Playing gigs for a cause

Last week we were lucky enough to get invited to the Circa Waves sold out show at The Brixton Academy in London.
It was funny, managed to blag way into backstage VIP bar and bumped into bass player Sam on the stairs, pointed out that it must have been only a year since me and Niall were moshing down the front of their gig at The Lexington and now here they were headlining Brixton Academy. Circa Waves are definitely a band on our 'want to support' list and they also had a great line up with Clean Cut Kid opening and Rat Boy doing a cracking set in the middle. Since then we've been having a bit of banter with Clean Cut Kid on Twitter, very funny in typical scouse fashion.

For us the live shows Sisteray are playing are the best and most important thing at the moment, especially when we see more people at gigs and the same people keep coming back for more. This blog is our Road To Reading (2016) but if don't cut the mustard when we get there then it would all be a waste of time now, wouldn't it?

Away from the heights of The Brixton Academy, I'd like to tell you a story before I get to the point of this post and also to say our last couple of gigs (and next one) have been for charity or good cause events and everyone has been an absolute joy to play and work with and the gigs themselves have been mental. Anyway, back to the story....
A few weeks ago we played a 'named' club in London. The promoter/venue contacted us (not the other way round) - "we'd love Sisteray to play our club night". It fitted into our schedule (we like to keep a bit of space between London gigs) and immediately we checked we were all free and said 'yes'. To be honest, when you're a band in our position, trying to build an audience and get attention, if a gig seems right we'll do it, what we might get paid is down to the nature of the promoter. Anyways, once 'the deal' came through a couple of weeks later, it said we were part of a four band line-up and the financial deal was, it was a fiver to get in and we were informed that for everyone who came in specifically to see us over 30 people (to cover costs) - we would be paid a quid per person.

So we played this thing (quite a good gig from our point of view) and when push came to shove and time to settle at the end of the evening, the person looking after things had it all scribbled down - 44 people who came through the door were sober enough (we were on late) or could be bothered to say they had come to see us, 28 had come to see one of the other bands (so they got nothing for their trouble at the end of the evening) and one of the other bands were having a dispute about whether they had brought in 25 or 34 people (don't know the details). Now what usually happens is, after a gig (if you remember, or if our manager's there) you go and 'settle up' - so on this occasion they had our £14 waiting for us... a tenner and four pound coins for your trouble.
Remember - band one had 28 people - band two (let's go on their minimum = 26) and us 44 - makes a grand total of money taken on door (to cover expenses ) £490 - the fact that there's a BAR there and loads of people are buying drinks seems more often than not, to get lost in these equations. So the band trying to make a case for having brought 34 and get paid £4 against the promoter's rep who was insisting that they weren't due £4 - they made the proposal that as in that particular venue four quid wouldn't buy them a pint - perhaps they could have vouchers or something similar for a pint, or perish the thought two, instead - not going to finish the story you can use your moral compass to work out your own ending - it can't be more ridiculous than the truth!

Dan / Mike @ Hope Fest

Sisteray's main priority at the moment is to secure a good booking agent and promoter who will hopefully make things like this just that little bit easier. Roll on December 3rd @ The Black Heart, Camden. Anyway, you might be surprised to hear the point of this post is a positive one and to say on the other side of the coin, what a pleasure it has been to do the kind of gigs we have been doing recently which have been charity or 'cause' based, including the gig for Oxjam coming up on Saturday. Whereas you sometimes you feel as if you are doing a promoter a favour on normal gigs, some of which are virtually pay to play in disguise, when people are organising a gig for a good cause, they tend to have much more respect for the bands - not sure that we're even looking for respect but it's nice to get it. We played Hope Fest in Liverpool, where the whole event was geared up to helping Liverpool's homeless, Anna and the team running it were amazing, looked after us, gave us something to eat, a few beers, there was an up for it crowd, great reaction and we even got a thank you at the end.

Then a couple of weeks ago, we heard about the We Shall Overcome weekend - a weekend of live music and anti austerity events. We wanted to get involved as anyone knows us it's an issue close to our hearts so we asked the promoter of our gig that weekend and We Shall Overcome if we could be part of it, thank you very much. And you know what, it made the whole thing a much better experience - next year we will definitely be getting behind a planned We Shall Overcome and big shout out to the people behind it, you could feel the strength of feeling and involvement leading up to it.

And Saturday (17th Oct) Sisteray are proud to be part of Oxjam Islington again (we played last year and it was a blast), events going off all over the country for a very good cause indeed. Again, the build up is great, everyone getting along and the only expectations will be, everyone pulling together for a good cause, while we can still create malarky, palaver and mayhem at our gig - it's at The Library Bar on Upper Street in Islington by the way. We're on at 9.30pm and no doubt we'll knocking about round the other gigs during the day, especially The Hope And Anchor before ours. There's been a great reaction to our first mix of 'A Wise Man Said' so here's a chance to come and sing along.

RECORDING - SISTERAY - Getting on the right track

We are going to let you have a listen to an early version / mix of a recording of one of our new songs. It might be a good idea to shed a bit of light on the recording process and for anyone reading this, we thought we might include the #Sisterymob and give you a sneak preview of what we have been doing.

When we sat down and took stock of where we were and scribbled our wish list for the coming months on the back of an old set list, we all agreed that the minimum requirement was to make sure we reached a position where we would be offered a slot at Reading / Leeds Festival in 2016.
The live gigs have been rocking, we're rehearsing more and more importantly people are coming to see us and the new songs are going down really well but to let the wider world know that Sisteray are coming, we knew that we would have to be spot on with how they were recorded.

This brings in the idea of a 'producer' - what does a producer do, we asked. Well it's true, left to our own devices in the studio we might get lost in the piles of kit and possibilities, so we all said what current tunes and sounds we liked and find out if and which producers were involved. We came up with a few names but Rory Atwell and his Bratwell Recordings really stood out, not least because he has also produced The Vaccines, Palma Violets and The Bulletproof Bomb, another exciting new band who's tunes and recordings we really like.
We didn't want the sound to be too clean as the tunes we were ready to record were a bit more punky and punchy than usual and Rory ticked all the right boxes - he made his name as a member of Test Icicles and a couple of their tracks got in the Top 40. We particularly like the way he has used his name as an acronym RORY = Result Of Reckless Youth.

Anyway, we had feedback from a few producers but it was obvious that Rory was our boy and we arranged a couple of days to go and record with him at Lightship95 recording studio - who would have known? der.. it is ACTUALLY a studio on a boat, a lightship in fact, docked in an arts complex in East London opposite the dome/O2 Arena - you record songs and look out of a port hole at the O2 and imagine one day we might be playing these songs there, pretty inspiring really…

So he had an idea of our sound and songs, we had been sending Rory recordings from gigs and when it came to the recording we focused on four which we felt we could nail and produce something sounding special. Whether it was the boat wobbling on the Thames or just the general quivering excitement, the ideas and music flowed and Rory made sure the tunes were done some justice. It's interesting that live, we are definitely going for a more stripped down punk sound but in the studio we were able to get any ideas recorded to help Rory create the magic dust when the tracks were mixed.

To quickly spell it out, for those that don't know exactly what happens when you commit songs to tape - well the first thing is, for us like many new bands, actual 'tape' doesn't come into the equation, in the same way that in the olden days they used to put film into cameras but now it's all digital, the same goes for recording music - you play and it turns up on the computer. Anyway, once all the instruments and voices have been recorded, the next stage is called 'mixing'. In this case, producer Rory would listen to everything we had recorded for each song and get the balance right. 

Now, where we are at the moment is, that there is a bit of a delay between us having finished the recording and getting the mixes right and this is where you can come in if you want - fancy a listen? We have what we are calling the first mixes or version one of the tracks and we thought we'd get one out there. The track is called 'A Wise Man Said' - this may not be the final mix, we've made our comments so are going to get another version to listen to but in the meantime, you can listen to and download the track here:

We are going to send a link to everyone on our mailing list or if you want us to send you an MP3 directly then email us @ sisteraymusicldn@gmail.com with the subject line 'A Wise Man Said' and we'll get something to you.