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…
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.
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…
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 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…
Well, that’s our favourite festival done and dusted for another year. “The Eyes have It” 2017 was roughly double in size to last year and four times the size of 2015. Headliners this year included the Blockheads and Climax Blues Band -and TOYAH, who we were delighted to be main support for on the Saturday night and who turned out to be really lovely and a total professional.
Our set seemed to go down very well and there are rumours (actually, slightly more than rumours) that we’ll be back next year – our FOURTH consecutive appearance at this wonderful event.
Telsen would like to thank Simon Clark and his amazing team for a fantastic weekend and his continued belief in our little band of noisy West-Midlanders.
Thanks also to Quentin Clark of Silk Purse Videos for his excellent video footage, which we’ll be posting here, a track at a time, for your delectation.
Here, to get the ball rolling is “Cowboy”, a newish song from mid-set that we’re especially pleased with…
We’ve been a bit lax regarding updates here but quite a lot has been happening of late. Our lovely drummer Dave Eley has moved on to pastures new (the bad news) but luckily the original Telsen drummer Richard Battye has returned to his sweaty drum stool (the good news).
And just in time too – we’ve been practicing hard to bring Richard up to speed with the newer songs before we play our biggest (and, sorry, favourite, gig this year) – “The Eyes Have It” Festival in Duffield, Derbyshire on Saturday 8th July.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – this is a fantastic friendly little festival, and we’re fortunate to have played there every year since it started in 2015. This year though, the ante has been upped and numbers are set to be considerably bigger than previous years, not least because of the bigger names that organiser Simon has lined up for each day. Friday’s headliners are none other than The Blockheads, on Sunday it’s the Climax Blues Band, and on Saturday we’ll be warming the stage for 80’s icon, Toyah! This is going to be a cracker.
If you’d like to come along, there may still be tickets available although we understand that the campsite may now be fully booked (but call to check). Telsen are onstage at 9pm.
Nick, Abi, Karl and David would like to take this opportunity to wish Dave Eley all the very best in his future musical projects. Thanks for the beats!
We hope you haven’t mistaken the lack of activity on this site for our: abduction by aliens, signing by a major label, band split, death in a mudslide etc…
Truth be told, we’ve been busily enjoying ourselves. But also securing gigs, recording a demo, writing new material, nailing down our live set, and planning world domination one gig venue at a time.
The end of 2016 saw us travelling slightly further afield and one gig alone led to two more bookings for 2017. There’ll be more gig announcements (including festival news), photos, and finally some studio-recorded demos right here very soon so keep looking.
But for now, here’s a nice photo(by our good friend and official photographer Colin Dabbs) of our Nick in the recording studio…
Our Halloween gig at the Walkabout was frightfully good fun. The sound was quite frightful too but we’re told it all sounded fine “out front” so that’s the main thing. The poor sound engineer struggled to overcome the problems with the room’s acoustics and horrendous noise coming from the main bar upstairs but Telsen and the other bands had great fun regardless. Thanks to everyone that came along. We’re now planning a recording session in the next few weeks and so we’re trying to decide exactly what to record. What do you think?
Anyway, here’s Nick and Karl in rehearsals this weekend…
Forgive us, dear reader, for our apparent absence in recent months. After our appearance at The Eyes Have It festival in the summer, the Telsenites have been taking themselves off on much-needed holidays and succumbing to a few illnesses but we’re now back in rehearsals with a renewed sense of purpose.
Not least, we’re working on new material, arranging some recording sessions and even planning a video shoot. So keep watching for news of these as they happen.
In the meantime, we’ve been invited to play at a charity gig at the Walkabout bar on Brum’s Broad Street (and not at Cherry Reds as previously thought). The event is part of Operation Drawstring and raising money for the city’s homeless and Telsen will be onstage at 9pm as main support to Seventh Syndicate.
TELSEN 