Last weekend saw Jimmy the Squirrel return to Salisbury for the 3rd time this year, first at the Winchester gate on the Friday and then for our first gig at the Arts Center on the Saturday.

We knew the friday wouldn't be a usaul set, with Sam having to stay up in Nottingham due to his new job, but we didn't expect to have as few on stage as we did.
Myself and Ben set off on the long road south about 1pm, we knew Mike and Jody wouldn't be leaving till 5 but we wanted to get down and get ourselfs set up. And so it starts.

We Finally got down to the wini gate about 6.45, glad I wasn't driving. It's always a pleasure to come back to the Wini, we've had some great gigs here and every one's always treated us really well. We waited for Robb Blake to get back from his other gig down the road and got to setting up.
For those of you that don't know, Robb Blake is a legend in the UK punk and ska scene having been frontman of one of our biggest UK bands Whitmore and has released two solo albums on do the Dog Music. He's become a great mate over the last year or so and we were all really excited that he would be playing with us at the winchester gate.

Now comes the fun. We got a call from Jody to tell us that one of Mike's windscreen wippers had come off durring terentical rain and that they were waiting for a recovery veical, not the safest thing to drive in the pissing when you can't see. With time pressing on Robb set up to play, only to find he couldn't get any backing track through the monitors, he had it out anyway and played a great set, was great to see him in front of a home crowd. Durring Robbs set he asked for regular updates of the "Squirrels progress" which unfortunatly wasn't going well at all. With it looking more and more unlikely that Mike and Jody would make it on time I got ready to play an acoustic JTS/solo set, not ideal but better then nothing. I played a mixture of JTS and my own songs and Ben got up towards the end to give the last 4 tunes some balls. After the set Ben and I went outside for some air only to be greated by tangerine terri swinging into the car park with two very tired Squirrels. At least they got there safe.

Massive thanks to all at the wini gate, can't wait to get back down there with the whole band! 

After the gig we headed to Robb and Abby's, we're always very greatfull to them for letting 5 smelly blokes crash at their home and this weekend I think we have need to be even more so. I will explain why later.

Saturday. Robb had arranged for us to use one of the rooms at the arts centre for a practice in ther afternoon and so killed the morning chilling and eating. We headed over to the art centre (30 secs for Robbs) for some lunch, Robb met us and showed us around, what an incredible place. The stage was massive quite possibly the biggest we've played on and we were all sure the sound would be amazing, turns out we were right. Sam got into Salisbury, no problen there, though we're glad he double checked his train route and didn't go via London (an extra £50) 

Edward II (headline band for the evening) arrived and starting setting up, it became clear quite quickly that there was a major problem with the sound desk, this didn't go down well with the band and the sound enginers went off to fetch another desk, this pushed sound checks right back. We watched Edward II getting ready, very professional and an amazing sound. By the time we got up to sound check there were already a lot of people waiting to come in, it was suggested that the curtains dividing the bar and dance area would be opened to us starting our first tune, no time to get a drink or change, straight on, no messing.

 When the cutain opened we were greated with the sight of around 200 people waiting paticently for the gig to start. Sam, who was starting our first song missed this as he was tuning, he looked up saw the crowd and struck the first chord, it was a great thing to see so many people coming forward to watch us. We only played for 30 mins but they were 30 of the best we've had on stage. The crowd responded really well to the songs and we were chuffed when we heard some of them shouting out for songs they knew. I think I'm right in thinking we've never had such a grate sound on stage or that we've played much better then we did, was gutted when we finished the last tune.

We all got ourselfs down to the front for Eward II set and had a dance, they're an amazing band, trad folk blended with reggae, one of the best bands we've ever had the privillage to play with.

It was a very excited JTS that got back to Robb's house and I'm ashamed to say I can't remember the whole night, let's just say, 3 men down out of 5 and a few sore heads in the morning. The less said about the bin the better (ask Jody if you must) and lets not forget Robb's flying computer. good night.

Can't thank Robb and Abby enough for having us and to all at the Wini Gate and the Arts Centre. Can't wait to get back to Salisbury!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce-NPgZXwyE

taken from a gig we played in Loughborough on Friday. The tunes called Big Fists!!

how dos all,
I've put off writing anything about this for ages as I just didn't know what was happening with the Jimmy the Squirrel album.
I'm happy to say that things have started rolling again and that we should have the album out in the net few months.

So whats been going on, I hope I hear you say (I'm gonna tell you anyway)!

Right, we finished the recording process in January, Mr Sean Flowerdew worked with us at Bink Bing studio in Bristol with engineer Matt, we recorded our rhythm section (drums, bass, rhythm guitar and Keys) live over two days and spent a third recording the main vocal lines, three very intense days but at the same time an absolute pleasure. Big respect to Matt from Bink Bonk, great bloke!!!

We then recorded the lead guitar and backing vocals at Sean's house, can't thank him enough for all the work he's put in and his family for putting us up and putting up with us, we all really appreciate it!!!!!

Dew to an increased work load for Sean (let's bear in mind they had the Levelers tour as well as the Specials shows and the new album) he felt it would be best to pass on mixing responsibility's to someone else so we could get the album out sooner, he once again found us the best man for the job in Ed Rome (the Big), who's production work on his own album along with the last two The Big albums are some of the best we've heard!!

Ed is currently mixing the album and hopes to have it ready in the next few weeks, I can't wait to hear what he does with it!
Then it's off to be mastered and off to Kevin for approval (hope you like it after all this waiting Kevin) and then to the pressing plant.

We hope people will still be interested in hearing the progression from our EP to this, we believe it's the best thing we've ever done!!!

Many thanks and much respect to Sean for all his work on this and to Kevin for his patients. Now it's just down to the man they call Ed Rome (so glad he's taken it on) to work his magic and we should have our first album!!

Cheers for reading, hope to have some samples of tunes to play you all soon.

Liam

Talking about the Jimmy the Squirrel album and his own.
go check it out!

http://www.dancingmood.net/musicaloccupation/?p=10...

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Afternoon all, Just writing to let you all know that we finished recording the music and singing for the our album yesterday. We've been working with Sean Flowerdew (pama intl/Rockers Revolt) at his house and Bink Bonk Studio in Bristol. We recorded the the rhythm section (drums, bass, Rhythm guitar and Keys) Live at Bink Bonk over 2 days and then spent a further 2 days there recording the main vocal lines. We had a great time working with Matt at Bink Bonk and came away really excited with how it was sounding. Sam went down to Sean's to record the lead guitar followed by all 5 of us driving down yesterday to record the backing vocals and one little bit lead for me. We've record 10 tracks, 1 of these being the instrumental Big Fists which you can hear on our myspace page. We're really happy with the diversity of the songs and hoping it will show a maturity to our music since our EP. We're now getting on with sorting our art work ideas while Sean works his magic on what we already think is the best thing we've ever done. We hope to have the album out by the end of February and to then gig as much of possible to promote the release. We will put up some teaser tunes at the beginning of Feb so look out for them! Take it easy

How do's all,
The second installment of our album teasers, a bit later then I hoped, brings you a new tune and new video! We've up loaded a demo recording of our instrumental tune Big Fists and have put up a video of us playing a song called bakrupt man live at the fighting cocks in kingston. Please let us know what you think of both of these!

I'll be adding another tune and vid in a couple of days so please look at for them!

Hope you enjoy the video!

Check out this video: bankrupt man

Hi, We're working hard on getting our album together and have been writting a lot of new tunes.
We will be putting up album teasers on our myspace over the next month, including two recorded tracks, Live Video's and demo video's.
We're starting off with our newest tune "How I Go", this is little more then a week old for me and the boy's Only learnt it last night. We've still got to add Sam's Guitar part!

Please let us know what you think of this song and the others we add in the month ahead, these tunes will only be up for a short time so check em out while you can.

We'll be putting up one of the recorded tunes in the next few day's so please look out for that.

Hope you like the song, first real love song I/we've written.

Take it easy,
Liam and the rest of the Squirrels

Check out this video: How I go (album teaser)

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Hi all, Just tolet you know we've done an interview for this months Distorted Magazine. You can find it by going to http://www.distortedmagazine.com/currentissue/ We are playing a gig for the editor of the magazine in October in south London, More details of that to come. Check out the interview and let us know what you think.

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