FreddieOllieRyanAlfie

Aha! I bet you are asking yourselves, “what does that title actually mean?!”. The answer my dear friends is, bugger all. It technically doesn’t mean anything. I was merely trying to justify and make light of our slow start to the year. I mean, we did release Hold On To My Ex, which has had resoundingly positive reviews, so that’s good. However, our foot has been slightly off the acceleration, such is the nature of changing band members; but two steps forward and one step back is still one step forward. And so, here I am again at long last, to regale you of the past few months of Leslie life, which thankfully hasn’t been all that bad…

   January saw us looking for new members, and praise be to god, we found Alfie Pawsey quicker than Usain Bolt running for the toilet after having eaten a dodgy curry. Practise ensued momentarily, and Alfie, Ryan and myself were soon in sync with each other but still, alas, without a new guitarist. This was troubling to say the least, considering the fact that soon enough we were to play at the Wigan Old Courts and Night People in Manchester. Consequently, we decided to call in a favour from an old friend who you might all know as, “The Baron”, but we just call him Julien… I digress, in any case, Jules happily traversed North with us to support a Killers cover band who incidentally were really rather good. We had a fantastic time both nights, leaving the stages sweaty and eager to go again (that’s what she said). It was a particularly important milestone for us as yes, we had rarely played many northern gigs, but most importantly, our Alfie popped his Leslie performance cherry, and what a performance it was!

   Thereafter, we were pretty high off of the aforementioned gigs, which clearly translated into our first London show of the year at The Bread and Roses supporting our dear friends from A.R.T. It was a raucous night of gigging and partying with our fans and other bands, from which came the amazing opportunity for us to potentially perform on The Bread and Roses stage at Glastonbury 2022. We actually just played our showcase performance last night, so fingers crossed everyone!

   Another amazing opportunity also presented itself to us after our lovely Ryan submitted ‘Anna’ for Kerrang!Radio’s ‘The Deal’ competition, which we actually got to the final of. Unfortunately we didn’t quite make the cut in the end, but it was still something of an achievement to get to the final I suppose!

   March came quicker than expected and still no new guitarist! However, Julien was waiting on the sidelines for us to tag him in, and tag we did. We played at the amazing Deaf Institute in Manchester, supporting ‘Shade’ for promoters This Feeling. Another fantastic gig with a fantastic audience, but the only audience we would see that month as we were so set on finally picking a new band member.

   With the changing of the leaves came the long-awaited change to our outfit; Julien had played his final show with us, for at long last, we had found Freddie. We wasted no time in preparing our new member for the stage and the studio. Within the past few weeks we have played our first Cambridge gig at the Cambridge Junction, recorded our next single ‘Feel Alive’, and potentially bagged ourselves a slot at Glastonbury (those fingers better be bloody crossed!). 

   All in all, a slow BUT successful start to the year. We couldn’t be happier and we cannot wait for what is to come. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears to the ground people. The Great Leslie is coming.