Jimmy The Dog Live | London | Blues Swing Country

NEWS

Sept 30

We played for the first time at The Constitution Club in Egham last Friday and it was a blast. The club is revamping its image to attract new members with live music and DJ nights and with significantly discounted drinks! We were the first act to play there in a long while and although there were only about twenty people there consistently, they all got up and danced all night. The management were very accommodating and encouraging and we'll be back there again sometime after the new year.

Our next appearance will be at Milk in Reading's town centre on the 17th October. This will be a ticketed event by Milk as it is a promotion night for Elijah Craig whiskey and with the £6 entry fee, you get a free drink.

Just a quick message up front: I rarely spend Christmas at home and this year I'll be in Spain, so there we're not taking festive season gigs for after the 18th December, but we're back in the new year with a gig on the 25th January.

Sept 19

Bunkfest Fringe was a blast! We started at The Cross Keys Stage under overcast skies and high humidity and sweated our way through our fast and furious set. As the whole town became a pedestrian precinct for the weekend, we had to physically lug our gear on foot, going back and forth to the second venue which was the Comrades Club. Fortunately the was a supermarket close by so we were able to use a trolley for some of the equipment. We finished our set there and were home by about midnight only to discover I'd left my Marshall cabinet at the club, which I collected on the Sunday morning, thank goodness.

Just a heads up about this weekend's gig at The Old Ticket Hall in Windsor: the management double-booked us and have asked us to give them alternative dates for our next gig there. So, if you were intending to see us in Windsor this weekend, sorry but we'll see you there some time most likely in November now. These things just happen.

Aug 29

The Wokingham Festival on Bank Holiday Monday was superb! Not too hot weather-wise but sunny and pleasant and lots of great acts to listen to. Two outstanding acts for me were 'That Joe Payne', a crowd-pleasing easy pop act with the London West End's Joe Payne, an exceptional vocalist with a huge range and a Dutch power pop three-piece called Sonic Whip who were expert instrumentalists and so tight you wouldn't have been able to pass a hair between the beats. We only had a half hour to perform in the afternoon so we went at it, at a frenetic pace and got sweaty again. Thank goodness we didn't have to play like that for three hours!

Next up is Bunkfest in Wallingford this coming weekend. We got an email from the organisers telling us that a band had had to drop out due to their drummer having broken his leg last weekend (bummer!) and would like to know if we wanted their slot. Of course, we said! So now, we're actually playing two gigs on Saturday 31st August; The Cross Keys at 5pm and then The Comrades Club at 7:15pm. What a way to see out the summer!

Just don't ask us to play on Sunday!!!

Aug 05

Well, we went down to Sutton again to one of our favourite venues, The Sound Lounge to support our friends, The Backbone Blues Band (www.backbonebluesband.co.uk) and right at the start of the gig, my guitar amp decided to pack in! I couldn't believe it as we had a run of gigs coming up and amp repairs are not normally quick, depending on what's wrong. So I played my G&L 'Strat' through a very clean Fender amp which had virtually no overdrive which was okay for the swing numbers but without bite for the more dirty blues stuff we do. I was horrified and tried not to let it show, but I don't think I hid it very well. However, the guys in the backbone band liked our performance and so, it seemed, did the crowd of about 50 seated and standing. Luckily, the following day, I found out it was a relatively simple fix; nothing wrong with the actual amp, but the footswitch cable had a break in it and every time it moved even slightly, the amp would shut down due to a protective in-built circuit. I cut about half a metre of the cable away and with soldering iron in hand, inexpensively repaired the problem. Whew!

Neil and I had a blast at the Friday Night Blues Club at The Butler in Reading on the night of the 26th July when Neil got to front his own band, the revamped Blues Cruise in which I played keyboards and the blues impresario, Thomas Heppel (www.thomasheppel.com) came on as guest guitarist to great acclaim. We were supported by our friends, The BJ Bevy (www.instagram.com/thebjbevy/)and their unique blend of funky pop and blues and everyone had a great time, so the bar sales were good, as you can imagine!

Next up, we're at the Here Comes The Sun Festival at Reading's Rising Sun Arts Centre this coming weekend, then at a new venue in Virginia Water called The Rose & Olive Branch the following weekend and finally towards the end of the month, at the Wokingham Festival. Check out our gig list!

Jun 23rd

Mid-summer's evening, The Friday Night Blues Club at The Butler, Reading. We supported our friends, an excellent Sussex three-piece called Mudlow (www.mudlow.co.uk)who play their own brand of swampy blues. Absolutely fab, they were. A big shout out for Simon Windisch at the mixing desk who did a superb job on live sound, as usual. And us, we were hot and sweaty as usual. Next up, we're at The Old Ticket Hall in Windsor. We last played there back in April and we rocked it! Got lots of praise from the many punters and bar staff alike, so we've been asked back. Must have done something right! And we're on the poster for the Wokingham Festival, where we'll be playing this coming August summer bank holiday Monday. Also, got some new stage pics which we'll be posting in the gallery soon.

Apr 14th

We got back to business last Wednesday night with a gig at The Facebar in Reading, supporting the excellent The Hawkmen (a first rate roots retro rock band from Bristol.......and they're soooo polite) where we had a decent sized and enthusiastic audience, some of whom (you know who you are) took to dancing with vigour. What an atmosphere! A big thanks to everyone who came. We even broke out a couple of new songs we'd written together. And there were a couple of great photographers snapping away and we've had a look at the result - very impressive. Check out Ian Ladlow Photography and Andrew Merritt Photography pages on Facebook. Here's a couple of examples:

So, we've been given alternative dates for The Old Ticket Hall in Windsor where we'll be appearing on the 4th of May, our next scheduled gig. We look forward to seeing you there.

Oh and the big news........we'll be playing FOUR, yes FOUR gigs at Bunkfest in Wallingford, 31st August - 1st September. We hope you'll be able to make it to at least one of them.

What a way to end the summer!

Feb 13th

A bit late for a Happy New Year I suppose so apologies for my inactivity. I was in Madeira for Christmas and New Year (and lovely it was too) and Neil was with his family in Reading. Shared duties; Neil tends to do all the Facebook announcements and I run the website, so he's more 'on it' than I am. which is why our FB page is more up to date. Our gig at The Old Ticket Hall in Windsor was postponed by the management due to lack of winter custom. We've been given a choice of two dates there for later in the year, so we'll let you you when that's confirmed. Things seem to be getting even tougher for bands as we've noticed a few venues where we've played in past years have now closed for good as businesses in the hospitality sector continue to struggle. However, we've just been surprised by our old friends The BJ Bevy and have a short notice support gig with them this coming Saturday at The White Horse in Wokingham! That'll be a great night. The BJ Bevvy are excellent so we get to see a great show there too. Talking about Wokingham, we're actually playing at the 'dying moments' of The Wokingham Festival in the afternoon of August 26th, the August Bank Holiday Monday. It's been a bit of a quiet winter, but we're sure things will pick up.

Before I went off for the Christmas holidays, I uploaded some more studio videos on our YouTube channel. Check them out!

Excited!! We've been doing some admin tasks over the last few weeks and so can now proudly announce our new logo!!

Dec 6th

We both liked the idea of a 1950's style "diner art" scheme thinking that'll accurately represent the music we play live. Designed by our friend, fan and graphic designer Natasha Dos Pasos, it will soon be adorning T-shirts and some other merch items which will be for sale at our gigs and from a shop on this website (something I've yet to set up). Many thanks, Tash!! Great job!!

Next up, we're at The Pear Tree in Fulham on Sunday 10th December for a relatively early gig, a 6:30pm stage time, with some Christmas tunes thrown in to our raucous set to big up the festive mood. See you there!

Nov 24th

A bit disappointing news is that we should be playing what would be a new venue for us, The Embrook Inn in Wokingham, tomorrow evening. However, due to budget restrictions, our slot has been cut. Things are difficult all round and pubs are having to look at their annual spends on entertainment. Post-Covid, there was a big resurgence of people going out and looking for live entertainment and food but with the cost of living crisis that seems to be waning again, especially on the run up to Christmas. A similar thing happened back in October when our gig at The Gallery in Harlow was postponed until after the New Year, date still to be confirmed when the venue's budget is reassessed. Still, Neil's running a new initiative in Reading town centre at a venue called The Butler which has a decent stage, sound system and a room which will hold over 100 people. We opened the night as the support act for Reading's own The BJ Bevy (one of my fave acts) and from Essex, Chubby Latouche and his Band of Whores with excellent driven pop-punk and humour. We've just been contacted by Darren from The Pear Tree in Fulham to do another Christmas Party there on the 10th December. It's always good there with a fun crowd and great food. After that we've no engagements until after the new year (as I go on holiday during the festivities). Our next booked gig is at The Old Ticket Hall in Windsor on the 17th February 2024, but there may be a few to slot in before that.

Sept 4th

We had another great night at The Sound Lounge in Sutton (despite the ULEZ now in force there too) supporting Tupelo Lime, an Americana act from Suffolk. Good crowd, great hospitality, great stage and fabulous sound. Plus we're in good company as acts John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett ("Really Free" hitmakers) and Geraint Watkins (ex-Paul McCartney, ex-Rhythm Kings) being on the bill at The Sound Lounge in the same week as us!! Plus, Claudia, the lovely venue manager makes a mean pizza!

And if you've seen us recently, you'll see we've gone electric. The acoustic guitar is brought out occasionally but there's more grunt and versatility to our act now with Jimmy using electric guitars (usually one telecaster and one strat plugged into an effective Egnator tube amp and Marshall cabinet) allowing for a bit more fancy finger-work. Neil's also got a new pedal effects board for his harmonicas so our sound just keeps getting better.

Our promo video seems to be getting us noticed and Neil is busy taking bookings after venue management folks around the south-east having seen it and liked our live performance. Check out our gigs on the "This Years' Gigs" tab.

May 8th

So, we made a video! That's right, we spent a night recording a promotional video of snipets and a couple of full songs in the music room of The Hope in Windsor with Matt who has done some great work and produced some great still photos too. The video's already live on this site and on YouTube and we'll be posting vines and shorts on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms over the coming weeks. Check out our 'Tour' page for upcoming gigs.

Mar 18th

And we're back! After a couple of dead months at the start of this year, we'll be doing our first 2023 gig at The Purple Turtle in Reading's town centre, supporting the excellent one-man-band Bob Log.

Dec 13th

How are your Christmas preparations coming along?

First, a bit of bad news. Well, we know things are getting tough for everyone all round thanks to successive governments of self-servers. It's affecting the pubs and clubs where we play. So, sadly, we have to announce that our New Year's Eve gig at The Long Dog in Dartford has been cancelled. It's not surprising really. Last time we played there the World Cup was on and we'd played to about half a dozen - albeit enthusiastic - customers. The landlord admitted that custom had been getting slack since the end of September and started to backpedal a bit when I tried to discuss arrangements for the NYE party with him. After our last gig there, we guessed we'd be cancelled. Plus we don't have any more gigs in December.

So, if anyone is up for us to play at your NYE party..............!

So, now for the good news! Neil has been in contact with a video maker and we'll be making a video of a couple of songs some time in January or February. Watch this space!

Nov 21st

We've been having a good few people turning up to hear us at our regular residency spot at The Lyndhurst in Reading, where the atmosphere is excellent and the food is great! It's also good to see old music friends from other bands we knew from years ago come to see us there too. I'm glad to say that there now seems to be more demand for live music after all that lockdown depression ad folk are telling me that it's great to hear a decent band live again. Thanks for all your support. Hopefully the venues will see a resurgence in attendance as austerity, doom and gloom seems to creep over to us all by the day thanks to the news, globl warming and a pretty useless government. Folks need to be happy and if we can help make your evening special, we will! Neil does his best with social media. That's his thing, not really mine. I just look after the website. And we've gone electric in our last few gigs with Neil putting down the harp for a few songs to take up his slide guitar with me swapping between acoustic and electric between songs. We've introduced a load of new material, sliding in a couple of well known Disney songs from long ago to entertain the troops as well as some more rockabilly and a new thing for us - a request from the landlord of one of our regular venues - ska!! We're still predominantly staying faithful to our swing/jive/Chicago blues thing, but variety is the spice of life! I reckon we've now got enough material rehearsed for a three-hour show and we're still adding more to give some variety. Now we're heading to a new venue for us, the hope in Windsor, and that'll top off November. We're back in Dartford twice in December; on the 3rd and also to do a special New Years' Eve party, both at The Long Dog. otherwise December will be a bit quiet for us as I'm off to Madeira for a week or so over Christmas (I need the heat!) but we've got a few January and February dates to be confirmed. So it's all looking good for 2023.

Aug 28th

Well, as we asked, we got some VIDEO CONTENT.....

Thanks to Helen Cuthbertson for this litte bit of footage from Sherfield-on Loddon yesterday. Check out the vids of Flip Flop Fly and Shame Shame Shame on our MUSIC page

Aug
27th

As usual and since we've been playing together we've played on the hottest days of the year and 33 degrees C at 8pm in Marlow at The Marlow Donkey was no exception. And every year it seems to be getting hotter. We set up in the beer garden in front of a fun crowd of mainly young people, most of whom had never heard our blues jive and shuffle but who seemed to enjoy the fun of it immensely. True to form we performed well and sweated buckets! By 9:30 a slight breeze had got up and we aired ourselves at a cool 27 C. Who needs to go to Spain?

This bank holiday weekend is the Reading Festival (where we're not on the bill) but we got "dep'd" at short notice to play a small festival today in place of an act that had to cancel and as it's an afternoon slot, we can get back to play with our new toys and practice some new tunes. Neil had bought himself a black Squier Jaguar guitar in bits and I put it together for him and strung it, so you might be seeing that axe sometime soon. I have the same bad habits as he and I bought myself two new electric guitars in the same week; a Jet S-400 - a budget 'Strat' which plays superbly - and a Fender Telecaster FMT HH, a guitar I'd wanted for some time, effectively the 'Les Paul' of Fenders. It's a work of art both to look at and play. Are we going all electric?? Most likely - I'm itching to get my new telecaster out and about hooked up to the Egnator Tweaker 40 amp head and Marshall cabinet I bought last month but we'll still be doing acoustics for the moment. Going electric means more kit to carry!

We're now on a site called gigrealm.com where you can check us out, videos and all and book us to play. It's great if you're a pub or entertainment centre manager as you can book us and pay us through the site.

Next up for us is way over west in Great Malvern, a late summer boutique festival, The Frolic Festival, organised by our friend and guitar-looper virtuoso Mathew One Man.

If you're in the area, come and see us. We'll be on stage sometime on Sat 10th September. Here's the line up:

Aug 25th

THIS IS AN APPEAL TO FANS FOR VIDEO CONTENT.....

Please, if you have any video footage of Neil and Jimmy playing at any recent gigs, even if it's just smartphone footage, please feel free to send it to us by email or by posting it on Facebook, Instagram or whatever and let us know where to find it. We're a bit short on recent gig footage and we'd like to add some recent video content to this site. It would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Aug
3rd

Maybe you've already read the earlier posts like the one below where we say we're playing a new venue, The Weather Station, in Reading and Neil's the official promoter. Well, as luck - or otherwise - would have it, we just heard the very same venue is closing down at the end of August! Sadly, this is becoming very common now as the fall-out from the Covid crisis continues to really bite and hit hospitaility businesses hard, even ones we thought would make it through. A 12-pack from Morrison's and a house party with a Spotify playlist seems to have become the modern alternative to going out. Maybe that's why we're getting more summer parties to play than venue gigs. Still, we'll be at The Weather Station on 12th August, one of the last acts to play there. Hope you can make it - it'll be a swell night!.

July 30th

And on we roll......

One thing we hadn't done in years was to play two gigs on the same day. We were looking forward to these gigs on the 16th of July and dreading it at the same time because our brand of fast paced blues and jive kind of leaves two old guys quite knackered at the end of a gig and we weren't sure we'd have much in the tank for the second one.

However, onward we went; the first gig at Queensmere House turned out to be a well-run masonic charity fundraiser outdoors of a stately home with private lake and all and no expense was spared on the free booze and excellent buffet! We did an hour's set there, then drove back to Reading for a private party where we performed at a barbecue (the weather was excellent!) until it got dark, so I reckon about two hours. Again we played on the hottest day of the year. Well almost; it's was 33 degrees when we played the first gig, but about a week later global warming had us baking in 38 degrees! Needless to say neither of us got out of our respective beds the next morning. But we're young and stupid (in our heads anyway) and will probably do the same again should the chance arise! Come and see us at The Weather Station (the old Eldon Arms) in Reading on August 12th. Neil's the promoter and it's not often you get to call your own gigs!

Jun 23rd

So, after lockdown was finally over, we had a good second half to 2021. The only disappointment was that due to lockdown restrictions, we never got the chance to support Dr. Feelgood in the end. But there'll be other chances again, I'm sure.

Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, I decided to go to Spain for a month, which meant no gigs until I came back in January. I decided to saty put and spent six months there which meant no JTD activity during the first half of 2022. Neil plays with other bands and was kept busy.

But now we're back!