An article in the North Devon Journal, about ukulele workshops for Mother's Day.
I saw this picture yesterday, I got me thinking. The person who made this joke, needs to read my blogs. I've made money from playing guitar for some 30 years now, for 15 years, it has been my main income. The problem for most people that can't make money at it, is not lack of musical skills, but lack of management skills. Look around you at other musicians in your area, which musicians make money, which ones don't? It may sound obvious, but I looked at this, worked out what the money making musicians did that the others didn't do and copied the good habits. Here are a couple of things not to do. 1. Play for free. Anyone can play for free. You can fill your diary with endless open mics, charity events and such like. I limit my charity events to just one or two a year. http://paulclews888.weebly.com/1/post/2013/03/open-mic-nights-why-you-should-not-play-them.html Make sure you are playing for the minimum Musicians Union rates for the job. This minimum rate, is the minimum for a reason, it's the minimum you are worth. 2 Not treat yourself as a business. Have a business plan. Know what you want and how you are going to achieve it. Also, be flexible. This is just so important. it could be a whole book in itself, not just a little part of a blog post. http://paulclews888.weebly.com/1/post/2013/12/managing-band-finances.html It's 20th February 2014, Ilfracombe, North Devon, 1:20 pm. A 4.1 magnitude earth quake shakes North Devon. I felt myself thrown forward, and Purdy, my cat, lept from my lap. She has been asleep. I was a little puzzled to what had happened. Seconds later the Twitter and Facebook world confirmed the tremor. Many in North Devon tweeted, I tweeted this.https://twitter.com/paulkclews/status/436493248341999616 I later tweeted this picture. This lead to the great British press requesting use of my picture. Here are a couple of the requests. I said yes to them all. These articles were the result. None of them asked me how the lamp got broken. They all seemed to assume the earth quake broke the lamp. Well here is the full story about the broken lamp. Well at the beginning of this blog post I explained how I had been thrown forward and Purdy jumped. We were both frightened, Purdy far more than me. She jumped so high, she landed on the lamp an broke it. So there you go, did the earth quake damage the lamp? Well, yes and no. Another par can has arrived. It will be used has a new addition to The Backtrackers stage lighting. It is also available to hire on it's own, or with other lighting effects. The Backtrackers PA and Stage lighting hire. Also great for parties. I have ordered a new laser to add to the light show. It will be available to hire as a package or separately. Contact me for more information about your event. See what it can do Win a free half hour guitar or ukulele lesson by Skype, FaceTime or google hangouts. During #DevonHour on twitter, this week only (21/82013), 10 questions about me will appear under the hash tag #SoYouThinkYouKnowMe. Simply tweet the answers back to me. All the answers are in my twitter time line and blogs. The winner will be announced shortly after Saturday 6 pm (24/8/2013) when the competition closes, here and on Twitter. In the event of a tie, I will draw a winner from the most correct answers. Anyone is eligible to play, except me. Good luck! You must be able to get your hands on a guitar or ukulele. No cash alternatives. My decision is final. There are some fantastic beers to enjoy in North Devon, but strangely for one of the more far flung points in Devon, a lot of the more popular beers available have a Cornish connection. The standard bearer is probably Doombar, a real favourite and easy drinking malty biscuit beer, “Doom” as it’s known was the real forerunner of Cornish ales in the area. This was soon followed by St Austell Brewery Tribute, partly helped in distribution terms with their depot in Ilfracombe. Tribute is a more delicately hopped beer with citrus overtones. Both Doom and Tribute are really excellent commercial beers in that their flavours are tasty but not challenging and therefore have wide appeal. However the Cornish beers don’t get it all their own way……. Another brewery whose beers you will see in North Devon is Exmoor. This brewery started life in 1980 and is based in Somerset on the edge of Exmoor. They were one of the original microbrewers and have had great success with their beers. Exmoor Gold was perhaps the original Golden Ale and along with Hopback Summer Lightning, these two beers ignighted the golden ale category. In fact it was particularly pleasing to report at the recent Plymouth Beer Festival, Exmoor Gold won the Golden beers judging panel for the 2014 Great British Beer Festival and will now go forward for judging at this prestigious event. Having talked about beers from out of county making inroads in Devon, it’s great to see the growth of small home grown craft brewers within the county. If you think back over a hundred years then every town and even village would have its own brewery. Things then changed as transport improved and the larger breweries took over the smaller ones. However partly driven by the lower duty small brewers pay on the beer they brew, the smaller brewers are very much on the up. I’ve not personally tried many of the beers brewed, but by reputation then the likes of Clearwater, Country Life, Forge, Holsworthy and Wizard breweries are well worth trying. Many pubs now operate their own beer festivals so if you go to one of these look out for the local brewers. For sure the likes of Doombar and Tribute are great beers but then the small brewers do some interesting and distinctive beers as well, plus of course try to support local businesses. This guest blog was written my Marc Bishop from www.craftbottlebeers.co.uk @Beermarketeer on Twitter
I have a workshop booked at Clavelshay Barn, North Petherton, Taunton, Somerset,
TA6 6PJ on the 22 July at 7 pm.. It is open to the public. For booking and more information http://www.clavelshaybarn.co.uk/workshops/ukulele-workshop/ I have been meaning to write this blog for a long time. A couple of years in fact. I keep putting it off because I know it's a little controversial and I want to get it right. In other words, I've done my research. Many of you may disagree (I have had many debates on Twitter and Facebook about it). It makes my blood boil. Now just to be clear, when I say 'why you should not play them', I also mean, you should not watch them, or eat or drink in the venues that promote them. The pub landlords that promote such events will tell you, they put them on 'to give new talent an opportunity to play in front of an audience', as if they are doing the 'new talent' a favour. Well let me tell you, this is a big fat lie, they put them on for profit. Now profit is not a rude word, but everyone contributing deserves a slice of it. They are using the musicians skills and talent to line their own pockets, and not share any of it with the musician. Okay, they often give you a 'free pint'. Let me tell you about that 'free pint', it's not free, you worked for it. I wonder if the landlord pays his plumber and staff in pints. Pints do not pay your mortgage, kids shoes, or even a packet of guitar strings. They should also be declared to the VAT man by the landlords because, as an accountant informs me, they are in effect making a taxable supply to the musician in exchange for services, so the VAT on the full value of the pint should be paid over. I hope you landlords are declaring them. Equally, musicians should be declaring them to the tax man. You are accepting beer as income. I suspect the whole thing is a hot bed of petty tax evasion. I suggest musicians should try going down to Soundpad in Barnstaple and offer them a couple of flat pints of beer for a packet of Ernie Balls. I can ensure you they will laugh you out the building. Musicians are consequently 'paying to play' as the old musicians slogan used to say. Another trick that the landlords and agents use to pull you in is, 'come play the open mic night, and we'll see how good you are. If you are good enough I will book you'. This is another lie. They rarely give gigs this way, although they will deny this. I know many venues that book a whole year or seasons entertainment on this basis, abusing the good will of hopeful entertainers. Entertainers need to stand together, say no to this rip off, and put an end to this awful practice, that is in all but name slavery. People have argued 'but they're fun'. I don't think putting musicians out of work and treating them as slaves is fun. I take no pleasure in it. Where are your principles? It's a nobel art.On occasions, I've had other musicians tell me, 'I only play for fun, I work in the week, I don't need the money'. Again, I don't see how putting other musicians out of work is fun. How would you like it if I go to your boss and say to him I'll do your job for free, because I work as a musician, therefore I don't need the money? There is a minimum wage law, some how musicians fall through the net. Has this musician got public liability insurance? I have never met one that has. Therefore any accident, such as taking someone's eye out with a guitar neck, or burning the pub down with your untested (PAT) electrical equipment, is not usually covered by the landlords insurance policy. You're taking a hell of a risk. When it comes to these practices, I want venue owners to give up, and pay up! I'm off for a walk to calm down. Thanks to
Rob Tickell of Large Chartered Accountants http://www.lca-avn.co.uk/ The lads from Coversure Ilfracombe http://www.coversure.co.uk/da/ilfracombe/ If you turn the clock back to the early part of this Millenuim, the likelihood of the ukulele becoming popular again, seemed about as likely as Gary Glitter making a successful come back tour. Associated wholly with George Formby, it was considered a joke instrument, slightly better than a kazoo, but not as good as the triangle.
Today every town seems to have ukulele club. The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain have become one of the world's biggest attractions. Not mention The Nukes, The Pukes, and the fantastic Gus & Finn. Then there are also ukulele festivals all over the UK. So what happened? Around 2008, I was a school governor in two schools, Ilfracombe Junior School, and Ilfracombe infant School. I was also teaching guitar in a number of North Devon schools. I noticed about this time, all the schools were receiving around 30 brand new shiny ukuleles, shipped in from China. I asked a few head teachers, classroom teachers and teaching assistants about them. No one seemed to know an awful lot about these mysterious deliveries, but the consensus seemed to be 'they're cheap', and 'they're going to replace the recorder as the school instrument'. My final question was 'who in the school played the ukulele'? The answer was 'no one'. I smelt an opportunity. Not long after this, I suppose remembering my inquisitive questions about the ukes, Maggie Foster, a fantastic music teacher from Ilfracombe, steered me towards a course run by Devon Music Services called 'Teaching Ukulele for Guitar Players'. Not wishing to miss the opportunity, I signed up. While on this one day course in Exeter, I learned a lot more about why these ukuleles had appeared in the schools. First of all, the uke is fairly easy to learn. The advantage the uke has over the recorder is that you can not only play single notes, but also chords. So there you have it. The plan from those lesson planners from up in government, was to shake up school music education. Every child will get an opportunity to learn a musical instrument. And it is going to be the ukulele! I went on the course purely to get me on schools radar, to bring in more school work. Before the course, I'd purchased a £20 uke to get a feel for it. One month later I upgraded my ukulele to a Kala Arch Top jazz uke. I love the uke. I played none stop. My kids played it, my girlfriend played it. We all got hooked. The work came in, I never looked back. My guitar used to always come camping with me, now it's my uke. I'd been playing the guitar for over 30 years without much recognition. Just over a year of first picking up the ukulele, John Govier invited my to play live on his Saturday morning BBC Radio Devon show. That was an amazing experience! In September 2011 I started Ilfracombe Ukulele Club. The club meets every Tuesday 7pm at Larkstone Cafe. Long live the mighty uke. Ukulele workshops. Available in every UK town, village and city. http://paulclews888.weebly.com/ukulele-workshop.html Ilfracombe Ukulele Club http://paulclews888.weebly.com/ilfracombe-ukulele-club.html Me with my Kala Arch Top http://twitpic.com/dpwm2 |
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