By Charles Dic(Ken)s
Feliz Navidad, buskers! It’s that time of year again. That time of year where everyone has a strange combination of seasonal excitement and perpetual fear of planning upon their faces. The time of year where you spend far more time than you’d care to admit looking for the end of the Sellotape. The time of year where it’s okay to pour a sherry before midday and watch Die Hard before even getting in the shower. I refer, of course, to the ancient Pagan festival of Saturnalia… or Christmas, to use the trendy word.
Every Christmas, The Busketeers ponder the efficacy of writing a successful enough Christmas song that would allow us to retire before 40 years old and just sit back and collect that sweet, sweet quarter-of-a-million in royalties every December. However, this train of thought always ends with the conclusion that nobody can now permeate the monopoly that Mariah, Bublé, Wham! and the rest of them have on the Christmas song landscape… a pox on them all! (Apologies – that wasn’t very Christmassy.) But who knows – perhaps we’ll give it a shot one day.
To thematically fit the holiday season, as well as just for a bit of a laugh, this month’s blog will follow the major story beats of A Christmas Carol. Grab a mulled wine and let’s kick it off…
The Ghost of Busketeers Past: A Year in Review
Another very busy year. Over 100 different gigs from weddings to private functions to bars and clubs – just how we like it. But without a doubt, this has definitely been the year of festivals for us; in fact we’ve played more festivals in 2024 than in 2023 and 2022 combined (I was about to pull up a histogram, but decided this was a bit overkill)! We hit some of our favourites like Rattler Fest, Tunes in the Park, and Kingsbridge Festival, but also got the opportunity to play some new ones as well! A particularly memorable experience had us venturing up to Derbyshire to play Bearded Theory, a multi-award-winning creative and performing arts festival set in the grounds of Catton Park in the heart of the National Forest. But my word… it was muddy. Very muddy. So muddy in fact that we had to abandon our vehicle and proceed on foot, carrying with us all our instruments and equipment. We just about made it with 15 minutes to spare, managing to smash out a set despite being notably flustered, covered in mud and crop-dusted with marijuana smoke.
Another cool festival was Beautiful Days, which was founded and headlined by The Levellers. We had such a good time and got to catch some legends like The Damned, Cast, Fat Freddy’s Drop and, the man himself, Richard Ashcroft. And, of course, we’d be remiss not to mention the opportunity to play at Boardmasters for the second year in a row which… I mean c’mon, man – it’s Boardies! We feel very fortunate to have these opportunities; I don’t think any of us envisioned that we would one day be on stage at these festivals we started going to when we were 17. Here’s hoping for many more to come!
The Ghost of Busketeers Present – New Years Eve Excitement!
But enough reminiscing – we’ve got an awesome gig coming up this month. We are very happy to announce that we will be playing at Steel Brew, Royal William Yard, this New Years Eve. If you’ve not already made plans and are looking for a great place to put on a party outfit and grab a brew, this is a fantastic venue for it. The festivities kick off from 7 p.m. and tickets can be bought online, meanwhile, we will be primed and ready to bring out our signature artillery of bangers from across the decades. We would love to see every single one of you there and cannot wait to welcome in the new year with a Busketeers bang!
We are also very excited to be supporting the legendary Mad Dog Mcrea at Carnglaze Caverns on December 20th. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Mad Dog’s brand of whiskey-soaked Irish rock, this event is absolutely going to turn into a pre-Christmas party. And what a cracking venue too – it’s literally underground!
The Ghost of Busketeers Future – A Big Anniversary on the Horizon…
Next year is quite a significant one for The Busketeers, as it marks the 10th anniversary of when Luke, Matt and Olly first started going busking and playing gigs under the moniker. At the risk of sounding cryptic, we’d like to save some of the specifics for an announcement in the new year, but we can confirm that we are planning a ‘Busketeers 10th Anniversary Tour’ (that’s only a working title!) across several months, where we will be performing at some significant venues relative to our journey and also some new brand-new ones. At these events we will be selling some exciting new merch yet to be announced, as well as our first full-length LP on vinyl.
Speaking of which, any collectors of physical media may be excited to know we will be hosting a release event for our vinyl in Tavistock at the start of March. Once again, please stay tuned for more details via email in the new year.
We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year; hopefully we will catch you at a gig very soon!
Ken, Luke, Matt and Olly
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