Bands
- No Limit: As a guitarist I've always wanted to perform in a band and i first began to gain an interest of this when I was in my first year of Secondary school and I managed to get united with various other people with similar interests. This is when my first band formed, we wouldn't ever cover any songs that already existed and instead wrote our own material in the genre of Garage Rock. Although it was pretty terrible our knowledge of performing in a group and our music writing abilities improved a lot at a very young age.
- Total Mayhem: After my first band 'split up', my interest in playing with other musicians grew and i soon found myself being asked to join an already existing band in year 9. This band mainly focused on Funk and Rock music and we only ever covered songs from famous bands but our ability to play off of each other whilst performing got very good and our timing was a lot tighter than my previous band.
- The Pope Stealers: Total Mayhem eventually died out after time although we were all still playing together and jamming every now and again just for fun. After a while we decided that we wanted to give the band another shot and got a new singer. As soon as we finally managed to find ourselves a singer we already had our first 'Gig' arranged at the Oakward Centre in Woodley in front of about 200 adults and children. We only played one song but apparently it went down quite well. After we played one gig we wanted to play more and eventually started to get more, playing at birthday parties. After a while we all went our separate ways due to musical differences until the 'Stand Down Day' (the final day of school for year 11's) at Waingels College when we all got asked to do a 'Pope Stealers reunion' for the last ever Assembly for the year 11's. We played in front of about 300 people playing a few songs, one of those songs was our own interpretation of the song 'This Love' by Maroon 5.
- The Mullicanos: The Mullicanos were an indie
rock band inspired by people such as The Libertines, The Beatles, Arctic
Monkeys, Hard-FI, The View and Dirty Pretty Things. The band had been formed
for a while before they asked me to join. Them all being older meant that they
had a bit more experience all playing together than I did. Never the less I
managed to soon catch up and we all got used to playing with each other. Not
long after I joined I started to write my own songs and lyrics and eventually
introduced the songs to the band, much to my delight they actually liked them
quite a lot and we set on learning them and perfecting them for gigs to come in
the foreseeable future. With a whole load of covers under our belts and after I
had finished writing about six different songs and the band had learnt them all
we decided to start gigging. Our first gig together was a half our set in a
venue called ‘Facebar’ which is a popular music venue in Reading. The gig was
in aid of funding Waingels College’s sixth form World Challenge trip and it had
a very good turnout of over 200 students. Once we got better known throughout
the school community we started to promote ourselves and organise more gigs
with local promoters. We started playing gigs all around Reading in venues such
as Plug n’ Play and East West, supporting various bands, such as Not Quite
White, Hidden Image, The Quotes and we even got asked to support the band Viva
Brother on tour. Once we got a following of over 200 hundred fans that would
try and come to the majority of our gigs, we decided it was time to start
headlining some of our own gigs. The last gig we played together was a headline
gig that we played acoustically, our set was about 45 minutes long which was
the longest set we had played.
- The Jacks: Towards the end of the first year at Henley College I decided that it was time to form a new band and i eventually did with Will Howell (drums), Joe Pape (rhythm guitar) and Henry Coates (bass guitar), with me playing lead guitar. We tried to practise every week and work on writing new songs every practise, as well as practising our own versions of covers from bands that inspire us. With influences such as The Libertines, The Hives, Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, Blur, Foo Fighters and many more. every week our skills in performing and playing improved and our ability to play together was also improving rapidly.
Orchestras
Through playing guitar in an orchestra in Junior school I managed to play in various different schools and churches improving my confidence and ability to play with other musicians other than the standard band line up.
Choirs
When i was in Junior school as well as playing in the orchestra i also sang in the choir. Even though i can't sing at all it helped build my confidence as a performer and we performed in places such as churches and concert halls like The Hexagon in Reading. I stopped singing in the choir when i left the school to go onto secondary school.
Session Playing
Quite recently me and Will Howell helped Emma Brown in a singing competition at Sub 89 called 'Open Mic UK'. In the competition, like X Factor you have to sing in front of a large audience (not as big as the X Factor one) and in front of a panel of judges who assess you on your ability to sing and as an all round performer. Me and Will play Guitar and Cajon for Emma whilst she sang her own interpretation of the song 'Horse In A Cherry Tree', fortunately We got through the second round and now have to perform again in the third round.
Practise in preparation for the show at Sub 89.
Playing at Magoos
I also played in makeshift two band for a one off night at magoos.
Performing Rolling in the Deep by Adelle at Magoos.
Performing Undercover Martyn by Two Door Cinema Club at Magoos.
Playing at Henley Youth Festival
Here for Henley Youth Festival i played in two bands. I played on Gig Night at the youth centre and at the Kenton Theatre for the Gala.
Gig Night Performances:
Can You See Me - The Monarchs
One Step Closer - The Monarchs
Lines - Reverie
Youth Festival Performance:
Lines - Reverie
Gala Performance:
Can You See Me - The Monarchs
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