We are one of those bands who pride ourselves on being a working band, we love to gig live and we love to write tunes and fairly much since A Little Bitter manifested itself in 2004 the pedal has been to the metal. There hasn't been a venue in N Ireland that we haven't brought the rock to and as new ones continue to open we eventually work our way around to them.

It was some time in 2007 I think when I first contacted The Diamond to look a gig and it wasn't untill June 2008 that we played our first show there. I was a bit sceptical about it, I thought to myself what kind of a Rock bar could there be in Ahoghill a small village 4 miles from Ballymena Hi!! I had been through it once in 1997 whilst on a work placement with a Ballymena firm and I cross Country bus triped it home to do a gig, in the days before I had a car, all I could recall was that it was tiny, so sceptical I really was.

The contact was a guy called Derwin who had got back to me via myspace with a profile that said Fiona, it was a little strange. He assured me that they had plenty of PA and told me to be down at what seemed a crazy early time to me. They wanted the sound check sorted and the venue clear for the punters coming in, it seemed a pain in the arse to have to be there so early but its nice to be nice so we said we'd be on time. Thats when all the sceptical thoughts disappeared.

We arrived at the bar to find a great laid out wee stage, more lights than I have seen in venues twice the size, an absolute beast of a PA, a green room for the band with a full spread of food, a fridge full of Beer and the most polite welcome I have ever had in almost 20 years of playing music!! Derwin, Fiona & Paul and a few more folk looking after us like we where stars, I was blown away!! We played a great show that night ALB & The Fool Fighters, so good both Bands had encores!!

Fast forward to this year and with one thing and another we only managed to get back this weekend past. The same great hospitality and another superb set of shows plus we sold more albums in that evening than we ever have in another single night/gig. I'm writing this cause some knob decided to have a pop at Derwin on a local music forum  for a booking policy he has to ensure that the Diamond continues to be able to be the best venue. Now given its basically a non profit venture ran for the love of Rock music which eats up a huge chunk of voluntary time effort and private investment I would like to state that we ALB + FF support ya 110% Derwin and imo the person who posted the topic is a jealous shit stirrer!!

How good is the Diamond?? Here is 2 videos of our encores from Sunday this is how good!!

Genghis

Further I Crawl

We are looking forward to playing the Diamond again!!

Cheers

SD