A hot and saucy event!

In a few weeks we will be playing at the Devonshire Arms Chilli Sauce Competition – a feast of all things chilli! This event is a calendar highlight for the pub, just off Mill Road, and this popular competition sees contestants entering their hottest chilli sauces, as well as chilli brownies and breads, and pretty much anything inventive that is chilli-related. Anyone can enter for £1, and you can enter as many products as you like into the following categories: Hottest Sauce, Best Sauce, and Best ‘Not-a-Sauce’. Money raised goes to the Florence Nightingale Hospice. So get making your best chilli sauce, and be prepared to try some hot  products!

We will be playing some music at 6.30 pm until 8 pm. We probably won’t be trying the hot chilli sauces just before we sing – but you never know, it might clear the airways!

 

City Roots Festival

We are really excited to be playing the City Roots Festival in Cambridge presented by the Cambridge Folk Festival. This two-week event showcases local artists along with well-known faces from the worlds of folk, roots and acoustic music, and during this period we will see a variety of musicians performing in venues such as the Corn Exchange, the Boathouse, the Portland Arms,  the Junction, and more. There will also be music events, workshops and talks over the fortnight.

Expect to see the likes of Tom Robinson, Megson and Wilko Johnson as well as Ethan Ash, Fred’s House, The Lost Boys and CC Smugglers, along with many more artists – here’s the full line-up.

We are looking forward to playing on Thursday 1 March at the Portland Arms at an event hosted by the NMG Awards, and the line-up includes Cavetown, Matt Hammond, and the fab Fred’s House. The event starts at 8pm, and we are on at 9.10. It’s gonna be a fun one! Tickets are £7 and are available here:

https://www.cambridgelivetrust.co.uk/tickets/events/nmg-presents-city-roots

The Facebook page for the event is here.

Hope to see some of you there! x

Cambridge Calling, Busk-a-rama and a 10th Birthday Festival

Cambridge Calling Volume 2

Today sees the release of Cambridge Calling Volume 2, a new compilation released by German Shepherd Records, featuring 19 bands from the Cambridge area – and we pleased to say that our track Falling To Pieces features on the compilation! All  proceeds go to a charity run by disabled people for disabled people – Cambridge Alliance for Independent Living. The compilation was compiled by Dave Hammond whose hosts the fortnightly show The Smelly Flowerpot on Cambridge 105 Radio. Other artists featured on the album include  Sound Menagerie, Beverley Kills, Izi Phoenix, Shyer, Tape Runs Out, and the Abstracts. We are really proud to be a part of this, and it can be purchased in digital format from German Shepherd Records as well as from iTunes, Amazon, Dweezer, Spotify, etc. 

Busk-a-Rama and Cambridge Blue 10th Birthday Festival

Last weekend we were involved in the Busk-a-Rama Festival, a two-day event of busking, open mic slots and local bands co-organised by the Cambridge Buskers and Street Performers Festival and Cambridge Wine Merchants. We played a Sunday afternoon slot, and Cambridge News were there taking photos and videoing us! Our lovely 11 year old Poppy played a great set after us which went down really well, as usual (people are always saying we could become a quartet if she joins us when she gets older – keep it in the family!) Other bands/artists included Tom Colborn, Paul McCaffrey, Flashback Photograph, Special Groove and Schrodinger’s Strings.

The Cambridge Blue, October 2017

We then ran across town to play a gig at the Cambridge Blue’s 10th Birthday Festival. We played in the marquee in the garden, after the Waterbeach Brass Band, to close the 10-day festival to celebrate Jethro and Terri’s first decade at the pub. The event saw several live bands including Mystery Train, Django’s Tiger and John Wheeler, as well as beer launches, quizzes, and a big raffle. It was a fun festival and a pleasure to bring it to a close for them – congratulations Jethro and Terri! As usual, thanks to those who came down to support us!

Radio, festivals, pubs, and a wedding!

We’ve had quite a busy time over the last month or two since the release of our EP, from being studio guests on a radio show to playing several gigs, including a wedding in a barn amongst bales of hay and fairy lights!

First of all we were the studio guests on The New Music Generator show on Cambridge 105, which was broadcast late June/beginning of July. Tim Willett interviewed us and we talked about our EP ‘Falling To Pieces’ (find out how to get hold of a copy here ! 🙂 ) as well as plenty of other stuff including how we came up with the name Luna Falls. It was a lot of fun, and we talked over each other way too much (as usual!) You can listen to the podcast below; we are on at about 30 minutes in.

http://cambridge105.co.uk/new-music-generator-21-06-2017/

We played a set for the Northampton Music Festival at the Vintage Retreat, a cool cafe/vintage/collectables store, alongside artists such as Billy Nomad, Dale May and Kenneth J Nash. It’s a lovely venue and it was a great day, albeit boiling hot! Oh, and Vintage Retreat do lovely cake!

 

In July we played at the Devonshire Arms, Cambridge, which we have played a few times now. We had a nice crowd on this chilled-out Sunday afternoon, and we took the opportunity to play a few new songs that we hadn’t played live before, and they went down well.

We also played The Flying Pig, Cambridge, at the July ‘Sunday Night Lives’ event, organised by Mark McGivern (thanks for the photo Mark!). It was a fun evening of music and spoken word, including artists such as Africa Simpson, Raggedy Rawney and Flaming June. The Flying Pig is a lovely, quirky, traditional pub, and it’s still under threat of demolition from developers even though they’ve been fighting it for a good few years now, so support the pub as much as you can, and sign the petition to save it!

Gemma and Richard’s wedding, Northants

A couple of weeks ago we played a gig at a wedding in Northamptonshire – congratulations to the happy couple, Gemma and Richard! The reception was in a barn on Gemma’s family farm, and there were hay bale seats and fairy lights everywhere, very pretty. We played mostly cover versions – anything that had a love theme to it really! – and tunes that people could sing along to if they wanted (which they certainly did!) It was a great evening. We are playing another wedding at the end of September, this time as the happy couple walk down the aisle, so we are looking forward to that, weddings are always a lot of fun. So if anyone is getting married soon and needs a band… 😉

September is also the month of the NMG Awards 2017, and this time the event takes place in the Cambridge Corn Exchange. We won the Best Acoustic Award last year, and we have been nominated for the Acoustic, Country and Folk Award this year – some of the categories have been combined – so we are excited about that (nominations for our category are on the video below). We know we will be coming away with an award for reaching the ’20 Week Hall of Fame’ earlier this year in Cambridge 105’s New Music Generator show with our track ‘Thought It Was Love’, so it will be a good night even if we don’t win our category! There will also be an Audience Choice Award up for grabs, where the audience can vote for their favourite band, so we may be asking you for a favour when the online vote opens in a few weeks!

 

EP ‘Falling To Pieces’ out now!

We are excited to announce that our EP ‘Falling To Pieces’ is out today! It’s been a long time coming, but we finally have it in our hands!

The EP features five of our own original tracks, and was recorded and produced at Big G Studéos, Cambridge, and mastered by Prods in the Dark. We love the front cover, which is an original oil painting by the talented Emily Wynn-Werninck, and the digital artwork design was created by Josie Baughan. We designed the back cover and label (using part of Emily’s lovely painting!) Thanks to everyone who helped us out!

We have a limited number of CDs, and they are priced at £5 each, and the EP is also available digitally.

There are a few different ways to get hold of the EP:

– Drop us a line and we’ll post one out to you (p&p in the UK is an extra £1.50)

– Purchase the CD or digital download from our Bandcamp page

– Buy them from us personally at one of our gigs

– Head to Black Barn Records on Burleigh Street, Cambridge, where our EP is on sale in the Independent Music section.

Hope you like it 🙂

Cambridge Band Competition – Heat 4

After a break of a couple of months due to Louise breaking her wrist, we got back out there again to play at the Cambridge Band Competition on Sunday night. We were pleased to get through to the heats, and this was the final heat in the competition, Heat 4. This was actually the ‘rock’ heat – we were moved to this last heat to give Louise’s hand the best possible chance of being able to play guitar! – so we missed out on playing in the acoustic heat. We opened up the evening playing six of our songs (five of which will appear on our forthcoming EP, out next month..!) before the full rock/indie/much louder and rockier bands took over!

The bands that played that night were Too Cool Kid, The Hot One Two, and GrassRoof, who stepped in when the Abstracts dropped out, and were our favourite band of the evening with their psychedelic indie pop rock vibes; each member of the band was a great musician and they had a lot of energy.

At the end of the night the winners were announced, and The Hot One Two made it through to the final. We all got involved in the ‘Audience Cheer’ – the band with the loudest cheer from all of the heats, measured in decibels, gets through to the final as the wild card – and we found out yesterday that we’d actually won the Audience Cheer for that heat! However, the band Vulpes from Heat 2 got the loudest cheer out of all of the heats so they go through to the finals as the wild card. We were just pleased we got a good cheer! It was a fun night.

The bands in the final on 28 April at the Junction are Jason and the Skagonauts, Flint More, Cavetown, The Hot One Two, Maverick, and Vulpes. Best of luck everyone!

Photo credits: Jay Cantebrigge.

Portland Arms, April 2017. Credit: Jay Cantebrigge

Portland Arms, April 2017. Credit: Jay Cantebrigge

Portland Arms, April 2017. Credit: Jay Cantebrigge

Portland Arms, April 2017. Credit: Jay Cantebrigge

20 Week Hall of Fame!

After being in the Cambridge 105 New Music Generator Unsigned Chart for what feels like forever, we have finally made it to the 20 Week Hall of Fame! That’s the last week we are allowed to stay in. We managed to stay in the chart for five whole months with our song ‘Thought it was Love’. So we now have to bow out and let others take their place in the chart 🙂

We have been in all positions in the chart – number one, number two,  three, four and five over the course of the last 20 weeks. But we managed to stay in, and we finished at number three which was amazing and we didn’t expect that. We’ve enjoyed listening to tracks by Lizard Brain (who also made 20 weeks), Datum Plane (who are on course to do so, best of luck guys!), Standing Like Statues and Tom Lumley and more.

When we were number one!

Thanks to everyone out there who has been voting and supporting us over the last few months, and thanks to Tim Willet who hosts the show. It’s been fun! Good luck to those still in the chart!

Best Acoustic Artist Award!

Well, we only went and won the NMG Award for the Best Acoustic Artist the other night!

We attended the NMG Awards ceremony on Friday 14th October at West Road Concert Hall along with many other musicians and bands from around Cambridge and East Anglia. The packed-out event was a pretty classy do; everyone was dressed in formal attire, and there was a red carpet and a TV crew/photographer/radio presenters to greet us as we arrived. We were interviewed on the red carpet and had our photos taken, and we just had time for a quick G&T before entering the auditorium.

The NMG Awards are in their fourth year, and the event was organised by Tim Willet, from Cambridge 105/New Music Generator, in order to celebrate the local music scene. We were told that awards would be presented to bands in 14 categories including best rock band, best indie group, best folk/country band, best female and male artist, etc.

The award for the Best Acoustic Artist was the first to be announced in the evening, and even when our name was called out from a shortlist of four including Datum Plane, Ollie & Will, and Fern Teather, we couldn’t quite believe it. Our acceptance speech is a bit of a blur! The great thing about this award is that it was decided on by a panel of judges including Tom Simkins from BBC Introducing Cambridgeshire, James Parrish from Prescription PR, and Helen Meissner of Folkstock Records – it’s so nice to think that they decided on this just by listening to our music and looking at what we have been up to over the last year. It would’ve been great to be a fly on a wall in that judging room!

NMG Awards. Credit: Adam Walker

Our NMG Award!

NMG Awards. Credit: NMG Awards

Through the course of the evening the rest of the category awards were presented as well as artist development awards, and there were also some great live performances from the likes of SJ Mortimer, Fred’s House, and Kelly Oliver.

We also found out the other day that we came 6th place in the Audience Choice Award (that’s the award we were asking everyone to vote for us for numerous times on Twitter/Facebook – thanks all!!). This was won by singer-songwriter Tom Lumley. Well done Tom. We were really pleased, and pretty overwhelmed, to come 6th out of about 100 nominees.

Well done to all of the other nominees and award-winners, and thanks to the organisers and volunteers. It was a fun night! 🙂

Here’s a list of all the winners on the NMG Awards website.

Unsigned Chart, Award Ceremonies – and a little favour to ask…

 So last week, ‘Thought it was Love’ was voted number 1 in the Cambridge 105 New Music Generator Unsigned Chart! Needless to say, we were pretty happy with this! We have been in the chart for six weeks and number 3 was the highest position before this. So thanks to everyone who voted, and here’s the link if you want to vote some more – it’s an ongoing thing, as long as we stay in the top 5! (Update: this week we are number 2 – so please keep voting to keep us in!)
http://www.newmusicgenerator.com/unsigned-chart/

And a favour to ask…Please vote for us for the NMG Awards!

We are also really pleased to have been nominated for the Best Acoustic Artist at the NMG Awards, an annual award ceremony that celebrates local musicians, which is held in Cambridge. The event is on the 14th October, and each of the nominees will be judged by a panel, so that part is out of our hands (fingers’ crossed) ! But – because we are nominees, we automatically have a chance of winning the  Audience Choice Award, an award decided by the public – and this is where you come in (see where we are going with this?!)  If you can spare a second, please can you click on the link below and find us in this long (alphabetical) list of bands, and vote for us? Click our name, click the Done button at the bottom, and that’s it! You can only vote once. Thank you in advance!
NMG Awards Voting Form

We will keep you updated!! 🙂

Gigtastic weekend

We have just had a gigtastic weekend in Northampton, playing a gig every day.

On Friday we played O’Neills bar, on Saturday we played in the Albion Brewery Bar, and on Sunday we played the Acoustic Stage at the Umbrella Fair on the Racecourse.

O’Neills was rather a quiet one for a Friday evening, but we were on early before the football, which people were obviously saving themselves for! The Albion, on the other hand, was busy at 9pm on Saturday night. After some hiccups with their in-house sound equipment at the start of the gig we swapped over to our own gear, and then the evening went really well. It’s a lovely place, full of hops, fairy lights, a brewery in the adjacent room, and some very nice Phipps beer! And the Umbrella Fair is always a lovely little festival, and we enjoyed playing the Acoustic Stage on Sunday afternoon  – good sound, a friendly crowd, and just a nice atmosphere in general.

So now we are in need of some rest before our next bunch of gigs!

We’ve had a good few weeks learning some new songs, playing a gig at the Alex Fest which was a lot of fun, and then subsequently getting one of our songs played on Cambridge 105 on the New Music Generator show. Here’s the link to the podcast if you want to listen to it – ‘Thought it was Love’ is on at 9 mins 30.

http://cambridge105.fm/new-music-generator-03-08-2016/

We have a busy weekend coming up with Northampton gigs – we (well, two thirds of us) are playing at O’Neills bar on Friday evneing, and all three of us at the Albion Brewery Bar on Saturday night, and then the Umbrella Fair on Sunday afternoon! Check out our Gigs page for full details.

Music at the Elm Tree

On Sunday afternoon we played a gig at the Elm Tree in Cambridge, a wonderful little pub specialising in Belgian beers, tucked away on the quiet narrow streets in between the Grafton Centre and Parker’s Piece. We played in this pub last year, on one of the hottest days of the year – and on this occasion it was pretty warm too!

We expected most people to either be a) watching the Wimbledon final on TV, b) watching the Grand Prix on TV, or c) watching the music at the Big Weekend festival on Parker’s Piece. So we were pleasantly surprised to see a nice crowd of people in the pub for the gig. It was a great atmosphere and we really enjoyed playing there, as always. Thanks for having us Rob and Jess 🙂

Our next gig is at Alex Fest on the 24th July, hope to see you there!