Mike & Harry: Birding brothers sing country album.
Mike & Harry came together when they met in the dunes at Climping beach in early 2016. They quickly formed a band together & released their first 3 singles in 2 months, “Bempton bound”, “Nobody likes us” & their biggest hit “We found an OBP”. There early reviews were mixed. The Littlehampton gazette quoted “why??” where as the Wick weekly said “That them there boys are our own”.
It soon started to fall apart though after their second album was released called “Dipped again”. Harry gave an interview with folk birders magazine stating that it was getting very difficult to understand what Mike wanted from the band. Mike was also interviewed later that week but unfortunately nobody spoke mumble so the tape was just binned
Some of the bands early success came from an unusual source. By chance the boys bumped into a promoter called Dan “The groomer” Booker who was on holiday in nearby Bognor Regis. He heard the boys busking outside Wilkinson’s on the High street. They struck up a friendship & he managed to get the Birding brothers their fist proper gig at Minsmere in Suffolk where Dan spent a lot of his time watching Avocets. The boys played to a packed out Island mere hide. They had wanted the nearby Bittern hide but unfortunately it was already booked for the weekend by George Michael lookalike LGRE playing 80’s classic disco.
the Birding brothers went on to play a further 6 gigs between Farlington & Spurn over the next 4 weeks.
Bempton bound was released straight after these successful gigs on the 12th August 2016 as a double A side on CD. This had “First Cuckoo of the year” & a live bonus track of “Selsey Pom (cormorant)” on it. It was met with mixed reviews but it didn’t stop the boys from embarking on a tour of Bingo halls across the South coast where they played their own style of birding country music & signed copies of their cd’s to any of the old ladies not quick enough to dodge them.
It was soon after the release of “We found an OBP” that the band were introduced to the crazy One-eyed jazz legend Simon “stringy” Cross. Known for blowing the trumpet at Portsmouth docks he soon introduced the band to a new sound. Described as a dirty ukulele rift he soon had them trying new sounds. Unfortunately this didn’t work for them & he was soon back in Goring living with his Nan.
One dark period was when Mike & his manager Dan “groomer” Booker went to Climping to try & mix birders country music with classical music. They took Ralph Vaughan William’s The lark ascending and created a new piece called The lark suppressing. Despite the fact that fans could come to listen to this piece as it was being played in the open air the decision was taken to not tell fans for 7 hours. This meant that when news was released at 3pm some fans couldn’t get there. This caused upset and anger.
Following on with the Ralph Vaughan Williams theme of exploring traditional English folk names the boys visited various Sussex hotspots for seabirds. At Selsey they were shown a seabird that was called a “Pom” but at another hotspot in East Sussex they called the same bird a cormorant. It was also noted that in Selsey they called themselves “birders” where as the Splash point name for them was “stringers”.