Hello everyone, it has been a fairly long time since I've been active on Hive. Roughly 5-6 months, and in that time, a lot has happened.
I have wanted to come on for a good while and give some little updates on how life has been going for me, and also catch up with a bunch of the friends I've made here. Every time something happens, I can hear a voice in the back of my mind saying, "I should write a post about this," but then I continue on, without a single keystroke taking place.
We Played A Gig Over The Weekend
There was a total of 5 bands - including ourselves - and it was a great night of music altogether. People seemed to like our sound, and as always, we had a lot of fun.
Here is a picture from the night. John - our newest member, sporting his saxophone; it has been a great addition to the band. Behind him is my dad, who stepped up to the mic since Dave's passing.
We have reformed as The After Effects in order to keep going, while simultaneously fulfilling Dave's prophecy.
Dave would sometimes say, "When I'm gone, you'll be The After Effects." We decided to do one gig under this new name, to give him the nod, and after that, we were going to give up on music and move on, but we had so much fun that we decided to instead move forward.
Here is a picture of the three of us, but sadly, you can't really see Mic, the drummer.
It was a great gig, and there are many more on the horizon.
We Are Part of A Collective of Musicians Now
Here's some pretty big news I have wanted to share!
So, a few months back, we hooked up with a man called Kev, who has a band called Sad Picture, they're based in Wicklow as well.
He ran an idea past us, which was essentially to gather up all of the original bands in the town and work together to put on our own gigs, specifically for original bands to get out and perform, as well as work together to advertise ourselves and each other through gigs, meetings, and social media.
It has been amazing, and we have picked up so much momentum in the time since our first meeting. There are somewhere in the range of 20-30 bands in the collective so far.
We have two venues in the town now where we play regularly, and that would be Growler Man, for acoustic nights - soon to be electric nights - and O'Sheas Corner, which is primarily for electric nights.
We were all interviewed at the gig that just happened for a segment on East Coast FM, and as well as this, we have also secured doing the music for The Taste of Wicklow festival, which is taking place this summer.
Needless to say, one or two bands working towards something like this is okay, but 20-30 working together can really make some waves, which is exactly what the Wicklow Music Collective is doing right now.
If You Want To Take A Look At What We're Doing, Here Is Our Instagram Page.
Also, Here Is My Bands Link Tree If You Want To Check Us Out.