Dialing it in at the Altar of Sound.

I guess you're not supposed to plug straight into a brand new PA that you've never tried out before, minutes before you go on, but first impressions are good!

This was a quirky, unusual gig for us but good fun, taking place as it did at the fabulous vinyl-emporium, cafe and community hub for like-minded-folk that is The Electric Church ! A place I can't recommend enough. When you get the chance - go!

It was also a significant one for us because we (by which I mean Em!) had collected for us a brand spanking new PA system!

We only bring our own PA for gigs like gigs at pubs, cafes, hotels and the like whereas many of the gigs we do are at festivals or bespoke music venues with a house-PA system and engineer. Our original PA system plus all the important stuff that goes with it like mics, mic stands, leads and so on was bought in n incredible hurry just before we got our 1st pub gig. We'd never been entirely happy with it's frankly quite 'muffly' sound (a factor which was really brought home to us when we tried to play some MP3 files through it for some 'walk on music' but it just sounded way too aweful). The speakers are incredibly heavy too which doesn't attract any further love from us before and after a gig!

Although Em checked the PA had worked and so on last night at her home, at this gig we were literally plugging all our instruments in, setting everything on 'center' choosing what kind of reverb we wanted (an unavoidable choice to make), then doing a volume-only-level check for a quick sound-check, then a quick toastie and an epresso and we're on. NOT the way to do it really, but we got away with it! 

Happily the vocals sounded clearer than ever before with the old PA, and I'm sure after a forthcoming rehearsal where we can get to dial in the right settings for each instrument, things will only get much better still.

Our good friend, indeed producer of Kitchen Sessions and occasional BY, Tim Lee wrote his  own blog post on the event on his site at https://timleesongs.wordpress.com/2019/06/22/the-blueyellows-live-at-the-electric-church-22-06-19/  (Thanks Tim!) You won't be repeating yourself if you've read it as I've mainly blurbled on about the PA (look, it feels like Christmas, OK!!?).

Many thanks to Jimi and all at the fantastic Electric Church and all her lovely church-goers!

A happy upshot of the gig (originally scheduled for release week) is that you can now buy CD copies of Kitchen Sessions

A flood of nice words!

We've just had this ace review from one of the most highly respected music blogs around, Here Comes the Flood;

"Eccentric, funny, tongue-in-cheek vaudevillian garage rock. with enough musical references to keep the music geeks at bay, like the Take Me To The River bit in Spiral Dive. Singer Jonathan Tarplee is an old fashioned balladeer turned indie rock musician, but the band's secret weapon is Emma Alcock with her uncanny knack for syncopation on both accordion and keyboards give the music an off-kilter quality that make the songs jump up and down in a good way."

Read the full review at https://werksman.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-blue-yellows-kitchen-sessions.html

Release.

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Left the house again tonight to see the Blue Yellows launch their latest album

A post shared by Bob (@wayofthebob) on Mar 1, 2019 at 4:12pm PST

March 1st 2019 - The Blue Yellows 'Kitchen Sessions' release Show.

If you're an unhealthy combination of worrier and control freak, then the many months of build up to meeting all the deadlines on the way to the successfully release of an album on time are a prolonged struggle comprising of garnering various people, software programmes, organisations, materials, third parties and so on... all against the relentless progress of time, any one thing threatening to cause a postponement of release-day and therefore scuppering months of promotional drip-feeds, press packs sent to music press, photography, conventional press releases and so on. Such a delay would then either end up being one of many months so that it can promoted properly again, or resulting in a bit of a non-event.
So it's a real sense of contented release I find myself in now, knowing The Blue Yellows can go back to being a gigging band again. Easy! 😉

What a lovely night you lot gave us at Tom's Tap and Brewhouse though, much of the talk afterwards while signing albums and so on, was how the young duo The Bugs owned that stage and played so well, these comments coming from a very knowledgable 'music-crowd' that really know their stuff. Pretty amazing for youngsters Owain and Dylan still at primary school!

Tim Lee, the brilliant singer-songwriter, friend and producer of the new tracks on this album, provided a similarly pitch-perfect tone for the night with his honest, emotionally and texturally rich songs.

The audience was full of familiar faces from near and far, many coming from Manchester as it worked out, and from further afield, some really good friends too, the only problem at an event like this is really having hardly any free moments to speak much.

To those of you there, thanks for giving us such a great night and sharing the happiness, contentment, new tunes and sense of... release.

This is a set-list pic from Tim's own blog-post on this event which you can read, in full HERE.

Tim Lee on superb form, photo by Rob Collins. 

Joined for the finale by Tim and The Buggs, photo by Rob Collins. 

You can now get to the new album on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer or whichever is your favourite streaming or download site, or order the limited edition CD, before they go, below!

Huge thanks to every one of you who came along to give us a great #KitchenSessions party! Plus brilliant guests @timleesongs & #TheBuggs! https://t.co/NU0uG8rLhK

— The BlueYellows (@TheBlueYellows) March 2, 2019