With 3 of us working full time jobs, and two of those (Brendan and I) working for companies that insist on sending you to ‘Forn Parts’ (As I write this, I’m in Paris, and Brendan got back from South Africa last week), the third running his own small business – you can imagine the hours that entails… and the fourth just finishing up his degree, finding evenings where all of us are a) in the same time zone, b) not embroiled in complicated paperwork, essays, powerpoint or invoices, is as complicated as juggling. Juggling angry cats.

However, despite this we are getting together reasonably regularly.  The songs are coming together and amazingly, we are starting to sound like a band. With just over a week to the gig, we have been amazingly lucky.  Next week, like some bizarrely complex piece of clockwork, our itineraries have aligned, and we can rehearse on two evenings.  Then it will be Friday and the gig will be upon us.

Exciting… Isn’t it?

It was Sue’s idea.  If we’ve got to delay, we might as well do something a bit more ‘special’ to launch the album.

We decided that playing the CD through and me having a go at some ‘unplugged’ versions of a couple of songs, in the back garden with 20 or so friends over Easter would have been nice, but we could think a bit more ambitious.  Adam was up for it, as was Paul (the two ‘local’ musicians on the project). So we got together and started trying out some of the songs. Yes it was working, but we could really do with a guitarist too.  Andy unfortunately had to rule himself out due to work commitments, and of course Steinar and Nick are in different timezones!

But Paul and I thought of a friend from way back who is a good guitarist and who might be up for a jam.  To cut a long story short, I’d like to welcome Brendan Dykes to the Fantasy Bridge family for the launch gig. Rehearsals are very much under way, and I’m pretty pleased with the way it’s sounding.

Then our attention turned to the venue.

So having thought a bit and explored a few avenues that seemed to get closed by either cost, or people not returning emails, Paul happened to mention his neighbour owned a live music venue, and might be worth contacting. Sue and I went to visit Daren of DBs Music Bar in Weston, and he is a really nice guy, with a cool venue, replete with sound system, stage, lighting, bars, and more importantly  a free night on June 3rd.

So we will be presenting about half the album, live to an invited audience on that night, followed by a play through of the CD and some fine retail opportunities.

The countdown to the launch party begins!