WinterKids Chrismukkah Message

Merry Christmas and happy Chunukkah!

Ok, some of you don't mind reading massive chunks of writing. Others probably can't stand it.

I'm about to write alot, so as its Chrismukkah, throughout this blog are some 'Chrismukkah presents', ie - I have uploaded some music that (apart from the last track) before this day has never been played or heard in public. Each song will have a story behind it.

2008

2008 has been a year of development for WinterKids. For much of the year we have locked ourselves away in ‘Little House’ (the name of our rehearsal space in Peaslake) writing music.

There has been the occasional trip to Germany and Switzerland where we have played some exciting shows to amazing fans and shared some interesting experiences - one that springs to mind is climbing to the top of a Swiss mountain in a cable car just after playing a gig…we befriended a goat who happened to live at the peak of the mountain...

...but for the most part we have been creating, writing, recording, listening back, scrapping, re-writing, experimenting and re-recording music.

We have developed as musicians and developed as people.

Earlier this year we revealed that the release of a new EP would be on the horizon. Due to changes behind the scenes on the management front, the EP (for now) will not be released....HOWEVER, the management issues have been resolved and 2009 will be a big year...

Here is the first piece of music. This is a track that was written earlier this year and was going to feature on the unreleased EP. It is called 'Forget About The Future'. Hope you like...



2009

The TV Show

With the news of new management, has come a unique and fun opportunity for the band - we are currently working with the TV producer who was behind Live & Kicking (our favourite programme as children), developing a new TV show. The show has a similar format to TFI Friday, Big Breakfast and Later with Jools Holland.

It will be shot in our rehearsal studio 'Little House' and there will be a live studio audience every week with celebrity guests, art and fashion slots as well as some hilarious sketches by our comedian friend Jay Foreman.

We actually live in Little House and of course will write all the music for the show as well as being the 'house band'....similar to that of '4 Poofs and the Piano'....but in a slightly straighter way!

As soon as this is aired, we will let you know. Meanwhile, if you'd like to be a member of the studio audience, please email us here - info@winterkidsmusic.com or send us a message.


Ok, time for another piece of music. This was written by Hannah and was originally going to be put on our first album 'Memoirs'. We didn't have time to master it in the end, so this is an un mastered, un mixed version. It is called 'Lavender Hill' -



The New Album

The new album has been written.

Now all we have to do is work out how to pay for it to be recorded....

We have been contacted by some top top producers who have all had top ten albums expressing a big interest in producing the new album, however, the one thing holding us back at the moment is lack of funds.

The first album was funded through our club night 'Indie-GOGO', however, due to time constraints, this club night no longer exists so the plan for album number two will have to be slightly different.

Do we approach labels? Do we approach investors? Or do we think of something else inventive to be able to fund the record ourselves?

This is something we'll be working out with our new management in the new year.

Meanwhile, with the new TV show as well as the hard work put into WinterKids to date, we are hopefully in a good position to pursue any of the above avenues!

Song number three is a track taken from our first album Memoirs, so some of you may have heard it, others won't of. The track was written about a meeting that never took place between an old girlfriend of mine. It is called 'Somebody Elses Clothes'.



Touring

Once we we plan out our year release wise, we shall be back on the road again.

Meanwhile, we will be showcasing songs from the new album in a number of low key gigs at the start of the year.

Here are the details for the first show of the year -

- The Lexington in London
- 22nd January, 8pm
- Nearest tube is Angel
- Tickets - To be placed on the cheap ticket list, please myspace message your name(s), or email us here - info@winterkidsmusic.com


Blog

Next year, we plan on changing the format of the blog so that it comes to you on a monthly basis. We tried weekly, but it is really tricky to keep ahead of the game. So there will be one regular monthly update as well as other random blogs of we fancy posting something.


Finally, a big thank you for listening to our music, going to our shows and reading our blogs.

We can't wait to share the new album with you and we wish you all the best for the new year!

Time to squeeze in some turkey sandwiches

James
x

Gig at the British Library

Hello!

We have a very last minute gig that we are playing on the 7th ..this Sunday)! It's a very unusual gig - we have been asked to play at the British Library to celebrate 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations!  

There will be stalls, fun workshops, bands and other interesting and unique acts performing on stage - including The Zimmers!!. (The restaurant will also be offering a traditional Sunday Roast from 12:00, yummy!)

The event is free and all ages are welcome. It will be running from 1-5pm. We hope to see you there!

Click on the link below to see more info.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/events/december.html

 

TV OPPORTUNITY

 
Exciting news is WinterKids will be involved in a new TV programme next year.  The show will have a live audience, so we'll keep you posted on that, meanwhile, heres an opportunity for any budding TV hosts -
 
The producer is currently looking for a male and female host to front the show.  They must be between (or at least look between) the ages of 18-28.  If you are interested, or if you know any one who might be interested in applying, please email through your contact details / CV or whatever you'd like to send with a photo to  info@winterkidsmusic.com - we shall then forward these over to the producer.  The show will be filmed in Surrey, so ideally we are looking for someone based in the south.
 
Have a good day:)

Hannah x 
 

Toms Banjo

Hiya Folks

Tom received a phone call last week from BBC Radio Berkshire.

The DJs were looking for a banjo player for a segment in their show. Tom gives banjo lessons, so they obviously found Toms contact details in an advert somewhere and gave him a call to see if he would participate in the show.

Tom was more than happy to...

We thought the conversation was quite funny, so we created this video type thing -





Hope you like!

Meanwhile, for those of you who live in London, we shall be playing at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen this Sunday 23rd November.

We'll be on stage from 9pm.

If you'd like to be on the cheap ticket list (£4 instead of £7), please write a message to us with your full name and the names of your friends.

Here is the flyer for the show -

Hope to see you on Sunday

Regards

WinterKids

x

New Songs

We have added 'Another Break' and 'Knock Down All The Houses' to our myspace player. Hope you like..


Meanwhile, more gigs added and other shows in Europe to follow soon


Have a good weekend

WinterKids
x

Gigs!

Hi folks,

Just a quick one this week to let you know that from now until the end of the year, we will be playing a few low key shows.

Our set will consist of a mixture between old and new songs.

Check the gig listing and hopefully see you at one or two of the shows.

Its snowing in Peaslake so we're going out to make a snowman.

WinterKids x

B**G

Bonjour, je m'appelle Connie.

I became friends with WinterKids after meeting James at their Indie Go Go club night in Guildford a couple of years ago. My services to the band include joining them on their legendary tours to Germany, where in the evenings I am found perched on the merch stand, selling t shirts and vinyl to the fans over there.

This week I am going to guest blog, providing you with coverage on the exciting events of Hannah's birthday suprise.

On October 20th Hannah will be 21, so James orgainsed a night out last Thursday with all of her friends to celebrate.

The band drove up to London in Big Blue, keeping secrets about what she would be doing that evening and that all of her friends would soon be gathered in East London to suprise her. After meeting in the Salmon & Ball pub, we walked down to the Working Men's Club, a cosy retro place in Bethnal Green. Hannah's a fan of Dita Von Teese, so James booked us three tables at the Whisky & Ginger Burlesque Show.


We arrived, got stamped and got drinks, then settled ourselves round to wait for the show. Whisky & Ginger was the drink of the night, along with the champagne supplied by James.

The show had a hilairious host and over the next few hours we saw burlesque performances from secretaries, a school boy, fifties pin up girls, a doctor and his brother and a sparkly lupine creature. The show was full of feathers, glitter and bubbles with plenty of falling skirts and bra straps. The boys loved it, and as for the girls, well, we're now researching burlesque lessons.

Towards the end, Hannah was called up to the stage where she was seranaded by the host then presented with a birthday present from the club, a classic pair of red, sequined nipple tassles.

For afters, we stopped at the Brick Lane Beigel Bakery before heading up to a little pub in Whitechapel. A few drinks later, we all parted ways, and I joined the band on the satisfied, sleepy journey back inBig Blue to Little House.


The Flyer -


Hannah shocked at her suprise party -

Inside the club -

A more than lucky Chris, surrounded by Hannah and her friends -

Hannah being called on stage for everyone to sing happy birthday to -

Hannah is presented with her gift -

Hannah trying on her gift -

Lil Miss Chevious -

Legs Malone -

The climax of the evening, all dancers on stage at once -

New Video

First off, here is the link to all of our new photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/winterkids/


A month or so ago one of our friends shot a music video for us.

We wanted to give the video a DIY feel so we managed to cut costs down to just £300. We shot the video in the Peaslake Village Hall and covered the place in brown paper ; all of the coloured boxes you see in the video were hand painted using our marvolous artistic skills.

The video was based around the artwork for the Another Break single -

To see the video in full quality, please go here -

http://web.mac.com/blakeclaridge/site/winterkidsanotherbreakpromo.html

Otherwise, you can check the video out on youtube here -

Hope you enjoy.

Kids

x

Photos...

sorry, we missed posting a blog last week...we kinda went on a last min holiday...!!!

so here is our sorry ''gift''. All our fav photos from the photoshoot....

hope you like them

Kids
x

p.s - we'll post up a link next week if you want to see larger sizes of the photos

Hectic

Hello Everyone

Sorry for the lateness in this blog.  The weekend was a hectec one.  Hannah and Chris are getting married early next year, so we have been sorting out invitations.  

Wedding invitations are really expensive apparently, so Hannah decided it would be a good idea to hand make them all.  Nice idea...but when each invite is specially wrapped in a hand made gift box containing all sorts of random bits (like french sweets, hand made heart cushions stuffed with lavender, luggage tags etc etc) and all of which 'HAD' to be perfectly positioned, it can take a bit of time to put together.  So there we were, sitting around a table all weekend putting together wedding invitations.

If this music thing doesn't work out, I think we'll start a wedding invitation business...

(btw, they are getting married in france, hence the reference to french sweets and luggage tags)

Talking of the wedding, i've stupidly volunteered to bake the wedding cake.  Ok, embarrassingly my one and only 'A' at GCSE exams in school was in cooking, but I think I'm probably going to fuck up.  Ah well. 

(this is the worlds largest wedding cake.  that could be fun - i'll try beat the record...)

Last Wednesday night we had some photos taken by a talented up and coming photographer called Ed Schofield (you can see some of his work here - www.flickr.com/photos/edschofield)

Here is a glimpse of a few promo shots he took for us...we'll add the rest of the photos in a week or so -

More from us soon

James

x

Something to do...

Hi its Chris here!

I thought I'd give you something to do for the weekend just in case you have time to kill (and your hungry)...

You may have seen on our video blogs that I love cooking. And eating.
A while ago James and I got very addicted to a particular recipe for peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. We made these cookies 2-3 times a week. It turned into an obsession. We had to go cold turkey for 2 weeks to stop ourselves from exploding.
Heres how to make the BEST EVER peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies in the world.


Ingredients
½ cup butter or margarine softened
¾ cup sugar
1/3 cup smooth Peanut Butter
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1-¼ cups plain flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup Cadburys Bourneville Dark Chocolate, broken into chunks

Directions
1. Heat oven to 350 F
2. Beat butter, sugar and peanut butter in medium bowl until creamy. Add egg and vanilla, beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt, add to butter mixture, blending well. Stir in dark chocolate chunks. Drop rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 12-14 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet. Remove to wire rack, cool completely or serve warm with ice cream.


Hope you enjoy them!
Chris

In an ideal world...

Good evening!

Thank you for all the entries we've had in our Fanzine competition.

A few weeks back we asked you to complete the following sentence -

'(In an ideal world)I would like to say cheerio to...'

We can't print all of them in the Fanzine, so we thought it would be cool to post a whole load of our favourite answers so you can see exactly what fellow readers would like to say 'cheerio to'...

Gary Hetherington, Camberley

"robert mugabe, inequality, english rain, mosquito's and flies. flies because they have to be the dumbest creatures on this planet. why is it that when you open a window they always fly up? 'fly down stupid!' "

Niomi, Maidenhead

"wrinkled shirts, sour milk, John Lennon, & dusty Carpets"

Aarron, Reading

"My grandparents"

Sam Foreman, Brighton

"Watercress, The Queen, Aids & Flatulence"

Tamar Levi, London

"cheerio to the grim dirge of the deranged in Morrisons at 16.00 on a Wednesday. "

Neil Amon

"Cheerio to gangs of drunk chavs on buses with loud garage music playing off their mobile phones... the nanny state... and that annoying bint who plays Stacey in Eastenders."

Becki Burrows, London

"losers..users, substance abusers....and george bush."

Jody Faulkner, London

"Well, the only thing that springs to mind that I feel strongly about is injustice...did I say injustice? I meant coriander...this evil substance added to otherwise delicious food renders it inedible. Lately it seems to have become the fashion to insert this vile plant into all dishes as a final touch...more like the kiss of death in my book...coriander you murderer, you've ruined my burrito."

Matty Harris, Newcastle

"cheerio to wasps ruining picnics......their getting bigger as well"

Joni Kähkönen, Finland

"(In an ideal world) I would like to say cheerio to wars and unnecessary violence, 'cos if we even could get rid of those things the world would be so much better place to be in and maybe we all could just hold hands and sing about nice things, like birds, rainbows and WinterKids."

Tom Durrent, Woking

"Holly Willoughby when I leave for work in the morning...?"

We'll notify those of you who will get their answers printed in the fanzines...meanwhile, if anyone else can think of any others, feel free to message them over. We did say closing time is today, but the fanzines havent been printed yet, so theres still a bit of time to get a few more answers in!!!

Enjoy the weekend

Kids

x

A Fish Called Ponder

Hello everyone, Brad here!

This week I have been pondering to myself.

There are a number of deep and philosophical questions I wanted answered, so I felt compelled enough to do some research and share with you what I have found.

My first ponder

Being in WinterKids, I was thinking about the birth of the CD. I wondered what the first song ever pressed onto this format was.

The answer: The first CD ever pressed was in the US, and it was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

My second ponder

I was walking through town the other day and happened to notice a Motorola advertisement.

I thought to myself ‘I wonder where they got that name from’.

The answer: The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At the time, the most known record player on the market was called the 'Victrola'...so they called themselves Motorola!

My third ponder

For those of you who aren't aware, Chris (drummer) and Hannah (organ/vocals) are going to be getting married next year. This got me thinking about he word ‘honeymoon’.

What does it actually mean?

The answer: It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink.

Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the "honeymoon".

(Some mead)

My fourth ponder

When touring in Germany a couple of weeks ago with the band, I noticed several statue’s of soldiers on horses in parks.

One horse had both legs in the air, whereas another had just one leg in the air. This made me think ‘do the legs mean anything?'

The answer: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

(This soldier died as a result of wounds received in battle)

My fifth and final ponder
Birthdays; whenever its someone’s birthday, they usually receive a rendition of the classic ‘happy birthday’ song from friends and family.

Well this got me thinking ‘does that song have a copyright or is it owned by the public?’

The answer: The company, Warner Communications actually paid $28 million for the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday".

Thanks for reading my ponders. If you have anything you'd like answered, feel free to write to me, and I'll do my upmost to find out the answers.

Btw, thank you everyone for your fanzine entries! We've had some real gems. There is still time to place an entry, so read the last blog for more info! (comp closes next Friday)

Cya soon

Brad

x