This is really soon!
The Gunpowder Works Presents a Kentish theatre tour
Triple headline theatre tour featuring Los Salvadores, Wheels and The Flowing
Tickets for these events priced at £5 each and are available by clicking the links within the event details.
2nd February 2012, Sheppey Little Theatre, Sheerness, Kent – Tickets available from We Got Tickets!
Facebook event.
3rd February 2012, Avenue Theatre, Sittingbourne, Kent – Tickets for this event
Facebook event.
4th February 2012, Tom Thumb Theatre, Cliftonville, Kent – Tickets available from We Got Tickets!
Facebook event.
—————————————————————————-
Tickets will be available on the door each night!
For anybody interested, we had a little downtime last night due to changing web hosts/servers. We’d had a few comments about the site being slow to load. I investigated, found out our host was rubbish with WordPress and changed to a new provider.
All is well now!
So, if you’ve been reading our updates religiously (I assume you have), you’ll have noticed that The Gunpowder Works are putting on a triple headliner theatre tour in Kent, which includes us, Wheels and The Flowing. I am especially excited because I’ve always felt that my name should be up in lights, and I’m told its theatres that do that kind of thing.
There is something special about theatres – the velvet curtains, the spotlights, the mini ice-creams (although I can’t promise they’ll be available at all of our venues) and my memories of performing (badly) in school musicals with a (bad) American accent and singing (badly) to an enraptured audience that has ultimately come out of obligation. I’m hoping I don’t get a teenage flashback while performing, otherwise I might break out into a Kiss me Kate song (singing ‘I’m a maid mad to marry any Tom, Dick or Harry’ was a definite highlight).
I was a child star.
We’ll also be following a long line of famous names who have also appeared at these theatres. In no particular order:
Michael Palin at The Sheppey Little Theatre (actually amazing!):
Palin, you silver fox you.
These people at the Tom Thumb Theatre in Cliftonville (still quite amazing, but in a different way):
El Baldiniho. I know the guy in the middle from school actually.
And err, well (ahem) these guys at the Avenue Theatre in Sittingbourne:
Definitely our best side.
I hope those of you who haven’t bought a ticket for one of these gigs is beginning to feel that you’re about to miss out on something special. The only way to remedy that sinking feeling is to buy a ticket. So go on. Buy a ticket. Just buy it. And please please actually come along too (we promise we’ll play our best).
Tickets for Sheppey Little Theatre (Thursday 2nd February) here
Tickets for Avenue Theatre in Sittingbourne (Friday 3rd February) here
Tickets for Tom Thumb Theatre in Cliftonville (Saturday 4th Febraury) here
In February next year we are playing 3 nights in a row in small Kent theatres. All nights the doors open at 7pm and the music starts at 7.30. Tickets are £5 each night.
Thursday 2nd is at Sheppey Little Theatre on The Isle of Sheppey. This theatre is a converted church sitting right in the middle of a residential street. Tickets. Facebook.
Friday 3rd is at the Avenue Theatre in Sittingbourne. An 88-seater community theatre in the heart of town. Tickets. Facebook.
Saturday 4th is at the Tom Thumb Theatre in Cliftonville, nr Margate. Thought to be one of the smallest theatres in the world, it has just 50 seats. Tickets. Facebook.
Los Salvadores (that’s us), Wheels (that’s not us) and The Flowing (not us either) will be performing on the 3 nights, each taking a turn in headlining. Check out the poster below and tell your friends about the shows. They’re going to be fun!
It looks like next Wednesday could be the last ever edition of our historic local newspaper The East Kent Gazette.
This is a tragedy for Swale which will no longer have a trusted news outlet, the familiar EKG, the paper willing to fight the corner of those whose voices may otherwise not be heard.
The dedicated staff, who have always maintained standards despite ever-increasing workloads, face redundancy in the new year and we want to wish them the best of luck, and to thank them for the constant and valuable support they have given Los Salvadores over the years.
Personally, I’ll not only miss the Gazette as a local musician, but also because it’s where I started my own journalistic career in 2004. And trite as it sounds, it does feel like losing an old friend.
It’s where I leant the skills I still use every day, and I’ve never enjoyed being at work quite as much as I did back then with the team of other young reporters, enjoying the characters and camaraderie of our first newsroom.
The loss of the Gazette is also a huge blow to the ongoing history of Sittingbourne and the surrounding towns. For more than 150 years it has been the newspaper of record, chronicling the biggest events in the life of the borough.
This all stops next Wednesday, depriving future generations of a valuable resource and further diluting the town’s shared sense of history and community.
The archives of the EKG are a wonder to behold, and have provided the inspiration for at least one Los Salvadores song.
Finally, I think it’s important that people understand the EKG is not a failing paper. It remains a widely read and trusted, and already there is a huge outcry on facebook from long-term readers.
The Gazette’s owner, Northcliffe Media, which also publishes the Daily Mail and has held the EKG for less than five years, has decided to close the office it is published from because its sister paper, the Medway News, is not making enough money.
A 159-year-old newspaper, read and enjoyed by thousands, is being written off as collateral damage by a company that only cares about pleasing its shareholders.
A community buyout has been proposed, and I truly hope these ambitions can be realised.
The Save the East Kent Gazette facebook page can be found here, if you would like to offer your help and support to keep this vital service going.
