It's been a year!! Really, it has. The time just seems to have flown by but we have loved every minute of it. Over the last year The Mill has played host to a veritable array of emerging bands. A couple of months ago, a few of the A&R team and I did an interview for the Sunday Herald about how Scotland's music industry thrives in a recession. It was fascinating to hear the journalist's research which demonstrated that Scots tend to pick up a guitar when they don't have a job, rather than get depressed. Ok, so they may express their depression sometimes in their music, but the amount of creativity in Scotland cannot be argued with. It has meant that we have had an amazing choice of bands to be able to book this last year, and we are looking forward to booking just as many creative people in the coming months. We're already booked up til December and demand is high for places, but we still want to look back at the bands that have progressed to the next level of their career since they played. That's what The Mill is all about.
It was hard to choose our headliners, and it is hard to decide which bands we should book weekly. We could only book everyone that wants to play if we were open every night of the week now, so you can imagine how hard it gets. We did manage to decide eventually though, and it seems we got it right as all tickets for both events were gone in 12 hours.
If you haven't managed to get your paws on any tickets, you can still enjoy some of the music. All four of our headliners were asked what emerging bands they would like to bring with them to play at our gigs celebrating a Year At The Mill. We figured nobody knows best than the musicians themselves. A great example of how this works for bands is with our headliners We Were Promised Jetpacks – they were signed to Fat Cat Records after fans of the band, Frightened Rabbit, suggested them to their label, Fat Cat. Jetpacks and the Rabbits also played a stunning sell out show together at The Mill last year – you can check out the audio recordings produced by Tony Doogan and the videos online on our website. Unfortunately you won't be able to get your ears around Jetpacks latest recordings unless you have tickets for this Thursday's gig. We are recording all the bands live, as usual, Tony is producing and mixing them as usual, but the difference is that we are doing it all as it happens, and making it available only to all the guests on the night – as they leave they will be given a free exclusive CD of the gig they have just seen.
Our emerging bands audio and video recordings will all be available on our website so you can check out Some Young Pedro, chosen by We Were Promised Jetpacks, and Sparrow & The Workshop, chosen by Broken Records, this Thursday. I highly recommend checking them out if you haven't managed to grab a ticket because they may be our headliners next time.
For those of you that have managed to obtain tickets, you are in for a treat. A plethora of great bands, playing great songs with Jim Gellatly on DJ duties, it's going to be an aural pleasure for everyone. Not only that, you will get an exclusive memento of the evening in the form of the live CD and posters were have for you.
Doors are at 7pm, and as we need to squeeze 4 bands into the night, bands will be starting fairly early on so make sure you get down in time to catch everyone. Be aware that the emerging bands will play directly before the headliner that brought them, so the running order for Thursday is Some Young Pedro, followed by their headliner We Were Promised Jetpacks, then Sparrow & The Workshop, followed by our other headliner Broken Records. Don't be late!! You'll regret it!
