mark ronson

Our summer season of music festivals

6 August 2013

music festivals

Last Sunday we drove to a small seaside town, just south of Colchester, to perform at the Brightlingsea Festival. I’ve always thought there was something quite poetic about travelling to the very edge of the country to play music – and the whole experience was made all the better by the fantastically warm welcome we received when we got there.

Brightlingsea Festival is a brilliant community event. Run by enthusiastic, music-loving volunteers, as you can see from the photo above it attracts a buzzing crowd, as well as a wide range of musical styles (we were preceded by jazz and bluegrass bands, and followed by a swing band!).

This was our third appearance at Brightlingsea, and we hope to be back again sometime in the future. In the meantime, here’s a reminder of the other outdoor gigs we have coming up this summer…

Astoria Park Concert Series

If you’re in the New York area, catch us at Astoria Park on Thursday 15 August. Our first Astoria show was in 2010, to a crowd of 2,000 people on the banks of the East River. Magical! Can’t wait to get back. Click here to read more.

Burlington Amphitheater

The Burlington Amphitheater in New Jersey is one of our favourite venues in America. Their concert series is well-known in the community and we always get the chance to meet some tremendous people when we play there. We’ll be back again on Sunday 18 August. Click here to read more.

Brownstock

Back in the UK, we’ll be headlining the Piano Bar stage at Brownstock in Essex on Saturday 31 August. This year’s main stage headliners are The Fratellis, Mark Ronson and DJ Yoda, so there’s plenty of top-drawer musical shenanigans to keep you amused before and after our set. Click here to read more.

Chris Lightyear

Festival season climax – Brownstock 2013!

23 July 2013

Brownstock 2013As 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

19 July 2013

Brownstock 2013We’ve been booked to headline The Piano Bar at Brownstock 2013 in Chelmsford, Essex, on Saturday 31 August. Main stage headliners include The FratellisMark 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.