Singfield

Singfield coming to Horsham

2011-06-15T22:21:00.002+01:00

After many months of trying, it looks like we might finally be playing some gigs in our home-town of Horsham, West Sussex. Hurrah!

First up, Ben and Sarah are playing two acoustic gigs:
- The Anchor Hotel (used to be Bar Vin) on Sunday 3rd July
- The Tanners Arms on Thursday 21st July

We're hoping to bring the full band to The Tanners Arms in August. It's a great place so get down there when you can! We're also excited about the Horsham Music Festival which is taking place on Sunday 4th September. We're waiting to hear if there is room for us on that day.

Finally, we'll also be returing to our second home of Fareham in Hampshire on Friday 26th August. We'll be back at The Brass Monkey with some special guests...

The Hold On EP

2011-03-12T19:08:00.002Z

We're very pleased to announce the release of three new songs on "The Hold On EP". You can listen to them and download them for free here:

Singfield ReverbNation website

Just in case you're interested, here are the credits for the EP:

Sarah Dover-McCarthy - vocals
Nick White - lead guitar
Ben Singfield - guitar
Dominic Dover-McCarthy - bass
Nick Richardson - drums

and special thanks to Win Stanley - tambourine on "Hold On To Each Other"

"Stagger Man Blues" and "Hold On To Each Other" were written by Ben Singfield.
"Waiting To Fall" was written by Ben Singfield, Joe Singfield, Dominic Dover-McCarthy and Nick Richardson

The EP was recorded at Soundlocker Studios by Win Stanley of Black Wookie Recordings with help from Martin. It was mixed by Win Stanley with a little bit of help from Ben Singfield.

The videos soon to be released into the world were recorded, directed, edited and produced by Dominic "Boy-Project" Dover-McCarthy.

Back to The Brass Monkey

2011-01-12T19:29:00.002Z

Happy New Year friends and fans of Singfield!

Our gig at The Brass Monkey back in October was great fun and well supported by Ben's work friends (they even brought signs to wave). In fact we enjoyed it so much we're going back. We're playing there next week - on Friday 21st January. We'll be on at about 9pm playing for 45 minutes. Also appearing that night are rock covers band Mojo Dollar. It should be great, and as it's free entry it's a perfect night out even if your bank account has that Janaury "not-much-money" feel to it.

In other news we are also booked to go into the studio in February to record a few tracks. It'll be our first "proper" recording since 2007, and our first with Sarah and Dr. Nick. We'll let you know the details once we have them - at the moment we're busy rehearsing and choosing which songs to record!

Hope to see you next week!

Brass Monkey - 15th October 2010

2010-09-23T17:04:00.002+01:00

Singfield are pleased to announce they'll be playing at The Brass Monkey in West Street, Fareham on Friday 15th October. It's a showcase night for local bands, so we'll be playing a 30 minute set at about 10pm. Please come down and support us if you can - it's free entry!

Singfield at The Brass Monkey

The Big Gig 2010

2010-09-23T16:57:00.002+01:00

We're not playing The Big Gig 2010 as the organisers like to refresh the line-up each year. However, if you're still interested in going then visit www.natsnoise.co.uk.

A review of a year

2010-09-23T16:37:00.003+01:00

So what have we actually been up to in the year since we updated the website?

Well, first up we played The Big Gig 2009. This was our biggest show to date - over 300 people at Ferneham Hall in Fareham. We really enjoyed it and felt it was a very successful evening. There's some video of us here:

Singfield at The Big Gig 2009

Ben spent the first part of 2010 writing some new songs (as well as going to work, looking after his daughter, drinking too much with Dom & Sarah, etc, etc). These included "Stagger Man Blues", "Stand Up And Say", "Kick Back" and "The Best Way To Spend Our Time". We're pleased to say that the band mastered these pretty quickly, although they didn't do a very good job of learning the names.

Then in June we played the first ever Domfest. Unfortunately Nick The Drummer couldn't make it as he was having a baby (well, his wife was), so instead we did an acoustic set with a guest spot from Ben's brother and ex-Singfield member Bongo Joe. The only other problem was that Ben had food-poisoning, so wasn't doing a great job of standing up, moving around, eating, etc. Still, it was good fun! Have a look:

Singfield at Domfest

Then in August we returned to The Armstrong Gun for the first time in three years. We played a full set and even played our new songs. Even though the band still haven't learnt the titles yet...

Blimey?!

2010-09-07T21:53:00.002+01:00

Has it really been a year since this site was up?!

I'll update it - I *will* - to include our new sexy lead guitarist! He loves it!

Update coming soon!

Next gig - Fareham

2009-09-30T19:08:00.000+01:00

Hello!

Singfield are proud to announce that they will be playing at ‘The Big Gig 2009’ at Ferneham Hall in Fareham on the evening of Wednesday 21st October. This is a charity event with all proceeds going to the Hampshire Autistic Society. We’ll be sharing the bill with:

- Baadness - a ska/pop/Madness covers band
- The Lokomokos - a rock covers band (they are already promising to play some Lynard Skynard and some Eric Clapton). Info at www.myspace.com/lokomokos
- Rusted Warrior - providing all your hard rock needs, these guys will be covering the likes of Iron Maiden and Metallica. More at www.rustedwarrior.com

Also, this will be our first gig with our new lead guitarist, Dr. Nick White! Hurray! So we would be really grateful if you could come along and support us. The evening is modelled on “Later… with Jools Holland” so each band will be playing a couple of short sets, with a few guest spots and some (exciting) on-stage interviews!

Tickets are £12.50 for adults and £5 for under-18s. This is essentially being run as a private gig, so tickets need to be bought directly from the band (they are not available from Ferneham Hall direct).

If you would like to come along the please e-mail us at singfield@gmail.com or send Ben a message through Facebook. It’s going to be a brilliant night out and your support would be gratefully received!

Thanks!

Ben, Sarah, Dominic, Nick and Dr. Nick.

Links:

The Big Gig 2009 - www.natsnoise.co.uk
Hampshire Autistic Society - www.has.org.uk
Ferneham Hall - www.fernehamhall.co.uk
Singfield - www.singfield.net

Gig @ The Railway Inn Gosport.

2009-06-28T08:11:00.003+01:00

Woop -

Well, the secret warm up gig at the Railway Inn in Gosport went down swimmingly. This was Sarah's first gig, so there were a few nerves (and repeated visits to the ladies) but all worked out well.

The highlights of the evening included

1) Turning up at Ben's house to find he'd cooked an enormous chinese. (Good)

2) Nick arriving at the venue to find he'd left a pretty crucial part of his drum kit in his house 40 miles away. The fact that "I know where I left it - it's by my stairs" didn't excuse it Nick. (Bad)

3) Turning up at the venue to find that it's the landladies 30th birthday and all the locals were in their sister pub where the party was. The news that "Oh there are millions of people in here on a Friday night, but their all down the road tonight." (Bad)

4) Nick attempting to fix his missing equipment with a legendary amount of gaffer tape / chairs / sellotape/ pencils (Amusing as ultimately successful)

5) Quite a few of my dear friends rocking up (despite there being "a good night on TV like") (Great)

6) Everyone focusing on the fact that I had a little spot (It was a huge spot Dom - Ben) on the side of my head. This was discussed constantly by everyone, and Ben even claimed that it ruined the acoustics in the venue. (Bad)

7) The PA and bass rig I'd brought being quite, quite excellent (Good)

8) Ben rewiting one of the tune halfway through the song (probably quite bad)

9) The general audience reaction (Excellent)

10) Going back to Bens and drinking "a heroic amount of Guinness" (superb)

11) The fact that Paul turned up and videoed the whole thing. The sound ultimately suffered on the video simply 'cos ben was "very fucking loud" but a great solution was employed (by the way of a bit of masking tape). And Paul set up our own video channel on YouTube. (Fantastic)

I know that list goes up to 11, but there are some conventions that one can't escape from.

Next, the Millenium Stadium on October 14th.

ddm*

2009-05-16T16:20:00.002+01:00

I have been practicing.

This is so worthy of note that I had to post something here...

ddm*

Demos in the post

2009-05-01T14:45:00.007+01:00

Our live demo has finally gone out in the post this week. Hopefully the gig offers will coming rolling in over the next few weeks...

In other news, I'm trying to organise a couple of solo gigs to see how they go, and we have a friend jamming with us at the moment so that we can hear some lead guitar over our "vast" set list. All good things!

- Ben

Slow Progress

2009-03-11T09:12:00.004Z

We managed at couple of rehearsals in February, but as Dom has pointed out, if we're not actually rehearsing for anything then essentially we're just four mates playing music together in a room. This is depressingly true.

I have a long list of venues and potential "gig-opportunities" to send our demo to, but Dom is working hard (hopefully) on a fab sleeve for the CD, so I won't be sending it out until that is done. I've considered making one myself, but that will probably involve scissors, glue and the photocopier at work, and I imagine Dom would not be impressed. He is the visual artist within the band after all.

However, we potentially have six rehearsals over April and May, and we may actually be able to make them all if Nick doesn't jet off again, Dom & Sarah stop having so many friends, and I can get the baby to bed on time.

In other news, the non-drummer members of Singfield had a rather lovely day out a few weeks ago, any saw Wobbly Squadron, The Berettas, and The Wow Signal, who were all rather good. And one of our favourite musicians has a new tour, and we may also be going to this.

Ben

Winners and Losers

2009-01-28T16:16:00.002Z

I notice that Unsigned Act has just finished on Channel 4 - it’s one of those programmes that I caught bits of every now and then. I was pretty impressed with some of the acts on it, including the winner Tommy Reilly and finalists Hip Parade.

The only thing I didn’t really get is the competition aspect, so I’ve come up with my own idea for a new TV show - a cross between ‘Unsigned Act’ and ‘Later…’ that is essentially a show case for unsigned bands, etc. Same rules as Unsigned Act - everyone plays live and it must be their own material. It would be bound to have loads of interest, it would be pretty cheap to make, and there is endless potential for “theme”, “best-of” and “where-are-they-now?” episodes. Heck, I’d tune in. I may even try and enter.

Our competition experience so far has been limited to a very brief slot on a BBC Radio show. Our song ‘Innocence’ was rated against a couple of others. Actually, to be more accurate, the first 45 seconds of ‘Innocence’ were rated, as that is all the show bothered to play. I’m not convinced that you can properly review a song by only hearing the first 45 seconds. If you did that to ‘Stairway To Heaven’ you’d probably think that Led Zeppelin need to lose the flutist and get a drummer and a singer.

Anyway, needless to say we didn’t do brilliantly on the South Live competition, despite Dom “influencing” the on-line vote. And to be fair the song that was submitted (by persons unknown) was just a live demo recording. But regardless of all that, we’ve never been that fussed by music as a competition. I know “Battle Of The Bands” are an easy way to get a gig, but we just can’t be arsed.

So instead we’re looking for proper gigs. If you can recommend a suitable venue then please drop us an e-mail or leave a message on our Facebook page, and we’ll stick a demo CD in the post to them very soon.

Ben

Live demo released on the world

2009-01-20T14:51:00.002Z

So today is the day - Dom's wonderful website is available to the world, and so is our new demo. Five songs, all recorded completely live in an effort to get us some gigs around the South-East of England. We realise that there's not much chance of someone stumbling across our website and then giving us a gig, so we'll be making up some good old-fashioned CDs to send out.

The only problem with this whole process is that the vast majority of venues that have unsigned bands playing have no interest in how good you are. I'm sure they'll give the CD a quick listen just to make sure you're not a tuba-xylophone double act, but if and when they decide to give you a call and offer you a gig, the main thing they are interested in is how many people you can bring along to the gig.

I can understand that - we're purely a bit of entertainment to try and bring in a few extra people. But it's bit disappointing that it's our mates who are expected to be those extra people.

Not all venues are like this of course - some have recognised that by having live music it makes their venue a more appealing place to be. But they'll still be interested in seeing how many "travelling fans" we'll bring with us. That, of course, is a very difficult question to answer. It depends on what day if the week the gig'll be on, where the venue is, whether they'll be charging people to get in, etc, etc.

Still, one way we can let them know how popular we are, is to see how many friends and fans we have on websites like Facebook and Myspace. So if you've got a couple of minutes, won't you please become our friend?

Here comes the genius

2009-01-18T20:20:00.001Z

In anticipation of ddm releasing our website on the world, I thought I'd pop up here and announce my intention to steal this blog as my personal soap box to witter about all that music stuff that's floating around in my head. Mind you, as Dom has pointed out, chances are that he'll be the only person that reads it.

But never mind! Onward to bloggy delights.

Dear blog,

Got up, had shower, went to work. Pretended to be aeroplanes flying over central London. Came home. Put up pictures for mother-in-law in exchange for roast dinner. Wrote blog.

Hmm, I must be able to do better than that...

Ben

Clearly lost my mind...

2009-01-13T19:21:00.000Z

I've forgotten rule one of web design - cross platform compatabilty.

Design continues well - however, just on a whim I uploaded the initial files so I could check it on my work laptop. Only as I was doing this did I have an ever increasing feeling of dread, mainly because I became aware that I didn't change my resolution to design it. It looks great on my system, but then I'm running twin 2048*1024 monitors.

Looked at it on a non-geek computer, and it looks like a monkey made it with a shovel.

Great.

Back to the drawing board.

ddm*

Time waits for no man

2009-01-13T15:11:00.000Z

Countdown clock until the new website is ready now says 3 days 8 hours. Bugger.

There is a *slight* possibility that it may not be ready in time. Hmm.

After a short break,

2009-01-12T18:10:00.000Z

After a short break (I had to DJ a party for which I knew NONE of the tunes) I've returned to build this bad boy web site.

I've decided that after many many nights of wrestling with javascript to make the mp3s play properly, I'm going to use a third party player. So the player from Reverb Nation it is. Oh yes.

Probably will work better than mine anyway.

Nick has come back from Australia, and seems to want to hit things hard with wooden sticks again. One would expect therefore that we're going to possibly rehearse again soon. Time to gig methinks.

Site design continues -

2009-01-08T21:29:00.000Z

Site work is well underway, with the design protocols firmly set. Ben keeps threatening me unless I finish it soon. I sent him some of the code to debug for the mp3 section of the site, because I can't get the bugger to work. I've copied some of it below:

var _4=parseInt(_3.maxage,16)*1000;

if(_4>0){

var _5=_4-_1+_2;

var _6=15552000000;

if((_5>_6||_5<0)&&typeof>

vjo.darwin.tracking.rover.Rover.dropRoverSyncImage();

},dropRoverSyncImage:function(){

if(typeof (RoverDomainBaseUrl)!=="undefined"&&RoverDomainBaseUrl.length>0){

var im=document.createElement("img");

im.width="1";

im.height="1";

im.src=RoverDomainBaseUrl+"/roversync/?rtpim=1&mpt="+new Date().getTime();

document.body.appendChild(im);

I also thought that I'd rely on Blogger to run this section. I imagine that Ben will type stuff and I will read it. Probably no-one else, but there we go...