The Simmertones only play two or three times a month and that’s for a few reasons:
(1) We have families and work – it’s important we get the balance right so our family lives don’t suffer.
(2) It’s not easy making sure everyone in a band this size is available – our sax player Ray Beavis isn’t fulltime with us; he plays in his own band and also is a member of Suzi Quatro’s band and as I write this he’s in Germany with Suzi. Trombone player Sam also plays with other bands and guitarist Jamie has Lonely Grill, a three-piece rock covers band. We’re also spread across South Devon; from Exeter to Ivybridge and everywhere in between.
(3) We want to keep it fresh – if we played a few times a week it would get stale and get to be more like a job – we have jobs for that!
So, what have we been doing? We played at Babbacombe Beer Festival last week (ska and beer is a match made in heaven!) and next weekend we are playing at a similar event in Dawlish.
Although we’ve been played on Radio 1, 2 and 6 Music this isn’t a regular thing and without a record label or promotion company plugging us to DJs we have to do all of this ourselves.
We’ve picked up some airplay for new song Bring Your Love To Me on BBC Radio Devon thanks to John Govier and further afield in Australia, the USA, Ireland and Holland. A lot of radio these days streams on the Web or is available as a podcast so the reach of a small station is huge.
DJs like Andy Cole in Dorset, Barnsley Sime in er… Barnsley! and DJ Danny Dread in Holland all have listeners much further afield than where they broadcast from. You can find all of these guys’ shows easily and they’re definitely worth a listen.
Posters for the launch party (July 21 at The Rainbow Hotel, Torquay) have been put together and are being printed and the finished CD cover artwork and the final, mastered audio went to the pressing/production company last week.
Fingers crossed we’ll have our hands on the CDs very soon! A friend of ours, guitarist Martin Vowles of The Wildcards and Mighty Atoms, runs www.rootscd.com and has very kindly agreed to be our online store.
As well as CDs, we have recognised that the convenience of digital download is here to stay and as with the first album we will be making the EP available through iTunes and Amazon too.
Our friend Nick Lee who works for Music Mill, Newton Abbot where we recorded the EP has been working on a full promo video for the song which we will hopefully have completed in the next week or so. Keep an eye out for this on YouTube.
We loved the way Nick’s videos for Warm Your Bones and Do What You Got To Do off the first album turned out.
Oh, and blog writing. Mustn’t forget that 
Stay tuned for more Simmer-stuff soon!
