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The Lightyears on your telly-box

So… the inaugural nationwide tour of Josh’s Band is now over. We’ve been to Birmingham, Bristol, London, Edinburgh and Manchester and played to (and with!) over 1,100 people. It’s been an incredible experience to be part of Josh’s core band and the general consensus is that all of this is merely the beginning.

Work on the track we wrote for the campaign – “Come With Me” – continues apace and it is due for release on a major record label in January. The final recording will feature hundreds of musicians and singers from all over the UK. The first advert (covering the dates in Birmingham, London and Bristol) has already hit your TV screens. The follow-up (covering Edinburgh and Manchester) is out next week.

Thanks to Josh for having us onboard and to all the fantastic performers who joined us on the tour. Josh will be making a guest appearance at our gig tomorrow night (Friday 4 December) at The Troubadour in Earls Court and it is highly likely that a mass singalong will ensue… hope to see you there!

Look out Manchester – Josh’s Band is a-coming…

Since I last blogged, Josh’s Band has jammed in Bristol, London and Edinburgh. We’ve played with pipers, melodised with melodica players and harmonised with hurdy-gurdyists (don’t be fooled by the elaborate alliteration – all of this is true). Plus our mates are starting to get in contact to say they’ve heard us on the radio tonight – so the word is spreading…

It’s been an awesome journey so far and is set to continue in style with an enormous gig at Manchester’s Trafford Centre this Saturday. If you live in the area, make sure you get your butt down there. You won’t regret it.

And, if you’ve managed to miss out on this poptastic jamboree entirely, fear not – you can come and see The Lightyears headline The Troubadour in Earls Court next Friday 4 December. Josh will be making a special guest appearance and no doubt an impromptu singalong will ensue…

Historically we tend to sell this venue out so it’s advisable to buy in advance (click here to purchase tickets) or arrive early. Doors at 8pm; first act 8.15pm; LYs onstage 9.45pm. Visit the GIGS page for full details. See you there!

Thank you Wembley… and hello Bristol!

Last night we played to 46,000 people at Wembley Stadium and who should turn up to join the crowd but that bloke off the telly, Josh Ward!

Seriously though, we had an awesome night and it was great to see so many LYs fans there. We took the opportunity to do a little onstage camera piece with Josh ahead of our trip to Bristol tonight – the next stop on Josh’s Band’s T-Mobile tour.

I studied at Bristol University so I have a special affection for the place… no idea where in the city we’re going to be or what we’re going to be doing but, if Birmingham was anything to go by, it should be cracking! Check out this quick clip from the first gig of the tour in Brum.

Expect more of the same from the rest of the tour dates – Bristol, London, Edinburgh and Manchester. Visit Josh’s Myspace page for details.

Click here to learn the lyrics and chords for our tour song, “Come With Me” (written by Chris and George Lightyear especially for Josh’s Band). Click here for the video tutorial.

Josh’s Band hits the road…

Well… Birmingham was awesome. Nobody knew quite what to expect from the first date on Josh’s Band’s tour but what we got was a mass singalong in the Bullring, just enough decent weather to perform outside and about 200 screaming fans! Josh, it seems, has become a minor celebrity overnight and his mere presence now sparks mass hysteria amongst his devoted groupies.

Our song, “Come With Me“, went down really well and a large proportion of the crowd had done their homework and learnt the lyrics, tune and chords (check out the video tutorial here). People were turning up with guitars, miniature drumkits, saxophones, kazoos and ukuleles and, despite the rain, British spirit endured and everybody had a whale of a time.

Next stop, Bristol – this Thursday 19 November. Details coming soon!

Now, if you’ll forgive me, I must return to Lightyears duties and go and prepare for tomorrow’s gig. Which is at Wembley Stadium. In front of 60,000 people.

Gulp.

Come one, come all, to Birmingham…

All the great tours start in great cities. That’s just a simple fact of rock and roll. It might be the Enormodome, Memphis, or the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, or New York’s Madison Square Gardens.

This tour, on the other hand, begins in Birmingham.

But you gotta start somewhere, eh?!

Tomorrow morning at 11am, Josh’s Band (featuring Chris and George Lightyear) will be premiering at the Birmingham Bullring in an attempt to get the good people of the UK singing the song we wrote last week in a studio in St John’s Wood. It’s called “Come With Me” and it’s invitingly simple to play and sing (click here for lyrics and chords; click here for recording and sheet music).

If you possess even just a modicum of musical talent or inclination, come join us and you could end up starring in a T-Mobile advert. It’s going to be exactly like the video for “All You Need Is Love”… except, you know, in a shopping centre.

Visit Josh’s Myspace page to find out more.

Tate Modern, here we come…

Over the past few weeks I’ve been spotting my face all over bus stops, underground stations and bins (no, really) as part of the new T-Mobile ad campaign. I know what you’re thinking – if a man sees his face on too many shopping centre bins then, eventually, he’s going to develop an intolerable ego. Well, true to form, the ego is burgeoning and well and truly on its way. But that’s not all. Not only have I found myself (semi-) immortalised in a mobile phone advert but, along with George and Tony, I have now been forever documented in a rather excellent painting by Charlotte Harris from Langtree School in Oxfordshire.

This may sound like an episode of Heartbeat but in fact Charlotte painted the above picture, along with a second one featured below, as part of her recent GCSE Art project.

If you’ve painted a picture of The Lightyears, or have perhaps built a shrine to the band in your front room complete with inflatable mannikins and potato print murals, please do send it in and we’ll publish it on the website.

Our song in a national ad campaign…!

Here’s the news – T-Mobile have selected our song “Come With Me” to be the signature song for their upcoming ad campaign. On top of this, George and Chris have now officially joined Josh Ward (the face of the ad campaign) and virtuoso drummer Mike Glozier to form the core band for the tour. This means that we’ll be bombing up and down the country over the next month or so performing the song and teaching it to – hopefully – thousands of people.

Click here to view the latest episode of Josh’s Superband Saga – featuring The Lightyears in the studio, working on “Come With Me”.

This whole campaign has grown organically and it’s impossible to say what will happen next… but there’s a good chance you’ll be hearing more about it soon, whether it’s in the paper, on the TV or in your hometown. Whether you’re musical or not, Josh wants you to Join His Band. And you should. He’s a lovely chap, you know.

You can read the lyrics for our song “Come With Me” on the LYRICS page.

You can here “Come With Me” on Josh’s Myspace page by clicking here.

Writing a song for T-Mobile…

Our involvement with the new T-Mobile ad campaign is now beginning to get exciting. Friends and family have been spotting us all over the UK on TV ads, billboards, bus-stops and train station big screens…. and today we were brought in to write the campaign’s flagship song.

We were invited to the famous Rak Studios in St John’s Wood, which is where Radiohead recorded The Bends. Our brief was to write a song that would provide the basis for the next leg of the campaign – travelling around the country and inspiring mass nationwide sing-alongs. No pressure then.

Joined by Josh on bass and the amazing Mike Glozier on the drums, George and I wrote a song called “Come With Me” – an uplifting, quirky, catchy pop number about gathering together everyone you know and going on a massive road trip (you can read the lyrics here). Various different songwriters and groups of musicians have been asked to contribute material to T-Mobile’s cause and it’s not clear yet which song the ad execs at Saatchi & Saatchi will choose. Fingers crossed – we find out tomorrow…

ps. If you’ve seen The Lightyears on a billboard or bus-stop, send us a picture of yourself with the advert (preferably with your thumbs-up – it’s the only respectable way to be photographed) and we’ll publish it on the website.

Jamming on an open-top bus!

OK, so it’s Week Three and yet again I found myself gathering up an instrument and heading off to a slightly unconventional jamming session for the new T-Mobile ad campaign. I was on guitar rather than piano today because the session was taking place on a vintage open-top bus driving through the centre of London. I know. This was rock and roll in its purest form.

George is out-of-town at the moment so I took my kid brother Shaun with me, who is a stunning musician and, not that surprisingly, looks almost exactly like me (see picture above for evidence). We started early – 9am to be precise – and spent almost the entire day driving through London’s busiest streets singing to the masses. True to form, Josh had gathered together a motley crew of musicians and vocalists, not to mention a battalion of enthusiastic cheerleaders (complete with pom-poms) to entertain the people of Oxford Street, Soho and Mayfair.

We were a genuine spectacle, cruising through Piccadilly Circus singing and playing and generally causing a ruccus. Tourists stood open-mouthed. Builders whooped and cheered. Hearts were lifted, boundaries were crossed. The superband is growing…

If you’re a musician, you should get involved. Contact Josh via his Myspace page.

The Piano Orchestra

OK – latest developments in the T-Mobile Superband Bonanza…

Today Josh asked us to come and join him and bunch of other musicians in the Half Moon pub in Oxford to jam a new song that had been written for the campaign called “I Wanna Feel You Move”. It was a small pub and full to the brim with guitarists, singers, percussionists and pianists. I was rather delighted to find myself part of a frankly formidable Piano Orchestra (OK, there were only three of us – but that constitutes an orchestra in my opinion). Afterwards, George and I were filmed walking along the street texting friends as if on the way to the jam. Luckily I have a degree in Drama and the skills I learnt whilst at university meant that I was able to very convincingly “text” my “friend” – even though, in reality, I wasn’t actually writing anything at all.

For the second time in a row, the jam was attended by a harpist. Most impressed by this. Harpists are practically an endangered species these days.

Think the first ad will start airing soon…..

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