It won’t be a surprise to many Londoners, at least, that these are tough times for the pub trade. Continuing disposable income squeezes for most people, an ongoing awareness that we live in ‘interesting times’ in some of the worst possible senses of the word leading to an instinct to save not spend and the overwhelming attractiveness of staying in with Netflix and a bottle from Sainsbury’s make it hard to get people down their local. Add swingeing business rate rises in the capital and 2017 has not been the year of landlords having money to burn or even to incautiously invest in their business; they are more and more turning to low-overhead ways of increasing footfall, such as quiz nights and poker tournaments, and avoiding paying three-figure sums for live music.
So Elaine and I are working less in the bar gig trade with our covers and folk duo act, sadly. Some of that time and energy is going into increased activity and visibility for the full band focused on Elaine’s original material and playing bona fide music venues with door charges and aficionado audiences; some of it is going into finding the other places there is still budget to be had for engaging, performative basically acoustic live music with a fairly high proportion of ‘something what we know’ – functions, weddings, parties, Irish theme events (we do a strong line in music of the Emerald Isle).
And with that in mind, it’s about time the duo acknowledged its separate life to the originals quintet and moved out of the spare room at home, so to speak, to an online place of its own. So please head on over here for all your acoustic duo, covers and folk needs:
https://www.musicglue.com/kindredspiritduo
See you at the next fancy event …