June 24, 2019
Well, it’s been a while.
It’s been…more than a while, actually. But, we’re going back to play in the US. We’re doing a couple of shows, in a couple of weeks – and for now, that’s it.
We’re playing at Summerfest on Friday the 5th of July and then at WIRE, in Berwyn, IL, on Saturday the 6th.
So – tickets are on sale NOW – follow the links, and grab them while you still can!
I know, the first question is going to be – “So, why aren’t you playing ______, instead?” Well, there is a reason behind all of this – I’ll do my best to explain. We get offers to come and tour widely in the US, from time to time, but it never seems to work out. There are a lot of logistical things around getting us all together to go and play – and the bottom line is, we don’t have a lot of time to spare. All of us have now got jobs, lives, families, responsibilities, at home. that means tearing ourselves away for touring is fraught with difficulties. And, sometimes even finding a window when all five of us can get the same week off, to tour the UK is a problem. So, the US presents an even bigger challenge. It’s so much bigger than the US, that you’d need weeks to do it. Back when we did the band for a career – that was fine. this was all we did. But now, it’s tricky. Plus, there’s a lot of other expense involved – the cost of US visas is now massive, that’s definitely a factor.
When we got the offer to play Summerfest, at first, we thought it was going to be the same old story – but this time around, we decided on a new plan of action. We would use up our entire fee, pay for flights, hotels, and visas, and just come over for a few days. We’d do the show, and not actually make any money. Normally, that would be an issue – we all have bills to pay – but this time, we decided to see if we could do this gig, have our visas ready to go, and focus on future gigs over the next year and a half. Our visas run till the end of 2020, and we want to be in the situation where we could get on a plane, fly over and do a long weekend worth of gigs. Come play a pair of shows in California, or on the East Coast. Do a festival or two, then head home. And if we get multiple chances to do that – every couple of months or so – then fine.
So, we’re gambling, I guess. We’re hoping that we’ll get more chances to come and play in the US after we’ve done these shows. Hope that makes sense to all of you, and hope that the explanation will make up, in some small way, for the disappointment that some of you must feel if we’re not playing in your town. Here’s hoping we can come back! Other news? Well, there’s lots. Some good, some….not so good. A lot of our year has been taken up by the fallout from the collapse of Pledgemusic. Any of you who follow our twitter feed (if not, why not? it’s HERE) will have seen how crazy it’s all been. We were swindled out of several thousand pounds – money which came from YOU. The whole thing was shocking, depressing, and frustrating. Plus, that money was already allocated to bills, which needed paying. The credit card took a lot of the strain – which does bring an extra level of stress into the picture. For a band like us, it’s quite a basic operation – there’s not a huge amount of money swilling around – and the Pledge money would have helped our cash flow for at least a year. In many ways, it’s caused huge problems for us, and fighting those has been a real headache. On top of that, we never received full payment for our appearance at last year’s Camp Bestival (another company that hit the buffers), and we were left out of pocket once more. Sums like that would normally enable us to do things like plan, print and sell more merch, and it’s been hugely frustrating that we can’t, through no fault of our own.
But – in the grand scheme of things, we’re not going to be beaten by it. Let’s face it, there are many more people in the world who suffer real hardship in their daily lives, and we’re in the relatively lucky situation of still having a bit of a profile. We can fight through the issues for now, and recover after a year or two. We do feel very angry for those bands who will be pushed under, by the things that Pledge have done. We trusted them, so did the fans, and instead of rewarding that trust – they broke it.
Anyway – it’s meant that we’re also thinking about future plans, too – we have a project in the pipeline which could help find crowdfunding solutions, and we’ll let you know more about that soon.
We are also having a bit of a celebration, this year – it’s 30 years since we started to release our music upon the world! the first trip of singles (Info, Never Enough and Bring) are back on Spotify, and other streaming and download services, with their original artwork, and b-sides. We’re also plotting to re-release Liquidizer, later in the year! And – we’ll be doing a 30th Anniversary Liquidizer tour too. I’ll bring you the dates for these shows, in the next few days (some of the schedule has been tweaked a bit!)
And – Mike has begun work on re-recording some of his favourite Liquidizer tunes, as well. He wanted to see what it would sound like if the Jesus Jones of today got a chance to go over the songs we did in the past. We’re a stronger band now – if I’m honest. We sound better than we’ve ever done. SO, we wanted to see if we could go back, and play those songs in the studio, and how they’d sound. First impressions? They sound GREAT. More on this, very soon.
So, that’s it for now – more on all of the things above, in the next update!
So, this is a big one. We are TOURING WITH EMF! They’ve been our mates for over thirty years – but we’ve never shared a stage
Read MoreSo – let’s try this again, shall we? We’re back out to the US & Canada (Toronto) in March and April of this year – we literally can’t wait!
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