NOVEMBER
It's been a great few months for Stone Sole River, we've played some excellent gigs with some superb bands. All the supports we've had with Mountain, Wishbone Ash and Carl Palmer turned out even better than expected.

On both the Mountain gigs the audiences were fantastic, and very positive in their response, which is great considering we were playing to a relatively new crowd. The Manchester Life Cafe is always a great venue to play and has become one of our favourite venues, with the Wishbone Ash gig being our third time at there in almost as many months; certain people were asking if we were the resident support band (we wish!)

The second date with Mountain was a new venue for us (The Sheffield Boardwalk) a venue we'd wanted to play at for sometime, and what a great foot in the door playing with Mountain! It's a great venue with a very warm and friendly audience, that seemed really into what we were doing, which is lucky because off the back of that we were given more dates to appear with Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) and Jump.

Actually getting to meet people like Mountains Leslie West and Corky Laing is a great experience considering the people they themselves have played with and been around, and Ritchie Scarlet, there bass player, was a great guy, giving us some very positive feedback!

A great benefit of playing The Boardwalk (besides getting our own very plush dressing room…stained glass windows ya'know!), is that we can stand just outside the dressing room door right by the side of the stage and watch people like Leslie West from about five feet away without getting elbowed or having your pint spilled! Although we did get to see first hand the now legendary wrath of Leslie West, not directed at us I might add, but rather his long suffering guitar tech Shaggy (yes Shaggy, used to live next to Joey Ramone apparently!) and long time drummer and compadre Corky Laing! I won't go into what he was yelling (too many expletives!) but the guys seemed to brush it off, probably all to used to it, although if anyone has the right to lose his rag when things aren't perfect it's Mr West, over 30 years experience he knows how he wants it to sound!

Wishbone Ash again were a great band to perform with, superb musicianship from what is a classic British rock band! It's a great textbook to learn from bands such as these, bands that have had very successful and long established careers.

Another gig we really enjoyed was playing support to Carl Palmer, again at The Boardwalk, a gig where we spent most of the time in complete ore at the musicianship and sheer virtuosity of the band. If prog rock jazz-fusion is your thing go and see this band!

Our latest gig at The Boardwalk with Jump was a slightly quieter affair, although the audience was smaller, they more than made up for it in their response. We played a slightly extended opening set, which the audience really seemed to get into. Jump were two players down but didn't let that stop them. Whereas many bands would have pulled the gig, they just reworked it as a four piece and played, a real pro band with a great sound and some really excellent songs; can't wait to see them with a full compliment of players!

Our next gig at The Boardwalk will be on Saturday 13th December supporting British rockers Budgie, we played with these guys earlier this year at The Witchwood so we're looking forward to another great gig, and a packed house, maybe we'll see a few familiar faces!

We should have the radio interview we did for the BBC on the site in the next few weeks, giving you the chance to listen to us putting the music world to rights and giving you a few insights into what Stone Sole River is all about! Plus one of our favourite tracks 'Ocean Song' which was aired during the interview.

Anyway, just to say a big thanks for all your support in 2003, it's been a great year for the band and we hope 2004 will be even better, we hope you all have a great Christmas and an even better New Year!!!

SEPTEMBER
Time for a diary update!

The band has just performed at the Stockport Festival, and what a great day it turned out to be. The audience was fantastic, a couple of thousand people milling around enjoying the music and the fantastic sun, creating a great festival atmosphere. Although by the time we went on the sun had moved right opposite the stage nearly blinding us, at one point I Iooked up and all I could see was a sea of ultraviolet people, very psychedelic, but very, very cool!!!

We'd like to say a huge thanks to everyone involved, especially Darren and Angela who arranged all the bands, and also to all the people that came down to watch, a really great audience. Hopefully you all bought the compilation CD of the bands including T-REX who contributed a track for it. Don't forget all proceeds went to charity. If you attended and want a copy of the CD e-mail us and we will tell you how to get one. This is going to be an annual event therefore we'll be back again next year!

Another great gig at the Globe (Aug 16th) that preceded the festival, we think it was one of our best performances at the venue to date. A great audience and sound (cheers Rae!) made for a very enjoyable evening, and the post gig jam session downstairs until 3am capped of a very Rock N' Roll night. We'll be back at The Globe for a special Christmas Eve event with The Washington Lees Experiment, a double header rockfest to see the year out! More details about this great gig will be posted on the site nearer the date.

We've just been interviewed and performed a live acoustic version of Upon Weathered Sands for Pure Radio Stockport (87.9 FM). The interview will be aired in November along with airplay of various S.S.R. tracks from our studio recorded EP's. We'll find out the actual date and time and post details on the website so you can tune in too.

We're especially looking forward to the up coming Wishbone Ash and Mountain supports, and hopefully we'll see a few S.S.R. T-shirts in the crowd. If you'd like tickets for these gigs you can order them from the venue (Life Cafe, Peter St. Manchester) and Piccadilly Box Office as well as various internet sites, dates and times are on our gig listings.

The band will also feature on a new compilation C.D. available to buy soon. The Band New compilation is being put together by R.M.R. Promotions to promote bands from the North that have mainly featured Upstairs at The Globe. More info on the project can be found at www.raeleeson.com

As usual all the rest of the gigs are listed on the site and updates will be posted throughout. Also some more songs will be available on the site to download very soon, the first being Upon Weathered Sands (personally one of our favourites) so keep an eye out!

We look forward to seeing you at the gigs and THANKS for your support!!!

JUNE
It's been a while since we gave you an update, but we've been rather busy with one thing and another, don't know where the time goes! Firstly a surprise last minute booking to play with The Blue Oyster Cult at Manchester's Life Cafe came our way, (last minute being 24 hours notice so unfortunately we had no time to advertise). Possibly the biggest gig we've performed at, with an audience of over 500 people crammed right to the front of the stage. We played a 45 minute set to open up for B.O.C, and it turned out to be a great night for S.S.R. with a fantastic, very supportive audience, a great stage and sound and a great opportunity to play alongside one of the classic cult rock bands of all time. Hopefully we'll be lining up a few more gigs along this line in the future and hopefully we'll have more notice to let you guys know about them as well.

Speak of the devil, whilst I'm writing this I've just had confirmation of a gig alongside Wishbone Ash!!! Again at Manchester's Life Cafe we'll be playing an opening set probably starting around 8p.m. For ticket's you'll need to contact the venue, the gig takes place on Thursday 16th October, tickets are priced at £13.

With the new acoustic C.D. completed and now available to buy at gigs and from this site if you so wish, the Tangents launch at the Globe (Glossop) was a great success, we sold plenty of copies of our latest offering to a very supportive audience that seems to build more and more every time we play there. It was a very interesting performance from our part as we decided to split the gig into two halves, the first a complete acoustic set in which we performed the whole of Tangents and other previously recorded acoustic S.S.R. compositions and the second half a full electric set of S.S.R. numbers featuring songs from all our other E.P. recordings. We're back at The Globe (upstairs) on Saturday 5th July and again in August (£3 admission).

Another big gig for us was the support slot with Spike', the band made up of members of the Quireboys, Bad company. U.F.O etc. It turned out to be a fantastic night especially with Jason Bonham stepping in at the last minute on drums. We'd like to thank all the people that in particular came in to see us, your support that night was fantastic and much appreciated, also thanks to Spike, and the rest of the band for actually being a rather nice bunch of blokes and letting us share their dressing room and having a beer or 5 with us, it was nice to see big time players actually being very down to earth geezers!

Another gig we're especially looking forward to is the open air Stockport festival (August 24th) we've confirmed our stage time at around 4 p.m. with headlining band T.Rex going on around 7p.m, as well as a number of other bands also playing throughout the day and evening, so providing the weather is as nice as last years festival it looks to be an excellent gig! Well I think that just about gets things back up to date, for last minute updates and other gigs we've got coming up check out the updates page and gig listings, if you're in need of any more information you can e-mail us (see contacts) with any questions and we'll get back to you. Anyway we look forward to seeing you at the gigs, thanks for you support and goodbye for now!

APRIL
Well we've finally finished recording the long awaited acoustic EP that we promised last year, and we're very happy with the results. Again recorded at Shed Studios, Stockport with the help of our good friend John Slater, we managed to lay down six tracks over the course of 8 weeks, in between gigs and rehearsals, and that other thing we do to keep us in guitar strings, namely work! And yes we've actually titled the recording (a first for SSR), Tangents. The tracks are as follows - Letting Go, White Plastic Poets, Ebony Skies, 2 High, Sacramento in Spring and a bonus track Mud Elephant Raga. All these songs have been performed live and we wanted to capture that live feeling in the recording, almost as if we're playing in the room with the listener. The launch party will play all the tracks live in an extended acoustic set at the Globe in Glossop on Saturday 26th April.

Other good news comes in the form of some new gigs. We've been asked to support Spike* at the Witchwood (Wed 7th May) this looks to be a great gig and if you'd like advanced tickets you can join our mailing list (see contacts page) and we'll sort you out. Also we've been asked to take part in the Stockport open air Festival (24th August). The festival takes place in the market square on the Sunday Bank Holiday, starting mid-afternoon through to late evening. We'll post playing times closer to the date.

More gigs are in the pipeline and as soon as we've had confirmation we'll let you know, but in the meantime all our regular gigs are posted on the gig list which is updated monthly. If you need any queries about venues, dates, times or tickets etc. you can email us and we'll try to answer all questions.

Anyway it's back to the grindstone, we look forward to seeing you at the gigs.

* A gig not to be missed...Spike, vocalist with the Quireboys, has assembled a band line up which can only be described as a Super Group. Joining Spike are Paul Guerin on guitar (The Joe Walsh Band, Michael Schenker Group), Dave 'Bucket' Coldwell on guitar (Bad Company), Keith Weir on keyboards (The Quireboys, U.F.O.) and Michael Lee on drums /percussion (The Cult, Page & Plant, Little Angels). Wednesday 7th May @ Witchwood, Ashton

FEBRUARY
Well it's past the New Year so time to update you on what's happening!

We've already booked gigs at our regular haunts right through to the end of the year and are arranging some new venues further afield, trying to spread the word to as many people as possible. We hope to revisit some of the outdoor summer festivals we played last year (Debdale Park, Stockport etc.) and some new ones; as soon as we find out what events are taking place we'll let you know.

The Globe (Glossop) will see the band play both acoustic sets downstairs (Sunday afternoons) and the heavier material upstairs (Saturday evenings) and with extended licensing you'll get even more for your money (all upcoming dates are posted on the site). We will also be arranging a few new venues where we'll be performing just acoustic sets, we've acquired quite a taste for them and they're always relaxed jams that showcase the other side of the band. But if you prefer the heavier material don't worry, new 'electric' songs are in the pipeline.

However, before that, we've finally booked studio time and finished writing for the long awaited acoustic EP. We'll be recording at the end of January and in-between gigs throughout February, hopefully it will be on sale at the end of April. Also we've been recording a number of gigs over the last few months, we hope to piece the best numbers together and release a 'Live Bootleg' album as soon as possible.

We also plan to upload a few more MP3's for you to listen to, some studio recorded and possibly some live pieces. If anyone out there has any useful info or suggestions please email us and we'll see what we can do.

Anyway, that's all for now. More updates will be posted throughout the year and we look forward to seeing you at the gig's!!