I had a musical filled weekend recently and I wanted to share it with you.
I’ve attended a few ukulele festivals/gatherings now and it’s a subject I find myself explaining a lot to non uke players, so I thought it easiest to show you a bit of one.
Yes, everyone plays ukulele. Everyone. And it’s brilliant.
Ah Edinburgh. I like Edinburger. We were up there for the Foodies Festival on Friday and I decided that it was the perfect time to start vlogging. Plus the Edinburgh Fringe has just started so there were so many things to film!
Really proud of my little vlog! It’s something I wanted to create for a very long time but, I’m such a perfectionist, I’ve dreaded getting round to doing it. Tried to get all my weirdness in, though I still think I’m a little more bizarre in the real world. I’m absolutely chuffed that something of reasonable quality fell out of my brain (granted, it took a day of editing to make me look slightly more sane – hopefully will get faster at that), hopefully I haven’t scared anyone away…
Do you like my first vlog attempt? Would you like to see more? Tell me! What shall I ramble about next?
I am very pleased to announce that I have two stunning new Kala ukuleles. My first ever tenor and a new baritone (or KA-ASAC-T and KA-ASAC-B for the uke nerds like myself). I asked on Facebook a couple of months ago what I should name them, as well at multiple gigs and after long consideration (and quite a lot of thought over whether I should just name them Steve and Frank) I’d like to introduce to you…
HA! I couldn’t decide and I adored all the names suggested but figured (yay) they could have second names (had to stop myself from giving them middle names too), but since “Mr Plinkety” was suggested I thought Jarvis was worthy of a title, so why not Baron? That’s fun eh? So Monty is my tenor, and Jarvis is the baritone, whatchafink? Thanks very much to Hugh, Katrina, Ben and Laura as well as all the other awesome humans that suggested names for them. Although they both look the same size in the picture, as I’m closer to the camera, I’m holding the tenor and the baron is chilling on the chair…
Can’t wait to play them at Grand Northern Ukulele Festival this weekend (OHMY4DAYSTOGO)! Absolutely massive thank you to Geraint of Kala Brand Ukulele and the utterly wonderful Matt and Andy at Omega Music, I adore my ukes, plus they’re pretty magical I have discovered…they change colour o: (no I’m not kidding).
Check out to where you can see me playing them next but if you’re local to Galloway, I can tell you right now, that I have a wonderful gig on the 29th of this month in Gatehouse of Fleet, as part of Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival. All organised by myself, so I’d really really appreciate the support and hug you and dance and stuff. I will be joined by the wonderful Calum Gilligan and stunning Finch and the Moon. It’s going to be a really lovely, chilled, intimate evening and I really, really cannot wait. You can get tickets by clicking here.
Righto, I’ll quit rambling, will leave you with a artsy fartsy blurry pic and hopefully I’ll see some of you at the gigs over the next coming months? Give me a wave and say hello 😀
P.S SIR LUCAS AND THE MOON IS BACK IN STOCK! If you missed getting your hands on my début album the first time round make sure you get yours now!
New officiallyness music video for the new album single, Winter Song is FINITO and ready for your eyes! *cheers*
All filmed, edited and near tears shed over by yours truly (and a bit of father) locally (Wigtownshire) in the month of December 2014. I tell you, the weather in the last week has ranged from mild and sunny, to wet, cold and windy, to a sudden 20 second tantrum of snow, and no frost for ages. Which was insanely annoying as I was worried that the video wouldn’t look wintery enough and it wasn’t until yesterday morning that it got a bit frosty, but yesterday was the day I’d planned to publish the video. *hysterical laughing* Please remind future Zoë to have realistic deadlines and prepare months before. Well, do tell me what you think. I hope you like it and it evoked that wintery feeling.
I didn’t want to create a complicated video. No inner storyline, nothing overly clever, and definitely not something with me prancing around in the snow looking seductive and pouty. For one, that is not me and the most pouty I can be without cringing is what I did in Nobody Knows. And no it’s not only because the whole process would be faster and easier to video and edit as you’ve potentially gotten rid of a full on storyboard, saving time. I wanted the song to speak for itself, not having an alternative meaning in the video potentially distracting from the moral in the song. Winter will end so enjoy it, and Winter will end so don’t feel dark. I was trying to capture all aspects of Winter and how it makes us feel and, in the process, film what winter is like here, where I live which can be rather bleak and very cold and sun on a sprinkling of snow.
Oh and I guess I didn’t want it too complicated so that I could do it myself. But it’s totally all about the meaning… 😉
A behind the scenes on our not so adventures during the filming and the general ideas/inspiration for the video will come soon, featuring geese.
Cheers very tah muchly to the Father for filming me and laboriously slaving away with me, deciding which clips to use and fixing any technical issues that nearly involved tears (mine). Mother for getting all excited and spurring me on with tea. And Mr Shaun from famously known ‘The Bookshop’ for the lend of his nice camera.
I do hope you like it and if you feel you want to I would definitely appreciate the sharing to anyone else you think would like it too. Should also say, Winter Song is available on iTunes along with my whole debut album which, if you like, you can get here. There are also very, very few copies left of the physical album but you can still get them here, and as it’s nearly Christmas I will sign each one I send out in the month of December.
Think it’s time for a brew…
Warning: This whole post is all about me nerding out over my new pedal. I don’t care. I screamed when the doorbell went, not even kidding. Fangirling or what.
You know when you really want something and, because of your parents NLP background*, you envisage yourself doing the thing you really want and you speak positively about the thing with “when” instead of “if”. And you can imagine yourself getting the thing and what you will do with the thing and you get yourself really excited and worked up about the thing, although you haven’t even gotten the thing yet?
My ‘thing’ that I’ve wanted for nearly a year has been a TC Helicon Voicelive 3.
And today, my Voicelive 3 arrived.
Don’t get me wrong, I bought it. I knew it was arriving. A year ago my Harmony GX-T was still fresh and I was in love with that, not clouded at all yet by the awesome new arrival of the Voicelive 3. But long story short, I was enticed by the shiny, new thing, like a magpie to a…shiny thing. All the possibilities; more presets, uke effects, vast array of harmonies and looping to name a few and how handy it would be in all one. I sat and watched countless tutorials, walkthroughs and music videos were the Voicelive 3 was used, boring my friend spamming them links about it, and on constant high alert at gigs with musicians using unusual effects, wondering whether they had one. So you can imagine how surreal it does feel, after months of anticipation, when father wakes me up explaining that he tracked my new pedal, that it should be arriving within the hour (sleepy Zoë saying sleepily, “what, this hour? like today?”) and the doorbell promptly ringing straight after that sentence.
I yelped. Father ran. I fell out of bed.
It’s very pretty. “If Apple made pedals” Father quotes. It’s bigger than I expected and I guess that’s good. I sat staring at the morning sun rays glinting gracefully off the curvature of the metal face, perfectly manufactured for ease of pressing the top foot switches without accidentally hitting the bottom. Caressing the slightly raised black text of ‘delay’ with my thumb, I extended my index finger and carefully rotated the volume dial. Don’t even get me started on peeling off the protective film.
Wow.
Must admit, haven’t even plugged it in yet. Might be crap.
*Yeah, that’s just me isn’t it…
Oh and P.S Got a Switch 6 too, that’s what’s in the pic. But it’s just extra switches I can assign certain elements to. It is also pretty.
Was absolutely honored to play at Identity Parade‘s 10th Anniversary at the Mash House in Edinburgh this weekend. I like the Mash House, played there not too long ago as part of the Hit the Road tour I did with Lewis Capaldi, and Jacob & Rory Green, so I was chuffed to be back and able to play again in a venue I like.
It was mentioned on the night but I’d like to reiterate something similar to what the lead singer of The Lonely Together mentioned on stage, Keith and Alan are really top blokes and did a brilliant job of successfully creating a supportive, and well varied but suited showcase that really was a cool experience to perform at. It’s nice to walk into a venue, and automatically think, “Aw, I’ll enjoy this” and I definitely did.
If honest, that day, I’d traveled up from London after a night of headbanging on a four hour train, to then get driven 2.5 hours to Edinburgh and then, absolutely shattered, sing (weird how doing nothing for 6+ hours is so freaking draining, ha!) so a little part of me was worried that I’d either forget everything, have gone to all that effort and the audience hate me and throw things, fall asleep or some other melodramatic reason.
Safe to say, nothing was thrown, muscle memory is wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed myself the whole evening without falling asleep until I was in the car.
Sadly because of trainage and driving missed the whole of Alan R Davison‘s set and most of Orthodox‘s but of what I heard it sounded great. Enjoyed The Lonely Together, sound was pretty awesome, I like a lot of bass, there was a lot of bass, I was happy. And of course I enjoyed Nathan Connolly’s set! Him and Alan sang SP’s Chocolate so I was definitely chuffed. Oh and the Nathan freaking lead guitarist of Snow Patrol and front man of Little Matador Connolly said I was incredible and bought my CD. Can we just. yeh.
There you go, little 14 year old Zoë would never have guessed that as she creates a Snow Patrol ‘fan/info booklet’ for a Computer Science project whilst blaring A Hundred Million Suns.
Massive thank you again to; Alan and Keith for asking me, all the lovely things said, and general wooping. It was fantastic evening.
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