January and February is traditionally a very quiet time of year for musicians. This is either an opportunity to practice or market the band or a complete bummer, if you have no gigs in the book. At this time of year it is good to keep playing by being versatile and playing music that you don’t necessarily usually play or feature in your repertoire. So this year we have been playing mostly smooth jazz (nice) with some big band jazz, a bit of funk and some Rock n roll thrown in for good measure. Every type of music has its own feel, nuances and it is a good musical education to play different styles and with different musicians and singers. That said, I for one am very much looking forward to playing some straight ahead jazz and am delighted to have a couple of wedding bookings in the diary already.
Festival work is slow, but to be honest we could be working harder to get it, so that is the focus for February. Hopefully this will bear fruit and we do already have the Doonbeg International Jazz festival booked for the end of May. This will be our third visit to South West Ireland to take part in this lively and fun festival. In the past we have given our Commitments to perform “Mustang Sally” and join in the Madness of “One Step Beyond” and a whole lot in between. We have made some friends over there and look forward to having the opportunity to do a lot of playing over the 3 days.
After only a couple of weeks this new website is doing well in the rankings so hopefully that will start to pay dividends soon. So perhaps I should be advising “don’t delay – book the band today” – before you are too late! Well we live in hope 🙂