A journey

To say the last six months have been interesting would be the understatement of the year, looking back to the beginning of February I could never have foreseen what a rollercoaster of emotion was ahead of me. It all started innocently with a short run of
gigs seeing a band who I have held in high regard for some time ,The Script, there was no indication at the time as to where this journey was going to take me and how much was going to be added to my life by a group of people I had never heard of at this point .

The first gig at Sheffield was great, a terrible journey , broken down car, train travel in the snow and a long wait outside in the freezing cold, at this point there is no need to give full detail of the gig as I have reviewed it previously but this was the first time I came into contact with a bunch of highly entertaining artists called Will and The People, from the very first song I found these a delightfully random bunch of people, with a sound that grabbed you and held you, from the first note to me they absolutely owned the stage, being first on is never easy but for this band there was no stumbling tentative start .. they made the audience theirs from the offset and they never let them go.

Their fun pop/ reggae sound was so refreshing in this world of rapping/ rocking/whining bands and it is really hard to fault them and this is from a person who actually has their roots in Rock and Metal music but great music is great whatever the genre but to be memorable it has to be delivered by artists whose presence reaches down into the crowd, in WATP you have such a band, not for them the air of detachment found so readily within other bands, from a personal point of view any great gig is fed in part by the audience , however great a band a poor audience can squash the whole evening stone cold dead but the band has a great responsibility to own the crowd and this is where Will and Co excel .

This was the first of many gigs, in fact when trying to calculate how many I gave up as I have never felt the need to explain or justify my love of live music and in particular certain artists and in this case I could never explain it , I suppose it is simply if it works don’t fix it and Will and The People just work for me… if I tried to quantify I would have to begin with Will as whichever way you look at it he is the driving force who was always going to find fame at some point as the talent is enormous as is the will to succeed , even if this ambition is sometimes thwarted , I have yet to meet anyone who has not found him endearing if that is the right word, however much he wants to be perceived as a bad boy the niceness of the person shines through, and maybe its not really the right thing to call someone in his position nice but you can only really call it as you see it.. of course he can be prone to heading off in totally the wrong direction , but what person does not suffer from this, no one I have come in contact with actually including myself.

However the depth of the band comes from the rest of the people, Will on his own has the star quality, but when in the company of these fine musicians it moves into another dimension , they are as close as they are diverse and you can sense that days on the road with this bunch are not dull , never predicable and I suspect seldom totally sober for any length of time. A musician’s life blood is in touring and performing and unless they can embrace the whole lifestyle it must truly be very trying to spend hours on the road and nights in hotels, but if you enter into the whole spirit of the experience it can be a wonderful ride.
The road to fame and success is never easy and in truth if it is too easy a ride you are never going to appreciate it to the extent you should, the overnight success inevitably becomes the overnight failure, but the artist who withstands the bumpy road and for the main retains their hope and optimism although not guaranteed to fulfil their dreams should they do so are far more likely to retain them..

So the story continues……….. at this crossroads you can only imagine which scenario will play out and where this band will be in six months, if there if any justice they will be the name on every ones lips but if not the day will surely come when they are, and even though there are many great artists out there who also deserve to succeed for Will and Co there really does not seem any other rightful destiny .