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10 Years of TEHI?!

We’re delighted to have been asked back to play at the 10th – yes TENTH – The Eyes Have It festival in July 2025. This is especially meaningful to us because we’ve played at every single TEHI and it’s always a highlight of the TELSEN calendar. When you consider that there was no festival in 2020 due to the pandemic, you realise just how long our relationship with this amazing little festival has been.

We’ll be playing at 2pm on Saturday 5th July so don’t be late.

There’s an additional night of entertainment this year too as the festival starts on the Thursday evening with an Acoustic and Drinks night to gently break you in for the festival proper.

You can get your tickets here.

‘Grammed Up

We’ve recently been asked whether we had a TELSEN Instagram account. We hadn’t. But we do now. We’d be EVER SO grateful if you’d find us – @telsen.band – and give us a ickle follow please.

The plan is that we’ll post gigs, snippets of songs in rehearsal, photos… that kind of malarkey.

Best TEHI Yet?

For 8 or so years now, The Eyes Have It festival in Derbyshire has been one of the highlights of the band’s year. This year the festival was bigger – and arguably better – than ever before. TELSEN appeared on the revamped marquee stage on the Friday evening, after China Crisis and Marseilles and before Ranking Jr’s The Beat. We had a great crowd (many wearing TELSEN t-shirts), great weather (some of the Saturday acts weren’t so lucky) and great sound.

We had the opportunity to meet up with some lovely people who’ve become friends over the years and to see some excellent music.

This photo by kind courtesy of Jo Glattback…

Thanks so much to Simon Clark and his amazing team for everything, not least their continued support of TELSEN over the years.

2023: Going Four-ward

And then there were four.

Yes, for the first time in many years, TELSEN is a four-piece. Still as noisy, still as cool, still as sexy… (okay, so this might be subjective) …but with marginally more room onstage.

We’ve begun the year with a support (to “One Eyed Dog“) slot at the wondrous Billesley Rock Club in Birmingham and we will be posting details of this year’s festivals soon.

There’s new material, new photos, Nick is now jumping in on 2nd guitar occasionally, and there’s even the odd bit of keyboard appearing. What’s not to be excited about?

(Carlsberg product placement is not part of any sponsorship deal… although it probably should be).

2022: TELSEN Firing On All Cylinders

And then suddenly, it’s a whole new year!

I think it’s safe to say that the band have never been tighter, more creative and keener to share our brand of Indie Rock with the world. We’ll soon be posting details of our two festivals booked for this summer, including a return to the fabulous The Eyes Have It festival in Duffield, Derbyshire in July.

We’re also trying to line up some gigs for the coming months. Watch this space.

Oh, and we have some new photos. Here’s one, taken in our studio…

New Photo, New Songs, New Festivals

As if to prove you can’t keep a good band down, TELSEN have recommenced rehearsals to prepare for two festivals scheduled for July. But first, here’s our first official photo of 2021 (including, you’ll notice, “new” drummer Luke, who’s been with the band for almost two years but only had the opportunity to play a couple of gigs with us)…

Right. Those festival dates:

Saturday 3rd July: “The Eyes Have It” Festival, Duffield, Derbyshire. Main stage. Supporting the legendary Steve Harley. You might be aware we’ve played here several (4? 5?) times before and it is truly a highlight of the TELSEN calendar. Click here for more information and tickets.

Saturday 17th July: We’re still waiting for full details about this event but it will be in the West Midlands. TELSEN have been asked to do an acoustic set on Friday 16th July and then a full set on the Saturday but this is all yet to be confirmed.

What we can tell you is that apart from storming, re-energized renditions of those classic TELSEN songs, we have a few new songs fighting for their place in our set list that we feel have the makings of future classics.

2021: Still Here!

Well 2020 didn’t quite pan out as we’d hoped, did it?

Our (now) annual appearance at the wonderful The Eyes Have It festival in Derbyshire was cancelled due to some sort of pandemic, and even though we did our best to keep rehearsals/writing sessions going, this proved increasingly tricky with our home town of Birmingham flying the flag for high infection rates.

However, you can’t keep a great band down and TELSEN are now chomping at the carefully-sterilised bit to get back into the studio and pick up where we left off.

Before Boris & Co. told us to stay at home, we were beginning to create, in an appropriately socially-distanced stylee, some wonderful new material. Our singstress Abi plays a bigger part in some of the new stuff (both writing and taking the lead vocal) plus we’re playing around with different sounds/instrumentation. During the numerous lockdowns we’ve been sharing new musical influences and generally whetting our appetite for future creativity. “New” drummer Luke (he’s been with us for a year already) has been putting the rest of to shame with his dedication to improving his craft – he was good before, he’s amazing now. Nick, Karl and David have also been processing new ideas and lyrical influences that can be introduced into new music as soon as we’re allowed.

So hello 2021! You don’t scare us. We’re ready for you. TEHI has been rescheduled for this summer and we’re optimistic that TELSEN will be back and firing on all cyclinders.

In the meantime, there are quite a few live performance clips available on our Facebook page and YouTube so please keep in touch with our music until we can be out there breaking microphone stands and kicking musical ass “in the flesh”.

Speaking of microphone stands, here’s a unique TELSEN-patented “Post-breakage mobile microphone support apparatus“, currently unavailable in retail outlets…

 

 

 

Luke Who’s Drumming!

We have a new drummer!! Sadly, Mike left us at the end of 2019 (we wish him all the very best in his other musical ventures!) and Luke Glattback stepped in during rehearsals for our two remaining shows of December and January (a support slot for The Killaz and a private party, both at the brilliant Route 44 in Acocks Green, Birmingham).

Despite his tender years (he’s still a teenager so brings down the band’s average age nicely), Luke has been playing for a few years now and after just a handful of rehearsals was able to dazzle at both gigs and has recently been part of the bit we really love – writing new material. We look forward to more writing and recording with Luke over the next few months.

TELSEN on CD

We’ve put together a limited edition 4-track live CD to take along to The Eyes Have It festival next month where we’re supporting the 80’s legend Hazel O’Connor (Friday 6th July). The tracks were recorded at last year’s TEHI festival by our good friend Quentin at Silk Purse Videos. We hope to be selling these for £1 a pop at the festival but let us know if you’d like to reserve one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not too late to come and see us TEHI. This is our favourite festival and we’d love to see us there.

Next stop – t-shirts!

Drummer For Summer

TELSEN are delighted to welcome Jeff Wilday as our resident tub-thumper for our forthcoming events, including our much-longed-for return to TEHI Festival in July.

Jeff replaces our original drummer Richard, who had to take a recuperative sabbatical due to ongoing hand issues and eventually decided to step down. We’d like to wish Richard all the very best and we’re glad to hear his injury is showing a great deal of improvement.

Before making this announcement here. we sneaked in a little mid-bill 40 minute set at The Asylum 2 in Birmingham last month which went down very well.

We don’t think it will be long before Jeff is up to speed with the rest of the TELSEN back catalogue and perhaps even emerges from a cloud of rhubarb-and-custard-flavoured vapour long enough to have his mugshot added to the website.

For the moment, here’s the first ever photograph of the new line-up (Jeff is second from the left betwixt two other grumpy blokes…