My incredibly talented bunch of friends.

Oh dear GOD I have incredibly talented friends. I knew that they were ace, which is why I am friends with them but I didn’t fully appreciate how much they have done for Royce Wood Junior and I.

Thank you Marie-Claire Denyer, Martyn Thomas, Jo-Ann Doherty, Julie Elgar, Lawrence Pearce, Sarah Chandler, Debs Chandler, Nava Kazemi, Martin Jj Gallagher, Kate Mayger and Papa John for all helping to making something I am incredibly proud of.

Here it is! The LIVE performance of WET.

Stac xx

Second Lens EP

Hello.
How was your festive period? Mine was lovely. I made dinner myself! Definitely my biggest culinary achievement to date. Next year I hope to get the duck right as well as the turkey and beef. Its ok, there were 8 of us.

But this is not why I popped in for a chat. I popped in for a chat because something exciting is happening. Do you remember me telling you about the project I was working on with Royce Wood Junior? Well its coming out! Second Lens is finally coming out on the 30th January on Shades of Grey Records and we are both incredibly excited about it!

Royce Wood Junior and I have spent the last couple of months organising a Royce Wood Junior live session for Mary Anne Hobbs‘ show on XFM. We recorded it a couple of weeks ago and one track a day is going to be broadcast from the 30th January, including one of the tracks from our Second Lens EP, a track featuring the OneTaste Choir, a special guest appearance from someone whose name rhymes with balloon (sort of) and the man RWJ himself singing incredibly beautifully! There’s more stuff to tell you but I will do that nearer the time.

Until then, here is a video for our song Outlines

See you soon!
Stac x

Harp

Hello!
How’s your winter going so far? It doesn’t really feel like winter does it? Not in England anyway. I went to New York a couple of weeks ago for my friends 30th birthday, we were lucky enough to experience 3 out of the 4 seasons while we were out there. It was glorious when we arrived on the monday…

and we woke up to snow on the saturday…

Global Warming ay. It was lovely to walk around Central Park in the snow but the fallen trees were a massive reminder that we are screwing ourselves up. So many trees fell because they still had their leaves. Its pretty sad. It was only October!

So, in order to bum you out further, I have decided to play you a new tune I wrote a couple of months ago. I recorded it at Jamie Woon’s and Royce Wood Junior’s studio. Well, actually, I recorded the harp in my bedroom at my folks house holding the microphone with my knees so Roycey, who produced it, had a lot of work to do. I think he did a smashing job. He also made this video for it. What a dude.

So thats it for now. Until next time!
Stac xx

Royce Wood Junior and Stac

Hello. How are you? It’s been a while hasn’t it. I’ve been busy organising shows for OneTaste in London and New York. How very la dee da!

Other than that I’ve been working on a new musical project with one of my best friends Royce Wood Junior. We have been friends for half our lives and its taken us this long to work on some music together. Im not entirely sure why. We have made an EP called Second Lens and I am really proud of it.

Roycey has spent the last couple of years working on and playing on Jamie Woons album MirrorWriting. Jamie is a mutual friend of equal duration. We all met at school and have been buddies ever since. Anyway, Jamie, being somewhat recognised as audible gorgeousness by a fair amount of people worldwide had suggested to one particular DJ that they might like a mixtape of tunes Roycey had made over the last year called Gutter. This particular DJ loved the mix and asked Roycey to send over some tracks so that they could play some on their radio show! Who am I kidding? You know Im talking about Mary Anne Hobbs. Ive been banging on about her on facebook for the past 2 weeks! She’s amazing. Not only did she play ‘Edge’ on her saturday show twice but she also made it her Game Changer record which meant that she played it every day so far this week on her new XFM show, Music Response.

It’s mental. Ive only managed to listen to it being broadcast live twice, once on monday night and again last night. Both times I felt sick and my heart was racing like that of a recently escaped budgie. It totally doesn’t sink in. I tried to make it by reminding myself the whole way through that the music I was listening to was coming from the same station I used to listen to all the time as a teenager. It didn’t. Its just made it harder.

I thought I should load you up with Royce and Stac stuff. Here is our facebook page just incase you wanted to ‘like’ us. No pressure.
Here is a picture of us drunk on Royceys birthday earlier this year. Our drunkness was severe.
I remember calling my friend Katie up the next day and telling her that I actually thought I might die.

And that’s me done! I hope that you like our stuff.
Speak to you soon and hope you are all well and lovely.
Stac xx

Thank you Soundwave

Hello! I wanted to tell you just how good Soundwave was and urge you to buy a ticket for next year. So that’s what I am going to do.

It was AMAZING. I’ve never been to a festival as beautiful as this one before. Sun, sea (no sand) and seafood.

We got to the airport at half ten at night and we were greeted by Adam Ball, one of the organisers who drove us the half hour drive to our apartment, where we crashed out and woke up in the beautiful sunshine the next morning. We had previously looked at the weather forecast which read something like this…

Thursday – Shit
Friday – Shit
Saturday – Shit
Sunday – Slightly shitter…sorry.

But we had high hopes and we were not disappointed. It was glorious. Adam, Abi and I cartwheeled our way down to the festival site and claimed our spot which turned out to be ours for the entire weekend. The sea didn’t take long to entice us in. I do wish it has been slightly kinder on me though as I managed to fall over quite a few times and graze my left buttock on the rocks before I managed to get in. There are sea urchins you see and their sole purpose in life, I am sure, is to get bits of themselves into your feet, so its best to go in with jelly shoes. I went in with flip-flops. Don’t go in with flip-flops. Even though mine had 3 straps to ensure they didn’t come of, they did. Once we were in the sea I could not have been any happier. It was crystal clear and so salty that treading water whilst you listened to the DJs and punched your index fingers into the air (ironically of course) was real easy to do. Unless you are Abi Sugden who had to straddle a buoy to do so.

The music wasn’t bad either! Aly Gillani did an exceptional job of introducing us to Soundwave life with his DJ skilz. Ross PTH, The Nice-Up boys, Hoya:Hoya fellas and WrongTom were most excellent at getting the party swinging into action at the Beach Bar whilst we sipped our Pina coladas and on the main stage Laura J Martin did not disappoint, Bonobo was rammed, absolutely rammed and Jack Baker and Mike Lesirge blew most of the audience away with their sick improv tussle which was only bettered by the drop back into the tune (of which I am more than embarrassed to have forgotten the name of. I don’t think I am too good at writing reviews).

When it came to our set on the Sunday you’ll never guess what happened. It rained! It did! It bloody rained! So instead of playing the main stage drenched in sunshine and probably sweat, the entire festival was ushered into Barbarella’s, (a 1970′s, Italian discotheque) and play resumed. Although, it was a different kind of play. By the time we had set up our equipment the whole dance floor was populated and a rave was well and truly underway. Not the ideal warm-up for an acoustic act that consists of 1 guitar and two vocals. We asked the DJ to bring it down a little so he dropped some Nostalgia 77 and watching the dance floors reaction to this was hilarious. It was like they had all been woken up from a state of hypnosis and caught themselves doing something really wrong. I did enjoy that bit.

When it came to it, the audience were amazing! We had a sea of people beaming at us and dancing along. I couldn’t believe how much they appeared to enjoy it considering we had just wrenched them out of a rave and thrust them into some soft vocal lead, acoustic soul. Every song we played was met with a wall of hand claps, wooops and eager faces awaiting the next. I sound like I am bigging myself up here don’t I. I’m not, I am bigging the crowd up. Ive never been to a festival where the festival goers are so open to everything. They were there to have a good time and so that’s what they did. It really was a joy to be a part of and testament to a wonderful festival.

So, all that’s left to say is thank you Soundwave. Thank you for your good times. I like you very very much.

Stac x

I thoroughly recommend…

Hello, its me, Stac. Hello, how are you?
What a glorious day!

I feel like my life has been enriched by a couple of things recently and rather than just keep them to myself I thought I would share them with you and maybe you can enjoy them just as much as I do.

Here’s number one…

Tanya Auclair

Last week I went to Tanya Auclair’s ‘Origami’ launch party. Tanya is some kind of angelic musical beast. I don’t know if you heard her previous EP, ‘Thrum”? That was good but this new one is next level good. She’s really honed her sound and she gets better and better every time I see her live. So, if you fancy treating yourself, go listen to some songs I wish that I had written.

Number two…

A Penpal
I thoroughly recommend getting yourself a penpal. Preferably someone you’ve never met and maybe even someone that lives in a different country. If you get a really good one, they will send you treats, stories, books, music recommendations, advice and insights into some of the many worlds outside of your own. It’s a joy. And in a world where the purpose of communication, really, is to get from A to B as quickly as possible, its nice to get your waffle on.

Number Three…

Horns.
Two brand spankingly new and completely different albums from WahWah45s, plus an old school gem for nostalgia. The Colman Brothers, Hackney Colliery Band and Louis Armstrong. Maybe whilst playing a nice relaxing game of sunday scrabble.

And Number Four…

OneTaste
This is something you can definitely get involved with as it hasn’t happened yet. OneTaste is going home to the Bedford (Balham) for a rather wonderful show on the 19th June. I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve got a smashing line up including Holly Walker, Ray Antrobus, More Like Trees, Andy Craven Griffiths, Moats and Thrones and of course the OneTaste Choir! There are going to be some ace moments and my Mum and Dad are coming!

Right that’s it for now.

Oh, except possibly the most important recommendation of all…

A pint of Aspall.

Go have yourselves a thoroughly enjoyable week.

Stac x