In March I asked my dad’s cousin, Luke, if he could help me reach out to people to try get a gig in Bradford as he does regular acoustic performances. He got in touch with Rewired bar (as our “promoter”) and they told him to tell me to email them with some promotional videos and a bit about ourselves. I sent them an email with the video from the international women’s day performance we did and they asked about our fees. I had asked Luke about how much he thinks I should ask for and he said he started off with £150 for an hour and half set so I asked for £120 as I felt £150 might’ve been a bit too much to ask for since we haven’t done a proper gig before. They seemed really interested but then didn’t reply for a week so I sent a follow up email and they didn’t reply again so I decided Rewired would not be the place to have the gig.
After this I was on the lookout for open mic’s to go to and my dad found one at The Exchange Bar in Bradford so me and Faye decided we’d work towards getting 10 songs ready for that (however we would only play 3). By this point it was the end of the Easter Holidays and I was really stressing to get a gig. The Exchange Bar does a few gig’s so I got in touch with them as the event managers there seemed to really enjoy our performance and they said they would get back to us. A few weeks later, the man (Dave) running the gig’s and open mic’s rang me and discussed potential dates we can gig for and we decided on the 30th of June, to play after their once a month open mic night. This will also be a paid set where the bar puts £60 towards it and also anyone can give money if they want, which then gets split between the acts of the night.
I was still looking for a gig still so I asked Luke again about any places I should reach out to and he mentioned Boar & Fable, he told me not to worry about it and he’ll act as our “promoter” again. We decided on a midweek evening in May, deciding to do it on the 23rd of May. Then Luke said I should try get a support act so people want to actually come out and see us as its midweek, so I asked Oliver from Level 2 if he was interested in doing a half an hour set to open, he said he’d happily do it with his band Cry About It which is a two piece band and they’d do an acoustic set. I then went onto creating the poster and me and Faye have started thinking about doing some originals.
At the end of April, a friend who is in University asked if me and Faye would be interested in participating in a festival that one of her friends it putting on for their final project in University. I said yes, of course, and she sent me his Instagram page so I messaged him asking about it and he said he’d love to have us. So now Izzy and Faye are doing a voluntary gig of about 20-30 minute set at the Lost In Translation Festival at Production Parks in Wakefield on the 30th May.
The gig at The Boar and Fable has been moved to the 13h of June because Faye has come down with an illness.