Wow - what a weekend! Big thanks to Rory Clements for having us on as part of the Limavady Festival in Northern Ireland - and a big thank you to everyone in the crowds who made it such a memorable weekend. To all the new friends we made - keep an eye on the gig list, and we'll see you soon!

In the meantime - a busy weekend of gigs coming up. Saturday afternoon we play at the Hanwell Carnival in London, then at Scratchers in Godalming on Saturday night. And then a swift hop up the road to Linton for a slot at the Linton Blues Festival on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully see you there!

Two gigs in Farnham this week! Thursday night we're playing in the Maltings - see Boogaloo Promotions for info... And then on Saturday it's the Lazy Bishop's Festival (website), set in the beautiful settings of the gardens behind Farnham Library. There are a few tickets left, but there are likely to not be any left on the door so if you're planning on coming - get some tickets from the website quick!

While I'm here - great thanks to Ad and the Liquid Courage boys for our great weekend of gigs over in the Netherlands. Huge fun!

See you at a gig soon - keep supporting live music!

Anyone on itunes? Haven't bought our cd yet? You can now buy it online - just search for Northsyde or Mercy's Medicine and there it is. Happy downloading!

A quick heads up - we're going to be featured/interviewed on the most fabulous Sue Marchant's radio show tonight (1st May) live at about 8.20pm on BBC Radio Norfolk - FM - 95.1, 95.6, 104.4, MW - 855, 873 & DAB or you can listen live at the BBC website! Happy listening!

Wow... a lot of things to tell you about... Firstly, and most excitingly, the CD is here at last! If you click on the "add to cart button" over on the left, there it is... It's been a long time in the making but we're proud of it and hope you enjoy it too! Our official Launch Gig will be at the Grey Horse, Kingston, on Saturday 6th June. Look out for some reviews here soon... Also keep an eye here on the site, work is now under way for a new website which will be launched just prior to the Grey Horse gig, which will mark the official name change to Northsyde! Bring it on!

So, in other news - we have some good gigs coming up to check out. The first of which is at The Arkenstall Centre in Cambridge, on Saturday 2nd May (see gig list for more info). This is part of the fundraising series of gigs put on by the organisers of the Cambridge Rock Festival in August. It promises to be a lot of fun! The Festival has already got a killer lineup (check out the poster here) - Asia, Focus, Jefferson Starship, Quicksilver Messenger Service - and loads more as well. Marvellous!

And so, to look back a little now... we've had some great gigs over the last few weeks! Our trip to Holland and Belgium at the beginning of the month was an absolute hoot. We really love playing in Europe - it's incredible! Wonderful, energetic and open-minded audiences, great people. So, a big thank you to Ad Van Meurs and Jo Verboven for organising the trip for us - you guys are brilliant! You can see some photos from a couple of the gigs at Marc Koetse's and Xander Hagen's" websites. Incidentally, another thank you to Marc Koetse for the gracious use of one of his photos in the booklet accompanying the new CD!

This weekend also saw us heading up to Cumbria for two gigs. Friday we played at Bill and Joyce Harrison's new venue in Barrow In Furness, The Traveller's Rest. What a great gig! Wonderful to see a new venue so well supported - a fantastic crowd and good acoustics, it made for a rocking night. So much fun! Saturday then saw us playing at Chris Denton's Club 35 in Carlisle. This was the first time we'd played in Carlisle and was also a lot of fun. A big thanks to everyone who came out to see us there too!

And so to finish... huge props to everyone who continues to support live music - we love you all!

See you at a gig soon!

Coming soon!



1. Get The Funk Out - 3:32
2. Hole - 3:48
3. She Never Could - 3:46
4. Blue Summer - 4:58
5. Devil Said - 3:14
6. Hard Shoes - 6:25
7. I'm Not Crying - 4:46
8. Take Nothing - 3:05
9. Leave You Be - 6:01
10. Whipping Post - 5:37

Hello all - courtesy of the rather tasty work of Andrew Welding, we've got some rather cool youtube clips to share from the Ealing festival shenanigans. Thanks for sharing these Andrew!

Good To Be Free


Whipping Post (with Sam Kelly)


Feel So Bad


She Never Could


Sugar


Lovelight


Enjoy!

Morning all! Wow - Ealing Roots and Blues Festival... what fun! We had a great time - those of you who were there: thank you for making it such a hoot for us!

And now some rather sad news to relay - as you can see by our giglist, all our remaining gigs at the Globe, Brentford have been cancelled. Charlie and Beata have been overtaken by events, and no longer run the pub. It is therefore no longer a live music venue - hard to believe really! As a Chiswick-ite myself, that place has been synonymous with live music since I was a kid. I always imagined the time gigs stopped there would be the year with no Christmas. But, as they say, nothing lasts forever... and so we say a big thank you for the gigs we did play there, and here's hoping to a bright future for Charlie and Beata, wherever their paths may lead.

And so, with that - keep supporting live music (more important now than ever!) - time now to go and pack up for tonight's gig in Buntingford.

Keep an eye on the giglist - there are more shows on the way in!

"I like to be here when I can!" to quote Pink Floyd! And yes, we're back from a marvellous week spent in Holland. A very inspiring country and invigorating music scene. I'll be putting some pictures up and gig reporting etc with wild abandon over the next couple of days, but in the meantime suffice to say we are all missing the place already! And big thanks kudos and props to Ad Van Meurs for putting us up and organising the trip. Can't wait to go back! Also -to any inbound surfers from overseas that saw us - thanks for stopping by!

For now, our next gig is Scratchers on Saturday - keep supporting live music!

So... this page should have been up-dated at least a month ago. Jules has been the busiest of bunnies as have I so....we have slipped somewhat.

Right...down to business. We are off to Holland for a few days starting Tuesday. We are participating in Queens Day Festival and some other fringe festivities. If you happen to be in the vacinity - we would love to see you.

Post Holland, we are at Scratchers in Godalming 10th May so come on down and support us if you can.
The new C.D. is still late in coming (some might say "a long time") but is scheduled for sometime in July.
We are the special guests of Helium Soul on the 16th May - come and see a fantastic rock band showcase their new single and release of their new video. We will have 40 mins to wow a crowd that has never seen us before - so if you can come and support - then we would really appreciate it. Till then Hope you are all well and enjoying the weather. Speak soon. X

And who would have thought the end of February would roll around so quickly! It's already been a great year for gigs for us, and we've got a nice run ahead of us over the next few months. Thank you to everyone who's been out to support live music so far in 2008 - we've played to some great crowds already!

And - to those who haven't been able to see us since 2008, I have some belated news to share that Marc Le Guerrannic is sadly no longer a member of the band. The fact that it was a mutual decision by all of us doesn't mean it was easy and we all wish Marc well for every musical endevour that comes his way. For those of you that wish to keep up with his movements you can stay in touch via his myspace page here.

And so, that leaves us continuing as a four piece band. This has meant a slight hiatus on the recording front as we rework the material to work in this configuration, however I can let you know that work is back underway and we will have a new cd in our grubby little mitts to pass around very soon!

In the meantime - please check back often and keep track of our giglist - we look forward to seeing you at a gig soon!

Ahoy everyone! Hope you are all well! And finally - a gig to tell you about! After a few weeks hiatus, we're playing in Hampton in Arden (near Solihull) this Saturday. Can't wait! The venue is "The Clubhouse", the postcode being B92 0DQ, and the gig is run very nicely by a chap called Pete Morris, of The Custom Cab Company. They make very cool guitar amp cabinets to spec - one day I'm hoping I can get one! linky linky linky!

Also, we'll have a special guest Dr Ika on guitar for a few tunes as well. He plays with the Grapevines and is a very tasty player, into some very nice Robben Fordy type edgy things, which should put a nice twist on proceedings. It will be fun!

Hope to see you there - in the meantime check back on the website as we've got some things cooking and will have a whole heap of new gigs for next year added to the website before the week is out. Bingo!

Good evening all - crikey what a week!

A quick word of explanation and apology to anyone who's surfed into our website and been confused by the changing location of gigs this weekend! Due to circumstances beyond our control, our original planned appearance at Maryport this weekend was cancelled, and a last minute replacement gig was organised very generously by Tom Corda-Stanley. After all his hard work I am sad to say that due to further and unrelated circumstances (again beyond our control!) we have had to pull out of this show. Hearty apologies to those planning to attend!

In the meantime, the planned gig at The Kings Arms in Barrow in Furness will not be a funkydory gig per se, tho Lillian and I are making the trip up to Cumbria to perform with Mike Kidson on drums. When we're back on Saturday I'll have a chance to catch up on gig reports and let you all know how our trip goes.

Thanks for continuing to support live music, and us as a band!

So that's it for a week or so - we're all just about recovered from July - what a fun month of gigs! The Grey Horse, The Globe, Guilfest, Maryport - all lots of fun! While you're here - have a peek at our forum to get some inside scoop on those gigs and future news...

Our next gig is back at The Bullingdon on Monday 13th August - we love it there! A great venue and superb vibe. If you fancy a night out I can't recommend that one enough...

Cya soon!

More here!

Hello everyone out there in internetland!

Time to give you a quick update - after a merry weekend in the studio I can now officially say that progress is underway on our second CD. We've yet to give it a title but the rhythm tracks are sounding good so far. Watch this space for more information as we progress!

In the meantime - we still have a few of our Guilfest tickets left so if you're after some, let us know and get in touch (preferably by email)!

Keep an eye on the giglist too - things are ramping up for a busy summer - see you on the road!

Afternoon all!

Hope you are all well and enjoying our random slice of early summer - strawberries and cream yessiree! Well I have some good news in that we are now officially on the bill for this years "Guilfest" - an excellent festival in the fields of Guildford, on the weekend of the 13th, 14th and 15th July. The festival has always prided itself on it's slightly alternative look at which bands to put on, and with an attendance of 25,000 per day it's going to be a wonderful opportunity for us to showcase ourselves to a new audience. We'd love for you to be a part of the fun as well, and we have a limited quantity of tickets for the festival to sell!

If any of you have been to the festival before you may know that tickets are available both from the official ticket office, but also through the bands themselves. I would ask that should you wish to come along, please buy your tickets through us!

We are playing at 6pm on Saturday 14th on "The Liveclub Stage" - there are of course many other bands playing through the day, particularly noteworthy are Squeeze (headlining at 10pm), the excellent Morcheeba (playing at 8pm), Sandi Thom, Richard Thompson (Fairport Convention's guitarist), amongst many others. The full weekend lineup is online at http://www.guilfest.co.uk - well worth a look!

The pricelist for tickets is as follows:

Day Pass - £40 (£30 for 12-15yr olds)
Weekend Pass (no camping) - £90 (£50 for 12-15yr olds)
Weekend Pass (with camping) - £100 (£60 for 12-15yr olds)

For those under 12yrs, admittance is free. It's a very family friendly festival - so no probs to bring the nippers!

To make sure everything goes OK, please email me at jules@slidejules.com to reserve tickets, and let me know which ones you require. While there is no fixed time limit (we can sell our tickets up to the day before the festival), in order that we can get them to you in time it'd be great to do it sooner rather than later. Don't forget, even though we're playing on the Saturday we have tickets for each day available to sell, so if you really want to see Supergrass or Madness or any of the other excellent bands on show, it's no problem!

In the meantime, have a look around the rest of the Guilfest site (there is a forum there too!) and check out the photos from previous years' festivals - it looks great! Enjoy the rest of the weekend, keep an eye on our giglist and see you at a gig soon!

Stay funky!

In a nutshell... Grey Horse gig on Friday was superb! Possibly the best one we've had there. Not quite as good as the Bullingdon was but not far off! So thank you to everyone that came out, what a great crowd you were and what a nice noise you made! Top banana.

Tomorrow night we're at the Globe in Brentford, then later in the month we're heading up to Barrow In Furness (Kings Arms, 20th April) where there's going to be a sort of dietydory gig, Lorna, myself, Pumperloaf, and the awesome Roger Inniss from John O'Leary's band on bass. Great stuff! Sadly both Marc and Lillian are unable to make it, but we'll be in full swing the following night at Bodelwyddan Castle in North Wales for another Boogaloo Weekender. Superb!

And so with that I'll be outta here - and watch this space for a nice gig related announcement soon!

Geek alert. I spent yesterday upgrading some more software behind the scenes so to speak! Check out the gallery link above... it's pretty cool!

In the meantime, thanks to everyone that came to the Globe on Saturday - what a great gig! And to everyone that's coming to the Bully in Oxford tonight - see you there!

Good morning everyone out there in funkyland! Happy New Year to you, I trust it all went well! We're now two gigs into 2007, and two excellent gigs they were as well.

On another note, Lorna and I are moving house this weekend, and consequently will be offline for a few weeks. While this website will still be online, there will be some downtime towards the end of the month when I transfer the server to our new house. I've also been building a new server box which is much faster than the delapidated old pentium II that this site currently resides on! So come February there should be a marked improvement in the site's performance (especially the forum!).

In the meantime, have a good rest of January one and all, and keep an eye on our giglist for upcoming shows!

Keep music live!

We're at Banham on Saturday 16th not the 17th December! Itchy trigger finger, sorry!

Afternoon everyone out there in internetville... some gigs here to tell you about - our last ones of 2006:

23rd November - The Globe, Brentford - happens to be Lorna's birthday too!

1st December - The Grey Horse, Kingston - our last one there for the year - bring it on!

17th December - Banham Barrel, Norfolk - it's been a while since we've played there (well, I was there on Saturday but that's another story!) - a return FD visit is long overdue... so all you Norfolk-ites that haven't seen us for a while - then's your chance!

Seeya!

Morning all! A week later, and what a fun time we had up in the Lakes... it is a beautiful part of the country up there and really the people love their music. It's great! Have a look on the forum, all the reports are there and up to date. Fun.

Our next gig is November 9th at the New Crawdaddy Club in Billericay. It's been a while since we've been there but I'm looking forward to it - there's a good sound system and it's a nice big room. Bring it on! As usual, the map etc can be found on the gigs page.

In other news, I've added a few more reviews from the last two issues of Blues Matters to the press page - have a read!

See you at a gig soon!

Woohoo it's Friday! Marvellous, another weekend of fun and antics ahead of us... leading smack bang into next week, right in the middle of which we will be seen taking off for some intricate giggery! Thusly:

Wednesday (18th) 9pm - Unplugged gig at the Grey Horse, Kingston (KT2 5EE). Just Marc, Lorna and myself - chilled at times, bouncy at others. Marvellous.

Thursday (19th) 9pm - Lancaster University (Grad Bar) (LA2 0PF). It's been a while since we played there, but last time was definitely a goodun (despite my foot in the mouth holiday comments)...

Friday (20th) 9.30pm - The King's Arms, Dalton Rd, Barrow in Furness (LA14 1HY). Since the Duke of Edinburgh is closed we've relocated round the corner to the King's Arms. First time there but with any luck (and a tailwind) all the regular Barrow posse will be round there!

Saturday (21st) 9pm - The Fletcher Christian, Cockermouth (CA13 9JS). I played there in August with JOL and it was ace - looking forward to doing it with funkydory too...

Sunday (22nd) 4pm - The Navy Club, Maryport (CA15 8AB). First time back since the Maryport Festival over the summer - always fun.

Then the long drive back and some uber-gig-reporting to do on Monday. Bingo!

Morning all!

What a fun weekend we just had! The Banbury fest at The Mill Arts Centre was great fun - a big hello to anyone surfing in who saw us there. Our set seemed to be over after only a matter of seconds - time flying etc etc. Plus it was great fun to sit in with Primo Blues of course!

Also, apologies for the outages that have been hitting this site over the last few days - we've got some building work going on next door and if they're not drilling through our power supply their tools are interfering with our phone line = no broadband = no server = no website! Doh! Fingers crossed it'll get sorted soon or I'll be able to find an alternative place to put the server...

See you soon!

Unfortunately due to a charity event our next gig at the Grey Horse (October 6th) has had to be cancelled - I'm working on an alternative date so keep an eye on the gigs page! Many apologies to the Londoners reading this, as it currently stands our next home gig won't be happening until the next globe on 23rd Nov... watch this space!

Afternoon all! Just a quickie to say this weekend we're back into it with two gigs, tonight at the Globe in Brentford, and tomorrow night at The Waterman's Arms, Hersham. Both cool pubs for music and both look to be good fun gigs. As usual details/maps etc are on the gigs page of this site. Meanwhile behind the scenes we're busy writing material for a new cd to follow Still which we are aiming have ready by the end of the year. 4 songs in and it's all good stuff. Suitably different but a nice evolution in the sound. Exciting!

See you soon!

Wow, in a word! What a great weekend we've just had - two really cool gigs, Belgium on Saturday and then Stevenage on Sunday. You can read the gig reports on the forum and I've already got some photos on the gallery from Saturday courtesy of Bobtje (of bobtjeblues.com fame) and Danny from motofocus.be - fantastic!

Which means now we have a well earned little break as both Hayden and Marc take their summer holidays towards the end of the month - leaving time to book some more gigs, write some more songs, start thinking about a new CD, and so on. No rest for the gigaholic!

So, thanks again to everyone that's seen us over the last few weeks at our various gigs - we've had a hoot, and so by the looks of it did you! We feed off your energy and to find our little niche in the world of music is a wonderful thing. Keep supporting live bands and keep an eye on the gig list and forums - there's still lots going on! See you soon...

...from the Maryport Blues Festival. In a word - outstanding! Thanks to all of you stopping by that made it such a great weekend. How much fun was that!?!?

Keep an eye on the giglist - it's always changing! Our next gig is a last minute one down at The Globe in Brentford on Thursday after another band have unfortunately had to pull out!

Oh and while you're online - have a look at our friend Nina's collection of photos from Maryport here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gibson!

See you at a gig soon!

Another local gig this weekend - we're at The Globe in Brentford. It's always a fun gig there, nice atmosphere and good people. Free entry too so no excuse to miss it! Third place match is on Sat night too so I think we might start a little later to accomodate it. I'll post here to confirm later!

Morning all! Just a quick reminder about next week's pair of gigs on Friday and Saturday!

Friday 30th June we're playing at The Grey Horse in Kingston - always a fun local gig, and kick off will be about 9.15pm as usual. Postcode is KT2 5EE for multimappers - or click on the map link to your left!

Then on Saturday 1st July we've got another set at The Half Moon in Putney - the last time we played there it was a really cool gig so if you came and enjoyed it, come again, and if you missed it now's the chance to see what the fuss is about! We're on at 8.30, and the other bands appearing are Freefall and Halagoogoo - both look like breezy funky bands so everything bodes well for it to be a good night. Tickets are £4 in advance from ticketweb or £5 on the door. Don't forget if you come along to be certain and tell the person manning the door that you're there to see us! They keep a tally of these things!

In the meantime have a good weekend all, I'm off up to Cumbria with John O'Leary's Band, so see you next week! Don't forget that Marc and Lorna will be running the Jam at the Red Lion, Twickenham this Sunday (with Derek McIntyre on bass and Darby Todd on drums) - the Red Lion postcode is TW1 4BN and there's plenty of parking there.

Cheers!

Morning all! What an amazing weekend we've just had in Ireland... you can read all about it in the forum here:

Limavady Gig Report

So welcome to any new surfers - keep an eye on our giglist, or sign up to our mailing list through the contact page - we hope to back soon, it was wonderful!

In the meantime, to all of you local guys, see you at The Red Lion in High Wycombe on Saturday night - which'll be an interesting gig because Lillian's off on holiday for the week, so we've got James Ahwai from Andy Cortes' band depping on bass. Will be fun!

Bingo!

A quick thanks to everyone that came down to Farnham last night - what a fun night! We all had a great time, it seems you guys did too so a big welcome to everyone who surfs in that hasn't seen our website yet!

Big ups all round, keep an eye on our giglist, and see you again soon!

Afternoon all!

Firstly, an announcement of sorts! I'm very happy to let you all know that as of this weekend, Lorna and I are officially engaged to be married! Life part two starts here! We're looking at tying the knot in March next year, so watch this space, somewhere along the line there's going to be a monster party and jam session type thing... churlish not to :-)

In lesser news but still I can't resist some last minute gig pimping - we're playing back at The Globe in Brentford on Thursday night, it's a 9.30pm start and we're playing all night - so for those of you that came and had your appetites whetted by our little set at the Half Moon the other week, here's a chance to catch a full 2 hours of funkyness... excellent!

While you're here check in on our forum, it's a good place to catch gig recommendations and the like and maybe the odd review here and there of things we (and you!) have seen and liked!

For now, have a good time, and see you at a gig soon!

Cheers, Jules

A quick thanks to everyone that came to Putney last night - what a cooking gig! Flowstate and Cherry Blackstone were both really good and we had a ball playing with them. Result! So thanks to you all, we'll see you there again!

For now, next gig is up in Hampton in Arden next Saturday (it's up just by Solihull - not that far away!) before we're back at The Globe the following Thursday (18th May). Looking forward to that one, it's always a laugh there...

See you soon! Jules

Should be a fun night this one! Next Friday we're playing at the Half Moon in Putney, alongside two other bands - first on the night is a band called flowstate, then us (we're on at 9.30pm), then Cherry Blackstone. It's £4 if you prebook (http://www.halfmoon.co.uk) or £5 if you buy on the door. Definitely worth prebooking!

So if you feel like a friday night out in some funky rocking company - you know where to be!

Morning all! Firstly thanks to everyone that came out to see us over the last few weeks of gigs - Kingston was great, and our weekend up North just gone was a lot of fun too. It's been really heartening to see the hardcore of people out there that still enjoy live music coming out and having a good time. It's a pleasure to play in front of audiences that love it as much as at these recent gigs. Great fun. We made some new friends, sold a bunch more copies of Still, and had a ball. Perfect!

So now we're a little quiet for a few weeks - a good opportunity to relax, recharge the batteries (and little grey cells!) and also work up a bunch of new songs to play over the summer. We've got a couple of covers to rework (started playing our own version of Whipping Post at the weekend - very cool!) and also some riffs and song concepts to distill down into new material. Bring it on. So keep an eye on the site and keep visiting the forum - in the meantime we hope you all have a nice Easter break!

See you soon...

A quickie reminder here - Friday's another return to home turf when we play the Grey Horse in Kingston again - excellent! We rather enjoy playing there and feels like months since we were last there (in fact it has been months!!!) - bring it on. We'll kick off about 9 and rock through until just after 11 - be there!

Also while you're here, if you haven't been on the forum yet, have a look, and also have a look at the Gallery, there are some nice shots by Phil North from our trip to Belgium lurking there...

Thanks for your support, see you all soon!!

Ahoy hoy - the more eagle eyed surfer might have noticed a small change to the menu at the top of this page! Yes, we now have our own forum - cool eh? Much .php geekery has resulted in our very own little chatboard. Feel free to drop in and say hello - fingers crossed it'll stay clear of the spamming buggers that kept posting messages about viagra to the guestbook! Don't they realise we're only a young band? They could at least wait another 40 years before spamming us like that. Never mind - anyway, yes indeed have a look, click on forum above, give yourself a username and post away!

Top o' the morning to ya! Cheers to everyone we saw this weekend, a fun pair of gigs to be sure to be sure. The Globe in Brentford is always nice, we had a good time there, then off up to Ipswich on Saturday for the Royal Oak gig. An interesting place, that - we were pretty cosy on the little stage but still had fun. And then this week we are off up to Lancaster Uni again on Thursday, which will be fun, and playing a place called The Railway in Ramsbottom on Friday. Looking forward to both of them - so if you're feeling funky you know where to find us!

I was just surfing around and had a thought - Pumperloaf has been hard at work for a while on our myspace site - and I never got around to anouncing it on here! So here goes - our marvellous spanking new(ish) myspace site can be found at:

http://www.myspace.com/funkyband

Have a look - sign up, surf around, it's a cool place to find new bands that you didn't know about and all the rest of it. Good stuff!

Hello everyone out there in internet-land! We're back from Belgium, what a weekend it was... Three excellent gigs, wonderful audiences, fantastic people. For our first trip to Europe we have to say, Mission Accomplished and then some. We've been booked already to play a rather nice festival in St. Lenaarts on August the 12th, which means some diary reshuffling is necessary, and we're hoping to put a few other dates around that one perhaps to make more of the trip.

We have some rather "entertaining" stories about our trip that Laurence has hinted at in the guestbook - suffice to say every car in Mol now has new tyres! On the plus side, I can't say we were bored for one second on the trip!

Now that we're back, the momentum is keeping up, we have a rehearsal booked for next week and 2 new songs to polish up ready to play out, before a pair of gigs next weekend at The Globe in Brentford, and then in The Royal Oak in Ipswich. Oh and while I think about it, we've had our first review of Still come in from Ashwyn at Digital Blues - now added to our press page. Marvellous!

Morning all! Great fun gig at The Red Lion last night - great to see so many familiar faces along! Nice to make some new friends too - welcome to our world those of you finding our site for the first time! It was fun playing a few covers that we hadn't done for a while, as well as some new songs of our own too. Good stuff. We'll be back soon so keep an eye on our giglist.

So now, a relatively quiet week getting ready for our trip to Belgium for the long weekend. We have quite a few gigs pencilled in that I'll be adding to the giglist over the next few days too. Bring it on - for now though we're really looking forward to playing to some European audiences, it's always fun playing out there. See you when we get back!

Wow! Firstly and most importantly thanks to everyone that came and supported us this weekend - two great gigs in a row! Our little set at Sutton on friday was fun, even the stupidly rushed soundcheck didn't dampen our enthusiasm a bit! Thanks also to everyone that bought CDs - considering Friday was the first official gig we were selling them at, we shifted far more than I expected to for just a support slot. Great! It was fun especially to play Sugar live for the first time!

Then the full set in Banham was great fun too. Jonty runs a really nice little place there, smiles all round and boppers behind and in front of the bar... all good! We'll be back later in the year so keep checking back at the giglist!

Our next gig is at The Red Lion in Twickenham on Saturday night - a nice local one for us and always a fun place to be. See you there!

A bit of last minute info for anyone that doesn't know already - the doors open tomorrow at 7.30pm, we're kicking off at 8pm! See you there!

Morning all! A busy day yesterday, ending up in a few updates to the site! I've updated paypal to reflect that our album is now on sale (see the icon on the left!) - alternatively you can pick a copy up from us at any gig from now on! They got delivered on Friday and look great - even if we do say so ourselves!

I've also put a new page up called "album" that you can see above - if you have a look, there is also a behind the scenes look at how the album came together and a bit more about each song. For those of you interested in that kind of thing!

That's it for now - a last reminder (well, there might be *one* more next week!) that next friday's support gig for Joe Bonamassa is going to be a top night - there aren't many tickets let so if you want to book some, go to Pete Feenstra's site now... Don't delay!

   

Clicking on each of the above will load up a high resolution jpeg of the artwork. The tracklisting (and times) are as follows:

1. Push It - 4:08 2. Mercy - 5:01 3. Long Time Coming - 4:53 4. Same Train Home - 3:45 5. Good To Be Free - 4:31 6. Still - 7:32

7. Northside - 6:58 8. Free and Easy - 3:11 9. Cherry Picking - 5:40 10. Dreamtime - 6:25 11. Sugar - 5:07

The album will be available online from February 17th, for £10. If you bought one of our original demo CDs then bring it along to a gig and you can buy a copy of Still for half price! Bingo.

Also I forgot to mention - there's a really nice feature on us in the centre pages of this month's Blues In Britain magazine - Lorna and I were lucky enough to spend a few hours chatting chatting with editor Fran Leslie just before Christmas. Lots of fun and the article came out great. Congrats to any readers that find their way to this website after reading it as well - there was a minor typo in the url - I should mention the words www.funkband.com and funkdory for the benefit of the search engine bots, then hopefully more of you may find your way here!

Drumroll please... ba dumph yes it's all done! Just in time for me to wander down to the post office at lunchtime and get it all off to the pressing plant. Marvellous. Keep an eye on this site over the next few days for mp3 clips and for the tracklist/cover artwork etc. At 57 minutes 16 seconds long it's a pretty respectable first album - we're all pretty pleased. Now to get on with the business of selling them and getting them to every radio station in the land!

A quick update - we're nearly there on the recording, hopefully we'll have it all mixed and mastered by Monday in time to send off to the printers for our 1st February deadline! I've got 3 solos left to do and Lorna has a couple of songs left to sing, and that's it. All of Marc, Lillian and Pumperloafs parts are done and dusted. I'm really pleased with how it's sounding so far - very exciting! Well, I'll check back in at the weekend with another update and some photos from "behind the scenes" too... In the meantime, stay well everyone, see you at a gig soon!

Thanks to everyone that came along to The New Crawdaddy Club over in Essex last night - what a great gig! We weren't expecting so many people to make it out (especially since the last time we were there at the Digital Fest back in October, there were only 10 people in the room!) - I think the word of mouth machine is starting to work in our favour, little by little. If all goes well we should be back in late 2006 - looking forward to it! (Now to find out what I missed in Eastenders?)

It's good to be back home! And what a nice homecoming indeed - some more coverage in January's "Blues in Britain" that I've added to the press page, and of course last night's appearance in the Mick Martin Blues Party on KXJZ Sacramento! If anyone missed it, I've added mp3 clips to the aforementioned press pages - have a listen, it's great! Alongside funkydory he also played songs by The John O'Leary Band and Roadhouse that featured both myself and Lorna - a fun night we had listening along online. So big thanks to Mick, you are the man!

As mentioned before, Thursday is this month's only gig, however we're not sitting on our backsides, no sir... plans our now firmed up for us to record our first official cd, currently the favourite title for which is simply "Still" - we should have this recorded, mixed, pressed and all the rest in time for February the 17th. What happens on the 17th I hear you ask? Well, it's a pretty cool gig for us, supporting Joe Bonamassa at The Boom Boom Club in Sutton. Over the next few days I'll be updating the site with ticket info for that gig - Joe is awesome and thoroughly recommended, and I'd say that even if we weren't supporting him!

With that, I'll get back to work - enjoy the mp3 clips from the radio show - and see you on Thursday!

Hello from France, people! Just a quick news update here to let you know that we're going to played on the Radio in California tomorrow night (Saturday 7th January) - KXJZ 88.9FM or you can listen online at http://www.capradio.org. It'll be on at 1pm to 5pm local time which is 9pm to 1am UK time. I'm not sure which track they're going to play but it does mark a first for us to be on the radio in another country!

While I'm here, a quick reminder that next Thursday (the 12th) we're playing at The New Crawdaddy Club in Billericay (see left for map info!) - our first gig of 2006. I can't wait, it's been a long break over christmas!

See you soon...

Monday morning, and we have some news to relay!

I'm pleased to announce that Ian "Lillian" Mauracio has joined funkydory as our new bass player. For those of you that were at our gig in Watford last week, that was a sneak preview of the new line-up! Lillian, of course, replaces the inimitable Fox, who has been with us since day one. It has been a wonderful first year of gigs for all of us, and so we'd like to thank Fox for his help and support through 2005 and wish him all the best for the future!

I've known Lillian for about 5 years now and we all hold his playing and creativity in very high regard, so all I can say is keep an eye on this site, we plan to do some more recording very soon, after which I'll put some clips on post haste!

That's all for now - Happy Christmas to all, see you in 2006, and enjoy your holidays!

As I sat reading my latest Mojo the other day I noticed something called "Got Real if You Want It..." which appears to be some kind of bastardised anti-X-factor/death-to-fame-academy type band talent search! So yes, you've guessed it - we need you!!! All you have to do to help us out if you feel like it is to take 10 seconds to email mojo@emap.com with "Genuine Substance" in the subject, mention our name and and 50 words about why you like what we do, and that's it! So please feel free to forward this to anyone and everyone and help us get noticed... thanks to all!

A quick thank you here to everyone who saw us in Farnham yesterday, the festival was a big success and a lot of fun - foolishly I wasn't expecting the place to be quite so packed and only brought 20 or so cds with me! So to everyone that queued and then couldn't get one - hearty apologies! As usual our cd is available through the site - click the icon to the left and paypal ahoy!

Only two gigs left for 2005 now, 23rd November at Dusty's in Holmer Green, and 3rd December at The Pump House in Watford. Fox is otherwise engaged on the 3rd so we'll have "Lillian" Mauracio on bass with us - it's been about 3 years since I last did a gig with him and he's an absolutely amazing bass player, so I'm really looking forward to that one!

For now, we're staying busy writing and recording tunes, and looking forward to a chilled out Christmas time... bliss! Oh, and if you saw us at a gig and liked it - sign our guestbook and let us know!

Thanks for supporting live music - see you at a gig soon!

In re-reading that last news thing, I should point out that no, of course I'm not that popular, those two thousand emails were mostly spam. How they found out that I need viagra, want a mortgage, am addicted to cialis (whatever that is?), enjoy spanking housewives etc etc etc, I have no idea. Never mind.

Anyway on another subject, tonight is Jam Night, as usual - and we have two gigs this weekend for you all to come to and holler loudly at! Saturday sees us at The Red Lion in High Wycombe, kicking off about 9pm - and then on Sunday we're playing the Blues Festival down at The Farnham Maltings (as usual see the gigs page for maps and URLs etc.) - for the Maltings gig we're actually kicking the event off at about 12.30pm - playing for 90 minutes and it'll be something of a powerhouse set. We're out to impress in order to book a bunch more gigs next year - so if you like us and want to support us, come along and scream, loudly! We won't mind, I promise.

Having gone through close to two thousand emails that have amassed in my inbox over the last week, we've had quite a few from people asking when we're next going to be back at a certain venue etc. - to save you guys the hassle of looking back and checking the site all the time, you can alternatively join our mailing list by sending a mail to mdaemon@slidejules.com with "subscribe funkyband" in the subject line. Alternatively you can just click here! I tend to send out one small email a week and that's about it, so if you want to keep in touch from now on - you know how!

A quick message here to say thanks to everyone that came out to see us over the last week and made it such an amazing stretch of gigs - you were all fantastic and it wouldn't have been worth it at all had it not been for you guys! To everyone that bought CDs - thanks and enjoy them, keep playing them to friends (hey, especially if your friends happen to own record labels!?!) - we'll definitely be back in 2006 playing at all the places we played this week (and more, of course!) - keep an eye on this website and also on my own site for pictures from these gigs - they'll be online over the next week or so.

Take good care of yourselves everyone and we can't wait to see you all again!

Morning all! It's a busy week for us starting from tonight - 5 gigs in a row, 1000 mile round trip, bring it on! We've got a bunch of new songs in the set since we were last up north, and with a few new audiences to try them out on we're all buzzed.

Thursday 27 October 2005		|map|		The Grad Bar, Lancaster University
Friday 28 October 2005		|map|		The Duke of Edinburgh, Barrow
Saturday 29 October 2005		|map|		Semi-acoustic set, The Shed, Norwich
Sunday 30 October 2005		|map|		4pm start, The Banham Barrel

Bring them on. Glad we got a gig on the 29th sorted - big props to Ryan at The Shed for sorting it out for us!

See you at one of the gigs!

Hello everyone out there in internet-land! Hope you are all tickety boo and everything is rocking!

As you hopefully all know, tonight's Jam at the Grove Tavern is not on thanks to the footy, but we'll be back in a fortnight as usual - looking forward to seeing you jammers down there again!

Tomorrow night we return to The Globe in Brentford, a nice local gig with a really cool atmosphere - plenty of good times to be had there - we've got a few new songs to play there as well, which we aim to record over the next few weeks. Keep an eye out on this site for some more mp3 clips too!

Something else to mention is that on Sunday 13th November, we're playing at 12.30pm at The Farnham Maltings Music Festival. Here's some blurb from their website:

Sunday 13 November

ALL-DAY BLUES FESTIVAL - £25

A host of bands throughout the building, plus all-day bars and food. In addition to funkydory, the line-up includes Connie Lush & Blues Shouter, Ruthless Blues, Nicky Moore's Blues Corporation, Ben Waters, Blue Thunder, Station House, Trafficker, Sonny Black- and more! Tickets are available now at just £25 per person or £10 for under 16's. Free entry for children of 10 and under. Book tickets through the Box Office on 01252 726234.

Sounds good doesn't it! Anyone local to the area, please come along and make a lot of noise as we're there to impress!

Other things to tell you about are that we're heading North again in a couple of weeks to play at Lancaster Uni (27th Oct) and The Duke Of Edinburgh (28th Oct) before coming back down for a gig at The Banham Barrel (formerly the Cider Shed) on the 30th. Should anyone happen to read this that wants us to play for them on the 29th - please get in touch with me because thanks to the sale of a venue in Maryport, we are still gigless for that night!

And with that I shall bid ye all farewell - see you at a gig soon!

Morning everyone! Usual reminder to any casual surfers that we're once again running the jam at The Grove Tavern in South Wimbledon tonight. The heights of summer are upon us (is that a real phrase?) so come down, have a nice cold beer, listen to some music, have a play - it's all good.

Also have a look at the Gallery, courtesy of Mama F there are some new pictures from our gig at The Green Man in Barnet on Sunday just gone. And what a fun gig it was!

Speaking of gigs, things are starting to build up for us for next year - we've already been booked for the Maryport Trail next July, which will be fantastic and I'm looking forward to it already! If you know of any other venues local to you then please let them (and us!) know!

Lastly - thanks to everyone that came to the Forum in Darlington to see us. We had a wonderful gig so large props to Mike Prendergast for organising the gig!

See you at the next...

Good afternoon all - firstly just quickly to mention that we're jamming again tonight at The Grove Tavern, the usual drill - tonight it's Hayden on duty so if you come down, get on his case and he'll get you up on stage!

Also I'm here to get in there early and mention next Friday's gig at The Forum in Darlington. We've never played the North East with Funkydory before, however Lorna and I played the Forum last year with Roadhouse - and what a corker it was! Very nice people in the area and Mike the promotor is as much of a gentleman and all round nice bloke as you'd ever hope to meet. So if you are surfing in to our site from the North East - come along to the gig and have some fun with us... it'll be a good'un!

Other than that, more gigs are coming in so keep an eye on our diary - and we'll see you at the next one!

Hello everyone! Firstly a big thanks to everyone who came down and had a good time with us at The Grey Horse on Friday - what a fantastic night! The sound and video came out great so look out for a some video clips on this website over the next few weeks - also Phil "The Lensman" North took some excellent photos which I'll be putting online over the next few days as well.

On to other news, as you can probably tell from his nickname, French Marc is, in fact, French (no, it's not a comedy affectation). He has some family coming over for the weekend and since they haven't seen him play for a long while, we have snuck in a gig in their honour at The Grove Tavern this Friday (29th July)! If you want to see us, please NB that since there is another band playing after us, we are starting at 8pm pronto, and playing through until 10pm at which point Charly Lankester and Adrian Fraser will be taking over until the end of the night. We're looking forward to it, another chance to play our own funky stuff and have a good time!

How did that Roxy Music song go? "Funk is the drug"

See you at a gig soon!

A busy week ahead - as usual it's jam night tomorrow night (Wednesday) at the Grove Tavern, and then on Friday we return to The Grey Horse, Kingston. With several new songs and a new PA under our belt, this should be a great gig - we love the venue and Richard is as good a guv'nor as any! We'll kick off at about 9 and play for as long as we're allowed to - see the gigs page for map and website information!

In other news, the more eagle eyed amongst you may have spotted that our gig on the 29th October at The Captain Nelson in Maryport has been cancelled. This is due to the sale of the venue unfortunately, so our best wishes go to Sandra, and good luck for wherever she lays her hat next!

Consequently, we're on the lookout for a gig on the 29th October - if you know of any venues that you think would be suitable, please email them and recommend us (or failing that, let me know so I can try them!) - anyone who helps us get a gig can claim a free CD next time they see me!

In the meantime, stay well everyone, and see you at a gig soon!

A fun night in Barnes last night - it was a bi-annual Roadhouse Music Club and consequently a small funkydory mini set was in order. Sadly Professor Pumperloaf was up north sunning himself, but we did a few of our own bits with Awesome Tony.



As previously mentioned, tonight we are to record a few new bits and bobs, hopefully they will come out well, in which case they will be up as mp3s shortly. We have had a few new gigs come in, so keep an eye on that page, come and see us, and tell your friends how much you liked it!

A great night at The Globe - thanks to Charlie for the last minute gig! And thanks to everyone that came and bought CDs - we hope you like them; tell your friends and play it loud! Also take a look at the gallery, thanks to Phil for taking some excellent photos!

In the meantime, tomorrow we're once again jamming at The Grove Tavern, it's Marc's turn to run it - it will be a good night! Please get there early though if you definitely want to play.

Next week we have a rehearsal and two more songs to record, which will take us up to 8 originals in the set. Result! Of course mp3s clips to duly follow shortly...

See you at a gig soon!

Good afternoon funky surfer, whoever you are! A small update here to let you know that we have had a last minute cancellation gig come in for this Saturday, at The Globe in Brentford. You can find the address and their website details - as always - on the gigs page. See you there!

Bonjour, Salut and Welcome to the funkydory website! What a month! Our first Jam last week was a huge success - so thanks first to everyone who came down and supported it - just get there earlier! The next one is this Wednesday coming - 22nd July - as ever you can find the details on the gigs page. In other news, we have been merrily sending CDs out left right and centre, and will have some more gigs added to our diary in the next fortnight or so. We've also been writing new material, some of it debuted at our recent gig up at The Shed in Banham (what an awesome gig that was!) - some more yet to surface on stage, but all good and fun!

The last bit of news to relay is that both myself and Lorna have recently decided to focus more on funkydory, and therefore from the end of September, we'll be retiring from Roadhouse. A sad occasion, but looking back I must give a lot of credit to Roadhouse for our very existance as a band! So here's to the future!

Keep checking back, I'll have some more mp3 clips up next week and also with any luck some more photos too…

Hello everyone! I'll be sending out an email and spamming everyone I know with this news in the next few days - but just to let you know, we're starting out on a trial run to organise a Jam Night at the Grove Tavern in South Wimbledon - see the gigs page for venue details. Basically it will run from 9, so get there early to make sure you get a decent play, and fingers crossed everyone will have a good time! It's a good opportunity for us to try out new song ideas and keep playing as a unit so we're all pretty excited about it!

Morning all! Our demo is now complete, all artwork done, so on to booking more gigs! If you're interested in booking the band, drop me an email and I'll get a cd out in the post to you! Over the next few weeks we're going to be booking some more London gigs to get ourselves heard and seen, so keep an eye on the gigs page for new ones as they get added. I'll be adding some more mp3 samples of our tracks to the multimedia page over the weekend as well.

In the meantime, have a good long weekend - see you at a gig soon!

So here we are, at last funkydory's website is up and running! Thanks to everyone who came to our most recent gig at the Grey Horse the other week - a fantastic night, and good fun to debut some more original material. Personally the most encouring aspect was that our original material seemed to get the best reception! Always a buzz...

Our next gig is a way to go, both in time and distance - but we are certainly keeping busy. Our current rehearsing schedule is hectic, and very productive - our aim of having a complete set of originals by the end of the summer is I think very much in sight - Tuesday's rehearsal yielding another new song, making 5 in total so far. I'm hoping to record each song as it happens for demo purposes - in the meantime the multimedia page has snippets in mp3 - have a listen!

We're still on the lookout for gigs in the London area for the summer though - if you know of anywhere suitable, drop us a line so we know who to approach!

Enjoy the site - keep checking back as we'll be updating it soon with some slightly more detailed profiles and a picture gallery - and most importantly, keep supporting live music!

View all news items