Nov 27, 20234 min read

"It's a Wonderful Life" - Supporting The Dualers

An amazing venue, a wonderfully warm atmosphere and reggae family, old and new

We had a WILD night on Saturday! We've been looking forward to this one so much. Supporting The Dualers at KK's Steel Mill in Wolverhampton, a stones throw from our local area, and a chance to mix with some great musicians and meet some new lovely reggae fans!

Well, it was all of a big affair really! We arrived at a designated gate to load in. It was freezing on Saturday night! We had to wait a little while outside and then they let us in. Once we'd loaded in, we watched The Dualers soundcheck, and soundcheck, and soundcheck lol, and we gave huge hugs to Skaman Ade and Sarah because they're our people, and then they showed us upstairs to the dressing room, which was great because it was warm up there.

On a side note, I am now officially old, because I woke up - I kid you not - with an extremely painful and swollen knee a few days ago, and it was pretty bad on Saturday. Many many stairs later we plonked into the dressing room, which I was extremely grateful for. We also had Steppa, Harry's wee doggo, with us, and I think he was glad of the room, too!

Unfortunately, they weren't really prepared for us to soundcheck, so some of you early birds may have seen our soundcheck when you arrived. I'm really sorry about that! There wasn't really anything we could do about it as they just hadn't got enough time to set us up and soundcheck us before they opened the doors. But that's live music!

We had a good laugh in the dressing room! We played the one-word-at-a-time-story game, which yeilded some random and unexpected results. We all got ready in the en-suite bathroom. Seperately, mind you! We listened to The Dualers' horn players playing some Christmas carols next door.

For this gig, we had some interesting things happening. Firstly, we had beautiful boy Harry Bryan, which means the drums are going to be on point and fabulous. We had Lobster's bass man, Charlie, who brings some next level vibe. We have Angus now securely placed on guitar and he's just putting out some niceness, and of course the usual suspects, Teebs, Dawn, Sugar, Anna and myself. It was just a wonderful vibe! Clive came down early to catch up with us, but they wouldn't let him in until the doors opened, so he went back home because the poor fella has had yet another tooth out. They're killing him right now! We had Liv Linley, Joel Denny and Paul Roberts (aka Barry Birdseed) and everything is always good when they're gonna be in the audience. Our wonderful Jane joined us and stood right at the front in her Reggulites t-shirt, representing fully! Lindsey too! So many of you turned up and supported! We felt the love, trust me!

I don't know if you knew this...but I've been playing the trumpet for - does some quantum computing - 27 years now! And I thought I was passed all of that getting nervous thing. But OH MY GOODNESS there were a lot of people in that building! And what did we pick for the first song? Rock Fort Rock. Hello, horn feature! It was a bit of a moment, I'll be honest! But we did it! And every tune we did went down a STORM! I've been watching the videos back that you guys took, and the cheering is mega at the starts of the tunes! Makes me a little emotional! All of us, really.

Makes me even more emotional when I find out that Charlie and Angus had a little practice session together to get everything tight for the gig! Oh my wow. We're so lucky to have the musicians around us that we do.

It was emotional when the backdrop went up - no one asked us for any images for that sort of thing, so Skaman Ade was like 'Get on it!' and got them to put one up for the set! Thank you so much, it makes a huge difference!

We included a few of our favourite tracks and a select few of the new ones. Our second time playing them out, they're so new! But The Barrington Medley has evolved. Sugar stuck 'Revolution' by Dennis Brown right at the end as a little surprise. What. A. Tune.

And, right, I know I'm a little bit biased, but my SISTER, can we talk about her? Woman plays amazingly on the sax, as always. Woman has picked up her flute to play in the new Toots tune. AND NOW SHE'S SINGING BACKING VOCALS ALONGSIDE DAWN WHEN SHE'S NOT BUSY WITH HER FACE IN AN INSTRUMENT. She's an absolute super-hero-shiny-star-amazement! I'm so proud of her. If you seen the videos, that three-part harmony is sounding SCHWEET! Big big props to SaxyAnna/SingyAnna/FlautyAnna!

We made new friends and we're humbled af right now. We've had SO many messages saying how much they enjoyed the performance and bigging us up and everything. I didn't make it back downstairs until I was leaving, because of the knee of it all, but Anna and Sugar had pictures with people and they said amazingly kind things to them. We're just blown away. We're only 5 years old as a band (and two of those are Covid) so it really does mean a lot when people tell us we really supported The Dualers and we entertained you properly! I would say I think we really know who and what we are now, but we're always evolving. We don't ever want to sit still! So we're going to continue to bring you that hard work and love for the thing as we go.