*We are hoping to have our debut single available (and give-away offers!) for our headline gig at Fat Cats in Hanley on Monday May 10th. Monday night is student night with drink offers on too so it should be fun. Dayve Dean’s band James and The Giant will be in support (full line up of support acts is awaiting confirmation).

So, happy springiness and we hope to see you soon!
Jonathan, The B Y s xxx

On the web at;
http://www.reverbnation.com/blueyellows
http://jtmusic.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/blueyellows
and on Facebook; Search “blueyellows” (one word)

BlueYellows Biography

You can now read the band's biog as well as mine (just scroll down for the band) here.

Sounds, CDs, Songs, Gigs and more for 2010.

With the first signs of spring arriving it seems a good time to take stock and make plans. Here’s what the band and me are up to from where we are now;

As you may know we have done a number of gigs which represent our debut performances with the full line up, these have enabled us to dust off some of our cobwebs and live-performance nerves and get us used to performing in a variety of different acoustic environments. We have had some great gigs and some seriously dodgy ones and we would like to thank everyone who has come out to support us. We really do appreciate it, you make it all worthwhile.

Our Sound. We have been particularly pleased with all the comments from people saying we have come up with a new sound. This is something that has come naturally to us I think as we have not gone into this with any conceptions of sounding like this or that band, or for that matter with some contrived idea of coming up with something new. If we are unique it is because we write, shape and play this music from our own hearts and personalities rather than trying to copy our musical heroes or by being influenced by current fashions. Thank you again, this is really interesting for us to hear.

Recording. Through March we are intending to some recording, perhaps using a variety of different sound engineers and resources, so we are hoping to come out of it with a CD single, EP or who knows even an album!

New Songs. We are really excited about a load of new songs going into our live sets, we hope you will be too!

Live. We should have a number of headline gigs and festivals coming up. Keep checking myspace.com/blueyellows for latest confirmed events. We will invite some artists who we really like and who have been a help to us to support us at some of these gigs, people like Dayve Dean who as well as being a talented singer/songwriter in his own right, has had us on his radio show among other things.

Stuff to buy. As well as a CD, we are hoping to soon have some other stuff to buy like T-shirts, badges and who knows what else?!?... and expect a BlueYellows banner behind us when we play!

My Solo gigs? I am loving playing with these guys so much, they are all great friends (thank you BlueYellows! Xxx) and all of them are very individualistic people and musicians. However I will keep my solo oar in here and there, I will be playing a set at the Audlem festival for instance, as well as having a BlueYellows set there too.

Thank you again everybody x

Finally, for anyone interested in these things (and for my own record). The set list for our last two gigs, at The Full Moon and in Alsager was as follows. It’s rare to stay the same in 2 gigs but there you go;-

Killing Me
Galleries
You Want My Head
(I’ll be your) Love Limpet
Owl in the Willow
Cry, Cry Kill
Feels Like Sunshine
These Boots were made for Walking
HumanKind

First 2010 Gigs coming in...

The first outing for the BlueYellows this year will be a benefit gig to raise money for the Haiti Earthquake victims. Loads of bands and performers - should be a great event. we also have a UK tour support slot with possible dates in Italy on the "home" leg....Here's our confirmed outings so far:-

Saturday Jan 30th - Haiti Benefit Concert, Voodoo Lounge Hanley

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Saturday Feb 6th - Acoustic Session at The Big Lock, Middlewich

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Friday Feb 12th - The Full Moon, Newcastle-Under-Lyme

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Wed Feb 24th - Screaming Shadows UK tour, Alsager Arms

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Saturday March 6th - Dayve Dean & Friends, Woodlands, Alsager

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Friday April 16th - The Full Moon, Newcastle-Under-Lyme (Platypus Duck in Support)

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Sat-Sun April 17th-18th - Sandbach Transport Festival

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Plus gigs awaiting a date in Congleton, Sandbach and Nantwich, and we have already been offered gigs with Italian Roacksters Screaming Shadows on their home turf.

We are in the process of organising lots of summer festivals too so stay tuned...

Links; Haiti Benefit Concert

Screaming shadows

Dayve Dean

Now Some New Pictures...

...of Hayley, our drummer and backing vocalist with the BlueYellows, and of our cold, Christmas gig in Sandbach Square. (Thanks Steph)

Remember the Summer!?

Thanks Tom & Laura for these photos from the Alsager Festival.