Sects, Doug and rock and roll.

Written by neil on 6 September, 2012 in Ramblings with no comments.

If you go down in the woods today… you’ll probably attract the attention of that nice man from the Forestry Commission. So stop all that sordid, bosky fellatio and go looking for good, wholesome family entertainment instead. Not a term often used in connection with The Layers, it has to be said, unless preceded by a phrase like ‘the very antithesis of…”

However, this summer we were offered the chance to play a mellow, family friendly set at Treefest, Westonbirt Arboretum’s celebration of all things, er… tree related, by the lovely people at the 4014 project.

Friday night’s gig was for the benefit of campers, stall holders and others there for the weekend. We rolled up to a big top, a big stage and a friendly crew. The weather meant that the sides were on the big top and that produced an incredible reverberation effect every time Roo’s famously quiet and understated snare drum was hit. We’d started wishing that we were playing on a sunny, late summer evening but as the crowd started filtering in to the preceding act, a ukulele duo from Bristol, we realised that conditions were playing into our hands and the damp was granting us a captive audience.

And what a great audience they were. We’d picked the gentlest numbers, left Neil’s amp at home and hastily substituted any offensive words in the set with something equally meaningful but less controversial. We had some worries that the gentle set might lack impact but the reception from the crowd started cordial and got warmer by the song. As children wrestled like mating frogs in front of the stage, we worked our way through the most melodic parts of our repertoire. The audience were responsive, up for a chat and by the time the set was coming to its end, we decided that it was time to get out the banner and teach the world to sing Surf Trip… and sing they did. There’s something magical about hearing strangers sing your own song back at you and it made for a terrific climax to the set.

One of the audience members who wasn’t a stranger was Doug, ‘Dusty’ Jopling, who alert fans, medication depending, may remember joined The Layers for a short stint in the big apple a few years back. It was great to have 125% of the band in one place again and Doug enjoyed himself so much that he decided to come back to see us again the following week for the noisier, swearier set at The Vaults.

Apart from decibels and coarse language, the other chief difference at this gig was the size of the audience; thanks so much to the family and friends that turned out to support us but wow, there must have been something amazing on telly that evening.

Despite the dearth of spectators and eyeball-melting Czech moonshine that we’d been drinking, courtesy of our Pardubice-based promoter friend Viktor (you’ll have to backtrack to 2008 to cath up on those tales) we managed to get through brand new songs ‘Sapphire’ and ‘Tear You Down’ with enough panache and conviction to convince us that they’re worth recording on one of those new-fangled compact discs we’ve been reading about so next month, we’re off to the studio – more on that in a subsequent blog.

As an added bonus, Doug made a brief guest appearance on ‘Shadowpictures’ and ‘Belly Full of Sunshine’, giving Roo the opportunity to appreciate the band from the audience perspective. He’s become a big fan.

Next it’s off to the Zeitgeist Media Festival in Hampshire – okay, they’re nothing like a sect, it just made for a good title. If you don’t know anything about Zeitgeist, it’s a sort of apolitical political movement aiming to bring about the kind of world that favours people over money, fairness over greed and peace over war. Ridiculous, when you think about it, but a gig’s a gig and then we can get back to running our sweatshops and slave trading rings and generally trampling on the poor. If you’re not too busy selling crack to schoolchildren on 15th September, why not come down and check it out?

That will be it, gig-wise, for a little while (unless Lady Gaga comes begging for a support act again…) until we hope to be playing an album release party just in time for Christmas. More on that as the recording sessions go ahead.

Until then, thanks to everyone that’s come out to support us over the last couple of months; we love you all.

Layers out.

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