Backstage Gossip from Cazfest

Jul 4, 2011 by Kay    No Comments    Posted under: Articles, News

I’m not really much of a festival-goer, so I wasn’t entirely sure of the etiquette at Cazfest when it came to finding out where I was likely to be able to find The Overtones to say hello in person.

So, being middle-class and middle-aged I presented myself and my children (after a couple of minutes scrubbing them free of candy floss and snot with a wetwipe) at the stewards desk to ask, politely, if there was any chance of taking pity on a woman who was old-enough-to-know-better and finding out when and where the guys would be arriving. I was told to come back in an hour, at which point I was told there was no chance of seeing them before their set…but if I went to a gap in the fence afterwards with the kids, we could go and say hello…

And so it was that I, and three Mini-Toners, found ourselves in the dimly lit backstage VIP area meeting Lachie, Mark, Darren, Timmy and Mike, all of whom were as charming, smart and patient with the kids as we’ve all come to expect. I met Lachie at the Jazz Cafe in March, and we tweet, obvs, so it was like seeing an old friend, but I’d not met Mike within huggable distance before, so that was a joy. Both Lachie and Mark were on top form, looking just gorgeous.

Mike [taller than I thought, and as beautiful as his pictures] told me how hard it was having to do a set with no ear-pieces. “We’ve had a year of using the earpieces all the time, but we arrived this evening and were told the sound system would not support them,” he told me. “So we had to go back to using the wedge speakers at the front of the stage, which was really weird. We couldn’t  hear ourselves sing, so had to hope we were getting the right notes by feeling the vibration in our voices.”

Darren [another old friend from the Jazz Cafe gig, and soooo dapper in his suit and little bow-tie] and Timmy [sigh...what a smile] were very chatty in particular about the last week, in which none of The Overtones had a great deal of sleep. The 18 hour photoshoot on Wednesday was followed on Thursday by a late night party for Warner, with just three hours sleep before a 4.30am start for the roadtrip to the ASDA Big brunch in Leeds on Friday. I asked how they  managed not to look completely bug-eyed by the end of the shoot on Wednesday. Darren said, “We were in locations all over London, so we were all so excited we didn’t feel tired. Until the next day….” Neither he nor Timmy would be drawn on the reason for the photoshoot, with my persistent questioning being met with geezer winks from Darren and worried looks from Timmy. I asked a couple more times, really just for the cheeky geezer winks than genuine fact-finding, but I’m not Paxman so nothing more to report there!

The remixed version of the Good Ol’ Fashioned Love album, due out in October, will have a new cover and sleeve notes, and to the delight of an iTunes-phobe like me, will be available on a proper pop-in-the-slot CD. So that’s your Christmas presents sorted for 2011….

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