An exciting trip up the M1 in the StanVan to play at a new venue for us – The Diamond, in Sutton-in-Ashfield near Mansfield.
Please see venue website for ticket details etc as and when it’s added to their gig listings.
Posts By Stanley Dee
Watford
First gig of 2016 at Stanley’s ‘home from home’ the Horns in Watford!
Evening gig – please check venue’s website for timings etc.
Everyone’s gone to the movies….
Back in November we played at the Half Moon in Putney (one of our very favourite regular venues) and we were fortunate enough to be able to have it filmed for posterity! The extremely nice and generous Colin Rogal had offered to round-up his trusty crew and record the gig for us. You can see more about Colin’s day job on his website www.rogal.org and as luck would have it, he’s a big Dan Fan and volunteered to help us jazz up the website content a little.
You can see a clip of that evening by playing the YouTube link embedded in the website. We’ll be adding more to this once some mixing and editing has taken place but we think this clip gives a really good flavour of what goes on at a Stanley gig!
Hope you enjoy it…….and thanks again Colin and crew!
Putney
The Half Moon, Putney
Start time approx. 8pm. Please see venue website for details.
Another one reeling in…
And so we’re approaching our last gig of 2015. What better way to round it off than at the Half Moon in Putney on Sun 22nd November, where we’ll also be recording the gig for posterity! Hopefully we’ll have quite a few friends and regulars joining us to make sure it’s a good one. And if you’re in such good voice as usual you may even hear yourself on a track or two!!
Looking back over the year we’ve had some great gigs. It’s been particularly nice to play some outdoor gigs over the Summer, and on the whole the weather was very much on our side. Hopefully we’ll be able to repeat some alfresco Stanley activity next year too – ahem, Emily Eavis if you’re listening……
We’re also looking to try and add some new venues to our list next year, so if any of you people out there can recommend any of your personal favourites please let us know.
Thanks as always to everyone who has been to see us this year, and especially those who have shared your nice feedback with us, either in person after a gig or via the usual social meeja channels. It really makes our day when you take the time out to do that.
Hope to see as many people as possible at Putney on 22nd to help us round of the year’s activity in style!
cheers!
Stanley
St Albans
Looking forward to returning to The Boot, St Albans again. When we played here earlier this year it was rather crowded to say the least, so do arrive early if you want to see us as well as hear us!!
See venue’s website for timings.
Watford
The Horns, Watford
Start time approx. 4pm. Please check venue website for details
Some random photos…
-
- Wokingham
-
- Wokingham
-
- Tropic
-
- Tropic
-
- Tropic
-
- Tropic
-
- Dunfest
-
- Dunfest
-
- Dunfest
-
- Dunfest
-
- Farmer’s Boy
-
- Farmer’s Boy
Some random pics from gigs over the last couple of years…
Kings Langley
A new one for Stan. We’re looking forward to making some new friends at the Kings Langley Services Club.
A tribute….
Looking around the gig guides up and down the UK (and indeed overseas) it certainly is a credit to Steely Dan, that there are so many of us ‘tribute’ bands out there having fun playing their wonderful songs. I’m sure you’ve all been in the same situation as us, when you list Steely Dan amongst your listening favourites, only to be met with the fairly typical responses of:
a) Never heard of ‘em.
b) Weren’t they the ones who did ‘All around my hat?’
c) Weren’t they the ones who did ‘Stuck in the middle with you?’
Yep, we’ve heard them all!
So it’s always a constant pleasant surprise when we turn up at gigs to a room full of people who obviously know all the SD back catalogue in great detail (arguably more so than us sometimes!) and who get such a kick out of hearing the music from their own CD (and probably vinyl) collections brought to life in some way. And, in the regular absence of Donald and Walter from these shores I guess it’s the only option we have!
From our own experience in going to see some of the other excellent SD bands out there (Nearly Dan, Stealing Dan and Don, Gas in the Car, to name a few) there’s also some room for manoeuvre in how you can interpret the original tracks. The Stanley approach has always been to try and stay as close as possible to the studio versions, while some of the other bands take those originals as a base and have fun re-interpreting, improvising and putting their own stamp on it. It’s a testament to the original tunes that they work just as well whichever way you want to treat them, and also a testament to you Dan fans out there who have ears that are possibly a little more open than most and appreciate the music from all angles!
I think from a muso perspective, the reason why there are so many of us SD tribute bands out there is because there is just so much to get our teeth into. While we won’t deny the sheer joy of bashing through a raucous Johnny B Goode now and then, it’s really great to be able to delve into the harmonic richness of those SD tunes and try and get our collective heads around the genius of how those guys managed to come up with that stuff in the first place!
Also, thanks to the fairly low public profile of the band it is a huge relief that there is no expectation from the gig-going public for us to have to try and look like the people whose music we’re trying to replicate!! Having said that, a pair of Denny Dias dungarees might just have to make an appearance at a future gig…….just to properly keep up the whole ‘tribute’ thing!
So, there you are. A rambling piece of nonsense I grant you. But all in all I guess this is just a thank you from the band to Steely Dan for giving us all this great repertoire in the first instance. And thanks to you who come and see us and the other Dan-bands out there, for letting us have a chance to get up there and enjoy playing it to people who truly appreciate it.
Stop Press: Due to several requests, it may well be that ‘All around my hat’ makes an appearance in 2016.
Cheers!
Stanley