Berni Armstrong & The Saturday Blues Project

Our Album is taking off!

Hi there,

As some of you may remember, we had a disaster recently when the Mac on which our new album was being recorded was stolen (and the owner had not backed up the recordings). This was a major blow, but we thought we could just pick up from where we left off, with a heavy heart.

Now, it turns out that our Recording Engineer (also our Sax & Keyboards Player - the musical heart of the group) has decided there is no future for the group and has left to pursue more profitable endeavours.

Those of us still committed to the group plan to try and pick up the pieces.... But I have been here before with another band and I wonder if this latest crisis will not be critical for the survival of the group. In short, don't expect news of The Saturday Blues Project anytime soon :(

However, please do keep up with my solo work on my YouTube channel where I post at least one or two new songs a week.

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Thanks again for the interest you have shown in our music,

Stay healthy and as happy as your circumstances allow,

Berni

Hi all,

Xavi the guitarist and I had our first duo gig at a local bar on Friday night. A small but appreciative audience lifted our spirits.

The full band have our first gig in months next Friday at the same venue; so we have been rehearsing like mad for the last two weeks.

As we haven't any further gigs on the horizon - curse you Covid19 - we hope to use some of the summer recording in order to recover the tracks that got lost from our album when Alex (Keyboard & Sax) had his portable mac stolen from University.

With a bit of luck our third album should then be ready to distribute in the fall. It will be our best yet, it has some fabulous songs (modesty be damned) and although the mixes we managed before the theft cannot be altered, I still think it will mark a hiatus for the band.

Hope you and your loved ones have kept healthy during this crisis and if you have lost anyone, please accept our condolences. Life goes on.

Una abraçada (big hug in Catalan)

Berni

Hi there,

Here in Catalunya we are under one of the strictest lockdown regimes in the whole of Europe. While other nations have allowed their citizens out to do exercise once a day, the Spanish Central Government chose to insist on total confinement. We can be heavily fined if caught outside without a valid reason (going for food supplies, etc).

So, this has meant the band hasn't physically met in a couple of months. As a result, our hopes to get back into the studio and try to re-record some of the tracks we lost when our studio technician's Mac was stolen have been dashed by the prohibition on movement.

However, on the plus side, we (and our respective families) are all healthy. And that is the man thing.

So here's hoping you and yours have been minimally affected by the Covid 19 Crisis and that you are all healthy and not climbing up the walls with boredom.

At least one good thing came of the lockdown, I have been following lots of YouTube Tutorials on guitar techniques and I finally think my lead work is coming together. Not that I think I'll ever be as good as Xavi our lead guitarist ????

More news when this is all over,

Keep happy, healthy and musical,

Berni

Hi all,

I have told you before that we were having difficulties recording the new album for our band. This was because our sax and keyboard player (who has been our recording engineer in his studio) has been very busy with other projects and with his studies. He is at College studying music. Also, two members of the band work shifts and so we found it difficult to combine their free time with the times available for recordings. Despite all this, we were finally nearing completion of the album when disaster struck. The recordings were all on the sax player's Portable Macintosh which he was carrying down to his studies in Barcelona and back up to the village where we are based. A few days back, he had his back pack stolen with the Mac inside it. So all our work over the last two years just disappeared with his backpack.

Of the twelve tracks we were mixing down, we have rough edits in WAV format of seven of them which we might still be able to use for the album, but obviously we cannot now correct any errors in those mixes such as one instrument needing toning down or putting up in the mix. The other five songs are gone forever!

So, it is back to square one for us. We are so downhearted that I am worried that the band will not be able to get over this disaster. What a tough way to learn to do back ups, eh?

Hope you are all fine and listening to some great music out there,

All the best

Berni

My band, "The Saturday Blues project" have been getting our new album together for over a year now. It has been slow due to the other commitments of the band members, having a new bassist who needs time to learn all of our material, etc.

We hope to have the album out as soon as we can. Indeed, it was planned as a double album, but it looks like the best idea now would be to break it into two albums and get the songs that are most advanced in the recording process out to our fans.

Meanwhile, Berni is working on a solo album and a great female singer from Belgium is working on an album with quite a few of Berni's songs. It is all under development.

If we have any more concrete news, you'll be the first to know.

Thanks for your interest in our band (or in my solo work)

Cheers,

Berni

Hi all,

We have had a pretty good Spring. Our semi-acoustic, small format, version of the band (no bassist and percussion instead of drums) had a residency at a local Bar/ Restaurant which went down very well indeed and improved our confidence after a long gig drought.

The full band is now missing a bassist as our regular bassist left us due to more fruitful commitments with another band (we wish him well).

Now the Universities have all but closed for Summer, that frees up our sax/keyboard player to finally finish recording our third album, which will be our most rock based yet.

We have a new bassist about to try out with us, but I'll leave news of that till we know what the rest of the band think of his efforts.

Till we have any more news, this is Berni signing off for The Saturday Blues Project.

Hi all,

If you like my singer-songwriter songs, I suggest you check out my Youtube Channel.
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There are plenty of newly written songs to check out since I last sent out a message to subscribers at NM1.

News of our band "The Saturday Blues Project" is not as optimistic. We are still working on the new album. All the material has been written, and we are really pleased with it. However, finding time to actually record the material has proved difficult. This is especially so because our recording engineer, Alex, who is also our saxophonist and keyboard player, is now doing a music degree and so has far less time to dedicate to the album.

However, I hope before summer we will have some good news on that front.

As for gigs and rehearsals - well they have been complicated, not only because of Alex's lack of time but because Marcos and Xavier work shifts at their respective jobs and we seldom seem to be able to find a time when they are both free to attend a rehearsal in the evening (it has to be evening because the rest of us have day jobs.

Oh for the days when bands could make money and we'd not be in this situation, eh?
But as Gilliam Welch sings: "Everything is Free now!" - check that out it's a great song!

Till next time, thanks for your interest in me and the band.

Berni

Hi all,

It has been a busy summer with some very successful gigs and some great new material.

As Autumn draws in we are now back in the recording studio preparing our latest album, which will be our rockiest yet and will contain all the tracks that have gone down a storm at gigs this year.

Once it is recorded, it'll be available as a physical CD or else on Spotify for streaming or Bandcamp for downloading.

Let you all know when that happens,

Una abraçada from Catalunya,

Berni

Hi all of your who expressed an interest in either me or my band The Saturday Blues Project.

We have been fairly idle on Number One Music . But I haven't been idle on Youtube
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And we certainly haven't been idle in rehearsal.

After a recent very successful gig highlighting both our semi-acoustic and our full band sound we have been in the studio working on new material.

Two blues rock "instant classics" are developing and a side project has emerged that is very interesting. The latter is an idea for a Suite of Songs with a very ambient edge about Pyramiden, the abandoned Soviet Town on the Norwegian Island archipelago of Svalbard. So far we have set the scene with the flight of our hero out to the island. We will develop the idea and see how many songs we can get to fit into the concept. It'll be basically a kind of concepts album (how 70s can you get) or else the soundtrack for a film that only exists in our heads.

On top of that we plan to do a rough recording in the studio of the songs for the next album to act as guide track for the actual recording of the album, which we hope will be under way in late Spring.

Thanks for your interest in The Saturday Blues Project.

Cheers,

Berni

On behalf of Xavi, Alex, Ramon and Marcos