Auditions diaries from the acts #5

Audition diaries from the acts themselves from this year’s Live and Unsigned competition are going online in a bid to be in The List Magazine. A week ago we put a call out on our Facebook page for Scottish acts to tell us their stories from the Live and Unsigned auditions for the chance to be in the popular magazine. We’ve had an incredible response from bands and acts and the diaries of their experiences were just so good, we simply couldn’t choose which act to put forward to The List.

That’s where you - the Live and Unsigned fans and supporters come in, the bands and acts’ stories were so brilliant that we wanted to share them with you.  Each day we’re going to put up an act’s diary for you to join in the fun and read, if you like their tale, vote for them on our Facebook page by pressing the Like button or commenting positively on their work. The act with the most support for their diary by the publishing headline will appear in The List magazine and be followed through the competition.

The Best of luck to all of our Scottish bands and acts who have shared their stories - get voting for your favourite!

Audition Diary of Five Bar Gate – Glasgow Auditions 5th February 2011

Five Bar Gate are a four piece band with influences covering a wide range of genres and styles of music from Bluegrass, Blues, Motown to Classic Rock Glam and Thrash Metal.

The band consists of Craig McKee (lead vocal & guitar), Kenny Chesser - "Kacii" (Lead Guitar & Backing Vocal), Craig Conway "CC" (Bass & Backing Vocal) and Del Howie (Drums and Percussion). The members of the band come from Paisley, Kilwinning and Stewarton. With Kenny originally hailing from Dundee but now residing in Paisley. The band’s genre is Hard Rock based around catchy riffs with a melodic vocal melody.

We have have only entered one "Battle of the Bands" competition in the past, which was back when we first started. We knew that as we had a very limited time frame in which to rally our troops we would probably come in last, as we were also playing a weak set which we were not confident would win over the other bands crowd. However we performed well and managed 2nd place out of five bands local to the Glasgow area.

 I guess you could say that this may also have been our most "Rock and Roll" moment by winning over a potentially hostile crowd with a mediocre set. We have spent the last 6 months replacing and re-writing our set, resulting in music we are now extremely happy and excited to play. This appears to be appreciated by our existing fans, as well winning us new support with all of the feedback being positive so far. This set has only been played live twice and each time the audience has called for encore which was new for us and an endorsement of our work over the last few months. 

Live and Unsigned has given us a much higher goal than we have set ourselves thus far, we decided it was time to stop playing it safe and to put our music and performance out there to be judged by people who know what they are talking about.

So as we walked up to the door of the Glasgow Concert Hall, we were asking ourselves: “are we sure we want to be picked apart by industry professionals? Are we strong enough to get through this audition? And can we handle the critique?” So it was with some trepidation that we continued on, this was heightened as we walked up the stairs to the audition room to face the judges.

Standing in front of the judges was a daunting experience, however as we started to play this dissipated, and we settled into our zone, the audition seamed to be over all too quickly!  After we packed up and made way for the next band we were told to wait and we would be told if we got through.

As we waited many bands came and went, both those who got through and those who did not, and still we waited and the tension built. In all we waited for over an hour and as time went we were resigned to going home and chalking the audition up to experience.

So when we were finally informed that we had indeed gone through we were elated to say the least. That coupled with a lot of disbelief, may well have dulled our excitement into a "what really, cool!" Now that we are through to the next round we realise that for us, the work is only just beginning. 

We are now required to integrate a cover version into one of our own arrangements, which is something we have never before considered, so trying to choose something that we can all play with the same conviction as we play our own songs may prove to be a real task! As I mentioned we have very eclectic musical influences and with this in mind we asked for our fans input as to what they would like to hear from us, so we are working on that right now! We can’t wait to see how it turns out...

If you like Five Bar Gate’s tale, you have one week to vote for them on our Facebook page  by pressing the Like button! Watch out in the few days for some more diary entrants from Glasgow & Edinburgh.