Not Bad For A Girl: Katie Marie bangs the Cajon at Mama Stones!

By PRSD, on Thursday, December 3, 2009

Katie Marie enjoys the band Love Stop Repeat at her Bracknell gig and beats the Cajon for Dan Crisp at Mama Stones!

I’m happy to report that I’ve now finished my Marching song (yay!!) and I’m just mixing it all as we speak, so hopefully I’ll be able to play you a snippet very soon.

My gig in Bracknell went really well, if you’ll remember from last week’s article I was heading off to a lovely little venue called The Cellar Bar to play at a folk evening called Folking It Live. Previous folk evenings I’ve played at (and fortunatly I’ve managed to survive two!) they’ve seriously frowned upon acoustic singer/songwriters such as my good self and scowled at anyone turning up with anything other than a mandolin, fiddle or banjo. Thankfully this wasn’t the case for this particular evening and the audience and everyone involved were really great and hugely appreciative which is always very welcome!

There were a couple of other acts playing that night and the highlight for me was most definitely a brilliant duo called Love Stop Repeat, who were just amazing. It was the kind of thing that you just got completely sucked into because the music they were producing had so much atmosphere and each song was really well put together.

On stage they had a great set up, the lead singer (Lindsey) was playing a portable harmonium (which is now another thing added to my wish list!!) and David was switching between a ukulele and a classical guitar. For drums, David had a mic put inside his ukulele case which acted as the kick drum and for a snare sound he had a tambourine wrapped up in a jumper. This all resulted in such a full sound overall, great stuff! I bought their seven-track EP, which I’ve had playing in my car constantly! All the tracks are very simply recorded and all of what they do has a real humble and personal vibe going on, which I’m always drawn to.

Check em out and see what you think.

Another really fun gig I played this week was at the newly built Mama Stone’s in Exeter. Dan (Crisp) asked if I would pop along and play some percussion, which I was more than up for doing! When we were sound checking I mentioned to Dan that I had officially begun saving up to buy a Cajon (yes, I really badly wont one!!). Jonathan (co-owner) overheard me saying this and said: ‘We’ve got a Cajon here if you’d like to play it!’ My little face lit up and I couldn’t say yes fast enough lol.

So there I was like a proper percussion person, armed to the teeth with various drums and shakers at my disposal. It was soooo much fun. One thing I do have to remember when I get a Cajon of my own is not to hit it so bloomin’ hard!! As my left hand was twice the size of the right by the time I’d finished the night as I was hitting it so enthusiastically!!

Today I begin my next TV track, ‘What’s it going to be this time??’ I hear you cry… well next up is Jazz, which is little more up my street than Marching – but I’ll let you know how I get on!!

• Check out Katie Marie on MySpace, or on her website.