manhattan

New free download at Project Lightyears

22 January 2013

project lightyearsLord be praised*, it’s a miracle – we’ve passed 100,000 views at www.ProjectLightyears.com… which means you lot get a juicy free download all to yourselves.

Thanks to everyone for spreading the word so ferociously since we launched – in return we’d like you, your family and everyone you’ve ever met to have a free copy of our previously unreleased Manhattan version of “Emily”, recorded in New York in a tiny studio while Chinatown buzzed around us.

Visit Project Lightyears and follow the instructions therein to nab your free track.

*The Vatican are yet to recognise this as an official miracle, which is a bit mean.

Our Top Three Worst Gigs… named and shamed.

18 September 2012

Killers frontman Brandon Flowers recently commented in an interview that his band had a ‘chip on their shoulder’ when they were starting out, adding that he didn’t miss their days of playing small venues to tiny crowds.
To be honest, the news that a rockstar prefers stadium gigs in front of screaming fans over playing to no-one in the fetid back-room of a pub in ____ isn’t overly surprising – but in a funny kind of way it’s always nice to hear a global super-power like The Killers admitting that, even for them, there was a period of grinding, thankless drudgery where, at least at first, nobody really appeared to like them very much.
If I was ever invited onto a reverse version of Desert Island Discs and asked to list The Lightyears’ Three Worst Gigs Of All Time, I think I could answer pretty quickly. In reverse order…
STARBUCKS COFFEE HOUSE, NEW YORK (2007)
3) I should start by saying that I actually quite enjoyed this gig, but Tony hated it SO much that there was enough resentment hanging around to seriously bump up the average. In the lead-up to a weekend of gigs in Philadelphia which would turn out to be some of our best ever, we were asked to perform a short acoustic set in a student-heavy branch of Starbucks somewhere in Manhattan (the exact location eludes me). When we got there, there was one microphone between three of us and, crowded around the mic stand _____, we were steadfastly ignored for the entire thing . We won an INDY Award the next day – which softened the blow a little – but to this day Tony still twitches if you offer him a Vanilla Chai Latte.
PLAN B, BRIXTON (2005)
2) Plan B is cool. I mean really, really cool. In fact, it’s a hip-hop venue, not a sensitive-melodic-pop venue – so quite what we were doing there, I really couldn’t say. There were three people in the audience, and they were all our girlfriends (and to be honest I think even they were stretched by this one). We were supporting a really good band called Lucky Voice (still together apparently), but didn’t exactly ingratiate ourselves with them when, in an attempt to eject some much-needed energy into the room, I leapt enthusiastically from a speaker towards my keyboard, thwacked my head against a pipe on the ceiling and fell backwards into a stack of their very expensive guitars. This hurt on so many levels.
CLUB COWBOY, BRIXTON (2004)
1) The astute amongst you will have noticed a theme here – Brixton is not a friend to The Lightyears. Our first warning should have been the name ‘Club Cowboy’, which looking back on it rather implies a gay club night with masochistic overtones. The worst thing about this gig was the crowd, who were small in number but big in hostility. When we kicked into a cover of Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’ about halfway through, a skin-headed ___ in the corner started sporadically shouting the word ‘gay’ at us at gradually increasing volume. As the gig unfolded it became clear that they really only had the one point to make, but they were dreadfully persistent. By the end I was so pissed off that, on the final note of the gig, I crashed down onto the end of my piano and inadvertently sent it cartwheeling off the stage. It was a spectacular moment, and as a result my piano bore a crescent moon-shaped scar for the rest of its life (right up until it burned to a cinder in our house fire), serving as a constant reminder of why _________.
Now… in the interests of balance, I’m tempted to follow this with a list of the best gigs we’ve ever done – but on reflection I think that might feel a bit self-aggrandising, and in any case I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet.
Although I will say that all the gigs where I’ve blown my own trumpet have been BRILLIANT.

The LYs in New York. Sure, we LOOK like we're having fun... but inside we're crying.Killers frontman Brandon Flowers recently commented in an interview that his band had a ‘chip on their shoulder’ when they were starting out, adding that he didn’t miss their days of playing in small venues to tiny crowds.

While the news that a rockstar prefers stadium gigs in front of screaming fans over playing to no-one in the fetid back-room of a pub in Hatch End isn’t overly surprising, in a funny kind of way it’s always nice to hear a global super-power like The Killers admitting that, even for them, there was a period of grinding, thankless drudgery when, at least at first, nobody really appeared to like them very much.

If I was ever invited onto a reverse version of Desert Island Discs and asked to list The Lightyears’ Three Worst Gigs Of All Time, I think I could answer pretty quickly…

STARBUCKS COFFEE HOUSE, NEW YORK (2007)
3) I should start by saying that I actually quite enjoyed this gig, but Tony hated it SO much that there was enough resentment hanging around to seriously bump up the average. In the lead-up to a weekend of gigs in Philadelphia which would turn out to be some of our best ever, we were asked to perform a short acoustic set in a student-heavy branch of Starbucks somewhere in Manhattan (the precise location eludes me). When we got there there was one microphone between three of us and, crowded awkwardly around the single mic stand, we struggled for forty-five minutes to entertain the glued-to-their-laptops crowd of stand-offish coffee drinkers – but were steadfastly ignored. We won an INDY Award the next day (something which, ironically, we found out by telephone whilst in a Starbucks) and this softened the blow a little, but to this day Tony still twitches if you offer him a Chai Tea Latte.

PLAN B, BRIXTON (2005)
2) Plan B is cool. I mean really, really cool. Indeed it’s a hip-hop venue – not a sensitive-melodic-pop venue – so quite what we were doing there I really couldn’t say. There were three people in the audience and they were all our girlfriends, and to be honest I think even they were stretched by this one. We were supporting a really great band called Lucky Soul (still together apparently), but didn’t exactly ingratiate ourselves with them when, in an attempt to eject some much-needed energy into the room, I leapt enthusiastically from a speaker towards my keyboard, thwacked my head against a pipe on the ceiling and fell backwards into a stack of their very expensive guitars. This hurt on so many levels.

CLUB COWBOY, BRIXTON (2004)
1) The astute amongst you will have noticed a theme here – Brixton is not a friend to The Lightyears. Our first warning should have been the name, which looking back on it rather implies a masochistic underground club night. The worst thing about this gig was the crowd, who were small in number but big in hostility. When we kicked into a cover of Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect‘ about halfway through, a thicket of skin-headed neanderthals gulping lager and slowly ruining society in the corner started sporadically shouting the word ‘gay’ at us, at a steadily-increasing volume. As the gig unfolded it became clear that they really only had the one point to make (it was the one about us being gay), and they were dreadfully persistent about it. Now I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but by the close of our set I was so pissed off that, on the final note of the gig, I crashed down onto the end of my piano and inadvertently sent it cartwheeling off the stage. After smashing dramatically onto the dancefloor (thankfully not decapitating anyone in the process), it bore a crescent moon-shaped scar for the rest of its life, right up until it burned to a cinder in our house fire.

Now… in the interests of balance, I’m tempted to follow this with a list of the best gigs we’ve ever done – but on reflection I think that might feel a bit self-aggrandising, and in any case I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet.

Although I will say that the gigs where I’ve blown my own trumpet have all been BRILLIANT.

2010 USA Tour a success!

29 July 2010

Teeny tiny Lightyears at the fantastic Burlington Amphitheatre, New Jersey.Thanks to everybody who came out to see us during our 2010 American Tour. We had an absolutely fantastic time and were blown away, as always, by the warmth and generosity of our fans in the States.

Highlights included a bakingly hot return to Union Square in New York, a full house at Burlington Amphitheatre on 16 July  and a crowd of two thousand people turning up to watch us play in front of the East River in Astoria Park on the last night of the tour whilst the sun set over the Manhattan skyline…! Unforgettable.

Loads of you have uploaded your photos to our Fan Pics page on Flickr – click here to check them out (or add your own).

Our spies on the East Coast tell us we had a double-page spread in the New York Daily News (which apparently has a readership of two million people) on Tuesday, following our headline slot at Astoria Park. More details to come. For more USA press on the tour, see below:

“…for The Lightyears, making themselves a household name in America won’t be hard to do, what with the band being made up of three cute guys with English accents, including a heartthrob for a lead singer…”
Erica Brooke Fajge, Only In Philadelphia (read full article here)

“Gorgeous harmonies, three hot guys and that quirky English humor. What more could a girl want…?”
MetroGirl,
New York

Here’s to next year’s tour…!

USA Tour starts this week!

30 June 2010

George maxing and relaxing in NYC, circa 2008.Our fifth American tour starts this Thursday 15 July at Union Square in New York. Here’s a full rundown of the venues we’re playing:

Thursday 15 July: UNION SQUARE, New York NY
This will be our third year headlining at the Union Square Summer Concert Series in Manhattan. Recent years have seen crowds of thousands and, thanks to the prime location right in the centre of New York, it’s the ideal way to spend a late afternoon in the Big Apple. ENTRY IS FREE!

Friday 16 July: BURLINGTON AMPHITHEATRE, Mount Holly NJ
We’re very excited to return to Burlington for the second year running. Burlington has an impressive amphitheatre and promises to host a fine evening of entertainment. Never fear – if it rains, the show will go on (it’ll be moved to an indoor theatre next door). ENTRY IS FREE!

Saturday 17 July: BLOCKLEY POURHOUSE, Philadelphia PA. BUY TICKETS HERE!
**THIS SHOW IS NOW ALL AGES!!** Our big Saturday night headline gig (and our only appearance in Philadelphia this summer) is at the awesome Blockley Pourhouse on Chestnut Street. The Blockley is a brand-new, state-of-the-art venue built on the site of an old asylum. Which is pretty wacky. Get your tickets here – just $7 advance!

Sunday 18 July: THE SAINT, Asbury Park NJ. BUY TICKETS HERE!
We’ll be seeing out the weekend at The Saint on Main Street, Asbury Park. Previous performers at this venue include Ben Folds Five, Lost Prophets, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Dandy Warhols. Tickets on sale here! Also performing are local band Root Glen + special guests.

Thursday 22 July: ASTORIA PARK, New York NY
The tour comes to a close back in New York on 22 July at Astoria Park. We’ll be playing an hour and half’s set, so plenty of time to kick back with a massive Dr Pepper from Taco Bell and maybe even a tasty picnic. ENTRY IS FREE!

Full details on the GIGS page.

To hear us on the radio in your area, request the LYs below!

– Kathy Romano on WMMR (Bala Cynwyd, PA): REQUEST THE LYs HERE
– Bonnie Hart on WBZC “The Pulse” (Pemberton, NJ): REQUEST THE LYs HERE
WKDU 97.1FM (Philadelphia, PA): REQUEST THE LYs HERE

Our Top 20 Moments Of 2009

16 December 2009

Christmas Time is here again and there’s enormous excitement in the air. There’s an outside chance that Rage Against The Machine will beat the X Factor to Number One on Sunday and the weather-man says that snow’s a-coming. Things literally couldn’t be any better.

We thought we’d add to the general feeling of goodwill and festivity by recounting our favourite and most memorable experiences from the past year. Most of them – whether in London, Cape Town or the USA – involved the support of our fans and we’d like to personally thank everyone who has helped us make 2009 one of our best years yet. You guys rule.

So here, in no particular order, are The Lightyears’ Top 20 Moments Of 2009:

1. Stepping out onstage at Wembley Stadium for the first time in front of 45,000 people

2. Winning over an audience of leather-clad Norwegian bikers at the Speedway Cafe in Cape Town

3. Performing a barbershop medley of British seaside tunes in front of the British Ambassador in Seoul

4. Writing a song for a national ad campaign (“Come With Me” is released on Universal Records in January)

5. Spotting our faces in train stations and on the side of buses

6. Performing for a full-house of fans, friends and family at The Lightyears’ Christmas Party

7. Playing to a crowd of thousands on a hot summer’s evening in Union Square, Manhattan

8. Working with top producers Bacon & Quarmby (David Bowie, Finley Quaye, Sugababes) on the studio release of “Come With Me”

9. Watching South Africa’s foremost FHM model Roxy Louw stage-dive into a crowd of boogying revelers at our Cape Town Tens gig

10. Being invited back to Wembley Stadium

11. Drinking Pina Coladas by the pool at the Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town

12. Seeing ourselves on TV (click here)

13. Touring the country with Josh’s Band

14. Finding out we’ve been immortalised on canvas!

15. Spotting The Lightyears in the New York Post

16. Dressing up as intergalactic space rockstars for a Forbidden Planet tribute gig

17. Selling out our latest album London, England on the US Tour

18. Celebrating the end of the Korean Tour with a Lightyears night on the tiles

19. Appearing on the same bill as Diversity, winners of Britain’s Got Talent

20. Partying with the LYs American Fan Club in Riverton, New Jersey!

Blue Moons and seven-foot transvestites…

25 August 2009

Oh yeah. Check out our big American truck.WEDNESDAY 29 JULY, 8.30pm (Business Class Cabin, British Airways Flight 183, Heathrow):
The last time we toured to America, we flew Business Class. It turned out that Tony had a “contact” who was able to pull some strings for us at British Airways (I didn’t ask exactly what this meant – Tony has East End gangster blood in his family and I generally find it’s best not to enquire about his methods) and we had our tickets upgraded. Sadly, this time round, on account of the flight being absolutely packed, we have been condemned to flying World Traveller Plus, which is the next rung above cattle.

As a result we are now having to shuffle ignominiously through the Business Class cabin on our way to inferior seats in a perverse re-enactment of that moment in 1980s game shows when the presenter would excitedly announce: “And here’s what you could have won!” (it was always a speedboat, for some reason). You’d watch the forlorn faces of the unsuccessful contestants, struggling to look gracious whilst a small army of bikini-clad beauties clambered all over the star prize, stroking it lasciviously and batting their eyelids. We are having the upmarket wares of high-society living literally paraded about in front of us. The champagne. The leg-room. The seats-that-are-actually-beds. It’s almost too much. I long to turn away, but cannot. Oh the shame.

And then, unexpectedly, I spot a small boy in one of the seats. He’s sitting next to his very glamorous-looking mother. It’s unusual to see young children in Business Class but he looks somehow at home here, at ease, waiting so well-behaved in his window seat. He’s a beautiful kid, Italian I think, a mop of jet black hair and an innocent, thoughtful expression drifting like gentle waves across his eyes. He is playing quietly with a small wooden model of a fire engine. Our eyes meet momentarily and I glimpse the fleeting intangibility of youth in his handsome young face, the soft, unblinking wonder of boyhood – unaffected, it seems, by the transitory comforts that surround him, and I find myself thinking…

“You little bastard.”

Me in Ashley's apartment after four Blue Moons. Don't ask me who the other guy is.THURSDAY 29 JULY, 2.15am (Merrion Square Bar, Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York USA):
Having somehow survived the flight to New York without even the slightest whiff of fillet steak, we arrived into JFK airport at around 10.30pm local time and were met by Ashley, one of our US tour managers. We immediately took a cab to her apartment on the Upper East Side in the expectation of going straight to bed.

Instead, somehow, we currently find ourselves on our fourth round of Blue Moons (a deliciously fruity local beer) in an almost empty Manhattan bar whilst a Phil Collins live album plays over the PA. Now, without doubt, we are officially “on tour”.

THURSDAY 29 JULY, 6.15pm (Union Square, Manhattan, New York):
This is our second performance in Union Square. Our first was last September, as part of one of the more manic episodes in the history of The Lightyears, in which we succeeded in playing two gigs in two continents, three thousand miles apart, in under twenty hours. This time around it’s all a lot more straightforward. We’ve been in New York for a day already and have begun the process of acclimatising to local culture (i.e. eating more than our own body weights at each meal – this morning for breakfast, for example, I ate a pastrami sandwich that contained so much meat I actually felt like it might have been endangering cows as a species) and developing a tolerance for the intense heat you get in the peak of summer in Manhattan.

This evening’s gig, which is part of a summer-long concert series run by the Union Square partnership, is outdoors. Last week’s concert was rained off during one of the city’s dramatic July thunderstorms, but today we’ve been lucky and the sun is blazing. Jukebox The Ghost, a fantastic Philly band who supported us in London a couple of years ago and were the unfortunate victims of last week’s cancelled performance, have joined us on the bill and are just finishing their highly entertaining and accomplished support slot in front of a rapidly burgeoning crowd. Top band – check them out here. When we jump up onstage and look out across the park, I begin to wonder whether this could turn out to be our biggest audience yet in the States, and it turns out I’m right – by the time we’ve played our first few songs and the passing trade have assembled in front of the stage, the crowd has grown to several thousand. This is brilliant. Summer evening, outdoor concert, Union Square, the British invasion – nothing could be better. I’d go as far as to say that it turns into our best ever show in the States.

The LYs rocking the crowd in New YorkWe play for around an hour and the set includes songs both old and new – recent tracks such as “Johannesburg” and “Speedway 105” sit alongside songs which we haven’t played since last time we were in the USA such as “Miles Away” and “Brightest Star”. We’re having a whale of a time. I spot some familiar faces out in the plaza – fans from Philly who have travelled into the city to see us, friends from previous tours and even a couple of Lightyears fans from London. I speak to one girl afterwards who tells me: “I was walking through Manhattan and heard some band covering “Sleepless” by The Lightyears. Then I took a closer look and discovered it was you!”.

Afterwards we sign a bunch of autographs and have our photos taken with new fans, which is rather brave of them considering how disgustingly sweaty I am (see some of the pictures here). Follow this we assemble a motley crew and head for Revival where our after-party is being held. At Revival we gorge on pizza and more Blue Moons and at some point in the evening end up dancing with seven-foot transvestites to Michael Jackson tunes in a club that is, apparently, also a beauty parlour.

Today has been probably one of my favourite days ever.

FRIDAY 30 JULY, 6.15pm (WAWA Food Hut, Riverton, Philadelphia):
Today we head for Philadelphia. Which means one thing above all others.

THE WAWA FOOD HUT.

Wawa, as far as I’m aware, does reasonably good business most of the year in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. It’s a popular brand of roadside supermarket-cum-deli and Americans have responded favourably to its easy level of convenience and innovative touch-screen sandwich-ordering technology.

That said, I don’t think I’d be out of line in ultimately attributing the massive success of the brand to the amount of business it does once-yearly when The Lightyears land in Philadelphia.

We just can’t get enough of Wawa. Sure, we have sandwiches in Britain (we invented them) but the typical deal is two, maybe three fillings, limited to a small number of essentially quite similar combinations. Not so with Wawa. In fact, I’d confidently assert that The Wawa Food Hut is a very effective microcosm for the entire American Dream philosophy – in the USA, you can have exactly what you want, when you want it, and in huge quantities to boot. Just like in Wawa. For example, one of the options at the very beginning of the sandwich-ordering process is “2-foot”… a TWO FOOT SANDWICH! That’s insane. It’s like eating a boa constrictor.

On this particular day, we head into Wawa giddy with expectation. It’s been nearly ten months since our last hoagie and we’re all salivating with the thought. In The Lightyears, we tend to fall prey on tour to what we like to call “competitive eating”. It’s essentially a way of asserting masculinity over other band members by out-eating them, often to disgusting lengths, and I’ll be the first to admit that George is running rings around me on this tour.  I think the heat may have sapped my appetite. Whatever the explanation, I am destined to lose this particular bout.

After you’ve ordered your sandwich, the little computer prints a receipt for you, listing all the ingredients you have chosen to include in your hoagie. Grinning like a Cheshire Cat, George saunters over to me and says: “Look at my receipt”. He unleashes it. It’s about a foot long.

“How long is yours?”

I’m ashamed to produce it. It’s half the length of George’s.

“Are you on a diet?” goads George.

I think about defending myself by telling him it’s not the size of your sandwich but what you do with it that counts, but I know I’d be lying. I’ve failed. Admittedly my Wawa Philly Cheesesteak is no tiddler, and it fills me up, but that’s not really the point. In The Lightyears, unless you’ve eaten until the point of debilitation, you’ve not really eaten.

Once we’re back in the ridiculously massive truck that we’ve hired to get to Spring City, George begins the arduous process of actually ingesting the behemoth sitting in his lap. When he opens the paper wrapping, I actively wince. I swear I can even hear his heart-rate increasing. There are so many fillings in this sandwich that the bread walls have been breached and are hidden beneath a steaming mountain of meat, cheese, vegetables and sauce. It’s less of a sandwich and more of a dreadful pizza. I can immediately read the look on George’s face – “I can’t eat this like a normal sandwich”, he’s thinking, “because I can’t pick it up. There’s only one option.”

And with that, George plunges face-first into his food like a pig in a trough.

Whilst this disgusting process is unfolding beside me, I take the chance to study the receipt. My jaw drops open. Here’s a rough approximation of what it said:

ORDER #78: PHILLY CHICKEN CHEESESTEAK (12″)
Ingredients
– Cheese
– Extra cheese (3)
– Pepper Jack Cheese
– Grated parmesan
– Chicken
– Meat
– Extra meat
– Extra bacon
– A little bit of oil
– Extra oil [this isn’t a joke – you really can order this in America]
– Peppers
– Roasted peppers
– Sweet peppers
– Sweet roasted peppers
– Onions
– Extra onions
– Ranch sauce
– Barbeque sauce
– Horseradish
– Tomato relish
– Mayo
– Garlic mayo
– Honey mustard sauce
– Mustard
– French mustard
– Salt
– Pepper
– Oregano

In some counties in England, it would actually be illegal to eat this.

When he’s done, George is looking distinctly peaky. We are just a few miles outside of Spring City and will need to load our gear into the venue within the half hour.

“Chris…” he begins, struggling even to form words, “Chris… I don’t think I can do the gig. You’ll have to go on without me.”

I turn to face him. He looks like he’s been sat on by a bear.

“George mate, it’s going to be fine. I think you know what to do.”

He nods slowly.

“You’ll have to do the Christmas Walk.”

George invented the Christmas Walk back in the late ’90s. Typically it is used but once a year, on 25 December, at the close of Christmas dinner. In England it is customary on this occasion to eat and drink yourself into a stupor before crashing down in front of the TV to watch Noel Edmonds mince about in a woolly jumper for about five hours. Problem is, George has a habit of eating such a colossal amount of food during dinner that he is unable to straighten his body into a walking position upon leaving the chair, making a normal walk impossible. Necessity being the mother of invention, some years ago he patented the Christmas Walk, an ingenious method of walking whilst remaining in a sitting position. Basically you’re bent over at a sharp right angle, staring at the floor and waddling like an infirm duck. This enables you to muster a brief burst of (albeit limited) movement in spite of your creakingly full stomach. All you need is enough momentum to get you from the dinner table to the armchair. It doesn’t take much. But the Christmas Walk makes it all possible.

And so it was that George found himself Christmas Walking from the parking lot in the quaint town of Spring City, Pennsylvania, to the front door of Chaplin’s Music Cafe, where the second gig of our US tour was taking place. Passers-by regarded him with suspicion. “We’re British,” I explain. “He’s had a little too much cheesesteak. Nothing a quick Christmas Walk won’t sort out.”

FRIDAY 30 JULY, 8.45pm (Chaplin’s Music Cafe, Spring City, Pennsylvania):
Spring City is a small, attractive and incredibly quiet town north-west of Philadelphia. In England, a place like this wouldn’t have a music venue. In England, it wouldn’t even have a post office. But they do things differently in America.

Spring City also has a music store, conveniently situated opposite the venue and coincidentally named George’s Music. Naturally we had to go in there so George could do his “I’m a musician from England and my name’s George” routine. Rather splendidly the chap behind the counter gave us all free t-shirts in recognition of this fact. I left the store and discovered that mine was “Triple XL”. Not altogether useful for me at this stage in my career but I thought about it and concluded that it will come in handy when, after our 11th album has gone platinum and we all harbour such unrelenting and undisguised loathing for each other that we have begun taking separate limos to gigs, and I sit in my keytar-shaped swimming pool all day eating cheeseburgers and Findus crispy pancakes from a bucket and I’m wildly obese and need to be airlifted to gigs, it’ll be just the ticket. Always good to plan for the future, I reckon.

Chaplin’s is a fantastic little venue. The sound system is incredibly crisp and juicy (that’s right – “juicy” is a technical term in sound production) and it’s a great place to see live music. There’s a friendly crowd in tonight and we play, if I may say so myself, a very accomplished and well-balanced one-hour set that moves from the gentle acoustica of “Fine” and “Girl On The Radio” through the sunny upbeat harmonies of “Brightest Star” and “Emily”, closing on the theatrical coda of “The Last Night”. I do a bit of banter about sandwiches, which seems to go down well, and we sample a couple of flagons of the excellent local beer known as “Sly Fox”.

The LYs with Brooke Shive & The 45s at Chaplin'sWe are supporting a blues/soul act called Brooke Shive and The 45s, who are great fun and sound really superb. They are joined by Andy Goessling of Railroad Earth, who at one point manages to play two saxophones simultaneously. Now THAT’S a trick worth seeing.

Tomorrow – Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

Sunday – Burlington New Jersey.

Keep your eyes peeled for Part Two of my USA Tour Diary 2009 – coming soon!

Chris Lightyear

New York Post on The Lightyears

4 August 2009

LYs rocking the crowd in Union Square, ManhattanWe’re back from our US Tour 2009 and gee whizz did we have ourselves a swell old time! The gigs were fantastic, the crowds were our biggest yet in the States and, most importantly, George managed to avoid eating himself to death on Philly Cheesesteaks.

We’ve also been blogged about by the New York Post, which is rather exciting. Click here to read their piece on us (scroll down the page – it’s underneath Blink 182 and above Green Day ;-). We also got mentioned here and here and probably a bunch of other places that we haven’t noticed yet!

Keep your eyes peeled over the next few days for my USA Tour Diary 2009…

“Peppy British pop-rock… Get there by 6pm to enjoy the show. You won’t be sorry…”
NEW YORK POST 

“I haven’t heard anything quite like The Lightyears. Recommended for anyone looking for a new sound…”
‘WHAT’S IN A FRAME?’, NEW YORK BLOG

Lightyears on tour in USA

29 July 2009

This is how to look cool when you're in New YorkWe’re leaving for the United States today for a run of dates in the New York and Philadelphia area. See details below…

THURSDAY 30 JULY: Union Square, Manhattan NY (with Jukebox The Ghost)
– Free Entry. LYs onstage 6pm.

FRIDAY 31 JULY: Chaplin’s, Spring City PA (with Brooke Shive & The 45s)
– Doors 7pm. LYs onstage 8pm. BYOB. Buy tickets here.

SATURDAY 1 AUGUST: Milkboy, Ardmore PA (with Vantine/Amadio)
– Doors 8pm. Buy tickets here.

SUNDAY 2 AUGUST: Burlington Amphitheatre, Westampton NJ (with Jon Clifton)
– Free entry. LYs onstage 3pm.

See you guys there!

The Piano-led Power-Pop Revolution!

28 July 2009

Proof that playing keyboard-led pop makes you more attractive

Top-dollar Philadelphia act Jukebox The Ghost have just been added to the bill for our Union Square gig this Thursday 30 July. This is awesome news, for this jaunty piano-led power-pop 3-piece (sound familiar anyone?!) are one of the finest acts we’ve ever played with.

Jukebox supported us at the Clapham Grand back in 2007 whilst gigging in the UK and since then have toured with Ben Folds and gone from strength to strength. Check them out here.

If you’re in Manhattan, make sure you get down to Union Square at 5pm this Thursday for a rare opportunity to catch Jukebox and The Lightyears on the same stage…

LYs to tour East Coast USA

15 April 2009

George Lightyear rocks New York, Sept '08This summer we will be returning to America to play three states – New York City, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

On Thursday 30 July we’ll be playing the “Summer In The Square” series in Union Square, Manhattan. This will be followed on Saturday 1 August by a headline show at Milkboy Coffee in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and an afternoon performance at Burlington Amphitheatre in New Jersey on Sunday 2 August. For full details visit the GIGS page.

Whilst in the USA we are also hoping to secure a slot on WXPN radio’s legendary “Free At Noon” broadcast at the World Cafe in Philadelphia. This is an incredibly prestigious show – recent performers include Gomez, Damien Rice and Adele and the broadcast goes out to a national audience of several million people. We performed live on Matt Reilly’s WXPN show back in 2007 and so the next step up is to be part of the station’s weekly live concert. Here’s the fun though – YOU can help us secure the slot by visiting the WXPN website and requesting our track “Sleepless” for airplay on the station. Click here to visit the WXPN website and request “Sleepless”! It’ll totally rock our world if you do, we promise.

This will be our fourth visit to the USA and we’re excited to be seeing our US fans again. Click here to read my tour diary from our last Stateside visit.

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