The Musgraves

BBC Radio 2 – 2Day

themusgraves — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:26:22 +0000

Check out our recent performances on BBC Radio 2′s 2Day!

Spring/Summer Tour Dates 2012!

themusgraves — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:43:53 +0000

We are pleased to announce our Spring/Summer Tour Dates for 2012.

Get your tickets now!

Venue: 229 The Venue
City/Town: London
Date: 25th May 2012
Address: 229 Great Portland Street | London | W1W 5PN
Advance ticket price: £7
Ticket link: http://www.seetickets.com/Event/THE-MUSGRAVES/229-The-Venue/627567

Venue: Inside Out
City/Town: Darlington
Date: 1st June 2012
Address: Beaumont Street Darlington DL1 5SX.
Advance ticket price: FREE SHOW

Venue: Fibbers
City/Town: York
Date: 6th June 2012
Address: 8-10 Stonebow House York YO1 7NP
Advance ticket price: £6
Ticket link: http://www.fibbers.co.uk/bands/717/

Venue: The Boileroom
City/Town: Guildford
Date: 7th June 2012
Address: 13 Stokefields, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 4LS, UK
Advance ticket price: £5.50
Ticket link: http://theboileroom.net/listings/info/the_musgraves

Venue: The Ballroom
City/Town: Birmingham
Date: 8th June 2012
Address: 52-54 Dale End Birmingham B4 7LS.
Advance ticket price: £7.75
Ticket link: : http://goo.gl/rorKk

Venue: Sugarmill
City/Town: Stoke
Date: 9th June 2012
Address: Brunswick Street Hanley Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire ST1 1DR
Advance ticket price: £7.50
Ticket link:http://www.thesugarmill.co.uk/tickets.htm

Venue: Summer Breeze Festival
City/Town: Swindon
Date: 14th July 2012
Address: Warren Farm, Liddington, Nr Swindon, Wilts, SN4 0EB
Advance ticket price: £35
Ticket link: http://www.summerbreezefest.co.uk/tickets.html

Venue: Smartfest
City/Town: Stroubridge
Date: 11th August 2012
Address: Stanley Road, Stourbridge, DY8 2DL.
Advance ticket price: FREE
Ticket link: http://smartfest.org.uk/saturday/in-the-park/

The Musgraves to perform on BBC Radio 2!

themusgraves — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:09:59 +0000

Following our performance on The Graham Norton Show back in February, the legend himself has invited us into Radio 2 to play an acoustic session and catch up about what has been happening since the show! This is a HUGE honour for us.

On 10th May Radio 2 are holding their annual ‘2DAY’ event http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/events/2day/

The station will celebrate its distinctive programming and eclectic range of presenters by turning its schedule upside down for 12 hours, and hosting a bonanza of the best of what the UK’s biggest radio station has to offer.

Graham will be kicking off proceedings between 7am and 8am with us, The Musgraves, and we can’t blooming wait!!!!! You guys heard it here first!

Don’t forget about our shows this month in London and Manchester, check out our live section for more details.

Birthday cake to the rescue!

themusgraves — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:56:21 +0000

It had been a while since we had done a show in the capital so we were looking forward to jumping in the van to travel down south to play AAA @The Archangel in London.

We weren’t disappointed!

We have done some great gigs in London and this was no exception, although we did have a shaky start before we had even stepped inside the venue.
Usually the smaller venues in London don’t have any where to load in so it’s the norm to put the hazards on outside the gig, throw the gear in then send the driver and van on its way to hunt for a parking space for the next few hours. Unfortunately as soon as we pulled up on the double yellows a traffic warden greeted us with a big welcoming smile. “Sorry mate, no loading.” Great.

After some initial pleading and some raised voices we were getting nowhere. However, as it was Tom’s Birthday the following day we had some cake in the van so Lesley-Marie managed to convince him to turn a blind eye for 15 mins in exchange for a hefty piece of birthday cake. One slightly fatter warden went on his way and we had the gear in the venue. Result!

The gig itself was awesome and we had a great crowd turn up to see us in the funky little venue. Included in that crowd were a bunch of enthusiastic Swedish fans who were not shy about sharing their love for the band and especially Lesley-Marie! Matthew had some great banter with them and bizarrely joined them in a chorus of ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’?! Only in London.

A big thank you to other bands, The Dirty Goods, Dee Dee Loves Me and Young Men Dead, who helped to make it a great gig. Also many thanks to the venue for giving us a discount on their tasty burgers and veggie platters.

Also a big big thank you to Andrew Hiles for his fantastic photos from the night, check out his website also, http://andrewhiles.com/

Please check out the gallery for more of these great photos

The Musgraves X

Hull, Fruitspace and BBC Humberside

themusgraves — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:14:04 +0000

So the time had come for The Musgraves to return to my roots in Yorkshire, for our final March gig in Hull @ Fruitspace. I was really excited about going back home to perform, and was determined to prove to the male Musgraves that Hull rocks!

We left at midday, loading Tom’s new drum kit in to the van. It was his actual Birthday on the 16^th so we celebrated with some vanilla cake, yum!

The traffic was pretty bad going over the fly-over into Hull (the boys’ didn’t understand why so many people were trying to drive in to Hull on a Friday evening…. it must have been all the crazy fans heading to our gig!). We finally made it through the traffic, arriving at the BBC Humberside studios for a live session and interview with James Hoggarth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001tbfl

We performed two songs acoustically (vocals, guitar, violin, percussion and glockenspiel) – ‘Last of Me’ and ‘Discover Me’ – showcasing our pop and folk influences! 

James was lovely – we had loads of banter about ‘Beverley’ (an area in Hull) being posh. He even took photos of us holding a sign with the name of his friend, Robert Makepeace, who is, apparently, a huge fan of ours and was very jealous that James got to meet us.

It was just Matthew and I doing the interview after we had performed the acoustic session, so that Tom and Matt could head to the venue to start setting up for soundcheck.

The interview and session will be broadcast on BBC Radio Humberside on Wednesday (21^st March) between 19:00 and 21:00. We hope you like our acoustic arrangements, and do listen out for Matthew Bennett publicly making fun of my northern accent haha.

Soundcheck was amazing (as amazing as soundchecks can be)… the engineer had an iPad app for the rig, so was stood with us on stage walking around changing the monitor levels at the touch of a button, rather than running backwards and forwards from the desk at the back of the room and asking us loads of questions – it was the sign of a good professional gig…..

We got to choose our first support act, the very local ‘Creek Cats’… Good friends of mine…

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Creek-Cats/178273462287951

They kicked ass with their country tunes and awesome stage presence, finishing with all 3 members sitting, standing and jumping on Andy’s (one of the Creek Cats) double bass. Don’t worry, the bass was reinforced with wooden blocks and metal sheets!

We went onstage around 10pm, opening with ‘Comfortable Shoes’ (our next single due in May!). We did a similar set to the one at The Ballroom, and threw in a cover of Aloe Blacc’s ‘I Need A Dollar’ too, as our YouTube cover has been quite popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D74UUZeJtVk

We had such a great response, with budding bloggers and photographers interviewing us before and after. We did an impromptu acoustic performance of ‘Last of Me’ for Fruit’s official YouTube channel. Check out the video to see if you can spot yourself dancing in the crowd! Thanks to Josh Moore for filming and editing…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E40AJumVYKA

We had a wicked rider backstage and my parents bought us a giant chocolate birthday cake for the journey home to celebrate our piano player Matt’s birthday – we will definitely be going to the gym this week!

After the show, we sold out of our Musgrave mugs too! What a HIT! We even had a bit of a bust-up when fans were competing to buy the last mug – haha! Not really, but the woman who did get the last mug, Kate Johnson, posted a great photo online with the caption – “I got the last, I got the last, I got the last, last, Musgraves mug!” Ha – genius songwriting skills!

Here’s another fan, Trudie, really utilising her mug well!

To ensure you get yours, if you don’t already have one, you’ll have to get down to our next couple of shows – Manchester Roadhouse on April 26^th and Birmingham’s The Ballroom on April 27^th. Check out the event link below and PLEASE PLEASE hit Share!

http://www.facebook.com/events/200580970046048/

I had such a lovely time going back to Hull. Thank you to all of our fans, but also my old school friends and my family and their friends who all showed up to the gig! Seeing and hearing you singing back our songs was such a boost and your support means everything to us.

We hope to be back in the North East very very soon – it really is “never dull in Hull” – we will definitely be back!

Check out some more photos in the gallery section….

Much love,
Lesley-Marie and The Musgraves xx

It’s a Sell Out!

themusgraves — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:47:02 +0000

The Musgraves live at The Ballroom, Birmingham

The day of our hometown gig began with sunshine! It was a beautiful day, and although we knew the show had sold out a few days before (first time ever!), we didn’t really know what to expect on the night….

We knew of old fans coming, but we were also excited to meet the new fans – most of them attending as a result of our Graham Norton exposure (thanks Graham!). The sound check went well, and we then had a few hours to kill before our stage time so headed to the local for some food.

All the support acts were great – Of Kings And Captains, The Rookers Five, and The Offbeat (4 youngsters on fiddles, uke’s and percussion, with lots of vocals, a cool cover and handclaps here and there) who we especially liked and were well suited to playing the same bill as us.

With a well-rehearsed set we took to the stage and received an amazing welcome. With 4 additions to the set, new songs ‘Good Enough’ and ‘The Way You Make Me Want You’ were really well received – as were old songs ‘Seventeen Days’ and ‘Don’t Stray’.

We saved our current single ‘Last Of Me’ until the end (of course ) and the crowd didn’t let us down, it was great to hear everyone singing along. It was a real buzz feeling all the love! The atmosphere was incredible and we can only thank our wonderful fans for that. It seemed that the old, the young, the hip, and the sweet, all enjoyed the show – and the comments on Facebook and Twitter (which keep coming) have been great!

The lovely people at The Ballroom provided us with champagne at the end of our set to celebrate the sell out show (thanks for that!).

It was Tom’s (drummer) birthday party on Saturday too, so we headed to Stirlings Bar at St Pauls Square for an after party – Mmmm Jager bombs!! Apparently some places have stopped doing Jager bombs now, and instead are doing Port bombs – can’t wait to try one of those!

It was old-school RnB all the way – perfect for Tom! – plus a bit of Whitney (RIP), some Jackson 5 and even the Mary Mary classic ‘Shackles – Praise You’, what a tune!

We are booked for a return headline show at The Ballroom, Birmingham on 27^th April. Tickets are selling fast so get yours now! https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk/buy_tickets/events/?id=10020451

Other dates:
London, AAA@Archangel – Kensington on 15^th March
Hull, FRUITSPACE on 16^th March
Manchester, The Roadhouse on 26^th April
Liddington – near Swindon, Summer Breeze Festival on 14^th July
Stourbridge, Smartfest on 11th August

New gear and sold out shows…

themusgraves — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:48:40 +0000

After a series of lengthy phone calls with insurance companies and music shops all of us, except Tom our drummer, have new instruments. If you don’t already know, a van containing all our equipment was stolen at the beginning of February

Matthew has an amazing Martin guitar which sounds crisp, Lesley-Marie has a beautiful violin, and Matt has a new electric piano and keyboard which both have far too many buttons and flashing lights. Tom is still in the process of looking for a drum kit but no luck as yet. Everyone keep your eyes peeled for a bargain!

All our gear has come in the nick of time as we have three shows coming up in March and rehearsals have been full on. We have run in some new songs for our old fans and some old songs for our new fans! The set is rockin’ and we sound even better than before!
On Saturday 10th March we play The Birmingham Ballroom, which is set to be an awesome show. It’s completely sold out so it will hopefully be a great vibe in there. We will also celebrating Tom’s birthday.

Other shows coming up in March are – AAA@Archangle in London on 15th March, and Fruitspace in Hull on the 16th March. Hull is also selling fast and it will be great to play Lesley-Marie’s hometown. She has her own little fan club up there so she will no doubt be mobbed as soon as she gets across the Hull border.

In between rehearsals we sent out our first ‘Newsletter’ with an exclusive video link. A newsletter will be going out each month exclusively to those signed up to our mailing list. The newsletters will contain news, views, photos, band info, and exclusive video content. In order to catch exclusive ‘Film Friday’ video covers – a week before they go live online – sign up on the right hand side. Don’t miss out!

It’s been a productive few weeks and we are looking forward to getting back on the road and doing what we do best. Hope to see you at one of our shows!
On a final note, our ‘Last Of Me’ video has now reached over 16K views so thanks to everyone who has had a look. Let’s make it to 20K! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnU4aPlaYE

Much love,
The Musgraves x

For more info on our March shows sign in to Facebook and enter this link (if you’re signed in right now just click):
https://www.facebook.com/TheMusgravesUK?sk=events

BBC Radio Ulster Single of the Week

themusgraves — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:58:30 +0000

Following our recent success achieving B List on BBC Radio 2 (yeay!) we are also being championed, over in Northern Ireland, by Alan Simpson on BBC Radio Ulster!

This is great news – and then it gets better when he requests that we do an interview with him! This aired on his afternoon show on Wednesday 15th Feb. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007cpty

To make things easy a live stream was set up locally (for us) from the BBC Studio in Birmingham’s Mailbox.

We arrived on Valentine’s Day afternoon, dressed in new clothes! It was just me (Lesley-Marie) and Matthew as all four of us wouldn’t fit in the studio.

Following a short wait at reception we were taken upstairs to the smallest tiniest box room we have ever seen. Myself and Matthew are both pretty tall, so we quickly understood why only the two of us were asked to go along.

With a microphone, two sets of headphones and some wires to accompany us, we were left alone. We waited with anticipation for BBC Ulster to dial in at 13:30. It got to 13:35 and still nothing…………. Then, the phone rings…

I answered, “Hello, the Musgraves speaking how can I help?”

It was the producer of the Alan Simpson show, who was surprised to be speaking direct to the band! Something had gone wrong and the studio live link wasn’t working. We desperately called various numbers listed on the phone as “technical help”, trying to get on air!

After 5 or 10 minutes we looked at each other as it dawned on us that there were no lights on. Surely a live link to a studio across the Irish Sea wouldn’t work without lights on any of the equipment?! In fact, none of the equipment was even switched on.

A ‘technical’ man lurking around the door said – “Hello, can I help?”
“We don’t think it’s turned on…………..”
“Oh yeah, you’re right!”, says the man. He flicks a switch right near the door and BOOM. Lights, camera (although it’s the radio), action.

“Ring ring!” It’s Alan Simpson! FINALLY!!!

We had a great giggle with the Alan, who was so welcoming and really friendly! We discussed our music, our influences, Cara Dillon, The Graham Norton Show and the stolen Glockenspiel. Overall the interview went really well.

Thank you BBC Radio Ulster and Alan Simpson for all the support, we hope to meet you in person sometime soon.

The show link won’t last for long so check it out now!

Much love, Lesley-Marie xx

The Musgraves – Radio 2 Playlist!

themusgraves — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:20:44 +0000

At the moment each new day throws up another life goal achieved. We got the news last week that our new single ‘Last of Me’ would be on Radio 2′s playlist from today. So many people have been involved in us reaching this stage and we thank you all.

Let us give you some names that the little ol’ Musgraves are sharing this list with: Paul McCartney, Nerina Pallot and Lady Antebellum. Pretty good company for our first release!

Paul McCartney especially is an amazing honour to be next to. He is, along with Bob Dylan, the only person Matthew would be nervous in meeting – being a songwriter Matthew knows how hard it is to achieve what Sir Paul has.

So tune that dial to Radio 2. Wind down your windows to let the beat of ‘Last Of Me’ ring around the UK. (Warning, don’t do this if it’s raining, snowing or freezing cold!)

The Musgraves x

The A&B venue – Birmingham, Friday 3 February 2012

themusgraves — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:02:06 +0000

The Musgraves @ The Actress and Bishop

We woke up on the morning of our show to find out we were heading down to the venue early for a BBC Midlands Today news piece about the theft of our equipment (and the van), and our appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

The Musgraves on BBC Midlands

We scrambled together old and borrowed/hired instruments! Arthur Tapp, the promoter, showed up with a bass, an amp, a synth and guitar tuners – he was great.

The show kicked off at about 9pm with great support acts (The Picture / Jezabellezza / Jack Davis)
who loaned us their drum kit amongst other things, and Jack lending Matt his guitar.

At 10:35pm there was a mass exodus from the bar area – we all wondered what was happening, and then realised that the venue was screening The Graham Norton Show on the TV in the downstairs bar!

We felt overwhelmed with the support we got from old and new fans and the excitement kicked in.
After our performance of our debut single ‘Last of Me’ had finished on the show, a huge round of applause and lots
of “cheering” erupted – it was amazing and we thank everyone for their support. We then headed upstairs to perform.

The gig was fantastic, even though it was strange not being on our own instruments. There was a big crowd with lots of new faces as well as our loyal fans!

It was a great way to end a manic week!

No sign of the van or our beloved instruments yet, but with “Last of Me” climbing up the iTunes and Amazon charts – we are feeling positive.

Check out the photos from our A&B show courtesy of Dave Suth (legend).

Much love,

The MUSGRAVES xx