It’s creeping up to midnight on this very arctic evening in Berlin and I thought I’d keep up the tradition of writing a small summery of my musical shenanigans of 2010. Although it already seems like eons ago, the year started off with a great gig at one of my favourite UK venues, The Kasbah in Coventry. I shared the bill with Mercury’s new recording artist, Tiffany Page, who spent the rest of the year surfing the wave of quite a considerable record company campaign, which was fun to watch! Check her out for some of what I think is now called Anglicana.
In April I had the pleasure of performing in Berlin as well as shooting my very first music video. Thanks to the very talented director, friends and a then newly purchased bubble machine, we managed to create a cool, nostalgic and soapy video to my song One Morning. The video was premiered at a live show at the Barfly in Camden, London – I was so nervous to have a live viewing of it in the middle of a Saturday band & club night – a first for me and the Barfly – but hey, it worked! At least the top, left hand corner of my video was shown (the projector had a mind of its own) and is now happily making it’s way through the Internet. It’s actually now playing on a music channel in Vietnam (!!) and on SubTV in Student Union bars throughout the UK.
One Morning was played on BBC6 by Tom Robinson (many Thanks!) and Amazing Radio quite a lot (great online radio station for unsigned acts, go check it out if you don’t know it yet!), as well as other BBC Stations.
Had a fab Birthday in Stratford upon Avon, opening the show for Ian McNabb, who by the way holds the title of ‘Nicest man in Rock n Roll’. Got to play a song together with him at the end of the set too, so ‘tis true.
September came and I went to New York; I had booked 8 shows over 10 days in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I could and perhaps should dedicated an entire blog post just for this amazing trip, but most importantly, I met a lot of great people, talented and supportive musicians and would just like to thank everybody who made the tour so enjoyable (which would definitely include the guy on Montrose Avenue who made those amazing Cheeseburgers at 3am…mmm).
The London Highlight apart from the Barfly video premier was definitely the gig at The Garage in Highbury and Islington – such a good crowd, thank you so much for coming! It was definitely a worthy ending to the London gigging year. Oh, not to forget my show at the 12 Bar where none other than Adam Ant was in the audience. Had a really nice chat with him, he enjoyed the show, bought a CD and wanted to record with me. Stupidly, I lost the phone number he’d scribbled down on the back of a crumpled receipt (he doesn’t “do the Internet thing you see…). The lesson? Always save numbers in phones immediately!
So here I am, a week ago I played the last show of the year here at the Junction Bar in Berlin. I was so overwhelmed at how many of you came along, despite mountains of snow and Sunday evening blues. I have to say, it’s always fun to be on stage, but nothing beats the kind of atmosphere we had there, felt a bit more like playing in a living room! I had so much fun, hope you did too!
To give 2010 that last little boost right before it fizzled out with fireworks a plenty, my favourite clothes designer decided to sponsor me – I know have a huge bag of free cloths to wear at shows in 2011: Thank you Mr. Jimmy Ato!!
I’m completing new recordings in the New Year and am due to go on tour in Spring – will keep you in the loop! My first scheduled London show will be back at the Garage on February 18th, so picking up right where we left off!
Seasons Greetings, hope you all had a good ‘slide’ into this year – I can’t wait to see what it has in store for us.
Thank you for everything,
Roxanne