Katie Marie Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography)
Despite my best efforts to avoid the dreaded lurgy that’s been doing the rounds, I managed to get a massive dose of it last week and it really knocked me for six.
I’d been eating shed loads of garlic (much to the annoyance to all around me) and thought I’d managed to avoid it, but Wednesday morning I woke up with a sore throat and by the late afternoon I was in bed shivering away like a goodun… which was really bad timing as my gig at The Studio Lounge in Totnes was on Saturday. Grrrr.
Thursday and Friday were pretty awful and when Saturday morning came round I felt like I’d done about 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. But in my true ‘the show must go on’ type attitude, I managed to drag myself off my death-bed and go to the gig. I was very lucky to have lots of lovely people to help carry gear and drive me there and back – so all I had to focus my fuzzy brain on was playing (which was a bit of a challenge to say the very least!).
The main thing I was very conscious of was my vocal chords. Luckily for me (in some ways) it seemed as though I’d had flu rather than a cold, so most of the illness was how I felt rather than orrible gunk clogging up my throat and nose. That being said there was enough to cause a problem, and having damaged my vocal chords very badly five years ago I am ultra paranoid about hurting them again, (as it took me nearly a year to get my voice back when I damaged them the first time and I’m still missing a lot of my top range).
I made sure I had a huge flask of my magic potion for sore throats – honey, lemon and ginger. I also made sure I did lots of warm ups before the gig and although it made me feel like crap I purposefully didn’t take any painkillers as I wanted to be completely guided by what my vocal chords felt comfortable doing.
It meant when I was doing the gig that I had to not hit hardly any high notes and on the spot re-arrange vocal parts when I was hitting notes that felt un-comfortable….but it really did make a massive difference and I was able to get through the gig without hitting too many horrible notes or making my throat sore (thankfully!).
My support act Keith Jones had also been poorly but he did a really great job kicking the night off.
Hopefully the next time I’m back at The Studio Lounge in June I’ll be feeling a lot better 
My album is finally being made up (woohoo!) and I can’t wait to see it all finished. I had to do oodles of re-mixing as once we’d mastered everything there were certain parts of the mixing I wasn’t happy with. So we did about four or five different lots of mastering before we ended up with the final versions. This has meant that I’ve had to move the release date (which is now March 26) and I made a little video to explain it all:
While I’m waiting for my new album to be made up I’m getting all geared up to head off to Frankfurt in a few weeks time to play at the Frankfurt Musikmesse. Last year was so much fun and I can’t wait to be there again and play music all day long. I’ll be demo-ing on the Logarhythm and Schlagwerk stands doing lots more of this sort of thing:
And if all that wasn’t enough to keep me out of trouble, I’m also starting work on writing more brand new tunes as I’ll be recording an album with my very good friend Elli later in the year. It’ll be a mix of Elli’s music, my music and songs we’ve written together. It’s going to be so amazing. So my mission is to write four new songs and record some pre-production ideas in my little studio, will let you know how I get on next week!
