Let's take a walk through my 2018!

At the start of the year I was touring my album 'Night & Day' for the second time (Arts Council funded), taking it to newer and further out places... and it got wonderful reviews in some of the national circulars too... ***** "the sound of a major artist" RnR, **** Maverick Magazine, "Rising star of the UK folk scene" Music Republic Magazine

Mid spring I was delighted to have this video featured on Sky TV! (actually, ended up on Sky 5 times this year!)... The single was played on 13 BBC stations too, including national radio in Scotland ;) Which leads me on to my first Scottish tour! This was in April, and where I connected with the musicians with whom I would proceed to record the current album 'Ocean Of Stars' <3

Summer? Well festival Season! I was delighted to support Show Of Hands again at Lyme Folk Weekend, To play the Top stage at Keynsham Music Festival, proud to be invited to play Costa Del Folk Festival in Portugal with my lovely band, oh and the height of course being playing on top of Europe's tallest building - The Shard! Right at the very top, open air and everything! Had a lovely stint at the Troubadour in London, enjoyed Bristol Festival of Nature, the beautiful David Hall at South Petherton Folk Festival, and my first ever show at Hitchin Folk Club too. Oh! And....I was awarded my first instrument endorsement from Steve Agnew, which I have flaunted at every gig since ;)

And now for the autumn...as the seasons changed I began to crowdfund for the new album, knowing I was going to record in Scotland in October, and together we raised a whopping £7,500 (of initial goal of £3,500, which was reached within 5 hours of launching the campaign)! All set, I headed up to Scotland, wrote and recorded 'Ocean of Stars'.

Then all of a sudden, during halloween, my bag was stolen at the pub, and what did I do? I created a fundraising album, just for fans, and raised back the money needed to replace everything! It's called 'Lemonade' as an homage to turning something bad into something good, and is still available here.

And as the winter drew in in grey London, it stayed warm enough for me to busk in Trafalgar Square all throughout Christmas! I also managed to sneak a few gigs at the O2 ICON centre!!

So...2019?

So far on the cards is a 22 date launch tour for the new album in England (starting soon!), with the worldwide launch being 3rd March in London, and I'm currently booking a Scottish tour for May. NYC is also on the cards for April, and my team and I are preparing some mind-blowing video surprises to be released throughout the year! Festivals are booking in, we are making our debut in the Netherlands in June, and I plan to bring out more music, more energy, more shows and to reach many more people than ever before! 

As you may have seen on my New Years Day Livestream (check my fb page), the thing I'm most grateful for is you. My fans and listeners. And all I want for next year is MORE!

Here's to a fabulous 2019!

Lots of love,
Saskia.

Today I got the final version of my new CD Ocean & Stars from producer Clive Gray in Scotland, and it's sounding immense!!! 🤩
I know it's a little premature, since no-one has heard it except me and him, but I want to take a moment to share a HUUUUGGGEEEE and public thank you to the musicians who made it possible!  Calum J. Gordon, Neil Fraser, Nick Fry, Ali Petrie, Joseph O'Tweefe, Lukas Drinkwater, Jack Cookson 👏
I am incredibly grateful to everyone involved behind the scenes too (literally hundreds), and I'll put out a proper credit-post at a later date! Just wanted to focus for a moment on the musical talents of all these people I was incredibly fortunate to work with on this! :)
...we will be celebrating this new music with a 22 date tour in England next spring (Saskia GM // Ocean of Stars // 22 Date UK Album Launch Tour), with a launch in London on 3rd of March (Saskia Griffiths-Moore // Ocean of Stars // Album Launch Show), and I will start booking for a Scottish tour in May now.
This whole project was inspired by the creative community of the East Neuk of Fife, centred around Clive Gray himself, and it represents our combined efforts to blend people, countries and genre's together, and to be guided by our collective sense of beauty!
I couldn't be happier with how it's turned out, and I am jumping in my seat to share it with everyone next year!
Lot's of love as always.
X

"The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they make the best of everything!"

Well, I had my bag stolen a few weeks ago in London, and I wasn't sure what to do, when a fan emailed in suggesting I make a fundraising album, recording my most requested cover songs!

So, I thought - this is a great way to make the most of a bad situation, and I asked my fans to pre-order a new album, and vote on the songs!

760 votes, 1 week, and 1 studio session later, here it is! I get things done fast ;)

This is a limited edition, fan-only, exclusive CD! 

If you'd like to order a copy, you can see it in my shop here :)

Enormous thank-you's to my fans who supported this, and helped me turn a robbery into a reason to make more beautiful music to share with people!

I'd been wanting to make a solo acoustic album for a while, since my latest releases have been band oriented, so this was my chance to go back to the roots, as some people prefer, and to record the simple, original sound of one person and one guitar. No effects, no autotune, nothing artificial. Just the way I like it.

Enjoy! And much love to everyone!

​Saskia.

Today it is my great pleasure to announce a new endorsement from Scottish luthier Steve Agnew. We met during my first tour of Scotland in April, and after enjoying some deliciously moist ginger sponge cake in his workshop and lazily playing through some tunes with Demi and Clive, we agreed I could borrow an Agnew guitar for my gig that night in Cellardyke.

Any instrumentalist will tell you that once you play something of great quality, it's hard to go 'back', and that's exactly what happened to me that night! I mean look at it...(pictured below)!

Once I'd left Scotland Clive played point person in arranging an endorsement for me, and a few facebook messages later this beaut was delivered to me by Parcel Force (who were, by the way, really, really annoying to deal with!).

I am honoured to be trusted to represent an instrument made with such integrity and to such a high standard and I look forward to performing with it at my future gigs! I expect a flood of guitar-enthusiasts to approach me at folk gigs wanting to play it for themselves ;) Come along, I will welcome you!

Steve Agnew fb page: https://www.facebook.com/pitscottie/
Official Website: https://www.steveagnew.com/

And if you are nosy enough to want to see the official press release, I'll attach it below. I'll also attach something much more funny... while I was researching how to write the best attention-grabbing headline, I came across a headline generator app! So I input the key words, and it came out with....(see below). Enjoy!

Just wanted to say a HUUUUGGGEEEE thank you to Rush Release PR for helping release my single 'All For You'! Here is a little breakdown of what happened...

13 BBC stations picked it up - several of which opted for an interview as well, and I got my first play on BBC introducing in London!

​And...thanks to The Folk Show, the music video itself (made by Mat Green by MHG Music Videos) was actually premiered on SKY TV on April 20th!

​About the song itself.... it's a rare happy song of mine, celebrating my first two years as a full time musician. It wasn't easy deciding to go full time into something I knew very little about and cared about so much! You know, people give you a bit of a funny look when you first tell them you are a musician. Yes, full time. No, I don't have another job on the side... but despite the sceptical looks and various people's disbelief, after two years I realised that I wasn't going back! And that everything I did with music was for YOU the audience. It's all for you.

Enjoy!

So back in Jan I had the bright idea to apply once more to Arts Council England for funding to support my spring tour - basically just to bump up the fees for my musicians and to add a little extra in terms of PR and equipment. I sat down at the Savoy hotel in London and filled in ALL the forms in once really intense, earl-grey fuelled sitting!! I had been preparing this tour for a long time, and with the help of a project manager too, so, for the first time, this tour was all incredibly precisely organised, and I managed to fill out the required forms in record time!

Given that I was very close to the deadline, and that the tour started 4 weeks ago, I was pretty sure they would reject my application, but you know, I had nothing to lose by applying, and always wanted an excuse to walk into the Savoy... But LO AND BEHOLD! While on a rather long train journey to Bristol yesterday for one of the tour dates, just for something to do I decided to fish out my account login details and read through the letter of rejection, only to find out it was an offer letter!

So...as of today, I am delighted to announce that my Spring Tour has full Arts Council England Funding! And that this is the third time my projects have been supported by Grants For The Arts!

I am incredibly grateful for the support of this lottery funded body - they are making a HUGE difference to the arts scene in England from indie artists like myself, all the way up to top concert halls and nationally touring acts.

Let's make this tour even greater!!

Oh. My. God. Another tour is finished!!! I reached more people that ever before, performed in more places than ever before, and for the first time, played with this lot (see above)!

The idea was to bring together 5 of the UK's most talented young folk and acoustic musicians to perform my new music to a much wider audience than I would have by myself. Mission accomplished!

This band features Jack Cookson, Ciaran Algar, Lukas Drinkwater and Evan Carson whose collective accolades are an essay in themselves. They are a powerhouse of music, and it was a pleasure to bring them all together for this project.

"Not so new and unusual are the musicians Saskia has hooked up with, each of whom have previously been given column inches within these pages" Northern Sky Mag

I have to say, this whole tour has brought about a renaissance for me with my original music. I know it hasn't been that long that I've been performing, but, with every concert on this tour, and with the new musicians I had backing me, I have experienced a new side to performing that I felt as a potential within myself, but now finally was able to bring out! Anyone at the launch concert might agree (see Fatea's review here: ​http://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/live/Saskia.php/)

"a quantum leap for a performer who has mainly been a solo artist until now" Fatea 

"Saskia was full of smiles the whole evening and she had the right to be" Fatea

It wasn't just that night that I was full of smiles - it was every night. Every gig, every venue, every show. This tour brought out something new within me. Something that smiles!

After the launch concerts, I went on to do live sessions at BBC Radio Shropshire and BBC Radio Gloucestershire. You can listen to the session on BBC Glos here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05l1fzt until Dec 18th.

All of this is happening for two reasons:

1) I ran a kickstarter campaign in February. 109 people backed it, raising a total of £8000 for me to make a new recording. Pretty phenomenal really!!! My campaign reached it's goal within 10 hours of launching, and kept climbing, and without that boost, I wouldn't have been able to bring in so many talented musicians, and to record and produce a world class album with a world class producer. This album is the foundation of my future in music, and I couldn't be more proud of it. (side note, if you want to listen/download it, you can do so, for free, here: saskiagm.bandcamp.com/album/night-and-day)

But, once I recorded the album, I was left with the problem of how to get funding to promote it!! Apparently, the rule of thumb is to double the recording budget. So, I scrambled for resources to give this music the platform I felt it deserved, and put together a tour, working with all the promoters I had met previously, and bringing together as many people as I could find. But, none of it would have been possible without...

2) ...my second round of Arts Council Funding! Which went to the musicians I worked with, the PR I was able to get, and general costs of the tour.

I feel incredibly blessed to have had so much generosity come my way, and so much support for my music from the Arts Council, from my Kickstarter backers, from the media, and from the thousands of people that have heard and liked my music! From the people that came out to the shows, to those who put me and my band up while on the road, the messages of encouragement on social media, and people recommending me for gigs, media placements and to their friends. Thank you so much for contributing to this UK tour, and for allowing me and my music to develop and to flourish.

We are here to create and keep on creating original music, which I am labelling 'Anglicana' as Anglicised Roots music, and to share that music through live experiences with the public, again, and again, and again!

To the next one!

Love,
Saskia

 I am more than thrilled to announce that my new album project 'Night and Day' has been made Carbon Neutral, by offsetting the carbon emissions by planting trees with WordForest.org!

​Now, I met Tracey West (pictured below), several years ago after a concert in Lyme Regis. Someone (can't remember who) suggested a post-gig midnight skinny dip in the sea, and off we went! I'm proud to say we've been friends ever since, during which time, I have watched her and her lovely partner Simon go from strength to strength in setting up their charity 'The Word Forest Organisation' - planting Trees and building classrooms in Kenya.

As much as I love the touring lifestyle, the one thing that always got to me was the smell of petrol in the air as I got out of the car. It bothers me that there is a cost to my activities, and when I saw what my friends were up to, I jumped on board to offset my album!

​What we (well ok, mostly Simon), was calculate the amount of emissions involved in travelling to the studio, roughly how much energy was used by the studio over the recording and mixing days, and how much carbon emissions each CD produced would cost the earth. We even included estimated shipping emsissions! And then, to be on the safe side, planted a little extra on top.

​I am fully confident we have done the right thing here. The trees will be planted, the carbon will be offset, and the word forest growing in Kenya is managed, so even in case of drought, the trees will be re-planted! My friends are doing something wonderful for the world and the people in it. If you'd like to find out how you can offset your lifestyle, or anything in it, check out their project here: https://www.wordforest.org/

​Here's a little video we made...about our collaboration :)
​Here's to our projects!!

You know how 'it doesn't rain but it pours'? Well, I won't go into all the details, but this whole month has been the most insane, productive, crazy, musical and sleepless of all my months combined!

​Right in the middle of this, was the studio time we had set aside months ago for me, Jack Cookson, Lukas Drinkwater, Evan Carson, and Ciaran Algar to record my second album, with Gareth Young, in Cube Studios down in Cornwall. So, first class, and sleeplessly from playing a festival that same weekend, I hopped on the train with Jack to drift towards Cornwall late on Sunday night.

​Turns out I was not the only one with no sleep!! Ciaran and Evan made a mega-drive (not unusual for them apparently!), starting at 3am in Bedfordshire, to arrive by 10am for a full days recording. To top it all off, after our long session where me managed to track 8 of 11 songs, Evan then bumped into some people that needed his drumming, and he continued playing and recording into the night :)

​Now, usually, Cube Studios has a cottage for the artists to stay in, but it happened to be pre-booked this time, so we ALL ended up staying in the studio!! Did someone mention cabin fever? Yes. Yes there was... I must admit I probably had the comfiest sofa bed there (the only sofabed actually), and somehow we all managed to find a corner to sleep on. I can confess to watching Rick and Morty that night on the big studio monitors!! Gareth Young (producer and studio owner) did not seem to take issue with that.

​Photocredits: Ebby Tremain

Aside from the incredible feats of sleeplessness on lots of our parts (I do believe Lukas also made a mega-drive to get down - the studio is pretty far away from everything!), we absolutely powered through the recording! We had three full days, and were planning to do a live album, but took the opportunity to do it track by track, and to get really into the details, getting the best possible takes from us. We did all that, for every song, several times, and we still had time to spare!

​What I love most about these musicians I have cherry picked, is their ability to create and improvise. I am not the sort of musician that likes to get every note down, and I prefer to work with people that can be spontaneous! And with the sort of people that even when they are spontaneous, they still get it right every time ;) I am still blown away by the amount of work we were able to get done in less time than we thought we needed. You know when things just 'work'? :)

​A word, or several words of thanks are due once again to the people that supported my kickstarter campaign to get the funding for this project! I would never have been able to work with such talented musicians, in such an incredible studio without it. It's given my music an opportunity it never would have had otherwise, and boy am I making sure to follow up on it!! An extra little word of thanks goes to the band members for making a tremendous effort, and for being so damn musical, and especially to Gareth Young himself, for putting it all together, and going over and above at every opportunity. I'll never forget the lift to the curry place!! Studio-Cabin fever was peaking and so was my hunger...

​We will be launching and touring the album as of October 27th at the Sound Lounge, through to November 25th - so do come and see us! Note, not all members will be present at every gig, but for the London & Bristol launches, we will all be there. Will you be there?

​X

I have just finished part 2 of my Arts Council funded UK tour promoting my album 'Night & Day'. Now, despite leaving my capo at Hitchin Folk Club on the last gig, it went tremendously well, and I wanted to put up a few of the highlights here!

Huuuuuuuuge thank you's to my tremendous fellow artists involved, to Rush Release PR, and to every venue, host, sound techie, to all the fans that came out and to anyone who offered me a cup of tea upon arrival! 

​To a bigger and better one next time!
​
​X