So I’m not going to Texas…
Walking home from my work on Tuesday night (work no longer means ‘the dole queue’ but unfortunately still doesn’t mean just ‘gigging and recording and playing computer games’) I went past the O2 ABC and saw this…
If you haven’t heard of them, SXSW and MIDEM are events where the music industry (or a good portion of it anyway) descends on Austin, Texas or Cannes, France respectively for a week of meetings, discussions, gigs and parties.
For bands with a bit of a following in their own market they’re a unique chance to catch some international attention and maybe even sign on some dotted lines. My friends ‘The Law’ from Dundee, who I managed to book for a show at the Glasgow University Union last year, have played there the last two years and it lead to them getting a song placed in a George Clooney film trailer from it (click their logo to see it)…
I managed to blag my way in to the ABC and while the talk definitely wasn’t geared for me at present (I’m about £8k and several good festival appearances shy as it stands) it was a good chance to meet other people working, or hoping to work, in the music industry in the Glasgow area.
Specifically, I got to bump into, and apologise to, Ben from ‘Over the Wall‘ who months ago I’d given some drunken banter about the genuinely impressive quality of his moustache. Turns out he’s in an amazing band too, check out the great video (click on the picture) for their song ‘Thurso’ which will get stuck in your head for ages.
Anyway, on my way out of the door, I bumped into the promoter from Pivo Pivo, Gary, who told me someone had just been talking to him about booking me. Let’s bear in mind that at the moment I’ve played less than a dozen shows in the last year and have zero recordings of my stuff on the internet.
It turns out that the friend of a promoter had been at the BOX show last saturday and recommended me for a gig in December supporting ‘The Boy Who Trapped The Sun‘ (a band I was watching play at the Snow Patrol gig at Bellahouston Park only weeks ago) and hosted by BBC Radio 1′s Vic Galloway.
Roll on December.
PS – I fixed the bad karma of Bar Ten last night: Played a good set, finally met Dochan who’s thrown me several shows on nothing more than a prayer and got a headline show at Gallus booked up for the end of October from local musician, blogger and promoter Martin McGlauchlin who was at the show.
