AGM 2025

 19th December 2025

We had our AGM on Friday night...

On a day when yet another key music venue closed, we decided to move our AGM/Christmas party to a venue we love. 

Though none of us live in Crewe - we think of Tom's Tap and Brewhouse, Crewe as our "home" venue. 

We love it. 

Contemporary Tom's

 

Photo by sister Sue Tarplee-Williams 

Contemporary Nightmare 

We Are Nomad - photo by Tim Lee

Em - photo by Tim Lee

I've learned to at least try never to have any preconceptions as to how good a gig is going to be, but have to admit that the good feelings I had about this one turned out to be more than justified. In spite of considerable difficulties with the sound through soundcheck, Mike (from We Are Nomad) was as ever thoroughly well prepared but had some real issues for a while... But it was all sorted in time for the show. 

As if Mike didn't have enough of an event to sort, he and the other 50% of We Are Nomad , Rona were first up, and what a spellbinding and chilled start to a great night they were. We'd specifically asked them to focus more on original material for this one and it was great to hear their own songs including their epic "The Ocean". 

Next up were brand new band (this would be their third ever gig), namely youth indie-rockers Contemporary Nightmare I knew front-man Dylan Bugg from both his previous band The Buggs with brother Owain and from the fact that I taught them both guitar when they lived in Cheshire. To say we (I think I can confidently speak for everyone there) were impressed was an understatement. A teen band 3 gigs in are supposed to be really rough, battling with the basics like staying in time, maintaining a solid groove and holding a good melody under the pressure of the public gaze and not wanting to let yourselves down... These things typically take many gigs to begin to master before a band goes on to flourish. These lads definitely have "it" - straight out of the box - hugely enjoyable set. 

When it came to my gang The Blue Yellows we felt ready to take some risks on some newer material as well as some old favourites. Everyone seemed to love it. 

The night was certainly massively enhanced by such a thorough approach to sound from Mike, a superbly atmospheric light rig provided by Pod (Jason Podmore), plus a dry-ice machine (I think we're supposed to call it "haze" nowadays having been laughed at by a student working in light shows for calling it "dry ice"!). On top of that, many great photos were taken by Tim Lee, Martin Edwards & others many of which will appear over the coming months no doubt (with credits of course) in our socials and so on. On top of all this, the venue itself - Tom's Tap and Brewhouse - well, we just love the place and love playing here. Not only are their beers, ciders and other beverages and food top notch, but like any great places the personalities of the people running the joint really makes a difference and they have really built a community - one with all the right vibes and a real focus on egalitarianism and inclusivity. 

I will certainly have missed people out in this something of a thanks-fest post but as ever - the people who really make the difference are you lovely lot who come to the shows. YOU give us the energy, you share the emotions and excitement of making this mad, roller-coaster of feelings that is a live music show; thank you so much! 

Mike was prepared on the desk well in advance 

Release.

View this post on Instagram

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

Organising a €{$$ up in a brewery!

December 7th, 2018

*What could possibly go wrong, as they say!!? Well..

*The previous venue owner mistakenly deleted the event (which she was still tagged into- my fault d'oh) meaning that 50 or so folk who said were going or interested were informed the event was cancelled...
*At the end of one song, the 'dramatic ending' involved me falling into the guitar rack and symbols behind me!



Other than that it was a lovely night playing for Rickety Wireless, Sean and Jacqui at Tom's Tap and Brewhouse were great hosts who were friendly and really looked after us.

Thanks to all who survived the cancellation notice and came along!

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Played a really fun gig tonight at @tomstapandbrew with #RicketyWireless. Thank you to everyone who came along! 😘 #gig #musician #band #brewery #Crewe #trio #poprock #concert #craftbeer #Craftale #craftbrewery #cider #gin #funtimes #funtimefriday

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Dec 7, 2018 at 4:34pm PST

Because of the working environment of a brewery,
 and the stage being immediately in front of the big, brewing casks, a
lot of the general, malty crud from the floor had trasfered onto
my effects pedals, warrenting a good clean the next day.