Bexhill date as The Overtones finally get to celebrate their tenth anniversary

The Overtones are finally hitting the road on their tenth anniversary tour – two years after they originally intended.
The Overtones in concertThe Overtones in concert
The Overtones in concert

Mike Crawshaw is delighted that the Bexhill gig at the De La Warr Pavilion has been rescheduled for Friday, May 27. His wife Kerry is from Bexhill, he has got plenty of family there and it is a place he knows well.

But above all, it’s just great to be back in business.

“This is a very, very delayed anniversary. We were supposed to be having our ten-year anniversary in 2020. We'd already started on the album and then everything just stopped. We were very lucky in so many ways because we were all lucky enough to remain fit and healthy during the pandemic and obviously that was the main thing. Many people went through far worse hardships than we did but we were part way through the album process and we were starting to think about the tour, And for us not to be able to do what we were born to do for two years and more was just really difficult.

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“But professionally it was hard. It's the four of us. It’s not like we could have recorded the album remotely and then put it all together. We sing around the mics. We tried to keep in touch with our fans and keep them involved in everything by doing Zoom but really it was no substitute for the real thing. Obviously lots of solo artists started doing Zoom gigs but with the four of us we just couldn't do that. We did try to do Zoom just between us but it was just terrible. It was just never going to work. We had no choice but to stop working and in a way that's what makes it now all this sweeter that we can come back. We have always appreciated doing what we do, but maybe coming back now from all this has created some kind of freshness and some kind of rejuvenation for us.”

And the anniversary itself is a motivation, a chance to look back.“It's a tough one. I've said it before but a lot of life happens in ten years... and now 12 years! We have gone through some incredible things and some insanely mind blowing experiences that we will never forget but at the same time we have also gone through some serious heartache just like so many people have. Maybe with us, it's a bit more accentuated because there is that element of the public eye and having to discuss stuff when it happens in public like when we lost our dear Timmy (Matley, 1982-2018, lead singer of the band who was diagnosed with stage three malignant melanoma in 2016). We had to mourn him in our private lives and also mourn him in public and that was hard and that brought added complications but the wonderful thing was that we were able to mourn with our fans as well and I do think that was therapeutic for all of us.

“But it is great to look back on all the wonderful things that have happened over the years, performing on many TV shows, standing on stage at the London Palladium on our own tour. And when something good happens you just want to share it with the fans and that's what we get the chance to do.

"There are so many things that give us momentum. We do what we do because the fans want us to do it."