MATTHEW NORTH MUSIC

In a field of freedom? So on Saturday Secrets For September headlined the Freedom Fields festival in Plymouth, this is a much small affair than the one they have in June that boasts an audience of about 3000 odd people. We got there, saw there was a tent which was a plus as the weather has been pretty rubbish the last few days. A Small Pa and an audience of people. As some of you know Dave is unable to perform live with the band due to other commitments and we have a new guy JP playing for us, though he has only been practicing for about 2 weeks with us. Also we were without Mike as he was on holiday, so we played this gig as an acoustic set, which in hindsight was exactly the right thing to do as it was a much more laid back type of gig. We played a 35 minute set that had Hold Your Peace To Behold Wandering Minds Upside Down Right Here Traces Got To Give Up The Ghost Our on stage sound was great, we could hear everything crystal clear. The people watching

Secrets For September at the Passage House Festival 7th August 2011 Last Sunday was the second day of the Topsham Ferrymans weekend. Take a nice little pub by the side of the river, put up a stage with a small PA fill the place with people and hey presto you have a festival. I wasn’t there for the Saturday, but I hear it was all good fun. Arrived on Sunday, there was a band playing when I got there not knowing what the PA situation would be I was pleased to hear they had a good sound balance. So once unloaded (And managed to bash my head on the scaffolding!) Parked up and managed to relax a bit before the gig. Saw a good few friends there Simon, Deb and Jackson, Vic who I do the radio show with who I haven’t seen for ages (were back on air first week of September btw) Kal and Ant a good mix. As we are still bass player less at the moment I played the bass with my feet. I recently bought a set of Roland Bass Pedals here is a little video from out practice the other day.

Toots and the Maytals – An utter disappointment I was delighted to find out that one of the greats of reggae Toots and the Maytals were to play the Phoenix in Exeter and I was also lucky to have been one of the last to get tickets for this event direct from the Exeter Phoenix box office. We arrived around 8.45 ish thinking the doors were open and the support act were probably already on stage as the times of the gig were 8-11. When we got there the doors were still locked, so we were sat outside listening to some great reggae tunes, I was well excited to hear House of the rising Dub by International Observer being played too. Time went on, and on and on, before we knew it it was 10pm door still not open. We started to get a bit worried about this. Eventually the doors opened at 10.30 thinking well if he goes on now then we will get to see most of the set before we have to go home. But no, it had got to about 10.50 and still no sign of any live music. So we decided to ask for a