USA Tour Merchandise goes into production

We’ve just initiated the production of some brand-new Lightyears tour merchandise for our trip to the East Coast of America next month.

Fans at our US gigs in August will be able to get their hands on one of a new range of LYs t-shirts, along with – for the first time ever – Lightyears guitar picks. So hoorah for that.

Our bevvy of delicious Lightyears goodies is being pressed by the awesome PhillyBandMerch.com, a collective of musically-minded types in Philadelphia committed to supporting and promoting bands travelling to the area. Great guys – look them up on Twitter or Facebook!

Buy tickets for the tour

Our mini-tour of the States next month will take in some rather splendid venues – two we’ve played before, and two we haven’t. The opening and closing dates of the tour are free entry, and tickets for the middle two are on sale now. Click the links below for more details. Looking forward to seeing lots of you folks there!

For full information, visit the GIGS page.

Thursday 15 August: Astoria Park, New York (FREE SHOW!)
Friday 16 August: Jamey’s House Of Music, Philadelphia PA (BUY TICKETS)
Saturday 17 August: Circle Of Friends, Riverton NJ (BUY TICKETS)
Sunday 18 August: Burlington Amphitheatre, Westampton NJ (FREE SHOW!)

Festival season climax – Brownstock 2013!

As pianist in The Lightyears, I’d like to express my gratitude to the organisers of Brownstock 2013 for naming an entire stage after my instrument – and, as a corollary, for booking us to headline said stage on Saturday 31 August (marking, rather conveniently, the climax to our festival season).

We’ll be joining main stage headliners Mark Ronson, The Fratellis, and DJ Yoda in rocking the living heck out of the Essex countryside at an event that has, in its short history, grown faster than Willow Ufgood on a bucket of steroids (…was that in bad taste? I think it was. Ah well, it’s written now. And you can’t just erase blog content, everyone knows that). The Piano Bar has developed a glorious reputation for sofas-and-cider singalong charm over the years, and we’re looking forward to heading up the bill on the Saturday night with a set of acoustically-tinged piano-led pop goodness.

The Piano Has Landed

Unlike most festival stages, the Piano Bar is centred around its very own in-house grand piano, which works out quite well for me in that it throws the emphasis onto my instrument. It’s a well-known fact in rock ‘n’ roll that everyone hates keyboard players, and this is of course the reason that we’re normally shoved to the back of the stage with the guitar amp and the bassist’s mum and left to collect dust while the lead singer hoovers up all the groupies. But not at the Piano Bar, my friends. Oh no. The ivories get their own podium in this marquee.

If you’re planning to attend Brownstock 2013 (and you can buy tickets here), come join us at 7pm on Saturday 31st. Dat shit gon be off da hook.

Just get there early if you want space on the sofa…

LYs to join Mark Ronson at Brownstock 2013

We’ve been booked to headline The Piano Bar at Brownstock 2013 in Chelmsford, Essex, on Saturday 31 August. Main stage headliners include The Fratellis, Mark Ronson and DJ Yoda.

This fast-growing festival began small in 2006 but, in just seven years, has established itself as a national institution, and just this month was nominated for ‘Best Independent Festival’ in the UK by the Association Of Independent Festivals. Past performers have included Athelete, The Futureheads and Labrinth and Grand Master Flash.

To visit the Brownstock Festival website, buy tickets and find out more information, click here.

The Piano Bar @ Brownstock 2013

The Piano Bar is an intimate sofas-and-cider stage based around the presence of a rather glorious Roland Digital Grand Piano. Last year saw performances from a wide variety of (admittedly mainly piano-led) acts, and in fact ex-painter-and-decorator-what-you-know-off-of-the-telly-like Matt Cardle even popped in for a last-minute secret set. In short, anything can happen at the Piano Bar – although it is best to assume it will in some way involve pianos.

We’ll be rounding off proceedings in there on the Saturday night of the festival, so expect all manner of ivory-led shenanigans (by which I mean we shall be tinkling the ivories… not, like, doing weird shit with elephants).

LYs onstage at 7pm. Visit the GIGS page for directions to the festival.

British bands in America: our USA highlights

British bands in America have, if I’m honest, a bit of an easy time of it. The fabulously successful exports of our forebears (chiefly The Beatles, who basically did all the hard work for us) mean we are always greeted with open arms when we land Stateside, and as a result we have many happy memories of our time gigging around the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia area.

We’ve been touring to the United States since 2006 and it’s always been an absolute blast. In celebration of our 2013 USA tour kicking off in one month, here – in no particular order – are our Top Five American Tour highlights:

1. Two gigs, two continents, one day

In 2009 we played a gig in Southampton in the early hours of Sunday morning, then flew to America and played Union Square in New York less than twenty hours later. It was ruddy mental, and possibly one of the greatest days of my life.

Read about this in Chris’ USA tour diary

2. Starbucks, Fifth Avenue

In 2007 we won Best Pop/Rock Act at the UK Indy Awards. At the time we were on tour in the States; specifically, knocking back a round of lattes at Starbucks on Fifth Avenue. We exploded with rapturous joy at the news, and somewhat confused a roomful of New York businessmen. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tony, by way of explanation – ‘We’re British’.

Read about this in Chris’ USA tour diary

3. Signing the WXPN wall of fame

We were lucky enough a few years back to perform live on Philadelphia’s WXPN radio station, and afterwards were invited to autograph their rather splendid wall of fame, leaving our scribbled signatures next-door to the many dazzling musical luminaries who had come before us. Marvellous.

4. Astoria Park, New York

On our last trip to America, we headlined New York’s Astoria Park for the first time. It was a magical evening, set against the backdrop of the East River, and we were lucky enough to play to a 2,000-strong crowd. Can’t wait to get back there in a month’s time!

Read our New York Daily News press coverage

5. Sandwichageddon at Wawa

We don’t really go to America for the music. Not really. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that we do. No, The Lightyears fly to America every year or so to eat ourselves to death on the extraordinary comestible wonders of the Wawa Food Hut. (I’d also like to enter ancillary votes here for Taco Bell and Wendy’s, both of which make me weep with their beauty.)

Read about this in Chris’ USA tour diary

Chris Lightyear

Click here for more details on The Lightyears’ 2013 USA Tour 

Click to buy tickets for Jamey’s House Of Music (Philadelphia) and Riverton Circle Of Friends (NJ). All other shows are free entry.

Astoria Park Concert Series to host LYs…

We’ve played quite a number of gigs in New York over the years, but the Astoria Park Concert Series in 2010 was a real highlight.

We rocked up at the venue not knowing quite what to expect. It was our first time performing in Astoria, so we had no idea what kind of audience would turn up. It was a beautiful warm night, primed for live music, and the setting was quite spectacular. The iconic bridges, the trees, the sun setting over the East River – glorious.

And then an amazing thing happened. Out of nowhere, two thousand people flooded in. The good people of Astoria, ranging in age from 3 to about 73, came in their hundreds to perch on the hill and watch us rattle through a varied set of Lightyears originals and a few high-energy covers. We were joined onstage that night by a couple of special guests – NYC councillor Peter Vallone Jr, who hopped on the bass guitar for a spirited rendition of The Monkees’ I’m A Believer, and our good friend Ant Law, a superb jazz guitarist from the UK who was in town with the touring Michael Jackson musical Thriller.

A rambunctious time was had by all, and afterwards we were overwhelmed (as we always are in the States) by the enthusiasm of the music fans who came up to speak to us. A few days later the New York Daily News ran a double-page feature on the gig – take a look here.

In light of all this, you won’t be surprised to hear that we’ve been itching to get back. We’ve been busy having babies, completing doctorates and writing novels since 2010 so it’s taken a little longer than we’d planned, but on Thursday 15 August we will be kicking off our 2013 American Tour with another headline show at Astoria Park. Entry is free, and the show starts at 7.30pm. You can find more details on our GIGS page.

Hope to see some of you there. I myself plan to pack my entire body in ice in a probably futile attempt at combatting the insane heat you folks have out there. It’s a little too much for our pasty British constitutions, I’m afraid…

Chris Lightyear

The LYs return to Burlington Amphitheater…

Burlington Amphitheater in Westampton, New Jersey, is one of our favourite places to play in America.

We have an interesting history there. Our first booking was in July 2009, when we were scheduled to perform outside in the Amphitheater – coinciding, as it happened, with one of New Jersey’s famous mid-summer thunderstorms. The night before, when the storm was predicted, our US tour manager Jon warned us that if the clouds did open there was no way we’d be performing outside. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this was a little over-dramatic – I mean, we’ve played at a wet Glastonbury several times, and rain didn’t stop play there (I remember one year when the water was gushing into the tent and cascading onto my piano). Last year, when we headlined the Queen’s Jubilee gig in Goring, it rained all day, and people still turned up in their hundreds with thermos flasks, waterproofs and umbrellas.

Thing is, I thought all that before I’d seen American rain. GEE WHIZZ. As I explain in the video below (taken from the Burlington gig in question, in which we were moved inside to the adjacent library), American rain is nothing like the tepid drizzle we’re used to in England. It’s movie blockbuster rain, and it means to destroy you. It leaves golfball-sized dents in cars, breaches riverbanks and flattens livestock.

And so we were moved inside to the library, which still proved a wonderful experience and in fact acted as a natural precursor to our show at London’s Westminster Library earlier this year (libraries are unquestionably the new rock ‘n’ roll). Then, on our 2010 American Tour, the weather held and we were lucky enough to finally perform outside, once again to a fantastic sold-out crowd. Here’s hoping for the same when we return to Burlington Amphitheater next month, marking both our third performance there and the end of our 2013 US Tour. Looking forward to seeing lots of our friends and fans from the area – should be a very special night.

But if it rains again, I will be hiding under a table.

*Our show at Burlington on Sunday 18 August is FREE entry and open to all ages. Visit the GIGS page for more info, or click here for the official listing.*