Wow what a winter so far! First thing that happened since the last post was that we lost our drummer. You know, sometimes people are lovely and I was sad to see Ali go but it was her decision. This was the point where we had to make a new decision about the fundamental position of Wynd as an all-women band......but the decision was made when four hours after Ali quit, Andy Hoadley was on Facebook asking if we wanted him to join. Done deal, really. Andy brings excellent drumming, enthusiasm, commitment and fun to the band, a huge asset.

Meanwhile Aldo and Wicca have been going to the Plough and Harrow in Smallfield, Surrey once a month with Cass for a good open mic singsong with Ron Howe, et al.

Last blog I was moaning about the lack of recording. Andy bought a jamhub, so we have a couple of useful live demos, but the detailed work of making a professional recording begins this week as Andy and Aldo are going to start putting down drum trax.

We've also asked Ian Lloyd from Aldo's Other band, Raw Deal, to bring his brilliant guitar synth to add a bit of accordian to Dawn of Crack and Butterfly Pillow live if he can make some of the bigger gigs.

Lots of gigs coming up this year.....I am seriously looking for some management to take us to the next level, meanwhile Wynd's marketing campaign is looking good.

Joogum got a new bass for Xmas and Lyn has reduced her commitments elsewhere, so for 2012, well, it might be the end of the World, but it's just the beginning for Wynd!!!

Enjoying the Indian Summer but also thinking towards Winter's recording plans.
Wynd ... plans? yeah, we are quite big on Organic.

BUT, I did say 2011 would be the Year of the Gig and it has been. We're gradually building up a roster of suitable gigs, but it's also becoming clear that most of our activities to build some interest in Wynd in 2012 will be Festie-based. We've already been invited to do Glasstonwick, after Attila The Stockbroker saw us at The Welly back in August and liked the band.

Either as a whole band, unplugged or just Al and I, we've done 10 gigs since the beginning of May, and Wicca's been messing with Teenage Grandad a little too, which is a nice synergy for Wynd. Aldo and Wicca did a duo supporting Bad Medicine, the Bon Jovi trib., at Newhaven's Ark, and also ran a jam for Mary at The Neptune, Hove, we've another proper duo gig on December 18 doing a mix of Wynd and other material, and a full gig for Wynd is promised for the new Year.

Lyn has fitted in so well, in every way, really feels like the band is settled and we should have a chance to develop more new material this year.

We simply MUST get down to recording, we've only two tracks done 'properly' right now and we'd really like to put out some more audio, plus another video - probably green screening this time.

Off to the Rose Hill Tavern, even as I write, tonight, so we'll see how we go down there, that will be, with the two more planned, including one in Worthing in October, 12 gigs altogether this year. We just need to quadruple that and we'll be out there every weekend.

Meanwhile there will be some open mic visits for various configurations of the band so a busy 'live' year ahead!

Tempus .... Fugit! Year of the Paid Gig!!

It's August and I'm totally shocked to see that I haven't blogged anything about Wynd since January. Why? Well, time gets sucked up by Facebook, Twitter, rehearsals, gigs, cooking, travelling, writing more songs, getting a new five string violin, losing Belinda who has gone back to the USA probably for good, inducting Lynn, her fantastic replacement, inviting Al into the band on a permanent basis......breathe!

WYND is having a pretty good 2011. We've developed a bunch of new material, we are a five piece again but the wonderful Lynn is providing the third part of the harmonies I have so longed for, Aldo, the second part of course.

We've done a few gigs and we are now getting paid to play more often. Rosie couldn't commit in the end, I understand why, but she's there in the background rooting for us.

Joogum's bass playing has improved at an astonishing rate, Ali finally extracted her acoustic kit and is now using it at gigs, and because we now have Axeman Alster helping out I finally get to play a little violin, with Lynn, in my own band, so far on one number but the sky's the limit. Am very pleased with the five string, it gives me viola range, very dramatic!

We had a brilliant gig at Lindfield Arts Festival, two great gigs at the World's End, one at the Hove Park Tavern, and at the private festie, Glass-Tonbury Two and at the time of writing we are set to play Brighton Bandstand again, the Wellington Shoreham, The Brunswick, Hove and four or five other gigs dates yet to be advised.

Our struggle is to find the right circuit. Because most of the material is original, it would be almost impossible to crack the pub circuit unless we stick to the folkrock genre, or do a majority of covers in the set. But, we're not a rock covers band, we're not a folk band, we're not an Indie band. In some ways that's all good, but it does make it really hard to place us in terms of performance.

Alster, Joogum Boogum and I are off to Glastonbury town at the end of August to try to arrange a mini tour as we think we'd go down well in that demographic.

Back in March, Alster's rock covers band Raw Deal did a mini tour of Liverpool and we'd like to crack that city so that's also on the cards.

We won't be doing the HPT again, we had a great gig, got a fantastic response from those who showed up to see us, but the 'regulars' weren't interested and it did underline to us that we don't really belong on the pub circuit with one or two exceptions.

Winter will be the time to record another video, this time it's a studio project, with two tracks which we have yet to decide, after our Visitation video we realised all the drawbacks and hassle of location stuff wasn't really for us yet, so we're going to greenscreen it instead, should be a laugh.

Winter Plans

Lots has happened since October.

We've been at the jams in various configurations, although I've done more with Mr Bohanna's hard rock band Thunderfrog.

Writing and developing new songs all the time, in October Belinda and I stood in for the 'lost in France' keyboard player from the original Mockin' Birds fronted by Rosie Barnard. We played the Punk Brighton Festival at the Prince Albert, Brighton, it was a scream. Two violins, brilliant!

Of course I'm always on the trawl for likely backing vocalists, so Rosie was invited in. The bonus is that she's also a drummer so will provide some enhancing percussion.

Rosie has been down with a bad, bad flu since Xmas, so she won't be joining us at our next two gigs, Jan 22nd at the newly refurbed Hobgoblin and Feb 4 supporting Teenage Grandad, the loudest, edgiest 'older' band we know, at the World's End in London Road.

The Hob gig is due to Jason Alexander's revival of Brighton Pulse so there are opportunities for further gigs. Jase is looking at the Dome, Komedia and venues in London and Liverpool so, World Domination awaits. We have co opted Al into the band as Honorary Woman (he has the T shirt. For real!) to play a bit of electric guitar and provide some backing vocals.

Meanwhile, we released the first cut of our video: Visitation, see vid tab on Wynd Music group, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=115090300082 we had a laugh doing it, the next step is to redo including some storyboarding to match the song, and then another video. It was hell doing location, Al will green screen the next one! BTW we hit our 100th member on Wynd's Facebook Group on December 16, yay! 1,000 by Xmas 2011 please!

I've just asked for another gig at Brighton Bandstand, this time I will probably bring a support act and make a big show of it.

Belinda Fiddleycat and I have been asked to do more violin duets, people really liked the Pachebel Kanon and traditional tunes B and I did to kick off the Bandstand gig.

There are plans to get the girls to Al's house in France and maybe busk either in Chateauroux or another biggist town close by, that means generator or maybe Joogum can acquire a battery busking amp.

Our latest songs are called Eclipse, Barrio Blahniks, Red Suede Boots and Daddy. Al's written some great country rock so I'm hoping we can apply my When The Boss Went Country, a satire on Springsteen. We're also working up some covers, Tweeter and the Monkey Man, Travelling Wilburys, The Boxer, Simon and Garfunkel, and Refugee Tom Petty.

We all had a big meeting on Saturday and decided to establish a common mission apart from Joogum who wants to be Rich and Famous. We realised we did not want to give up our Lives and would be happy doing lots of gigs and selling some stuff on ITunes, that's the plan for this year anyway.

Let's see.....

Things Get Serious

It's been a great summer for the band. Sadly Lurex's commitments forced her to leave and we are missing our backing vocalist, but Belinda is filling some of the gaps and there is a full replacement on the horizon.

All our gigs went well and we are learning live work as a band.

We did Brighton Bandstand for Busking for Cancer in August. This was our first big public audience and it went extremely well. The day wasn't without disaster, our bassist Julz had to do the whole gig while her husband Dave 'Boogum', the bassist with Dolly Dagger, languished in A&E having come off his motorbike just before the gig. What a trouper she was, it couldn't have been easy.

We also had two videos of the event.

We played a private minifest at Alan Rae's Glass-Tonbury by his organic nursery in Newick, and also provided some entertainment at the Brighton Earthship Open Day.

We're developing new material and have shot the band inserts for our storytelling video of our song: Visitation.

Wynd will play the Hydrant, Brighton on October 13. This is our first proper gig and we are very excited.

For me, the band seems to be finally gelling as a unit, and we are growing in confidence weekly.

We've also been showing up in various combinations to jams and open mics and the material is going down well.

We've applied to be included in an all-women rock Fest in Wales next year and have been invited back to take part in the Summer 2011 Rocking Horse charity event in Brighton which we did in 2009.

We now have a better PA and no longer need the backing tracks but we haven't yet worked on including the FX that go with some of the songs live.

We're still not sure where our performing niche will really lie but we are meeting other musicans and networking all the time.

Wynd now has around 80 members in our Facebook Group and it's nice to have that kind of support.

There's never been a moment when I've considered quitting, taking as my motto: It's not a problem, it's a situation.

And overall, we are having fun, so looking forward to 2011 and whatever it brings.

The Beat Goes On

Synchronicity......just at the point when Al had a computer disaster and lost all our recorded material, the band started to sound like a band without the backing trax. Two finished mixes are still available on Facebook, but we'll probably redo them eventually.

He has retrieved some of it, and we'll probably keep the sound fx bits once we've figured out how to kick them in live, but we don't really need bass and drums on backing trax at all.

We now have a third summer 'gig' a private festie at Alan Rae's place in Newick in July.

We are also looking into just busking a bit around Brighton but really suitable places to play for us are definitely the outdoor gig and the benefit gig for now.

The video still needs shooting, hoping for some live videos and pix from this summer's crop of performances.

I am still working up new material, one new song finished since the last blog, just starting to put some music to a brand new lyric, but teaching Alispark and Joogum the set means we haven't been able to develop many new ones recently but that's ok, rehearsing with the 'new' members raises everyone's game.

I bought a gorgeous new 12-string which will enrich two or three of the songs enormously and I'm getting more confident on the Strat all the time.

Feel more enthusiastic about the band since the rhythm section appeared, the challenge of using backing trax live is really daunting and to be honest the two or three times we've used them, mostly last summer, was stressful, it was so tricky!

Have started also to think about trying to get some gigs on the alternative circuit which would seem to be our natural home, in a few months I plan to apply to the Mind Body Spirit guys for a spot at some of their shows.

Finally, A Rhythm Section!

AliSpark showed up a couple of months ago and has fitted in really well with us, we love her personality her percussion and drumming skills are great, she's using a djembe, a banana shaker, a shimmery tingly wind chimey thingy (what's is called again Ali?) and a Roland electronic kit. We're still using the backing trax as they have FX on them but once she has the whole set down we can strip the drum track off.

Joogum started playing a bit of bass at the electric jam, coached of course by Boogum or Mr Joogum. She got a new bass for her birthday and has been to our first rehearsal to get a feel for what we're doing. I liked her energy immediately, she is practical, down to earth and seems mad keen to learn the instrument, I feel glad she's giving us a try!

With live drums and bass the band can now get rockier and heavier which I will certainly enjoy because the tendency will be to brand us as prog rock or electric folk and that's not What She Wrote!

So, that prompts the question, what ARE we doing?

Well, we've got up at the Kendal jam which Al and Wicca run on a Wednesday and done various configurations of Wynd songs.

There was a hilarious episode at Frank's Lectern jam on AliSpark's birthday where she played Visitation for the first time on a kit drum, it, er, sounded weird, but no matter.

We now have six backing trax and two numbers which do not need backing trax so are ready to deliver about 45 minutes of music, due to the fact that a lot of the songs are pretty long, up to 8min. It's an eclectic band, we can have songs as long as we like! Two of the songs are now fully available on Facebook and the Wynd Group there grows weekly.

Better, warmer weather means that we will be able to film our first Rock Video since all the storyboarding is outside.

We have two gigs so far this summer, one at the Earthship Open Day in Stanmer Park on July 18 and one to raise money for Busking for Cancer at Brighton Bandstand on August 8, can't wait.

Lurex is muttering about various other local outdoor gigs, it seems this is Wynd's destiny, to play outside, I personally am a Leo gal so of course sun on my face, wind in my hair, perfect!

We've also acquired a much bigger PA and some more gear in general, so we will be louder, clearer, and more confident from now on.