e had a wonderful gig at the Barfly on the 28th. From the moment we arrived we knew we were in for a good night. We were supporting the fabulously kooky Neon Plastix, who are the nicest band in the world. As soon as we rocked up they offered us full use of all of their equipment which just makes things run smoothly and gives everyone lots more stage space. Imagine the difference between 3 drumkits on stage and only 1! Chay is the sound engineer there, he loves his kick drum and is very patient and lovely. He’s a friend of a good friend of ours, Mark who runs a smashing rehearsal studio in Cardiff called Musicbox, it’s where we like to hone our set.

Thanks to Chay and the Plastix we had a really good soundcheck so we finished up early and spent the rest of the time telling the good people of Cardiff all about the gig. I separated myself from the guys to have a sneaky soya latte, Sebastiaan’s concerned I’m developing a coffee addiction. I suppose he may have a point seeing as I’m having to get stealth beverages! I needed a warm mug though to help me in my quest to hand out flyers on a chilly Welsh evening. I like meeting people this way, the people who are dressed the coolest are always the most enthusiastic about coming to the gig (gig-going guys and girls are the trend setters I reckon) and everyone is always impressed when I tell them that I’m the singer of Ridinghood. They’re amazed that I would spend the time to promote the gig personally. I’d like to always do this, it would be so funny being as famous as in Wales as Charlotte Church is, walking down Queen street asking people to come to your gig, but then I guess your gig would be sold out! Well, that’s no fun, better stay underground then

I spent way too much time talking to people and had to run back to the venue leaving myself only 20minutes to get ready. I’m very well adapted to living out of rucksack and changing Wonder Woman style so it wasn’t too much of a panic but I did forget to take my hair out of the messy pony-tail I put it in to put my make-up on until after our first song! Later one of the audience told me they thought it was all part of the act, releasing my hair secetary style so even that was ok. We had a really, really great time playing. There was a very stylish group of young ladies strutting their stuff down the front and lots of lovely guys around the edges. The Barfly certainly does have some very cool clientel. Sebastiaan and I spent the week running up to the gig playing all the open mic nights in Cardiff and we had lots of people coming to check us out with a full band as a result. I love playing to people acoustically then wowing up them with the rocked up version.

We opened with Drama Queen and went straight into Mr Madison. Then we played five in a row, SMS, You Know Everything (we’ll be taking Superman off here for download and replacing it with this in a couple of weeks), Superman, Never Nothing (this a really rocky one) and Don’t Adore Me (our power waltz!). We finished up with the appropriately titled You Can’t Go On. The audience was really great and supportive, I spent so long after with them signing our mailing list that the Plastix took to the stage which meant my normal clothes were backstage and unaccessible. I had to stay in my stage gear whilst conducting an interview for a magazine in BurgerKing! That was so funny, I looked totally out of place and kept getting starred at!

I have some good photographs from the gig and some really great ones from the Bull & gate gig in London that we did the week before. That was a brilliant gig too. I’ll put them on here once I’ve finished this blog. I’m busy working on my vocal for our new track What It Takes that we’ll be recording tomorrow. My two favourite things about being in a band are playing gigs and recording the lead vocal so I’m very excited. It’s all about spending hours and hours and days and days weeks and weeks and months and months writing and rewriting and rehearsing and polishing and then you finally get to sing your song, you’ve spent all this time working up to three minutes, so those three minutes are just amazing when they eventually come.

We’ll be finishing off this track and playing some open mic nights in Swansea and Cardiff ready for our gigs at the end of October and I’m working on our website and organsing a big charity gig for next year. By the way, Cardiff Barfly liked us so much they asked us back to open up for the Soho Dolls on the 25th October, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about that! If you’re in Cardiff that day I hope you make it, it’s going to be a great night. If you drop me an e-mail at ridinghoodmusic@hotmail.com I can e-mail you a flyer.

Thanks to everyone who made it to the gig, especially Andrew, Violet, Skelley, Celyn & Fox.