If truth be told, I had no idea what to call this post and I've already changed the heading at least 4 times, but we have LIVE UK GIGS to tell you about and we've volunteered to help organise, promote and partially sponsor them - here's how it's happened:....
I guess this post has to start with a brief story of Nordic Music Review, which as we've established before, is all the fault of Moddi. Clearly I'd blame him for Climate Change and Brexit too if I could, but that seems a little harsh, so we'll stick to the responsibility for our music website. Our favourite Norwegian songwriter came to the UK 4 years ago and played a series of dates which included the lovely but very tiny Castle Hotel in Manchester, and it helped inspire us (well me mostly) to set up Nordic Music Review to try to get more attention for Nordic artists in the UK.
Four years on and the blog, despite the odd blip, has featured hundreds of artists and somehow reached an absurdly large number of readers. Last year to force ourselves to be slightly more 'professional' in our approach and get us access to some of the best new music we joined the SubmitHub platform, which allows musicians / bands to submit their tracks to a collection of excellent music blogs and guarantees them a response which includes feedback on their music. Obviously there's a small fee for this service, but there's also a 'free' option too which doesn't include the guaranteed feedback. I'm a huge advocate of the site which is the brainchild of the excellent IndieShuffle's Jason Grishkoff and the bonus for music bloggers is that it generates a very small amount of money for each 'premium' track they review and feedback on.
Clearly how each music blogger uses the small income stream is up to them, and I would never judge how they spend it. It can be used to pay for website hosting costs, gig tickets, bribe writers / contributors with beer and if someone uses it to take their tolerant and much loved friends / families for a weekend away from music blogging, good for them, because what we do is SO HUGELY TIME CONSUMING that I'm happy even to resort to Donald Trump style capitals to make my point.
Anyway..... we've decided to use all the money generated through SubmitHub in a slightly different, way, and we're using it to help finance a small number of UK gigs for Nordic artists. It's so difficult for less established bands and songwriters to get to the UK to play, because not only do they have the extra cost of flights as well as accommodation, but it's sometimes impossible to even find the venues to perform. So we're promoting, organising and helping finance the following gigs, and we really hope we'll see a few of you there...:
Firstly we thought it appropriate to help support Norwegian alternative rock band Major Parkinson, given their 2018 album 'Blackbox' was our Album of the Year. We're helping them with 4 gigs (admittedly it was only supposed to be 1 or 2, but it's grown legs...), and the SubmitHub revenue is helping in a useful way to pay towards the costs of putting on the gigs - mainly with the inevitable advertising / promo costs.
The Major Parkinson dates are:
Wednesday 26th September: Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
Thursday 27th September: Exchange, Bristol
Friday 28th September: Water Rats, London
Saturday 29th September: Soup Kitchen, Manchester.
Then we thought it appropriate to go back to where it started, and exactly 4 Years (+ one day) from when we first saw Moddi at the Castle Hotel, we've arranged a gig for Norwegian folk songwriter Jarle Skavhellen and the Swedish / Icelandic songwriter Freyr Flodgren , whom we even discovered through SubmitHub. We're using SubmitHub's money to pay for the venue hire / sound technician costs so that all ticket sales revenue goes straight to the 2 artists.
The Jarle Skavhellen and Freyr Flodgren date is:
Sunday 7th October, Castle Hotel, Manchester:
I know what we're doing isn't revolutionary or going to change the world, but we just thought it was a nice thing to do, and we're delighted to support Nordic artists playing live in the UK. Please come and support the gigs if you can - and if you come and it turns out to be rubbish, well I guess it's all Moddi's fault anyway...