Today it’s Good Friday, 25th March 2016. Outside, it feels like a summers day, the first of the year! Spirits are high as we’ve been looking forward today for many months now, ever since we were invited back to perform at The Beacon Theatre, in Wantage following our performance last year. You may have spotted our posters, or heard us shouting out about our event (that is until all of the tickets SOLD OUT!). Crikey we were really looking forward to this evening.
The day began in the garden, with our lovely nephew, and our new biggest fan, Ben. Here he is with his poster, all ready for the show this evening.
My family had kindly ventured down from ‘The North’ to watch our show and spend a couple of days at Zoots HQ. We were really grateful for their support and help in the lead up to our first public show of the year.
Dottie (our niece) was assigned the job of official roadie and head of merchandise, tasked with keeping the peace, doing what needed to be done, overseeing the merchandise set up and generally being there for everything we needed! She was a total super star, every band needs a Dottie!
Here we are arriving to set up at The Beacon…it was great to be back!
We loaded our equipment in. George, Tom and the team from JT Stage productions we’re supplying the PA and lighting for us. George would be the sound engineer for the evening, mixing and tweaking throughout our show to ensure it sounded brilliant. We’d had the pleasure of working with George last year, so we knew it was going to be great.
Lorna from The Beacon Theatre had been really helpful in the lead up the the show, spending a lot of time publicising the event locally, and keeping me up to date with information and how many tickets we had left. She was really helpful and patient, putting up with my countless emails.
Set up and soundcheck went smoothly, the room looked brilliant.
We were excited to be selling our T-shirts for the very first time!
The t-shirts were a huge hit! Thank you to Monster Press for doing a great job with the printing (#keepingitlocal)! It was so great to see so many people in the crowd wearing them! If you would like on too, please do get in touch. We’ve had requests for some children (and baby grow) sizes so please do let us know if you’d like one of these ordering!
Big thank you to Emily L, Tommy, Dottie, Sarah and Emily S. every who helped man the stall!
Before we knew it, it was time for the show!
We got changed into our sixties outfits. I love wearing the sixties style dress and iconic white boots! Jamie’s 12 string Danelectro guitar was great, really emulating the sounds of the sixties. Lead Guitarist Ben Jones’ handmade Victory amp sounded wonderfully clean as Ben recreated the sounds of the sixties with his Fender Stratocaster Deluxe guitar. Dan completed our 60’s look and sound with his Höfner Beatles Bass whilst drummer Simon Small tied it all together with his confident performance and solid harmonies, his drum solo on ‘Wipeout‘ had jaws dropping! We crammed in as many songs as we could in to our first 60 minute set. It was overwhelming coming out on stage and seeing so many people filling the room. The team at the Beacon even had to put out extra chairs and tables, there were so many people who’d come to see us!!
We also loved spotting the signs in the crowd, they were great fun!
Lead guitarist Ben Jones had arranged for one of his guitar students, 12 year old Sam, to join us on stage for a very special performance of ‘Yesterday‘. Sam confidently took to the stage, looking very smart in his suit and played the song beautifully. Everyone was singing along. Hard to believe he’s only 12!! 😀
If you’re thinking about taking up the guitar, get in touch with our guitarist Ben. Based in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, he’s been teaching for over 10 years, to students of all ages ranging from beginners to advanced levels.
We had a short break set one and went out to meet some of the guests. It wasn’t long until set two, where Dan showed off his double bass, and we had a great time performing some of our favourite songs of the sixties.
Set two was brilliant. The dance-floor was full from start to finish! The atmosphere was just brilliant.
Big shout out to Jo who got up on stage as an honorary Zoot, on her 50th birthday!
Thank you so much to everyone who came to watch our Zoots show.
Thank you to the team at The Beacon. Dave, George, Lorna, Tom, Libby, Steven, Jo, Matt, Amy, Kieran, Sarah and anyone we’ve missed! We’re really looking forward to performing at the Beacon again very soon.
Special huge thank you to Elouise, Dottie, Tim and Emily for documenting the evening for us. Thank you to Sam for joining us on stage. And a huge thank you to you (yes you, you know who you are) for coming to watch us. It meant to much to all of us to see you all there, same time next year?
We’d really love to hear your thoughts and see your photos and videos! Please do leave your comments below.
Love from,
The Zoots – Harriet, Jamie, Ben, Simon & Dan
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
See our photos on Instagram
