And how the flipping heck have y'all been? We've been having a whale of a time in various locations. The busy season's been winding to a close, we've finished all our hard work for the year with weddings and the stressful stuff, and we've had a few really great, relaxed gigs to just celebrate music without any pressure!
Regfest, Derby
Firstly, we hit Regfest. This was our reward - our chance to relax and just let go of everything. We love doing weddings and we love corporate things and what not, but they automatically have an extra bit of stress on each performance. It's got to be right and it's got to be pulled off mechanically. So, after a busy summer season of all of that, we rewarded ourselves by returning to Regfest: the best kept secret ever.
Regfest is a sort of private festival out in the sticks, and it just brings together musically-minded people in a wonderfully inviting atmosphere for a few days of chilling, campfires, a few tins and some food. The last time we played Regfest we had the most fun ever, so we couldn't wait to come back.
It was also our last gig with our lil Owen Nugget for a while, which was sad, but at least he got to finish his stint on a great vibe.
We played an hour of non-stop reggae bangers and felt the best vibes. I don't really know how to explain it - it's not like your typical audience. They're so involved and in tune with everything that the crowd become part of the band and the band becomes part of the crowd. It's just vibes.
Charlie Moore was already there and camping for the weekend because he's a legend, and the performance with us concluded his third performance of the weekend! I think both Lobster and Ire-ish performed.
It was wonderful to see Martin and Chris and we sincerely loved you having us there.
The Hipwoods Anniversary
Anyone who knows Reggulites knows Hipwoods! They're FAMILY these days. Indeed, I had to ask Katie what 'our Dad's' name is because I've always just called him Dad. The Hipwoods have supported us from DAY, and we always do our best to support them right back.
Mama and Papa Hipwood's anniversary was the best opportunity for this!
They held the party at Shirley British Legion, which is a lovely venue in the heart of Shirley. In fact, that whole area is a lot nicer than I ever knew. I think I'd quite happily live there.
Anywho, we had our little Haribo back on the drums and we had missed him terribly to be honest, so that was exciting.
The Hipwoods gave us that wonderful welcome and their guests were really lovely. Of course, the vinyl DJ's were top quality. We had a great time with everyone and we are extremely grateful for making such good friends through our music.
The Last Reggae Cookout of 2024 at The Night Owl
We've been entirely loving the reggu-larity of our performances at The Night Owl this year - a whopping three Reggae Cookouts for us! It's been serious vibes and we just have so much fun at The Night Owl. They always let you do your thing and really shape the event the way you want it.
Our very last one of the year just went by, and it was as good as always. We got there nice and early for soundcheck and then chilled out whilst the place filled up. DJ Jaz really warmed the crowd up with some wonderful old school selections (we rate you girrrrl) and the place was already buzzing by the time we got on.
We want to say a huge thank you to Shiro, our dude, for fetching water for the stage that we forgot to get...twice...because it really was rather humid.
We gave a royal welcome to Nan and Grandad, Helen (mother of sound) and Lenny (MiniSound TM)
when they arrived.
There were oodles of familiar faces, including Errol Cubase who we love very much, Jane Guest (our darling) and Gaynor, The Big Ship family, Imani...The Hipwoods suffered us for the second weekend in a row so they deserve a medal, and like, so many more people that we are just sincerely grateful to know and perform for. Twas utter vibes, I tell you.
Normally, when we have a gig coming up, we design and curate our set list in accordance with where we're going, what the crowd will be into, and how it flows etc. We put a lot of thought into it because we've got quite a large repertoire these days. We also don't ever play the same set at the same venue twice in a year, because we always do something different. This last cookout though, we just put in all our favourites, and it went down really well, but the whole band felt like we'd been hit by a tour bus and a 3 month tour by the end of it! We were officially knackered. I guess part of that curation of the set lists is setting the pace not only for the audience but also for the band, and because we just enjoyed every song so much, we were truly done in by the end of it.
Behind The Scenes
There's been plenty of work going on in the background of all this. For starters, because we've finished our weddings for the year, we wanted to conduct a thorough review alongside dB Acoustics to see what we've learned and what we could have done better etc. We also like to check that after all the stress, nobody felt like punching anyone else for any reason, lol.
So Nan, Grandad and Will met me, Anna and Lloyd at my house for Black Country chips (the best and really only way to eat chips) and discussed everything wedding. It was really interesting getting dB Acoustics' perspective on things, because although we're at the same events, their experience is ever so different. For example, they arrive first, not us, so we discussed how to make that easier and what to talk to the venues about, which I would never have thought of on my own, because by the time the band turns up, Grandad's always already got everything sussed!
We also finally put together the show reel, and we're super chuffed about it. I put it out a few days ago on YouTube and Facebook and we've already had a number of enquiries directly from it, so that's a job well done, I think. Well, that's what it's for, lol, so, yeah.
We're inching ever so, ever so close to releasing our album and obviously announcing the winner of the title for it! I can't wait. We loved how involved everyone got and there were some super difficult decisions to make about it. The way we decided to go about it was to:
Put out on socials that we'd love some suggestions for the title
Anna, Lloyd, Dawn and I sat around and voted for our favourites (basically, if they had one vote, they stayed on the list at this point)
We took the updated list to Discord, the platform where the band talks to each other and plans everything, as a nifty little poll, and the band voted for their favourites.
The 4 most popular were then taken back to socials for you guys to have the final vote.
I think that made everything pretty fair. We're super excited about it. Will's been ironing out the tracks in a final edit to make sure everything sounds crispy and delicious, Anna has been working on the artwork and we've decided on the company that will produce the products for us. So we're ever so nearly there now!
I should imagine that we'll be taking pre-orders very soon, for them to be landing just in time for what Anna has dubbed 'Restock-tober". We've been so happy to have nearly sold out of everything merch-wise as a result of our End of Summer sale, cause you guys are the best, so we can look at getting some new merchandise on the website and in the suitcase! I've designed a few t-shirts, so hopefully someone will let me make them lol.
Anyway, that's us all caught up! We'll be performing for the very first time at The Land Rover Sports and Social Club in Solihull at the end of October, and we'd really love to show them what a Reggulites crowd can do, so if you can make it we'll obviously love you forever.
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