A lovely weekend and our first review

This weekend was one of those weekends where, as a musician you really appreciate why it is you do what you do.

On Saturday night we had our pretty much annual James Street Vaults gig. It's always one of my favourite places to play being our local and there's always a friendly face or two or three or four in there.

We did a lovely full set with all our favourites in there. It was a good turn out and as an originals band it's always difficult to get new faces in the door but there were quite a few and we seemed to go down well which always makes it worthwhile :)

It was also our first gig with new band member Elani Andrea on backing vocals and acoustic guitar. She did brilliantly, danced up a storm with Trina, and also did a fantastic support set before our gig and it's a pleasure to have her in the band.

After Saturday night we were up bright and early for another gig. Geoff Heap is a great local promoter of Live Music and is always putting on events around Plymouth to showcase original music. Sunday was day 3 of his Level Up festival at the roundabout and we were first up on the bill.

Despite being on at 2.00 on a wet and windy Sunday it was a good turn up and our set went down well. We were also lucky to have the Evening Herald's live music reporter Ellie Hudson-Hopton there to review us.

You can read her review here :)

Lena Smith Band review

We're very pleased with it and I'm very proud to have a band full of such lovely and talented musicians to play with. I feel very lucky :)

We finished off the weekend hiding away from the storm with a big lovely roast and a front room jam  <3

I am the worst blogger in the world.

So it would appear that I am terrible at writing blogs. I can barely keep up with myself and so the whole idea of trying to relay all the things I've got going on in writing for you fine people to read is quite frankly ludicrous.

There has (almost) literally been a million and one things going on however and basically it's all very exciting and has been keeping me busy and so I feel I should write it all down or as much of it as I can more of a record for myself if anything.

Big news number 1; The Lena Smith Band debut EP (which was going to be an album but is now going to be two EP's) is completely finished, recording wise and we're now at the stage of mixing, mastering to follow, the artwork is on the go which is being done by the super talented Holly Partridge. You can check out her music and artwork here. https://www.facebook.com/HollyPartridgeMusic

Then it's just a matter of getting out to people's lovely ears. There are loads of beautiful friends and family members who are all fantastic musicians that have been involved in this EP who I am very grateful for.

Something I have been aware of lately is just how lucky I am to be surrounded by such awesome people and such awesome musicians. On a serious note I have in the past not been in a place in my life where I have been able to throw myself into music and I do really value where I am now. There are so many people I am blessed to play music with and give me so much encouragement that I really am incredibly grateful and I don't think I could be fulfilling my dreams one day at a time if it weren't for all these people :) <3

Okay so that's enough of the soppy stuff ;)

I'm trying to put together in my head all the things that have been going on recently, I guess a lot of it has been EP related but we've also had some excellent gigs with the band over the last couple of months, and I'm insanely happy about how those have gone and excited for future gigs.

I was honoured to be asked by one of my old school friends who is an incredibly talented designer to play at a fashion show he was hosting of his own work alongside some other amazing musicians and performers. I was given the song 'Blackman' by Hazel O'Connor to perform which I enjoyed immensely. I roped in the lovely Dan from Freshley Squeezed and Badcore Horns to play with me and an amazing night was had by all. You can watch th full show here. http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwAxXnDTQw4w%26feature%3Dshare&h=9AQEk55FT&s=1

Last week I did a 'live in session' from Beliefspace Studio in justjamit.com. I can't remember if I've talked about this is in my blog before but it's basically a live gig from the studio that can be watched online. Last week's one was (in typical me fashion) quite complicated but despite logistical stresses of it we had a fantastic time. As opposed to the first one I did which was just Lena Smith solo, this one was Lena Smith and guests. I am very lucky to come from a musical family and my dad who also plays the piano came and did a guest spot, he played the piano while I sang a few songs. We also had the fantastically talented Elani Andrea play a few songs with me, Elani has just joined the band singing backing with us and we are collaborating on other side projects together. We also did a sort of acoustic version of a few of our band songs. Stu and Marcin were on guitars, I was on piano and Nathan was on Cajon and tambourines instead of a full kit. We also had studio guests in with us and despite a few technical hitches at the beginning it went very smoothly even though we were all boiling hot and very sweaty ;)

Mini post

Just a little short one  :)

We had a really productive meeting with the lovely and very very talented Badcore horns yesterday. They listened through to the songs and my ideas and came up with some brilliant ideas as well for songs that I hadn't come up with ideas for so all in all I am very excited now about getting the horn parts all recorded. I realise I said the word ideas waaaaaay too many times in that sentence :)

Today I wrote a zombie song! Can't wait to record it, very pleased :)

The year begins

So, January and February are pretty much non-months as far as I'm concerned. They sort of fly by in a cold and dark way and not much happens during them. So March for me is what I consider to be the proper start of the year.

The Lena Smith Band kicked off the year with a gig at the roundabout pub. It was a for a brilliant cause; the 5 mountains for 5 years festival event which was raising money for men's cancer charity Orchid.  We had a great time and hung around for a bit after our set and got to see a brilliant new band called Horse around Home, I thoroughly recommend checking them out because they were absolutely brilliant.

I say that we haven't really been getting up to much during January and February but we have actually been working away on the guitar recording for the album at  Beliefspace Studio.  It's very nearly finished and sounding excellent.

Next on the list is recording the Brass and String sections on some of the songs. I have been writing away which has been brilliant, I don't have as much time as I'd like usually to sit down with pencil and manuscript paper and write music in that way. I absolutely love doing it as well so I have really enjoyed writing all the parts for the brass and strings. Next week the Badcore horns are coming in for a meeting about it all. Very exciting!

I did actually have one solo gig booked for the beginning of February but a small person sneezed all over me at work and so I was out of action for a week with the Flu and had to cancel (sad times) but luckily the B-Bar were most excellent about it and I have another one booked there for the 4th of April which I am very excited about (Happy times).

One of the reasons I am very excited about this is that I have been working hard on learning all my own lyrics. I appreciate that this sounds a bit stupid, you'd think that when you write songs you'd know your own lyrics but not me, I've always got a bit muddled with my words so I've spent some time really learning them and I've also been learning a few little cover songs to stick into my solo sets which I find very exciting. Exciting and a little scary but mostly exciting :)

Last week I wrote a new song which I hadn't done for a few months, what with all the recording, my songwriting has taken a bit of a back seat. It's always lovely when a new one comes out and I'm very happy with this one. It's called 'On my mind' and you can hear a live zoom recording of it here .

At the weekend, Welshy and I took a little visit to London to go to the 'Inside Abbey Road Lecture' We saw lots and lots of amazing things, and it was so exciting to be in a place where so much amazing music has been created and where so many talented and inspirational musicians have been.

(Some random old men crossing the Abbey Road crossing)

Next up band wise is Volksfest which I can't wait for, we're on on Sunday 26th Time TBC and we'll hopefully be doing some of our more recent songs.

So lots and lots to be excited about :) Yay!!!

Thank you for reading

Lena xxxxxx