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| Photo courtesy of Apertunes Photography |
On the 13th March 2020 we played the first leg of our UK Spring Tour in Leeds; the following Monday they locked the whole of the UK down. At first I was gutted; all the planning for the tour and studio was cancelled, then the reality of it all struck home. I do not know what it has been like in the USA, but here in the UK they’ve paid us a thing called furlough which is 80% of your full wages (how good is that?), so for the past 5 months or so I’ve been paid to sit and play guitar.
With the number of gigs, and by gigs I mean playing in public toilets to four people twice a week, we were never working on new material or going to the studio as frequently as I would have liked. It is easy to think that one is doing rather well and moving in a meteoric direction because one is gigging all the time, but one is in fact zero.
I liken it to being a dog. Dogs tend to be busy bodies: walking around the house, always wanting to run about, barking at the postman, chasing after every ball yet they rarely tend to get much done, creative or otherwise. Passionate, busy and ineffective. But who’s a good boy?
I am.
There were people in the band I was not happy with but couldn’t kick out because of the busy schedule. Also, I was drinking waaaaaay too much. Whilst drunk I broke my arm trying to jump over a wall which meant no guitar for a week. The doctor actually said a month but I’m like the cheerleader in Heroes: “Save the Jim, save the world”.
The band was in need of a deep and drastic structural renovation, not just a paint job. There is only so much paint you can put on a rickety and unstable building before the thing falls down and scuffs those groovy new trainers of yours.
I was working, gigging and partying too much to really think deeply into what needed changing. But once all those things ceased to be a thing and we had clarity, we put on our helmets and high-vis jackets and cracked on.
Quarantine brought the band Jacob Beckwith AKA Shazam the Packman Wizard, AKA Spunk, AKA Jacob- the slickest guitarist in both hemispheres combined. Let’s go champ. And Alex Wildman, the grooviest bassist since the advent of grooviest ow yeah bass yeah he is the funk groove. He just sits in that pocket with 80 cans of tuna, a dreamcatcher, four bottles of water (big ones, mineral), a colostomy bag (so he never has to go pee pee) and a bass.
Quarantine too got us an extra crispy logo with large fries and a coke (behave!). Never has the band looked and sounded so good. Gone are the days of playing public toilets.
I really am a good boy.
We are now set to release our brand new single “You’re a Beach” on 25th September.
The band was in need of a deep and drastic structural renovation, not just a paint job. There is only so much paint you can put on a rickety and unstable building before the thing falls down and scuffs those groovy new trainers of yours.
I was working, gigging and partying too much to really think deeply into what needed changing. But once all those things ceased to be a thing and we had clarity, we put on our helmets and high-vis jackets and cracked on.
Quarantine brought the band Jacob Beckwith AKA Shazam the Packman Wizard, AKA Spunk, AKA Jacob- the slickest guitarist in both hemispheres combined. Let’s go champ. And Alex Wildman, the grooviest bassist since the advent of grooviest ow yeah bass yeah he is the funk groove. He just sits in that pocket with 80 cans of tuna, a dreamcatcher, four bottles of water (big ones, mineral), a colostomy bag (so he never has to go pee pee) and a bass.
Quarantine too got us an extra crispy logo with large fries and a coke (behave!). Never has the band looked and sounded so good. Gone are the days of playing public toilets.
I really am a good boy.
We are now set to release our brand new single “You’re a Beach” on 25th September.
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