Well, we’ve just completed our first full calendar year with The Home Guard‘s music “out there”, and without blowing our own trumpet we have to say it’s been far more successful than we ever dreamed. As we look back, we find it hard to believe that we’ve been on the BBC three times, Alex Zane played us on his show, a local radio station played us enough times for us to lose count, and we made it onto the coverdisc of a music magazine. One thing that we try to keep in perspective, though, is that none of this would have been achieved without you, the fans, for which we thank you.
The story actually starts in November 2007 when we launched A Head of Steam to precisely no audience whatsoever. Given that we are merely a duo who write and record music as a hobby, we had not even a cult local following on which to fall back. A few of Dan’s real life friends occupied our MySpace page, while we slowly built an online presence through our very own www.thehomeguard.info and various other sites.
The silence was deafening until 25 January, whereupon – with preparations complete – we started the promotion our songs properly with one simple act: we uploaded Champagne Socialist to our MySpace profile. Suddenly the plays started coming thick and fast, and with them the friend requests. We were on to something!
Word quickly spread, and from then on it’s all a bit of a blur. Our first blog mention came courtesy of our MySpace friend Courtney on her Oddnotes page.
Our first airplay came when a local radio station going by the name of Hastings Rock asked if they could play Champagne Socialist – in fact, we were Friends of Hastings Rock’s Artist of the Month for May!
Next came our first national airplay, when Tom Robinson selected Champagne Socialist for his BBC Introducing show in June. We also made it onto the ultra-select podcast of the show!
Meanwhile, we had submitted Champagne Socialist to Computer Music magazine, and were delighted to find that they liked it enough to give it a critical review. (If that sounds like nonsense, bear in mind that it’s a magazine for music makers – so to be selected means you’ve “won”, and your “prize” is for them to pick apart and analyse your song.)
The pattern emerging at this point was that we were one-hit wonders, so imagine our delight when Alex Zane chose to play Walking Against the Wind on episode five of his MySpace Radio show!
By this point, A Head of Steam was doing far better than we ever expected, and it was getting hard to keep up with our fans as there was no real focal point. Cue Ian Fleming, a fellow home-recording musician, who flattered us immensely by setting up fan clubs in our honour on both MySpace and Last.fm.
Just as things quietened down a bit, we got a nice message from Tom Robinson saying he’d like to play us again on the BBC. Never ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, we were delighted to accept his request to play Champagne Socialist again in October.
Not much more than a month later and we were on again, this time thanks to the aforementioned Mr Fleming submitting The City That Never Wakes for consideration. All thoughts of us being one-hit wonders were by now right out of the window!
It’s fair to say that all of this attention took us by surprise, and unfortunately the recording of our second album suffered a little. You’ve heard lots of demos, but you can expect the real thing within the first quarter of 2009. To tide over our very patient fans, we put together a cover version of The Beatles’ For No One, offering it as a free mp3 download. This resulted in a few unexpected turns: 1) It’s had around a thousand downloads to date, making it our most successful output; 2) Sales of A Head of Steam increased dramatically; and 3) Someone only went and made a video for us!
That someone was YouTube user Allabest, whom we met in a Beatles online community. Not content with making a video of For No One, he then went on to put together one for Champagne Socialist!
Our number one Norwegian fan, Acuvi, then got in on the act by constructing a video for Poor Man’s England. (She also uploaded still-frame ‘videos’ of all our other songs, which was a great idea.) This YouTube exposure been a great help in promoting our music, and as we’re in absolutely no position to make videos for ourselves, we’re extra thankful for these efforts.
And that just about brings us up to date. From starting the year completely devoid of any sort of fanbase, we’ve made the playlist of Hastings Rock radio, been played on national BBC radio three times, get on Alex Zane’s MySpace Radio show, made a music magazine’s coverdisc, had three videos made for us by fans, had two fan clubs set up for us, have broken the 10000 MySpace plays barrier, and have even sold a fair few copies of A Head of Steam. We never envisaged any of this!
Finally, here’s our Roll of Honour of people who embedded one or more of our songs into their MySpace page in 2008. Why not send them a friend request? You’ve got The Home Guard in common, after all! (Not all of these links seem valid any more; humblest of humble apologies if we’ve missed anyone):
http://www.myspace.com/chrisgrose
http://www.myspace.com/birdsley
http://www.myspace.com/bbquade
http://www.myspace.com/spencedickulas
http://www.myspace.com/the_silverwings
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=190995742
http://www.myspace.com/theuac08
http://www.myspace.com/aaronemoftx
http://www.myspace.com/acuvi
http://www.myspace.com/431226848
Many, many thanks to everyone concerned for making 2008 so great for us – we really can’t thank you enough, and couldn’t have come this far without you. Here’s to an even better 2009!
