Not Bad For A Girl: Action packed week of gigs, radio and a magazine feature

By Katie Marie, on Friday, June 25, 2010

Ahh! What a wonderful time it’s been for hanging out in the sunshine! Hope you’ve been able to make the most of it while it’s here, as let’s face it – it could well be gone tomorrow!

I’ve had a pretty action packed-week filled with gigs, recording sessions and other lovely musical stuff.

I had a mammoth load of gigs over last weekend (five in fact!) kicking off on Friday with Nicky Swann in Cornwall.

Friday morning I had to be up pretty early (7am, eeerg) as Nicky had a slot on BBC Radio Cornwall and Karon (my Cajon!) and I were accompanying Nicky on a couple of tunes. I always love doing radio stuff and we all had oodles of fun and presenter David White seemed happy with it all.

After the radio show we all did a spot of mooching round Polperro ahead of our gig at a wonderful little venue called The Crumplehorn Inn (which I think is a fantastic name for a pub!). While seeing the sites and sounds of the town (and generally being a bit of a grockle, or emit if you’re a Cornish person) I popped into the local news agents, and guess who I saw:

Katie Marie gets feature in acoustic magazine

Yay! It’s me!!

I’ve been waiting for this article to come out for a few months now but it’s finally here! I was interviewed by Noel Harvey for Acoustic Magazine and I’m happy to say it’s on the shelves and waiting for you to check it out. I have to say a very big thank you to Noel for getting in touch and organising the whole thing, very much appreciated Mr Noel!

The evening soon came round and it was time for us to head over to the Crumplehorn and do our thang. Thankfully the audience were a little more enthusiastic about Nicky’s songs than England’s footballing skills (or lack of them…) and it turned into a really great evening. Hopefully they’ll have us back again some time soon!

The next morning I had to be up bright and breezy once again (which my body clock wasn’t too thrilled about, having got back at 2am the night before!). I had to be in Bournemouth for 10.30am for my first gig of the day with Miquid Licks. It was a bit of an unusual one as we’d been booked to play at a school fete. But this wasn’t just any old school fete, oh no. It was at a very posh private school and it’s probably the grandest fete I’ve ever been to lol Just to give you an idea, the raffle prizes included an iPod touch, a Wii fit and about five prizes of £50 shopping vouchers! That being said, everyone was really lovely and seemed to enjoy our music oodles. That coupled with the gorgeous weather made it a really nice day.

After our Back to School gig it was soon time to head off to our second Miquid Licks gig of the day which was at a wonderful venue called Urban Reef which is situation right next to the beach in Bournemouth, bloomin lovely! They let us play outside on the decking and because we started a bit earlier than usual (7.30pm) we managed to catch the dying rays of the sun. It doesn’t get much nicer than to play music to perfect view of the beach, with blue sea (well kind of blue!), blue skies and a few surfers dotted about in the water, lushty lush! This was also a really good fun gig and the audience seemed to really enjoy the Miquid Licks tunes.

My last gig of the weekend (which was also with Miquid Licks) was at a gorgeous little venue in Bath called Gasgoyne Place. It’s a restaurant and downstairs they have a kind of underground cellar type area where all the live music happens. It’s pretty tiny and with a few bodies in there it does get a bit hot and sticky, but there’s such a wonderful creative vibe in there that you can’t help but fall in love with it. The audience once again were brilliant and really appreciated our playing lots, yay!

So all in all it was a really cracking weekend of music and gorgeous sunny weather. Shame the footy was a bit rubbish on the Friday but hey you can’t have everything

This week I’ve been busy trying to get stuff ready for a gig I’ll be doing with Nicky at a wonderfully stereo-typical English pub called The Bridge in Topsham. I have played there before and the pub absolutely oozes with character and I think it’s safe to say there’s no-where else on earth like it, it’s so very English and it’s lovely. The audience are also very attentive so it should be a good one. It’s a ticketed affair which meant I had to organise all the tickets and posters and get them sent off. It took a little longer than I’d hoped as I’d designed the tickets and posters myself, but when I tried to print them at the printing shop they looked t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e! lol So I had to enlist the aid of Lisa and her magical software of wonder and she got it all sorted (Fanks Lisa!).

Katie Marie promotes her gig

Katie Marie's promotional material

So here’s the date for your diaries peeps: Tuesday, July 8, The Bridge Topsham, Me n Nicky – don’t miss it!

As you may remember from last week’s article, I’ve been busy re-arranging a few of my older songs ready to re-record in my lovely studio. Practise with Mr Paul the keys man went extremely well again this week and we’re going to go for recording next week (yay! Can’t wait). We’re going to be recording Misunderstood and Change, both of which are songs I wrote and recorded approx. nine years ago so I’m looking forward to having another mess about with them. I’ll hopefully be able to upload some mixes for you to hear very soon.

Moving on to gigs for this week – last night I had a really wicked gig in Barnstaple with Amy Newton and Jenna (who if you haven’t checked out before please do and they are both frickin’ brilliant!). I was asked by Amy to come along and play at Lilico’s in Barnstaple as part of the North Devon Festival and it was so much fun. Big thankies if you managed to come along, hope you had as much fun as I did!

Tonight I’ll be at the B-Bar in Plymouth accompanying Nicky Swann, it’s my first time there so I’m looking forward to checking it out. Sunday was meant to be a gig in Poole with Miquid Licks but they’ve cancelled on us (can’t possibly think why ).

Anyways hope you all have a super duper week and I’ll catch you next time, laters!