Bitter Ruin's Blog

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HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET ‘TRUST’ INTO THE OFFICIAL UK CHARTS?

Firstly, we have registered the track as a new single. Therefore, if you have downloaded it before the 3.10.11, your download will not count.

We need EVERYONE who wishes to help to download the track between the 3rd October and the 10th October – These downloads will count.

The single will be called “Trust (Official Single 2011)” – You will be able to download it from iTunes, Napster, Amazon and Spotify. We will post links to these sites on the 3rd. This will be the artwork:

We are relying on YOU to help promote this idea. PLEASE tell people what we are doing and how they can help.

The single will cost 0.79p and we’d need about 5000 sales to chart which means that even if EVERYONE on our Facebook page bought it, we’d still be short. Therefore, feel free to download a few times!

We know this is unlikely, but, YOU NEVER KNOW! and imagine what great publicity this could be for us. PLEASE help. We’ve been plugging this for 3 months with a PR campaign and a tour, we’ll be e-mailing our 3000 strong mailing list and plugging on facebook and twitter. We’ll also be asking a few famous faces to help, but it WILL NOT WORK WITHOUT YOU. Please help us. Please put the date in your diary or join the mailing list etc…

Any Questions?

Hello Pals

So we always get asked this: “So, are you two signed?” we answer no, “But you must have someone helping you?” we answer no, “so you do all of this by yourself? The
videos, the booking, the photos, the website? Everything?” we answer YES!!!

Often we find ourselves downright pissed off about
it actually. We’d absolutely LOVE to have Sony BMG or EMI come in and take over
all of the boring stuff, but unfortunately it seems they don’t want us.

It can be
very hard to hear that your friends, who have been in a band for about five
minutes and have only played two open mic nights have just been signed to
Primary or have landed support for Morrissey. BUT, when those A&R bastards do come knocking, we have the advantage
now of knowing our business inside-out, knowing how we like to work and what
our direction is with image and sound…hopefully, we are earning longevity and
timelessness as we go…I just hope someone helps us out soon!

So, lots of you seem to be interested in the story
so far and exactly how we do things…I asked you to ask questions on facebook
and twitter and I have chosen a few to answer:

What
is the one question that should be asked but never is? – Tina

Do you want a record deal?

You’re
both trained pianists. Why no keyboard in the act?  – William

Funnily, most of our songs are written on piano too.
I suppose it’s just not something that feels natural to the band. I (Georgia)
like to prance around stage a lot and would HATE to be stuck behind a piano,
and I think Ben just prefers playing guitar…HOWEVER, we are really really
considering some strings and a piano and some percussion (if we do get
signed/are given a budget, that’s the first thing we’d spend it on). We never
feel limited with the instrumentation, but I think our songs have the potential
to be HUGE, with a 60 piece orchestra etc…but I think we’d always have Ben
and I as the forefront of any performance, and we will always strip certain
songs down to just vocals and guitar no matter how big things get.

Do
the two of you ever clash creatively in the writing of the music? And if so,
how do you resolve the issue – Ben

Always! I think that’s part of what makes the music
good. Two brains are better than one and if we both thought the same thing
musically our songs would probably sound pretty predictable. We push each other
in directions that make us feel uncomfortable…but we like uncomfortable!

Is
the whole song a collaborative effort or does one take lyrics and the other of
melody/style of music? – Ozzy

Generally the songs will be written individually and
then brought to the other member with a bare skeleton. Then we have to flesh
everything out.

“What
have been your best and worst experiences with the actual publishing of your
music?” – Ben

When you say publishing, I assume you’re talking
about the actual manufacture and release of a record? There are so many bad
experiences. We HATE having our fate in other people’s hands, and for good
reason. ‘Hung, Drawn & Quartered’ was tough, the company we had hired to
press the CDs managed to disappear off the radar and take our money with them!
Oh god, and this was all happening while we were touring with Amanda Palmer.
Nightmare. We ended up going with a completely different company. Bands – NEVER
USE ‘MEDIA SOURCING/MUSIC VENTURES’!!!

Do
you do your own web design or do you outsource it? – Timothy

Ben creates the website, we both design it but Ben
actually creates it. Does that count? I think that means we own it?

How
do you go about getting gigs in other cities and countries, particularly if you
don’t have a contact there already? – Ingrid

Good question. We start by looking at other bands
(on our level) who are touring. If you look at enough tour date lists, you’ll
start to see the same venues cropping up. We’ll then check out the popular
venues by messaging a couple of the bands and asking their opinions on things
like the capacity, the promoter, the deal and the sound etc…generally bands
will help other bands out…then we’ll ask them for a contact for the venue. Or
sometimes we ask you guys where to
play. Or sometimes promoters come to us…I think the answer to this question
is that you have to make contacts if
you don’t have them, and the internet is the place to do that!

But also, be careful about touring too soon. Our
first tour was an absolute flop. Our profit was less than £100. There was no
demand for us to tour, nobody had said that they wanted us to ‘come to Leeds’
etc, so when we got there, nobody turned up! Most gigs were attended by a
maximum of 10 people.

Where
do you get your outfits!? you guys always look fabulous and they must be
expensive ^^ – Ryan

Why thank you! We love shopping for clothes for the
band and if we had the money we’d have hundreds of outfits, but you’re right,
they are expensive; so we can only allow ourselves new outfits every 6 months
or so. Also, we very rarely get the time to look for clothes. But we buy things
from vintage shops or flea markets and then tend to combine them with new
designer things too. We try to go for a timeless but striking look. We like to
look modern and old fashioned at the same time. I think having a certain image
is important and you must make sure it’s your own…don’t copy!

At
this stage having gotten so far doing it all on your own would/will you feel
comfortable handing all the admin stuff over to someone else and just getting
on with the music side of things and if you did pass all that stuff over would
it improve or harm the band? – Clare

YES! And it would definitely improve our situation!
We’ve recently been scared to death by tax and have registered as a legal
partnership. This has been such a hassle. Things like adding names to mailing
lists, designing tour posters, updating the website, paying our online store
bills, ordering cards and pressing CDs and T-shirts etc take up so so so much
time. We really struggle to find time to actually make music. It makes us cry L

However, we do find it hard to hand our business
over to people after we’ve spent so long building it up…maybe we wouldn’t be
happy?

How
successful do you think you guys would have to be before you couldn’t handle
everything yourselves, or do you think it’s infinitely scalable? Do you have a
definition of when you’ve ‘made it’? – Timothy

Well Timothy, it’s too big to handle now. We
desperately need help and money, but…what can we do? – As for ‘making it’…I
don’t know, I’d be interested to hear what you guys think about the definition
of ‘making it’ – I certainly don’t feel like we are anywhere near!

Whose
idea was the project, and did you have the vocal sparring in your head before
you started working together? – Nobly

The vocal sparring was something that happened
within the first couple of weeks. It wasn’t planned, but it also wasn’t
natural. Thankfully Ben and I are musically trained so we can make these random
ideas happen pretty quickly and have the ability to play around with something
like ‘Trust’ just for fun, and when it works, it sticks.

What
goes into tour planning for such a small band? How have you found that your
very enjoyable and vocal use of social media has helped to advance you as a
band? What’s your most favorite thing about touring/banding and what’s your
least? – Marc

Booking the gigs, cementing the deals, booking the
support bands, paying the support bands, booking the transport, figuring out
travelling times, booking accommodation, designing tour posters, sending out
tour posters, creating ticket links, updating the website/facebook/myspace with
dates, sending out press releases to all local magazines, ordering enough
merch, taking time away from teaching (losing money) and practicing. And that’s
before the tour even starts.

People keep saying that we use social media well. I
don’t know…hmm.

Most favorite thing about touring – The aftermath.
Being able to look back at your experiences and be proud of what you’ve done.
Also, making you guys happy!

Least favorite thing – The days off. Days off when
touring are never really days off. They feel weird. Also, the dread that nobody
will turn up.

What
were some of the milestones you reached through your journey in the music
industry, and how did you achieve them? Luck, hard work, know-who? – Heather

Landing good support slots. We do this by e-mailing
EVERYBODY…it takes hours and persistence. We don’t know anybody in the
business, we don’t have a dad who works at a label and we don’t happen to be
friends with any journalists. All you see is hard work to MAKE these contacts.
Networking I suppose.

Serious
question, and one I’m sure many upcoming bands could sympathize with – how many
unpaid gigs did you guys have to do before you started earning money from them?
– Christopher

About 500! I think. Basically the first three years
were unpaid.

But only you can make that decision, if you feel
like your band is in demand and that you deserve to be paid, ask for payment.
Decide what your standard fee is and stick to it. The ones you lose probably
wouldn’t have been worth it anyway.

I’m
not sure if this is too big a question, but can you give a comprehensive guide
or at least a few tips on how you’ve used social media to become rock
superheros? – Patch

Again, I’m not entirely sure we
used it in any special way. I don’t think we treat our facebook page any
differently to how you guys use yours…maybe that’s the difference between us
and other bands?

I
have a question if I’m not too late! You promote through twitter, but how do
you get set up? How do you establish a fan base? – Laura

Go out and gig! Start with open mic nights, one or
two songs, get the experience. When people start telling you you’re good it’s
time to get out there and book a real gig. Find out who the promoters are in
your local area by asking other small bands on facebook/twitter or even just go
into a venue and ask. THEN, you must create something for people to take home.
There’s no point playing a gig if you don’t have any way for people to remember
your name when they get home. Make a CD (just burning CDs from a laptop is fine
as long as you ‘sharpie’ your band name on it) always put a contact e-mail on
there too. Make flyers/business cards…you can get business cards made soooooo
cheaply, just make some! Hand them out. Make a mailing list (literally start
with a notepad and pen) ask people for their e-mail if they like you then
e-mail them when you have your next gig booked. I assume you’ll already be
directing people to a myspace/facebook/twitter page…I recommend having all of
those. Then gig some more. When you start off, you need to literally play as
many gigs as possible…open mic nights are not to be underestimated, there’s
always an audience and they’re always supportive. Upload some youtube vids
too…you never know who’s gonna watch And send us stuff! We’ll listen!

Also, any thoughts on
pay-what-you-want distribution? You don’t seem to do it, why not? – Mili

Actually
we do…You can pay what you want for any of our music on bandcamp (http://bitterruin.bandcamp.com/) –
this is the best way to donate to us. Just pick an album to buy and pay what
you like…although Mili’s half right, we do set a minimum limit. We need to pay
our bills too J

So I hope this has been interesting or
helpful to you….Let me know, I’ll be reading all the comments x x

Georgia

Well hello there soldiers!

So, what do you think of our new look website? We love it.
There’s so much to explore but first you must be made aware of some very
important Bitter Ruin activity coming your way…

OUR NEW VIDEO has been released early and people are going
crazy! WATCH IT HERE, but most of all, please keep the craziness going by
sharing it with anyone you can, share it on facebook, twitter, via e-mail,
HOWEVER, but whatever you do, remember, we’d be nowhere without you guys faithfully
spreading the word for us, we need
your promotion.

Trust will be re-released as a single FOR THE OFFICIAL UK CHARTS on 3.10.11 and we’ll be promoting the release with our tour in September. ‘This is going to be the most amazing video and song release for a bloody century, you’d all better wanna get involved!?’
So please put this date in your diaries and download the track within that
week. It will be available on iTunes and Amazon and Rhapsody
etc. And we’ll need EVERYONE to buy it in order to stand a chance at charting
(preferably get everyone you know to buy it too, or just download it from
several different accounts, or maybe we could break into the Official Charts
Company office and…well…) find out how you can help buy looking at the ’Ruined’ page, or sign up to our mailing list, or stay in touch via Facebook or twitter.
We will be giving away some serious rewards for helping us spread the word
about this!

Yes, yes, we know it’s already been downloadable, and yes,
it’s essentially a re-release but, we’ve never been registered for the charts
before, so if you liked it enough to buy or listen to it before, please do it
again…can you imagine? Bitter Ruin in the Charts?! And it’s only 0.79p!

If you’re game, and you also fancy coming to a show, tourdates are on our ‘shows’ page! Bring a BRV (Bitter Ruin Virgin)!

Here’s some behind the scenes photos from the making of Trust

Hello Chums!

So finally our fresh, spanking new website is here. We’ve
aimed to make it easy on the eye while keeping it squished to the brim with
info. Things you should definitely be checking out on here are as follows:

‘Shows’ page – Tour starts in 6 WEEKS! See the new dates
with Amanda Palmer and Duke Special.

‘The Ruined’ page – This page is about YOU!

‘Photography’ – Take a gander at our new snaps.

‘Biography’ – We’ve updated our biog and added personalised
biogs too.

 
Did you see the countdown clock on the way in??? (more on
that later – stay tuned to this blog)

 
Anyway, after all of the excitement of the new tour dates,
Ben and I are now in panic mode. We need to book about 22 hotel rooms, a ferry,
hire a van, find support acts, order merch…oh my, the list just goes on and
on. We’ve been staying up soooo late every night to bring this all together.

On a lighter note, on Saturday night we held a ‘House
Show’, which is simply, a gig in our house. We put up 20 tickets at £35 each
and made sure that only the most dedicated Ruined came…and boy, they did. The
night was phenomenal, we played ONLY new songs and, though they were rough, we
were happy. This album will rock your socks off and back on again. People
brought their own wine and we provided picnic blankets, sweeties and name
tags…also, our dog ‘Tchaikovsky’ joined in the celebrations. It was a blast,
but it was tiring. We may do it again. We may not. We invited questions and the
questions we amazing, thought provoking things. You guys are THE BEST fans!

I (Georgia) have dyed my hair an even brighter shade of
pink. Not sure I’ll keep it this way for tour, but thought you might all like
to see ‘casual’ me. Ben needs to be encouraged to do it too!

So, enjoy this space guys, sign up to everything…you know,
the mailing list, RSS, facebook, twitter….everything to keep up to date.
Special thanks to Ben for designing the website, Scott
Chalmers and Joe Shepherd for providing beautiful photos. Karim Fanous for
great advice. Thanks to everyone who came to the house show and to everyone who
has or will buy a ticket for a show. Thanks to Mark Withers, Peter Regan and
Sian Fever for the music videos, thanks to anyone who appears in The Ruined
photo gallery and special thanks to people who have donated money, wine, food,
shelter, advice, promotion and love. (check out some of these people on our
links page)

Over and out

G & B