THERE COMES a point in every band's career when A&R fixations calm down (too many unreturned phonecalls can do that to you!) and you grow weary of playing to the same group of friends (and friends of friends) every week.
Different bands cope in different ways. Some don't cope at all. But Dublin ska band Freres Jackman & the International Elevators took the proverbial (and clichéd!) bull by the horns and released their debut album on independent label Mickey Rourkes Fridge and have since done ten days of whirlwind gigging on the Shetland Islands.
The Shetland Islands?! That's what I said too.
A friend of a friend, you see, has a brother who's a promoter in the Shetlands, and referred the Brothers Jackman and their Multi-Cultural Lift to him.
"Around the same time," says vocalist/bongo player Pat Jackman, "we were going to do a gig on the Isle Of Man, and probably still will. We were hoping to get the Isle of Wight and some others so we could do an 'Avoid England Tour'."
"Everybody on the islands is music mad," Pat says, "and there's loads of money there, so they basically get this committee who have a barn in a field, sort of a community centre, to pay for the expense of bringing the band over. The band do a free gig to cover that expense and then do a couple of more to make a profit so that everybody gets a slice."
Freres Jackman were worried when only about thirty people showed up for their first gig but a few hundred snuck in free the next night in addition to - prepare yourselves -eight hundred paying customers.
"It was well strange," says Pat. "You'd be walking around the town and seeing people wearing Freres Jackman t-shirts and you'd be thinking 'Pop Star! Pop Star!' "
COALS TO NEWCASTLE
The band earned up to fifteen hundred quid for some of the gigs and admit to having spent most of it on food, drink and transporting their entourage over with them. Still, they plan on returning and are helping the same promoter to organize an eight band Irish festival over there, hopefully around Christmas. Interested bands can contact the band through ICE in Temple Bar (6714996).
But be warned!
"If you're rubbish they'll come up and drag you off," says Matt, or was it Mark? - from here on everyone on my tape sounds like they're practising backwards masking.
Anyway, fortunately for Freres Jackman, they had quite the opposite experience.
"In fact, at one of the gigs they threatened to beat us up if we came offstage!" adds keyboardist Mark Penny.
Wonderful reception aside, the tour did the band good.
"It did a lot for us as a five-piece," says Mark. "We learned a lot together."
"Organizationally we also learned a lot," adds vocalist/guitarist Martin Jackman, "through having to mobilize a large group of people and a certain amount of equipment and deal with all the administrative problems that that entails. It was very good from that point of view - just seeing where money goes and how money is spent because we'd never had that amount of money passing through. In that sense it's wised us up to a lot of things. We'll be better prepared now when we go to England."
The band highly recommend getting out there and playing to new audiences as soon as its practically and financially viable. "It's expensive to gig around the country," says bassist Matt Houlihan, "and it's impractical for some people to get away before they know they can do the business...
"...or can afford to loose money," Pat adds.
"But it's very important that people play to new audiences even if it's not easy," Matt concludes.
The band hope to find more new audiences in England soon. "We know it's like bringing coals to Newcastle bringing ska music to England," says Pat, "but the English people we know seem to be pretty into it."
"When we did the album it was bigger than what we were capable of at the time," says Martin, "we want to try and get something big again, something beyond our scope, like going to England or maybe getting into a film."
"We get very bored very quickly," says Pat, "and if we find ourselves getting into a rut we get really pissed off."
"We started out with a blueprint of what we want to be, what we know we're capable of," Martin concludes, "and are always working toward that."