Hey welcome to another Flashback series.
We pick up from the last episode, now with the first gig of 2018 and..Spice’s Début gig.
As you may remember from a previous Flashback episode we landed this gig from playing back in November 2017 at a new venue in Birmingham called “Get The Fear”
Our promoter Adam Ward had booked us again after our Début show with him at this venue a few weeks before.
But this time we were on the bill with a band called Terrorsaurs and of course other bands.. But we had not met Terrorsaurs until this time. We opened up the night, played our set and finished the show the Wild Strays way. Then we took our gear off the stage to then enjoy the rest of the night.
Ian the bass player and main driving force behind this band approached me after seeing our show.
He said, Hey, KT, I really loved your set. He continued to say there is no way you guys are a 7pm band and asked me if we would we be interested in supporting them on their last show in the UK before they headed off to tour America.
Well of course I bit his hand off and said we would love too.
He said, great. I thought you had a great sound and stage presence and yeah.. I’ll send you the details of dates and a venue location.
I shook his hand and pretty much ran straight over to the other members to tell them the news.
(For the full story of this night, please head back to Flashback Part 3)
Skip forward to the 7th of April and here we are.
A new drummer and the new line up for the Wild Strays is here.
In the afternoon we headed to the studio for a quick warm up and I remember the mood was full of excitement to get onto the stage.
We knew we had grown in strength over the last three to four months with Spice being in the band. I even remember someone coming up with the crazy idea of turning all the lights off in the practice studio and just having the torches on our phones...so we could practice in pretty much complete darkness to get used to playing in the dark.
It was good fun and after a quick rehearsal we headed off to the venue.
I used to work not far from this pub called the Wagon and Horses in Digbeth, Birmingham. So I knew the parking well and all the streets surrounding the venue.
However when we pulled up, and there were people everywhere. This Picture below doesn’t really do it justice but it was really busy, in the pub and outside.
Now we knew this was Terrorsaurs last gig in the UK before heading off to America.
But we were not expecting such a massive turn out.
We started to unload and make our way through the side door and upstairs. Turns out Birmingham City Football Club we’re playing on that Saturday and they were all at the pub after the game.
Still it was going to be a great night. When we had got all the gear upstairs we were introduced to the sound engineer and also got chatting to a guy called Dean. He explained he was a promoter and drummer for Colorado Lounge.
He stuck around to hear our sound check and was a pretty cool guy to talk to.
Although we had played two shows late 2017 with Phil on Drums. This gig, this venue, and this sound felt real good. Maybe we just carried more confidence after two shows and now with Spice onboard, but we were totally up for this show.
A good amount of people and great feeling on and off stage.
We opened up the night and I got to say although we didn’t have too much room on the stage the sound was awesome and we had an absolute blast.
It’s still listed as one of Jake’s favourite gigs.
We came off stage and enjoyed the rest of the nights entertainment.
I got talking to Dean again after our show and it was this gig that we secured another show for later In the year at Scruffy Murphy’s supporting Colorado Lounge.
He explained that Colorado Lounge also promote their own gigs and would love us to play with them at Scruffy’s. Of course we were totally up for it :)
A fantastic night, another gig booked, and off the back of another live show. A great start to what would be many gigs in 2018.
As always thanks for reading.. Same time next week.
Keep it Wild ,
KT x