Sylvia @ We Are Birmingham

Sounds Friendly’s next free gig at Birmingham’s finest retail destination features new local musical collective Sylvia. With beautiful melodies and polished harmonies they perform a special acoustic set of material from their debut ep Synge from 6-7pm on Friday 6 May.

Free gig tonight 6-7pm

Radio 2 Young Folk Award Nominees Jack Mcneill and Charlie Heys will be performing a chiiled out set of beautifully-crafted pure folk on guitar, vocals and fiddle at 6-7pm for free at the We Are Birmingham Shop.

‘Emotionally-charged, intelligent lyrics, a deftly melodic guitar style and empathic fiddle accompaniment’ – Radio 2 Young Folk Awards Final

David Garside at We Are Birmingham

In the latest in our series of free gigs David Garside wil perfom on Friday 5th March at 6-7pm in the We Are Birmingham shop. Those of you who caught our gigs at the old Created in Birmingham Store will remember David’s enjoyable set last year, so good we just had to have him back to perform in the sparkly new We Are Birmingham store.

Resolutely un-pigeonhole-able, singer-songwriter David’s last album on Frizz Records featured melodic, reflective tunes hovering somewhere between pop and rock . Here he plays the pick of them, plus some new material from his forthcoming album, with a guest appearance from Lydia Glanville on percussion. myspace.com/davidgarside

Smooth grooves at We Are Birmingham

 If you missed Route 49′s fantastic free gig at We Are Birmingham on Friday night, there are a couple of little videos and some great photos on Flickr , so check out what you missed (thanks to Stanley Newton). Thanks also go to Route 49 for a great set, especially as the pianist got his car stuck in the car park after the gig and ended up paying ££ to get it out!

We’re back at We Are Birmingham with another great gig on Friday 4 March, 6-7pm, details available shortly, plus we’ve got some awesome folky acts in April and May, so make sure you ‘like’ us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop.

Acoustic funk & soul @ We Are Bham

Kick your Friday evening off in style between 6 and 7pm on Feb 4th  at We Are Birmingham with an unplugged set of old school funk and soul classics plus a sprinkling of recent hits, all given a chilled out ‘live lounge’ twist. Route 49 features some of the Midlands’ most talented jazz, funk and soul musicians and the super-smooth voice of Rochelle Balach, whose sound as been likened to the stunning Erykah Badu.

FREE entry – Friday 4th Feb 6-7pm @ We Are Bham

Friday’s We Are Birmingham Gig Cancelled

Due to unforseen circumstances sadly there is no gig at the We Are Birmingham shop this Friday (7th December). However, we are in the finalising the performers for the gigs in February, March and April which will be announced very soon so keep an eye on this blog, or keep in touch via twitter and facebook for all the updates.

WaB series launches with a singalong

A big thank you to everyone who came down to the first gig of our new free series at the We Are Birmingham shop in the city centre. KTB got things off to a great start, and had the audience in the palm of her hand. She even persuaded everyone into a little singalong session at the end!

More info about KTB is available from her website and there are plenty of tunes to keep you going on her Myspace if you didn’t manage to pick up one of the free CDs at the gig.

More free music is coming your way at the shop from 6-7pm on the first Friday in January (7th), and then the first Friday of every month after that, Details will be posted here and on Twitter/Facebook soon so follow/befriend us to keep up to date.

We are back at We Are Birmingham

KTB

Friday 3rd December is going to be a good day. Why? And how do we know that?

Well, on your daily post-work trudge to the station/bus-stop/car park, your feet will be diverted to the warm and dry We Are Birmingham shop at the end of the High St for a delightful free gig from singer KTB. Plus it’s only 3 weeks before Christmas, so you can pick up a few one-of-a-kind Christmas presents while you’re there!

KTB (aka Katy Bennett, and one-quarter of folksters Little Sister) is a fine sonsgmith, singer and guitarist based in Birmingham. With no less than three albums under her belt, expect an hour-long acoustic treat from 6pm – 7pm.

“A sophisticated mix of folk, jazz, pop and rustica.” 
The INDEPENDENT

This is the first gig of our new monthly series at the shop, where we’ll bring you the best musical talent covering acoustic, folk, indie, pop, and jazz and everything inbetween, all for FREE from 6-7pm on the first Friday of the month. There will be free live music on at the shop every Friday evening from a range of other promoters, so keep up with what else is going on here.

To summarise:

KTB
Live at the We Are Birmingham shop,
Dale End, Birmingham City Centre
FRIDAY 3 DECEMBER, 6pm – 7pm
Freeeeeeeee

(News on our shop gigs from January onwards to follow soon. Stay in touch on Facebook.)

See you on 3rd,
SF x

Exciting times…

The 'old' Created in Birmingham shop

Firstly, here’s a little something awesome to listen to while you read, from champion French turntablists C2C: A Tribute to Mr Armstrong

Now to the important stuff. We recently had a rather interesting catch-up with the people of We Are Birmingham about their shop, which is a reincarnation of the Created in Birmingham pop-up shop that was open in Birmingham’s Bullring for a few months earlier this year. They have been working away to get their new shop off the ground and now finally have the keys to a huuuge unit at the end of the High Street (by Dorothy Perkins). Having curated a lovely mini-series of free acoustic gigs in their previous shop, we’re VERY excited to be doing the same again in their shiny new shop, plus we have several more exciting projects with them in the pipeline.  This time round the acoustic gigs are going to be monthly but there will be plenty of other events going on in the shop, which is nicely rounded up in their blog post (including a lovely photo of our gig from N.O.M.A.D last time round). More details on our plans to follow shortly (ooh and if you want a gig, don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’re very friendly). 

Follow us on Twitter for info on our gigs and lots of interesting music-related news (see right for a little sample), or ’like’ us on Facebook if you’re not a Twitter person…if you’re not a Facebook person you could always click RSS on this page for email updates when we post on here. Phew, think I’ve covered all bases there?…

Got sore feet? We sure do…

If you came down to the Sugarfoot Stomp last night and checked out the incredible Ed Puddick Dance Band, we expect you danced the night away and have sore feet (and probably a sore head) today. If you did, thanks for coming – it was brilliant to see such a packed room with more than a few people trying out their swing dance moves at the front! The band seemed to have a great night as well, and obviously a massive thanks also goes to the ladies of the Sugarfoot Stomp who were spinning vintage classics until the early hours.

If you were there last night, let us know what you thought via our Facebook page – become a fan for news of what else we’re up to. You can also follow us on Twitter, @soundsfriendly.

PS -check us out in this week’s Birmingham Post (p5 of the Review section) and on the Jazz Breakfast blog: ‘new kids on the block for stylish musical promotion in the West Midlands’, yup, that’s us!