Gigs

There will be lots of Twelfth Night activity as we get closer to our gigs in April and May. Just to remind you these are: -

30 April 2010, South Street, Reading
Tickets from the venue.

8 May 2010, Progeny Festival, Leamington Spa
Tickets from the Classic Rock Society or the venue.

28 May 2010, The Luminaire, Kilburn, London
Tickets from the venue, the Classic Rock Society or We Got Tickets.

29 May 2010, Montgomery Hall, Wath-upon-Dearne, Yorkshire
Tickets from the Classic Rock Society.

Rehearsals

We have now held our first rehearsals as a six-piece and all went very well. Andrew Wild, the author of Play On, was present for these rehearsals and wanted to send feedback to you all.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the band’s rehearsal sessions last weekend. This was the first time that all six members of the new line-up have been together. Not only are Roy and Dean genuinely nice people, they are also extremely talented musicians. They fitted in to the band dynamic immediately … and I have to say that this band has a fantastic, powerful sound. Dean now covers most of the keyboard parts (Clive and Mark play a few bits here and there), Roy has his lead parts pretty much worked out, and he will add lots of his own feel and style to Twelfth Night’s songs. Clive and Mark share bass and 2nd guitar duties and hearing two guitars bashing away during the up-tempo sections of some of the classic TN songs was a real thrill. I’m really excited about this development in Twelfth Night’s history and while there’s no doubt we will all miss Rev at this year’s shows, I am confident that the new line-up will be an amazing live band. I’m duty bound to not reveal too much about the songs on the set-list, but I can say that you should expect music from the early days right through to the Virgin album, with a number of changes from the 2007-2008 gigs. You can see a selection of my photographs from these rehearsals at Flikr, along with some video footage at our YouTube channel.

Twelfth Night, 27 February 2010. L-R: Dean Baker (keyboards, backing vocals), Clive Mitten (bass, keyboards, guitar, bass pedals), Roy Keyworth (lead guitar, backing vocals, antics), Brian Devoil (drums, percussion), Mark Spencer (guitar, bass, keyboards, backing vocals), Andy Sears (lead vocals, percussion, keyboards)

The publicity campaign for our live dates this year has started, and Brian was recently interviewed by Jerry Ewing for a three-page feature in the next Classic Rock Presents Prog. This will be published on 17 March. We are also taking out a full-page advert in the same issue to promote the gigs and Play On, which Jerry has reviewed too (and favourably, we hope!) … so make sure you pick up your copy! Naturally we hope this boost to our current profile will lead to increased sales of tickets, CDs, books, etc.

Please note: after some consideration we decided to include the Reading date in the advert, which means that there is only a couple of weeks left before the world at large gets to hear about the gigs – so we strongly advise you to book your tickets now, particularly if you also need to find accommodation. We really want to play to packed houses if we can!

New Releases

Our next Definitive Edition CD release on Festival Music will be Andy Sears’ 1984 debut album Art and Illusion, which we hope to release next month. The bonus tracks have been chosen and re-mastered and the artwork is being prepared. It will be a double album featuring the original album, demos, and alternate versions, plus a bonus disc of live material from the Art and Illusion tour, nearly all of it previously unreleased, and including for the first time tracks from Marburg (Germany) and the Dominion (London).

More about this in due course, including how to pre-order a copy, along with information about the Live at the Albany 2007 project which is drawing (albeit slowly) to a conclusion, and another exciting DVD release which dates back to 1983!

In addition to all these goodies we will be producing some new T-shirts for the tour, which we hope will be available in mid-April.

Incidentally if you come across any reviews of Play On please do let us know. We’ve sent out several review copies now! Thanks to Miles for his review in the CRS magazine.

... and finally

And finally, a quick nod to our friends at Galahad, who have kindly let us borrow Dean & Roy! If you get a chance, listen to their latest CD Empires Never Last, which is a mighty fine piece of work and is available from their website. And if you would like to see them live they are playing some dates soon ... Sunday 14th March: The Space, Stroud (part of the ‘Winters End’ festival) and Saturday 24th April at Montgomery Hall, Wath-upon-Dearne. Both gigs are being promoted by the Classic Rock Society – details at their website.

That’s about all for now. More soon!