Monday 2 January 2012

Happy New Year!!


Welcome to the New Year. It's been a bit boring so far hasn't it?
Check the message below as a way to brighten your day



Meanwhile, let us take a little look back at the last 12 months and see how it's all been shall we?

Looking back to last January and our visit to Leicester to The Musician - doing well at the audition gained us a spot at the Summer Sundae Festival which was a corker.... so that was good!

February, and the Artwork for the album was finished and a trip down to Bristol to ensure the mastering of "The Album" was all good... me & James took a trip to the NGM studios... turns out it was mastered just great thanks! Send it all off to get pressed & printed...

March... can't really remember! probably a bunch of gigs and trying to get people to turn upto the album launch which was at Taylor John's in Coventry on...

April 1st (the date seemed to fit ideally if I'm honest!)



We had a great night, had a bunch of our mates watching, and also managed to present my Mum with her mother's day flowers too!

April & May was then just filled with trying to tell people about the newly released album really...

June & July meant trips to Festival in Coventry (love them Scouts!) Brightlights in Kent and Solid in Essex as well as a tiny tea tent in Leamington (which was in the end actually dope!)

It also brought us to the attention of Nottingham through the Future Sound of Nottingham competition and we played in the open air of Nottingham city centre on a stage in front of my own children, and a bunch of my school pupils too. Went well in the end, and a vote online put us through to that final in Rock City in Nottingham in July.

We had fun in the final too, but ultimately should have played "Dave" which was the track that got us noticed, instead of trying to show too much of what we can do too early on... in the end, an enjoyable show, but just missed out on the podium... but at least more people knew who we were after it.

Following that, we supported my childhood heroes Fat & Frantic in Leicester which was a huge honour for me - especially as some people travelled down from Nottingham just to see us play there! (Lynsey, Kirsty, Steve - you're bonkers, but we think you're ace!)

Summer brought a show at Summer Sundae (which was mint) Momentum (which was mint) Harvest (which was a long way away, but was mint) Shambala (which was double mint) just before Greenbelt and a weekend which will remain long in the memory of the AFC.

Hobbit blew his throat out via snoring in a tent & playing the mainstage with Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.... which left me & Mark to play our Underground Stage show on the Sunday + the Last Orders show that evening too. We messed up our original set list, brought in RJ on drums, Adapt on beatbox along with various people to sing along on stage with us!... Thankfully, it seems that the songs are halfway decent and that we were at capacity in the venue throughout the gig so that Luke Leighfield told us he couldn't actually get in!
He saw us later though as we played at Last Orders, went down really well and made some new friends to come and play the show in the shop the next day...

Check the flickr set of our last show that weekend...http://www.flickr.com/photos/64351847@N02/sets/72157627430893347/

September, October, all involving bar gigs in Cov & Notts, with an interview with Notts music paper LeftLion to boot - http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/the-austin-francis-connection/id/3970

which leads us to November.

The Bodega Social is a great venue in Nottingham. It was made greater on the 2nd November by the fact that we got to support the Long Beach CA hiphop legends, Ugly Duckling. Not only are they a brilliant Old School hiphop crew, but they're some of the nicest guys around. And we got to play to a hiphop crowd....which was interesting... I wasn't sure how it would go down - but it was wicked! And to get some of your heroes turning round to tell you that they think you went really well as their opening act? Trust me - it's great!

Following that, a weekend filming for our first video for "Everybody Knows Dave" rounded off a great and eventful year....

Here's to another one - Cheers!!

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