Basith plays the guitar ¤ Eve does the singing for us ¤ Jeremy plays the drumming ¤ Paul plays guitar ¤ Simon plays the bass.
We make kind of rock music with hardcore tempos and nice melody parts and bits where we overcomplicate things by accident, we try and cut out the crap and keep things brief to get our point (when there is one) across. Ok?
What About An Ace Bushy Striptease History Lesson Then?
We started in October 2007 when Jeremy wanted to be in a prog band and Simon wanted to be in a cuddlecore band. Arjun was drafted in to play some guitarz because Jeremy and Simon already had a drum n bass with spoken word side project and having two bands the same would be pretty redundant. The first practice went pretty well and then we met Meryl in the pub afterwards and she was made to be the singer.
A few months later after we'd written some songs and had loads of rad adventures we were due to play our first ever concert! We were understandably nervous about this and we were struggling to play our songs all the way through as there were samples and all sorts that were very complicated. We found Basith bloody and deshevelled in a ditch and made him play the keyboards and the guitar so we didn't have to do samples and stuff.
Our first show was a battle of the bands at Aston University where we go and it was in the bar on campus. We played all our songs and then watched as the other bands played. We were very lucky and came second in the competition and won some guitar strings and drum sticks which were much appreciated.
Meryl left us in April 2008 which was pretty crappy but we managed to find another singer pretty quickly after scouting out the university karaoke night like proper predators. It turns out that Jeremy will approach anyone about anything after a few ciders. An invaluable skill for networking it seems.
Irini was the singer from karaoke and then she had a practice with us and then we were like, "woah everything sounds so rad when you sing, please join our band". And she said yes.
We went to a recording studio and recorded seven of our songs in one day. It was very fun overdubbing recorder and ukulele and hand claps. We had to go back to finish them off with singing and such. The best bit was putting a crappy casio keyboard line on one of the songs, no-one will ever notice but I think that makes it all the more special.
We played some more concerts and made some more zines and wrote some more songs (that made the older ones we'd just recorded sound even more rubbish). Then Irini found out that she had to go back to Germany to work which was pretty gutting as she is basically the best singer in the world ever and the fastest learner and the only girl who would put up with us with a smile. We tried to cover up her departure with various guest vocalists which was distressing but fun.
At the moment everything is a bit up in the air. Jeremy is leaving to go to India for 5 months just as we're getting offered shows and stuff so we're planning on carrying on while he is gone as Ace Bushy Squirrels and play as many of our songs as well can all cuddlecore like. Fingers crossed that actually works.
Ok, it turns out that brilliant idea and all, Ace Bushy Squirrels doesn't really work very well live. I think we were too into shouting at people to do quiet and considered music. We shall bring it back for radio sessions and the like if we're ever big and famous maybe.
We got a new permanent singer though, her name is Emma. We met her through the whole incestuous We Aeronauts thing and she was lovely and agreed to sing with us. We played one final show with Jeremy and Emma and then Jeremy departed for a while. Rachel the drum machine will be put on for the second half. We're playing with rush goalies.
We didn't really use Rachel much, she was more eye candy than the pop-hit machine we'd hoped she'd be. Emma Champion stuck though like blu tac. Arjun however left which was pretty much the saddest day because he'd been with us since the start and we're really going to miss him y'know.
Jeremy arrived back from India and we started making albums. Our first was a self-released effort called 'Toadstool Ellipsis On The Grass' (it's a really clever Bonnie Tyler pun). It was made up of songs we had from the last year or so and some we'd come up with while Jeremy was away. It kind of felt like we had to get them all out of our system before we could move on and write some more so yeah we went to Digbeth for a weekend and recorded fifteen songs. It was nice to get them all finished so we didn't have to try so hard to remember them.
A few more months passed and we wrote quite a lot of songs pretty fast, we decided to make them into another album and this one we called 'Daniel Ershov Has Been Offered £100,000 By An Eccentric Millionaire To Step Naked From A Car Onto A Busy City Street, Walk 200 Meters And Climb Back Into The Car'. Daniel Ershov is a really brill friend of ours, he is a lovely bloke but we forgot to thank him in the booklet for the first album. Name checking him in the title may be overcompensating slightly but y'know. We used an Atari Teenage Riot sample in the song 'James and James and James and James' in an effort to piss off Keyboard Choir who are planning on using the same sample on a forthcoming release. We didn't clear the sample but as we've made no money off the songs and have been selling the cds for cost price hopefully that's ok. Sorry Atari Teenage Riot, we hope you forgive us!
Shortly after we finished recording 'Daniel Ershov...' Emma left the band. We had been growing apart for a while so it wasn't much of a suprise. We went power trio for a bit.
After a bit we had written loads more songs. They were all really good so we decided to make another album. We got our friend Eve from Jet Ski Accidents to sing on a couple of the songs and Adam Jackson from We Aeronauts to perform trumpet. There were loads of other guest performers as we wanted to make it really full of interesting bits. Trev, the mastermind behind Odd Box Records asked if he could put it out for us and we were all like "yeah". We called the album 'A Little More Suspicion In Our Fairytales Plz', it's a Million Dead lyric and yeah it's quite a nice album title we thought, some small minded members of the band weren't keen on calling it 'Cat Bum' for some reason.
Eve was so brill at singing and as Jet Ski Accidents isn't really a proper band we asked her to join Ace Bushy. She said yes and to celebrate we went recording with our friends Falling & Laughing. We took a day and we did a cover of their song 'Roly Poly' whilst they had a go at our song '"Arrogance Is My Middle Name", Said Will Davies Arrogantly'. They both came out really well and then we collaborated on a Tiddlywhips supergroup collaboration song. It's six minutes long and super good. We might finish it one day.
We were just going to use Eve in the studio as she was a little shy and didn't feel like playing live with us but then we got offered a slot at Truck Festival and we trained her up to play with us properly.
We're writing our 4th album at the moment. We've got quite a lot of songs already. It'll probably be amazing!
This about page will always be a work in progress...
Someone asked up to write a bit about ourselves for the university newspaper before our first show, we wrote this.