Warwick Arts Centre: 29 May 08.
An auditorium to die for - and keenly-priced tickets.
Excellent set & AA+ performance - although has AA lost the sax & Miles his voice (no air-miles?)?
But an audience of 50? (number, not age!). Where was everybody? Take it from me AA are soooo good live. Next year (if the accountant deems it worth AA making the trip to the Midlands) try some better advance publicity & trailing. Otherwise it's all back to mine for a jammin' session.
West Midlands (& I am an expat Brummie) I'm ashamed of you.

well, that's a shame for the fans in the UK. One of the reasons why the fans were asked to turn out for the shows was because the promoters weren't doing much publicity - or perhaps didn't see the need to do much publicity.

We see it here, too. There was a very nice jazz festival last year - it was the first year for the fest. A couple of the boarders (not mentioning your names ) were there, along with long time fans from the area. In concept, the festival was a great idea - and the sound and the lighting were fantastic.

But there weren't that many people who attended just to attend. The ticket price was high and the place just wasn't easily accessible. While there was much community support & involvement, there wasn't much community attendance. It could have been because it was August - but I've seen a lot of 1st year festivals - it takes time to build up that core fan base. In the meantime, there are many empty seats.... I don't know if that festival will come back this year as there were more bills than incoming cash flow.

Ok here's my two cents worth . Firstly the theatre is part of the Warwick University campus and is there to teach students stagecraft and sound engineering . It provides an eclectic programme of performers mainly for the students and probably only advertises on campus . Despite the fact that our kind of jazz and students is not a great mix musically the folks who run the theatre like us and we like them . Consequently we continue to play there knowing our audience will be small although it was actually 104 ( I know i counted) . Aside from Warwick all the other British dates we played either sold out or proved to be our best yet audience total so in general we were very pleased with the run.We havent had a guest sax player for a couple of years - we like being a " guitar" band.
Stewart

Hello Kat, Stewart, the band and all AA lovers,
I keep checking the tour list for a city that will work for me. I have "This Way" permanently installed in my car CD player. I still love "Sounds Of St. Lucia" and am in DEEP need for my live AA fix. Sure would be nice to see you all again.

Your friendly photographer,
Rick

Rick...

There are a bunch of dates around New York & Boston next week..... maybe, you can make it?

We miss you and your photos!!

Just a thought on the timing of this run of UK shows in late May. I haven't checked previous years, but this year coincided with school holidays in many places. That means those of us with children might be otherwise engaged - we were away on holiday and couldn't make any of the dates. Perhaps a couple of weeks earlier or later might make a difference.

Having said that, we did get to the Warwick show last year, which was a brilliant performance played to a hall less than half full.

As has been said before, once any music fan hears or sees AA they will be hooked for life. All we need to do is get the band heard by more people and those venues will be sold out. I am a relatively new convert to AA so haven't followed what has gone before, but I cannot understand why they aren't more popular over here. The Great British public just don't know what they are missing.

Do we need to bombard Terry Wogan or Jonathan Ross with requests to play AA tracks on their BBC radio shows? Has the band ever appeared on Later with Jules Holland? He, and his audience, would surely appreciate the song writing and musicianship of Acoustic Alchemy.

Does anyone have any other ideas for raising the profile of AA in the UK?