All posts by Simon

Salisbury Live Bank Holiday Garden Party

August Bank Holiday Sunday 30 August 2020 – what a terrific day organised by Salisbury Live.

Originally planned as a full electric event – a revised “unplugged Garden Party” was put in place after receiving updated advice from Wiltshire Council.

With a strict social distancing, no dancing, no sing along policy it could have been a bit flat and lifeless but instead it was a celebration of local bands, original and covers, with all the tables being sold out with over a week to go. The weather was kind all day, although it did get a bit nippy when the sun went down.

The crowd stayed for the entire day and were entertained by

Ribble (guitar and fiddle – a “none more English” sound);

Tim Madden (singer songwriter + guitar – a little nervous without his full band but carried it off wonderfully);

Robb Blake (also singer songwriter + guitar – but made enough noise that he sounded like he had a band with him);

Lump light (like Lump but lighter – always entertaining. Salisbury songs for Salisbury people);

then the covers kicked off with Trinity who brought the tempo up to set the scene.

And then it was our turn. No on-stage speakers, an electric drum kit and in ear monitors – quite different but we think we got away with it. The crowd got us to play three encores which is always a good sign!

A huge thanks to Salisbury Live for organising a magnificent event, to Salisbury Rugby Club for hosting, to the great audience, and all the bands who played on the day.


A quick mention to BSM Stage Tec. They had something we’ve not seen before – wireless speakers around the venue. Genius idea – doesn’t have to be loud because there’s always a speaker nearby. an innovative way of getting sound to everyone without contravening the new noise rules. Extremely clever idea and the stage look brilliant too!

Thanks to all that came – we really hope it’s not another five months until we see you again.

Happy Holidays

That’s our last gig for 2019 done.

A huge great big juicy thank you to everyone who came to see us in 2019 and who liked our page and who shared our pictures and generally supported us throughout the year especially with the major change around the mid way point.

Without you it wouldn’t be half as much fun so thank you, thank you, thank you!

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year and we’ll see you in the Twenties!

August Bank HoLIDAY – DOUBLE THE FUN

The weather people tells us this weekend is gonna be a scorcher. Even without their wisdom we know it’s gonna be good!

Tonight (Friday) Salisbury Market Square is the place to be for the Salisbury Live Summer Finale.

Then we say goodbye to Craig with a double header. First up a stormning gig at Fun In The Field in Berwick St John. Check out that lineup!

This is gonna be insanne – find a way to get there!

Then to round off the weekend (before collapisng with a gig hangover on Monday) we have the very last gig with Craig at the Shrewton Cricket Club Beerex at the Shrewton Recreation Centre which is also going to be amazing fun.

Wish our Craig the best and see you all hot and sweaty!!

Breaking News

Breaking News:

Back on the 14th July we announced the sad news that Craig had decided to leave the band. At the time we said:
“Our intention is to hand all lead vocal duties to Amber with the rest of the band providing backing vocals, once the new drummer is in place. There is no fixed timescale for this so we will let you know as it breaks.”

The breaking news is that Craig will be leaving the band at the end of August. We have three more gigs until then so please make every effort to come and see us with Craig doing his thing. Those last dates with Craig gigs are:

• Salisbury Market Square Friday 16 August
• Fun in the Field. Berwick St James Saturday 24 August
• Shrewton Cricket Club Beer Festival Sunday 25 August

Come and show Craig your support and help us to wish him all the best for the future.

Back in July we also said: “we are not actively looking for new gigs until the new drummer is in place and we are all comfortable that the Break Cover magic is in place… we are confident that you’ll enjoy what this turns in to.”

This is also updated as we have a new drummer, we are over the moon with how everything is sounding and are now extremely confident that you’ll love what this turns in to – that Break Cover magic is alive and well. So, the great news here is that we can start taking bookings now for dates from October onwards.

Please follow the events page below to track where we are playing. There are a few surprises to come too. Stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you at an event soon.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/BreakCover/events/

Music In The Park 2019

A return to Elizabeth Gardens Salisbury for the City Council’s Music In The Park series of events. A beutiful location, a very appreciative audience and a simnply wonderful atmosphere.

Our favourite comment of the day was that it needs to go on for longer. A better compliment we could not ask for.

Once again the weather was extremely kind for us and the people of Salisbury came out to enjoy a picnic, or a very nice hotdog or just drinks and a relax in the sun to free music provided by Break Cover and the very talented Daisy who got a huge reception.

Daisy attracting a younger audience

Many thanks to all those who provided photos of the day

What a location to play!
The view from the stage
A wonderfully appreciative audience
Break Cover. In case you were unsure.

There are three more dates for this event this summer – get along – it’s a terrific atmosphere…

21st July – Sticky Toffee Jazz
Jazz and Swing vocalist with a big vintage vibe
Support Act – Becca and Tebby

4th August – Shannon Laura
A solo vocalist who performs Pop and RnB covers
Support Act – Hope Amber and Jess Corbett

18th August – TuneBox
A brother and sister music duo who performs acoustic covers of hit songs from across the decades
Support Act: Lucy Trigwell

Ebblefest 2019

A very full marquee

Saturday was a terrific day at Ebblefest! Lovely weather for it and what a crowd! We made sure we sampled all of the food stalls and the bar at the end of the Marquee. The Fete beforehand was well attended and then when the evening descended, well, the pictures show what happened!

Smoke machine was worked hard

Definitely a great way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon / evening! Thank you for having us Village Fete & Ebblefest – Odstock, Nunton, Bodenham.

Amazing crowd having a ball!

Also a tip of the hat to Just BecauseBadger Blues BandCommon Confusion and The Lyte Brigade playing throughout the event…

Just Because playing to full bar inside and out
The Badger Blues Band getting in to it.
Common Confusion hiding in the smoke
Most of the Lyte Brigade
As it was so hot and sticky in the marquee lots of Ebblefesters stayed cool with the drinks outside!

Break Cover is 7 years old today

17 May 2012 was our first gig at Boscombe Down Sgt Mess and the name Break Cover was coined for the first time.

7 years and 200+ gigs later we are still going strong. If anything we are having more fun now than we did when we first started!

We often get asked what our favourite gigs were so a seventh birthday feels like a good excuse to post our top 7 gigs.

The problem with that is we can never agree which make the top so there might be more than 7 in our top 7!

1. The Bridge Music Festival, Stockbridge, June 2014.

A charity music festival to raise money for Alex Lewis who lost all of his limbs following a cold! Memorable for the great range of bands, the incredible crowd, a great stage, insane lighting and the way that the whole event lifted when the sun went down and it just felt like a party for every second we played. The band were on fire and the crowd fed off that ; the band then fed off the crowd’s energy creating the magical feedback loop of joy which you can never plan for. Terry winding up Jim Davidson but making the PA feedback every time he spoke was hilarious too. A truly memorable night.

Either a smoke machine or this band are HOT!

2. John Coghlan’s Quo, The Barrington, November 2016.

Supporting a big name band is always going to be good fun but Craig and Simon are massive fans of Status Quo so getting to support the original Frantic Four drummer was always going to be even more special. It turns out that John is a terrific chap and his band are really lovely too. We had a great laugh with them and were made to feel like part of the family. The guys at The Barrington could not have done more for us as well. And then there was the audience… hugely appreciative, applauding the songs before we played them and really kind and open with feedback in the bar after. Another truly memorable night.

Opening for Quo. Awesome.

3. Salisbury Christmas Light Switch On, November 2015.

Playing in Salisbury is always a treat as Salisbury audiences really appreciate live music. It turns out an audience of 14,000 really appreciates live music. Salisbury market square absolutely rammed; a huge stage; a massive PA; a huge TV screen and a crowd that massively appreciated what we did. A huge buzz for everyone on stage. Getting the Evolution Choir, Santa and Rudolf up for “Merry Christmas Everyone” at the end was electric. Not one that we will ever forget.

Thanks to Spencer Mulholland for photo. What a lot of folk!

4. Qudos, 2014

2014 was a remarkable year for us but one of the most memorable things was playing in Qudos Music Bar & Grill on Castle Street Salisbury a total of 9 times in that one year. Qudos is a very special place for us. Simon was the first guitarist ever to play there in a previous band at the business launch. On top of that we have played there more than 35 times since our first gig in September 2012. The most outstanding feature of the venue – the audience. These guys are always up for it and it’s a joy to play here – every time. It helps the atmosphere is as hot as a Louisiana swamp at midday. A year to remember.

Qudos Music Bar & Grill. One of the very best places for live music in Salisbury.

5. Firsfest, August 2018

We have played at the Firsdown Music Festival in Winterslow (better known as Firsfest) before 2018 but this was the first time we had played the Social Stage. The last act on the main stage was All Floyd who had started late due to previous bands running over. This meant we had to start our set as they were still playing. Not expecting too much we launched into our set. We were joined very quickly by an extremely energetic group of people who were keen to party the night away. An hour or so later and more encores than we should have played and we looked back on one of the most energetic and appreciative audiences we could remember. A festival night to remember forever.

Even the lighting joined in with the Break Cover theme.

6. CarFest, Salisbury, September 2018.

Salisbury Market Square is good to us. Probably because Salisbury audiences are absolutely fantastic! However, we approached this one a little nervously as Salisbury had never had a CarFest in the Market before and we had to play from 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. Well we needn’t have worried – the weather was incredible, the cars were brilliant, the stall holders were amazing the audience was absolutely out of this world. More than 15,000 people attended the day and they could not have been more fun to play for. A CarFest to remember.

There are some cars in there somewhere we promise.

7. The Talbot Inn, Calne, May 2019

The most recent event to make the list was set up by the Celtic Crew MCC and took us to North Wiltshire for the first time. What made this so special? Two things: the people who ran the pub looked after us really well and the atmosphoere from the audience was tremendous. All of the gigs on this list were made memorable by the audience that we played to. When the audience feeds off what we are doing and we get high from their feedback and that makes us play better and the audience picks up on that… it’s what Wilko Johnson calls “a secret conspiracy to have a good time”. All of the gigs here had that but this last one was such a complete surprise that it had the band flying. A bike night to remember!

Just outside…

Truthfully, it’s impossible to pick a top 7 and if you ask us again tomorrow it will probably be different. Across 200+ gigs there’s always going to be those that just stand out so the following deserve an honourable mention as they are probably in that top list too…

8. Figglefest – a village festival which is superbly run, has a terrific atmosphere and is a joy to play.

9. Durrington Music in The Rec – previously organised by the late, great John Mills this is always a lovely family atmosphere event tied to an annual Vintage Vehicle weekend.

10. Amesbury Carnival – maybe it was the whether but it was probably the audience – just a superb atmosphere and an all round beautiful day.

Watching bands at Figglefest ’18 while Salisbury Plain burns in the background. Lovely.

The main theme here is that it is the audience which makes each gig memorable and we have been lucky enough to play some terrific events to some incredible people.

Thank you all so much for your support over the last 7 years! You are the reason we do this.

Please join us for our seventh birthday party at Qudos in Salisbury on Friday 31 May 2019!!

Can we get more people in this photo?

Qudos 23 March 2019

A huge thank you to everyone at Qudos last night. That was a terrific turn out and much hotter than anyone expected.

The new songs went down a storm and everyone had a fantastic evening.

Really nice to see some familiar faces we hadn’t seen in a while – great to see you having such a good time!!

Some members of the audience probably woke up feeling a little more worse for wear than others and we hope that the lady who fell in to 2 microphone stands, a music stand, an amplifier and 3 guitars isn’t feeling too poorly today despite drinking all of Qudos.

Once again thank you to the bar staff for keeping the evening moving and for making sure we all had a marvellous evening.

Next up Cosy Club on Friday 29 March. See you there!

Romsey Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Jo and thank you for asking us to your Rock & Roll party.

A great evening had by all and so lovely to see the ladies in their 50s dresses dancing their (bobby) socks off.

Next up is the Salisbury Live Fundraiser this Saturday 16 March. Join Trip, Passenger Club, The Duskers, Trinity, Just Beacuase and us at Alderbury Social Club.

Twice the Fun!

Saturday 22 December was an exciting day with two gigs to cover!

First up was a last minute gig with the Salisbury Live team as The Zucchinis were sadly not able to do their scheduled slot which meant we got to play in the bandstand for the first time this year.

It was great to see the Christmas Market still in full flow and everyone having a very Christmassy time.

Kudos to Gary Sarum, Brian Mundy and Kelvin O’Brien for running the music at the Christmas Market for the last 3 weeks – very professional and well appreciated!

Next up, a quick hop across town to Qudos Music Bar & Grill.

Once again the Qudos audience were in fine voice and despite, some very naughty sound gremlins (including a microphone cable which stopped working in the 6 minutes between sound check and gig time) an exuberant time was had by all.

Our favourite quote of the night: “As it’s the last Saturday before Christmas would you like to hear a Christmas song?” Qudos replies “NO!!” Righto then, on with the non-Christmas music.

Thanks to Vanessa, Andy, the bar staff and the wonderful audience for another great night at Qudos!

Have a great Christmas and hopefully see you either on Boxing Day at Alderbury Club or back in Qudos for New Years Eve!