Year in Review 2011
What a year it has been, a year of recovery followed by amazing creativity is the best way to put it really.
Musically this has been the most creative year for us ever. 2010 wasn’t the greatest of years for us and the first half of 2011 continued our bad spell from last year. Last year we only played 4 gigs and this year it went down to just 3 so the depression from last year carried over! Our search for a bass player was proving to be futile and with other commitments getting in the way we were rehearsing less than ever.
It wasn’t looking good.
Donkey Box line-up 2011
But as we couldn’t gig we made the most of it by jamming and writing new material. We even went into studio for test recording The Moment. We learned to play together better without bass. In late June 2011 we finally had a helper on bass and the discipline we learnt in song writing and playing tighter as a 3 piece actually helped us a lot when we did have Matt B on bass.
As we worked hard on the background, we launched our first gig of 2011 almost at the end of the year all the way out in September! But one hell of a launch that was, we did two brand new songs, made a brand new banner and for the first time ever we had our very own branded t-shirts for sale!
With this huge push we were now on a roll, we did two more gigs and launched another two songs. It was now clear that our sound was changing and becoming more rounded and well defined. And our gig in December 2011 showed this to be the case.
So, here’s what we got out of 2011 then:
- Found Matt B on bass
- New songs “Just Walk Away”, “Hypnotised”, “Lost Odyssey” and “Crossroad”
- A new t-shirt finally printed after two years of stops and starts
- A brand new cool banner hand painted
- Got some new moo cards printed
- Found new flyer designer
- Went to an open mic night together
And if you are on twitter (our most favourite social networking platform), we have met some really really cool people this year..people we haven’t seen yet but will slowly meet). Hopefully we can make a little community of DonkeyBoxers around the world who we can connect together 
So here’s a big thanks to the twitter crew this year for all the fun banter you have given:
Gosia in Poland (can’t thank you enough for your constant encouragement and song feedback) Jess in Sweden, Layan in Saudi Arabia, Mia and Kesia somewhere in South England, Beth (who has designed our flyers) in North England, Carmen in Canada, Andrea in Mexico, Niloofar in Iran, Alex C and Cliffy in North England, Stephen in London (you’ll make it to a gig soon dude!), Corrie in Scotland, Japs, Niraj, Billy A and Ben W in London (the last 4 have been to our gigs and we know in real life).
Lastly, for those of you who have actually turned up at our gigs and bought our stuff, there can be no better support than that to us so a massive thanks for actually showing up and supporting us for real.
A Happy New Year 2012 and let’s keep the good times going!
