Jon Tutcher

Since September, my Birmingham band ‘Route 49′ have had a new line-up and style. We’re still a pop covers band, but have been trying to edge towards the more modern end of things, rather than ending up with an identical set list to all the other ‘soul/motown’ covers bands. We’ve been gigging for a while now, and came out of the studio a few weeks ago with a rather impressive sounding demo (if I do say so myself):

Credit goes to Nobby Clarke at the Oxygen Rooms, Hockley, for letting us use his studio and making it sound great. I also got the chance to play a real Höhner Clavinet D6, which was cool.

Me with Nobby's Höhner D6

Hopefully we’ll have a lot of gigs coming up over the summer – I took the band (with some notable personnel changes) to Club Med Val Thorens at Christmas, where we had a great time, and with any luck we’ll be back at another resort later on in the year…

I think 2009′s been a great year for music in Birmingham. I could go into all sorts of reasons why, but far more interesting is how 2010 is shaping up. The mac is supposed to be re-opening (although I’m not sure on the specifics), the Mostly Jazz festival is running for the first time in June, but best of all (in my opinion) is Harmonic Festival – a new thing run by jazz dons Chris Mapp and Percy Pursglove, as well as Birmingham Jazz and the Cobweb Collective. It aims to celebrate and showcase just how much great new music is going on in Brum – and the line-up so far is very impressive. Harmonic runs March 11th-13th 2010 in a few venues around town, and full details are available on their website. Definitely worth saving the date!