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This week was our first band rehearsal after about a month and we invited Ben Knight in to audition to join the band as our new permanent guitarist. We gave him one track to learn and then one track to make his own part for. Ben came in ready and raring to go with great parts written. We went through the first two tracks and fell in love with his sound and the energy he brought so we decided to try and go through two more of our songs with him on the spot which he picked up almost instantly.

After some discussions after the rehearsal, Ben has explained that he would absolutely love to join the band full time but is due to be very busy this term. We have agreed he will join us for the odd rehearsal and some of our upcoming gigs and then join full time in the new year!

The track being played in this clip is a song I wrote called Beneath The Sheets... one of my contenders for being a single release next term!

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This week the band and I met at Small Pond to have a rehearsal, working towards an upcoming gig that we are playing on the 18th October in Cambridge. We used the time to run through our setlist and perfect the songs that we were due to perform. With the extra time we had left, we decided to workshop a song that we wrote a couple of weeks prior called Rollercoaster.

When we initially started writing the track, we hadn't written it with the bassist so this was his first time trying it out. So we spent some time walking through it with him first but I had also lost the lyrics that I had written so I spent some time working through these and trying to remember roughly what I had written.

Once we all had the song down, we started workshopping it. We incorporated a small bass solo, some extra stabs at the end of the chorus and we made sure the ending was tight and everyone was ending on the same note.

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Rollercoaster Runthrough by Caitlin McEvoy

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We booked ourselves into Small Pond's recording studio today to start our recording process. We decided the best way to kickstart our recording process would be to lay down the drum tracks so that we take these to any producer that we decide to work with. This will hopefully speed up the recording process later on down the line!

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Today we had our main rehearsal for our upcoming gig in Cambridge for the Cambridge Alternative Music Society. This gig is due to be taking place on the 18th October at the Six Six Bar where we will be opening for Lunar Phase and Last Resort.

We confirmed our final setlist for this gig and then went through each of the tracks. Our final setlist is:

Beneath The Sheets

The D Word

Cocoon

You and I

Rolling In The Deep

Rollercoaster

Ain't It Fun

Lifeline

We managed to run through the set twice, making sure we knew all of the sections and we timed the set to ensure that we were inside of our 30-45 minute set time. It all went really well and we are feeling super prepared for this gig.

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Today, I contacted a friend that I made over the summer through my photography business who is in a band called Bollo Bollo. He recently did cover art for his band's upcoming EP and it really caught my eye so I messaged him via Instagram and asked whether he does this for other people and what his rates would be. Seeing as he has not worked for anyone other than his own band before, he was happy to do it for us as experience and work out a rate as time went on which I was more than happy with.

I have attached our conversations.

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I Think I'm Falling In Love With You Too

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I Think I'm Falling In Love With You Too

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JT brought three tracks to the band recently that he wrote whilst he was in college but never used because the band he was in fell through. Therefore, today, we spent some time working through this and JT taught us how to play this track.

Whilst JT taught Matt and Tom the instrumental sections to this track, I went through the demo that we were sent to really get down the lyrics and melody of the track. We then reconvened as a group again after about 20 minutes to put everything together and it was sounding really pretty! JT would like to rewrite this track at some point down the line so we will be documenting this process as we go along and decide on what vibe and route we want to take this down.

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I Think I’m Falling In Love With You Too

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Today we had our first rehearsal in preparation for our gig that we have booked for Halloween night (31st October). We decided to focus our time predominantly on the covers that we will be performing which included; Zombies - The Cranberries, Toxic - Britney Spears, Bad Romance - Lady Gaga, Tainted Love - Soft Cell. We tried to look at making the songs fit the 'McEvoy' vibe more.

We started off at quite a slow pace, struggling to find our feet with the sound of the songs. Things were just sounding a bit flat. We persevered through this and by the end of the rehearsal, the tracks all sounded much bigger and more powerful. We also added a big intro into Bad Romance that included loads of swells and a lot of build of dynamics.

I am very pleased with how the songs started out but we will definitely need to look at what made us start of so slowly to help us avoid this more in the future and stop anyone from feeling demoralised in any way.

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Today we organised a photo shoot with Paddy Collier because the only band photo shoot that we have ever done included a member who ended up leaving the band in summer but it also did not include Tom. Therefore, we needed updated photos to start using as promotion for any upcoming posts on social media or promotion material.

I sent Paddy a pinterest board of ideas and inspiration but struggled with ideas for places around Brighton to do the shoot so I left this pretty much completely up to Paddy (the best idea!). We started off near an old train line, then moved to some places that had a lot of greenery around. We found plenty of spots that had graffiti behind us too because we all agreed the shapes and the range of colours looked very cool and would be eye catching to anyone scrolling or walking past. We did both group photos and individual shots so that we had a range of different things to use dependant on the type of promotion needed.

JT also had a last minute idea to do a photo shoot in a toilet where the boys all look like they are using the toilet... but so do I... as a comedic shot and to also promote the idea of the boys being my McE-Boys!

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Today, we played a gig in Cambridge supporting a band called Last Resort who are a friend of Matt's. We were the opening band for this gig and the other two bands were from Cambridge University (as this gig was booked through Cambridge Alternative Music Society).

We used this gig as an opportunity to get some really exciting content for when we start posting on our new TikTok account. We decided to do some Q&A style videos in the car on the way up to the gig. We then did a big vlog style video too...

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Today I posted this group of photos onto my Instagram and Facebook page as an introduction to the band. We have done a post similar in the past but this includes a new member and a photo of Tom that was taken at the shoot and also actually includes individual shots as opposed to one group shot. I prefer this as it shows the personality of each band member a bit better. With this post, I added the caption:

• 𝐌𝐂𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐘 •

you have all met the majority of the band so far however, we have had a little bit of a switch around and would like to welcome the very talented @route.6614 🤟🏼🤍

we have some gig announcements to make very soon so keep an eye out for all of these and make sure you come down 🤍

and the biggest thank you to @who_paddy for these AMAZING AMAZING photos🥰

This post gained 105 likes.

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In the past few days, I have booked a couple of gigs over the next month which needed to be announced. I therefore made a funky looking post to put out on Instagram and Facebook to begin promoting these gigs...

I also included the posted for each of these gigs. My caption for this was:

• 𝐔𝐏𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 •

We’ve got a couple of gigs coming up in the next month…

Next Tuesday we are going to be opening at the Prince Albert for 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧!! We expect to see you all in costume👻

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We have a special little something we will be playing on the 15th… more details to come VERY soon!!

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Our lovely @matthew_020304 and @jtwinteriscool have organised “𝐍𝐨 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐟*𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬”. A night of original, unreleased music… so come down wearing your best pair of 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 😎

𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐢𝐨🩶

Another big thank you to @who_paddy for these crazy good photos😇

This post got 81 likes...

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This week we began posting TikToks onto your new page (@mcevoyband). We started off with a video of us performing at Wokingham Festival in the summer. Then we decided to do a band introduction which included stupid little clips of each member of the band. Day three was our first little bit of promotion towards our first headline gig which will be taking place at the end of November. Our day four video was a comedic little video that JT made of our time in the studio recording drums. Then I had some issues with my service and I thought that one of my videos didn't upload, so accidentally uploaded two videos on the same day (the Cambridge gig rundown and day in the life) . Then day six was a little Q&A we did in the car on the way to our Cambridge gig and finally was another clip from some studio time!

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Today's rehearsal was in preparation for our gig at the Prince Albert later this week for Halloween. The organiser required more covers than we would usually use and they needed to be songs that fit the 'halloween vibe' so we picked some new tracks to play around with. These included, 'Tainted Love' by Soft Cell, 'Zombie' by The Cranberries, 'Bad Romance' by Lady Gaga and 'Toxic' by Britney Spears.

We made a big atmospheric introduction into Bad Romance and tried changing up the instrumentation for Toxic. We kept Tainted Love and Zombie pretty close to the original but added long solos to the end of both of them for Ben to show off in due to this gig being his debut gig with the band!

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The gig today went okay. It definitely was not perfect.

I think that this is due to the fact that the band all felt like we were under a lot of pressure. Unfortunately, the organisers put the task of bringing a full drum kit and then going to collect a bass amp in separate trips onto Tom so he arrived with very little time before we were due to start. One of the band members was then nagging at Tom a lot and I feel that this threw the energy off completely with everyone.

Despite this, after watching back some videos taken of the gig, I am still very pleased with how everyone performed and sounded so it is definitely still a successful gig!

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Today we spent some time with Duncan Howlett getting some photos and video footage for Waterbear. We also got this footage back so that we can use this as promotion for anything that we need in future. This was a very funny and new experience for all of us!

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Small Pond sent out the links for the editorial playlist today and out profiles that they made for the release for the Emerging project playlist. When I accessed the account, we noticed that the account had the wrong band name on it instead of our official name. 'Caitlin and McEBoys' was a temporary name whilst we were still deciding on a final name. Small Pond were informed multiple times when we decided on a final name.

Due to this, I had to contact Spotify and there was a lot of back and forth due to the fact that the company could not find the account or the track. Eventually, we gave up on changing the name and decided that due to the fact that we do not like the mix of the version that Small Pond are releasing, we will keep the wrong name and then open a new account under the name 'McEvoy' to release under in future so that this version is not linked directly to us.

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This Monday was our debut headline gig which was held at The Folklore Rooms with support from Not So Clever and Josh Hazelden. We managed to sell out the venue which was such a great achievement.

The set itself went amazing and everyone played great. There was great stage presence even through some technical difficulties that we had to face at times!

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Today we had our main rehearsal getting ready for our first ever headline show which is on the 27th November. We invited Imani to join us for this rehearsal as we agreed for her to come and do backing vocals for us at the gig!

We met up together before the rehearsal to discuss some harmony ideas through the songs for her to use and I gave her all of the lyrics. At rehearsal we went through and decided what parts worked best with and without BVs.

Ben also brought the idea of having an intro to our set where Imani and I walk onto the stage for a big entrance. This idea came from a Reuben James gig at the Hope and Ruin a few weeks back so we made a more 'McEvoy' version of this. Once again, we felt super prepared for the gig by the end of the rehearsal!!

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In the lead up to the headline show, we needed some really stand out promotional content to post to bring in as much of a crowd as possible. We used both new and slightly older content to do this. JT made the videos themselves as a part of their WB06 project. The comedic factor and shock factor to these videos will hopefully catch the eyes of some people and lead to plenty of ticket sales.

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Today we had a rehearsal ahead of our gig for the Candlelight Sessions being held by some of the second years. This gig required a 15 minute set of stripped back songs. We decided on our setlist being four songs and included one cover which was 'Northern Star' by The Amazons because this is quite a laid back, stripped back track already. The original tracks we decided to use were 'You and I' which is already acoustic, 'Lifeline' and 'Beneath The Sheets'.

I really ended up loving the versions of Lifeline and Beneath The Sheets as we have never done something like it and it gave me room to play around with the melodies. We felt super prepared for the gig later this week.

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Today we had our gig at the Waterbear Venue and it went really smoothly and I feel that we sounded great. It was such a different vibe to any other gig that we have performed at before.

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I had quite a quiet week after a super chaotic development week however, we did get our first official revision of Lifeline back from De this week. I didn't love it as I felt like my voice was really in your face and too far forward. There were a lot of other tweaks that I wanted made. The band agreed with these and sent some of their own tweaks they'd want too.

See week seven for my tweaks and email to De.

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We received our second revision of Lifeline this week which was much more in the direction that we were wanting it to go. Some of the notes that we did make included:

The concert toms in the last section - they could sound more loose and ring out more, as if they were quite literally being played in a giant concert hall.

The main guitar line at the end could come up a little bit along with the 'Running' ad libs.

The final main violin come up just a smidgen more.

There could be more reverb on the guitar and just turning it down slightly in the first verse, it feels a little overpowering.

A little more high end on the kick drum.

Just a tiny bit more reverb on the vocals and we asked if we can we play around with planning in the outro.

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Lifeline - Revision Two by Caitlin McEvoy

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We received our third revision of Lifeline and there was only one real tweak that myself and the boys wanted to make which was that the kick doesn’t feel like it punches through enough, mostly in the chorus, but other than that, everything sounds great and we are very pleased. This will be our debut single for the lead up to our EP release.

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Lifeline - Revision Three by Caitlin McEvoy

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Matt and I decided to record both of the acoustic tracks this week as Ben has agreed to do the mixing and mastering for both of these. I slightly mixed both of these tracks so that I can send them to Ben as ideas for what I am looking for and so that we have the demos for anything else we can use them for in the mean time. Ben may also add some extra guitar parts to the tracks if/where he feels they can use it.

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I am a pop/soul/little bit of indie singer songwriter from Brighton.

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I am a pop/soul/little bit of indie singer songwriter from Brighton.

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I received the final artwork for Lifeline this week and am over the moon with how it looks. It cost us £60 in total.

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I contacted a friend this week from a band called Bollo Bollo. They had posted their EP artwork and announced that Sonny (their guitarist) created it. I enquired about whether he took requests for other artists which he never had done before but was very much open to it. I created a brief idea what I was looking for, as shown above.

I left this with him for a couple of weeks and he would start to build an idea for this...

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Sonny messaged this week with an update showing that he had finished drawing the hands. This flared a lot of excitement in me because the detail was amazing and it was exactly what I want looking for!

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Later in the week, Sonny had mostly finished the background and added the lifeline itself. He also decided to try adding a white shadow to the lifeline to make it look like there was electricity running through which I loved!

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I received a messaged to the band instagram this week from someone looking to book us for some gigs in London. There was not a lot of detail to begin with but via email, it stated that that Jamie works for a company called 'More Live'. The lack of information concerned me and as shown below...

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When you go to the website for this company, there was no information and the only button you can click on to take you to a different page was the 'Contact' button which just takes you to your emails. This all made me feel a bit uneasy so I had him send us a contract for one of the dates to read through but also show to Meg Carnie for some feedback.

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When speaking to Meg, she pointed out that the promoter was not actually 'More Live' but the company; 'Underground Sound'. She advised that I avoid this company as they are not completely trust worthy and do not pay well and much more.

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Later in the week, I got another message from someone called Gabriela asking a similar question but stating she was from another company. After my interaction with Jamie, I wasn't sure how to feel about this so I did more research and took this back to Meg and everything was looking a bit more legitimate. Therefore, I sent over some of my tracks for her to listen to and see what her thoughts were.

See week nine for more...

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After sending over the tracks, Gabriela invited us to perform at The Finsbury next February which we were all available for so we have booked this in ready for next year and is currently our first gig of 2024!

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This week in lectures we spoke about transferable skills and what our Plan B would be in the future.

What kind of industry or career would be your Plan B?

I would like to work in photography, mostly still in the music scene, especially live music.

From your list of identified good practices, can you transfer any skills? Examples?

The idea of being consistent in what I am doing - social media, promoting photography business.

Having a schedule each week and to do lists - include time to relax.

Being organised and having good time management.

Which of your skills cannot be transferred and why?

Songwriting… It is purely based around music.

Do you think it is important to have a Plan B? Why?

Yes, just in case things do not go as planned in any way shape or form.

Will you actively avoid it or will it be incorporated into your Plan A purposefully, and why?

I will be actively incorporating my Plan B into my life around my Plan A because I do live music photography for the most part so it all links in and I would one day like to incorporate my photography into my band’s image (like JP Cooper).