Katie Marie and the hectic life-style of a multi-talented musician.
Heya there everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful bank holiday weekend – as promised in last week’s article, here’s a full breakdown of my musical (and rather manic!) week/weekend!
At the begining of the week (Tuesday) Marnie and I were in the BayFM studios playing some of our tunes live across the airwaves and chatting to presenter Martin Weller. The following day (Wednesday) we had to head off to the Palm FM studios in Torquay to pre-record a show with John Hogarth for Hogie’s 7-11. As always both were oodles of fun.
Thursday afternoon I was up at More Restaurant – the weather was super lovely and there were lots of peeps up there enjoying the sunshine and music. I had a go at trying a few songs in different styles… I think the best one was a jazz version of Purple Haze which strangely worked!
So after playing lots of wellknow songs in a jazz stylee, I then had to head on up to Exeter Picturehouse for a gig with Marnie. I’ve never been to the Picturehouse before (which for those of you that don’t know is a cinema, and a lovely old style one at that) and didn’t realise that upstairs has a kind of cafe/bar area which is nice and chilled and really good for acoustical type people to play. The other great thing about this gig was that we got paid in cinema tickets! How cool is that!
Friday afternoon I had to head back up to Exmouth as I had a gig with Mr Crisp at Exmouth Festy, this was my first time here so I was really looking forward to making lots of noise in the lovely Manor Gardens. Our set seemed to go down well with the Exmouth peeps and the sound guys did a fantastic job – thanks guys.
Once I’d returned from Exmouth festy I then had to head off to my studio and pre-record my radio show for the next day, as Saturday was going to be a busy one. Pre-recording an hour long show wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, but I decided to chuck in a few live performances to pass the time which was great fun… four hours later I had it all recorded, mixed and on a CD – yay!
So, along came Saturday – first stop was Exmouth Festy (yes, again!!) as I had a slot on my own to play, which was so much fun and once again the sound guys did a super dooper great job with the sound, which really does make such a difference. No sooner had I finished at Exmouth I had to head off to Helston as Marnie and I were gigging in Cornwall over the weekend.
Although the Campsite in Cornwall that we were gigging/staying at was a nightmare to find, we did manage to make it in good time – horrah!
The place we were playing at was called Out in the Open which is advertised as a gay-run, gay friendly camp site. I’ve never been to a gay camp site before – so wasn’t really sure what to expect! But I have to say that it’s the nicest, cleanest camp site I’ve ever stayed at and everyone who was running it and also staying there were really lovely. The owners had already set up a tent for me which was wicked not to have to worry about setting up my tent (which I’ve not done in a very long time and am probably rather rubbish at doing so!!).
The reason why Marnie and I were booked to play over the weekend was that the camp site (or the camp-camp as me and Marnie called it! lol I know, bet they’ve never heard that one before) were celebrating 10 years of being open, so we gigged Saturday and then Sunday night.
They had set up a big marquee in the field were we were playing at the first night was absolutly freeeeeeezing!! By the end of the night I was quite happy to be snuggling up in our tent with a hot water bottle. The weather the next day was simply gorgeous and I spent most of the day catching up on sleep in the lovely warm sunshine. Bloomin marvelous!
My alarm went off at 7am on Monday morning (gggrrrroooaaann!) as we had to be packed up and gone from the campsite by 8am and off to our next gig (which was at More Restaurant in Dartington and we needed to be there for 11.30am). We just about managed to leave in time and two-and-a-half hours later I was back in my lovely little home town of Totnes.
We were very lucky with the weather as it was raining on the drive up from Cornwall, but as soon as we hit Plymouth it seemed to stop and the sunshine gradually creeped through. As always More Restaurant was lots of fun and we had a really good crowd up there who seemed to enjoy it.
Then once again we had to dash off like crazy loons and head up to our last gig of the weekend which was in Bovey Tracey. This was a last-minute booking at The Cromwell Arms and they had organised an outdoor event and wanted us to play – which of course we were more than happy to.
So we got set up outside as the weather seemed really nice and our first set seemed to go down really well. But by the middle of our second set a big black cloud zoomed over and everyone ran inside!! The landlord asked if we’d be happy to finish off our gig inside the pub, fortunatly we’d only set up my little busking PA outside so it didn’t take two seconds to move and it was nice to be back in the warm anyways!
So after an exhausting weekend of gigs, we all rewarded ourselves with a well earned Chineese take-away – sorted!
• Check out Katie Marie on MySpace, or on her website.
(Images from the top Exmouth Festy with Dan (looking worried! lol); Dan @ Exmouth Festy; Dan @ Exmouth Festy; Security! We have a intruder; and Full vege breakfast!)
Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!
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