SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER BLOG BY JAX CHAMBERS

September 1st and a local gig for us at last, we did our 1st ever gig as Syteria supporting at the Brudenell, so it was great to have our 1st headline show there. There’s a brand new room been built there now so that venue is going from strength to strength and rightly so as it’s a fabulous venue, Tom Needham really looked after us as always 😃. It was our good friend Craig Renwick’s 50th birthday so we had a few friends down for the night.

After a great and late night in Leeds we head off the next morning to the ‘OFF THE TRACKS ‘ festival which turned out to be a lot of fun. A very diverse, eclectic festival which at 1st glance we seemed to be totally out of place at…but we got into the swing of things once Julia donned a flowery dress and found her inner hippy.  After we’d played the gig we watched a few more bands, ate and headed back, as we were to meet our potential film makers for the next video we plan to do which will be the song Revolution, seems I die in the 1st scene 😦 and come back as a robot, what are they trying to tell me? lol

Julia celebrated with a milestone birthday bash half way through the month and now hers and Keira’s age combined = mine😦😁. Then a flight to Sweden for me with Girlschool and a nice BA 1st class flight, so ate my own body weight in freebies in the lounge only to be greeted on the flight with a 3 course meal too, then met at the gig and told dinner was ready, we passed. We did however still manage to fit into our stage gear…just!

We hit October and Denise’s Milestone Birthday, so off I went to Essex for a few days to join the girls, a fun night was had by all, enough said🍺

Back upt norf and our next gig in Rotherham and trying out our 2 new songs and a rather shambolic version of the Misfits ‘Dig Up her Bones’ as it was our Halloween gig…guess we should have rehearsed that 1st or decided on the key 1st at least. A great night and all dressed up for the occasion.
What a pretty bunch😏

An early evening for me as I had to be up to get to France with Girlschool for the VOUZIERS festival, we went via the Chunnel for a change so no airports yay !😁😁 and we were breaking in our new driver Richard Fowler, initiation test passed😉. We’ve done this one before so looked forward to doing it again and this time with our old mates Venom Inc, had rather a  sophisticated meal with those boys beforehand , well as much as that was possible with both bands in the same room.

November was a very busy month for me personally, I headed to HRH for the Awards, then the day later Syteria arrived for our gig there and yes GIRLSCHOOL won the award…finally!

The Syteria gig at HRH wasn’t one of our better shows, we a few technical problems and all that but we still loved it and by the looks of it so did the audience and we had fun all day with the interviews and hanging out with the other bands and the fans there of course.

We left the next day to head to Kettering for another festival called ‘Day Of Rock’ a smaller one but a great new up and coming one. A week off and then off to Scotland for 3 days of gigs starting with Bannermans in Edinburgh, our 3rd time there as we love it there, then travelled to Glasgow to play the Hard Rock Cafe which was a good venue but so hard to load the gear in, so lugging gear around the streets, luckily we had a few crew to do that. We had a fabulous support band called ‘Til Death Do Us Part’ featuring Geoff Tate’s daughter Emily, what a good band and lovely people, luckily they were also playing before us the following day when we all headed to Troon to play the ‘Winterstorm’ festival. Oh boy that was cold, snow and by the sea, so extra cold indeed. This has to be one of the best new up and coming Festivals in the UK, very well organised and looked after the bands really well…although the fire alarm did go off for a 2nd time that day just as we were getting changed, so stood in a car park in the snow on the beach was not what you want before a show..don’t say anything but me and Julia sneaked back in when no one was looking, took our chances 😉 be hotter that way and thanks to Bigfoot for using a Catherine wheel on stage triggering the alarms…lol

The gig at Winterstorm was one we’ll all remember for sure, the drum riser was 5 foot high, where’s Pablo? and of course Keira and Julia went up there whilst I was playing a solo, Julia decided to jump off of it in the process sprained her ankle and with the momentum of that fall she then smashed her lip on the microphone splitting her lip…rock n roll, but she carried on, what a trooper 😁

So now I travelled back to Leeds, unpacked, then repacked as I was going to India for something totally different, a nice spiritual few days away…ah ‘Om Shanti’ just had to make sure I didn’t take the wrong suitcase to India with Leather and latex in it …lol . I got back and again had a day to unpack and repack before going off to Belgium with Girlschool for the ‘Blast From The Past’ festival, again Richard driving us, so we didn’t frighten him too much😅 with either Girlschool or Syteria.

After jetting around we headed for Syteria’s last gig of the yr in sunny old Sheffield where we played an Xmas show which was full of friends and family and some lovely fans who’d travelled miles to come and join us for the night. As always we took the opportunity to dress up, we so need more theme nights for this band, as we love it. I killed a huge Santa with a giant reindeer and a sleigh by deflating them, then evicted them from the stage as they took up far too much room, sorry Santa but you should have had a Harley for our Xmas song ‘Santa’s Harley’…which we did for the very 1st time live…and don’t worry Rudolph made it on stage with us for the encore as you can see by this photo thanks Robert.

See you all out there next yr and finally