Happy New Year and HUGE NEWS: Better Than The Book finally has a band and is preparing to hit the stage in 2020 (+ some fun gear updates)!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/32944672
https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Happy New Year everyone and some long awaited HUGE news to share today as you can probably tell by the post title! Hope you all had a great time over the winter holiday period and are settling back smoothly into routine now that we're almost at the end of the first week of 2020. I certainly had an exciting few weeks away, so let's get into that and the big news!
Let's start with some backstory. Better Than The Book has been a studio project since mid 2012, but apart from making the records themselves, I never really had the opportunity / means to take it to the stage. Fast forward to 2016 when Two Years On was released, and things started getting interesting. With 2 tracks making it on the radio over in the USA, I was getting interviews and requests asking when I would be touring the USA, but as a person with no band or funding, I really had no idea what to do. I even had a label approach me about the project back then, but without a gig-ready band at the time, I couldn't fulfill the needs they wanted. Fast forward again to 2019 and Hopes and Dreams, and even before the album was released the attention was heating up with radio play as far as Australia and many web features and interviews. When the album launched on July 19ths, things exploded over the next few months and it was clear that people wanted me to take this live, and I'd be kicking myself if I didn't give it a shot. By the end of October, 7/10 tracks from the album had made it onto the radio all across the USA, UK and Australia!
After much discussion with a few close and musical friends, in August 2019, four of us got together for a casual living room jam and strategy meeting, and all things considered, it went super smoothly and I was happy to give this live thing a shot. We set out 8 tracks to learn to start with with the aim to practice hard and meet up for a full band, loud and proud rehearsal before the end of the year, and in late December 2019 it happened, and it was spectacular! Considering we'd never played most of these tunes together, and certainly not in a full band situation, it was already more than 90% there musically, with just a few tiny kinks to iron out (like vocal harmonies and who was doing which backing vocals). I was on top of the world, and at the end of that practice, it was pretty darn clear that 2020 would be an exciting year for Better Than The Book!
And so without further wait, I'd like to formally announce that Better Than The Book will be hitting the stage in 2020 with the following line-up of my crazy friends:
Nick Standing (Me): Lead vocals and guitar
Eamon Standing: Backing vocals, guitar and harmonica (the amazing one man horn section)
Sam Brown: Backing vocals and bass guitar
Andy Forman: Drums
Eamon, Sam and I were in our first band together, I was in a band with Andy, Sam was in that same band with Andy before I joined, Eamon and Andy made a record together with me producing it, Sam's been in another band I was in, I've been in a battle of the band against Andy, and of course Andy lent his guitar playing to Better Than The Book's 1st EP One Small Step on the track "Woof Woof, Nag Nag" (as well as many gang shouts on the album along with Eamon). In short, we all have a long musical history together and I honestly couldn't think of a better bunch of people to be doing this with! What's next for the project? Well we've another 7ish songs to learn before our next meet-up in April then it's time to make the final polishing and start looking for gigs! We already have one confirmed for November (more details to come closer to the time) so at the very latest, our first gig will be then! It's been a tonne of hard work but I can't wait to really push this to see how far we can take it, and if you want to help support the project over on Patreon, it'd really help cover the practice studio and travel costs while we prepare (and get some merch sorted), and of course you'll be getting all the good stuff and full BTTB discography when you sign up!
And speaking of getting things, I'm super happy with my love new and compact gigging amp I got just before the practice, an Orange Micro Dark! Don't let it's size fool you, this thing is DEAFENING if it wants to be! Plugged into a Marshall 4x12 cab at practice, I could only get the volume up 1/3 the way before it was plenty loud enough for the room and to keep up with Andy's drumming! Simple, sweet sounding, my kind of tone and doesn't even weigh 1kg!!! I'll definitely be putting this in my rucksack for practice rather than taking my 50 watt 14kg+ Marshall amp on the train, as lovely as it sounds. For the gear heads among you, since the Micro Dark only has one channel (or sound at a time), as opposed to my Marshall which you can switch between 2 via a footswitch, I took some time during the Christmas period to build a little pedal for it! This'll be the 4th (and most simple) pedal I've designed / built from scratch, and I call it the "Pre-Wash". Put it before you amp and when engaged it cleans up your single for less distortion, in the same way as rolling the volume down on your amp can clean the signal. It basically turns a single channel amp into a basic 2 channel one. Neat! I still need to save up for a speaker cabinet for the Micro Dark to play through in the studio, but as of right now I have all the equipment I need to gig Better Than The Book (which is half the battle)!
Back to that epic practice in December, I did manage to get some footage of that, as well as subsequent practices too, so keep a look out for some of that coming hopefully later this month over on Patreon! Overall, 2019 was a heck of an exciting year for Better Than The Book, but I have a feeling that 2020 will be just as exciting in a completely different way!
That's it for this post! There's still a heck of a lot of work to do in preparation for gigging but I think musically and equipment wise we're pretty much there! I'm sure I'll be posting more updates about this soon, but until the next post, I hope you have a great start to 2020 and thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various projects! Let's make 2020 (and the decade to come) and amazing one!