2020 IN BRIEF…

2020 IN BRIEF: Album release planned, festivals, tour dates booked. Covid cometh. ALL GONE. Teach online, work out broadcasting.First gig online. Scramble to master the sound, struggle to operate cameras, lights. Rehearse, record, learn songs, teach, sleep, repeat weekly. DIY. Lovely Church of Sieben est.2020. 36 gigs in a row. Build each week to Friday. Papier Mache something. Often a moon, sometime a Big Kev. ‘Record some songs’ becomes ’10 CD retrospective career so far re-write Boxset’. 2020 VISION releases digitally, then CD, vinyl. Cat T shirts. Kev, George, Amber, Big Kev, Not So Big Kev, Mel, The Upstairs Hoover, The Old One, Stand, and Jonaton Monotron form ensemble. Sieben covers album. Sieben all-covers gig. 14 Sieben albums performed live in concert. 67 LS videos made – Lockdown a strange beast! Live Solstice album culmination. LS 2020 ENDS… (except two videos which release 24.12 and 25.12 😉 )

Expect the Grateful Dead (Gruntled Dead?) version of Sieben with concert 37 tomorrow night, as I indulge in a two-hour special and bask in the reflection of The Ginger One’s glory.

Culminates with a virtual ‘Who’s Been Digging In The Garden, George?’ and a hymn that Kev’s written for us all as a message of hope for 2021 😉 I finish off the year with this live album concert, Winter Solstice Special, and as always try to top the previous show. This time more so than ever 😉

I can’t thank you all enough for the wonderful journey, the fantastic travels we’ve had whilst at home in socks; for the mental and physical exercise-wheel of joy that has been LOCKDOWN SIEBEN 2020 for me 😀 A chance for me to really develop what I do, push myself, in ideal conditions. With a Kev. With you. With a new there-and-then approach. Re-connected me with my old material, integrated it all with a new sound. The ultimate As They Should Sound for me, with the better half of my back catalogue. With one major exception: No wasteful pursuit of over-cooking, over-working the mixtures making studio albums. It’s taught me a new, simpler more effective way: Pick up Kev, do it live, pedals ready to go, knowing there’s an eager audience, and as always having a real desire to expand the music I make and keep it fresh has driven me like never before. Despite Lockdown’s many downsides this has been an absolute joy, a labour of love for me to undertake, and to offer out to you. Truly a real blessing for an independent artist to have an outlet, a lovely audience that cares, and brings so much to the live concerts, and the LOCKDOWN SIEBEN Facebook group, its interactions, its friendships formed.

More to come in 2021, of course. I’ve still got to get to 100 videos, Volumes 8, 9 and 10 need doing, other albums need their own night. I wouldn’t be surprised if I see it through to a one-year cycle. I’m guessing you won’t be that surprised, either 😉

Thank you all so, so much.

Matt Howden 19 Dec 2020