[ Friday 19-01-12 ]
After much painful deliberation and tentative steps to see if continuing with this was possible, I am sad to say that this is the end of the road for Le Chat Noir.
I never dreamed I'd get the chance to play all over Europe with an amazing partner and best friend. I've loved every minute of it and will always remember our time together. Though it breaks my heart, I respect Eileen's choice to leave and I hope she finds happiness in whatever she does in the future.
Things are very hard for me right now, but I will definitely be working on a new band - no idea what it will be yet, but I hope some of you who enjoyed LCN will also like it.
Thanks to all the countless people who made this journey so special and memorable... most of all the irreplaceable, unique and wonderful Ms Eileen Spruce.
I sincerely apologise if anything I have said since we parted company has seemed insensitive or like I don't care - nothing could be further from the truth. This has been the happiest, most amazing time of my life and of course I am devastated it is over.
We only get the one life and it's too short for bitterness or regret, so now it's time to look to the future and new adventures. I hope to see some of you again along the way - until then, take care...
Teddy
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[ Saturday 07-01-12 ]
It is with great sadness that I must announce that Eileen and I parted company on New Year's Eve, both as partners and as bandmates. It's been an incredibly emotional and tough time for both of us after seven years as a couple and five as a band.
I'm trying to stay positive about the future, hard as that is right now with everything so raw. Over the next few months I will be working hard on putting together a new Le Chat Noir lineup and we will then hopefully record a new album before hitting the road once more. I intend to honour all our gigging commitments in Europe this summer.
Thank you to everyone who has made our time together in Le Chat Noir so much fun, I hope to see you all again once I've sorted things out. Hope you have all had a better start to 2012 than me...
Teddy
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[ Friday 02-12-11 ]
If it seems like we've disappeared, don't worry, we're still here - we just haven't been updating the news section here very often!
For regular up-to-date Le Chat Noir news, I recommend visiting our Facebook page.
We are busily working on our new album, as well as planning some exciting tours for next year which will include a trip to Northern Spain in April and a Benelux tour in June!
Teddy
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[ Tuesday 11-10-11 ]
It's been a while since I wrote on here - we've been busy in the studio writing a new album, which is halfway there!
We have a few more gigs coming up this year but have kept our schedule fairly free so we can continue working on new material. At the end of this month we'll be heading back to Belgium for three shows in Aalst, Wervik and Rumst - check our gig listings for more details.
Teddy
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[ Tuesday 12-07-11 ]
Had a great time in Belgium as always - thanks to everyone who rocked with us in Lichtaart and Gent.
The Devon Dub Fest organisers have been having problems with the local council, apparently they aren't allowed loud bands after a certain time each day and we were scheduled to go on after the cutoff point. After lots of reorganisation we will now be playing on the Sunday (17th July) at 3.40PM - 4.40PM.
After that it's back to Belgium for Power Festival in La Louviere on the 21st, where we'll be playing with some awesome bands such as The Bellrays, Bob Log III and Demented Are Go!
Teddy
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[ Sunday 08-05-11 ]
We've been taking a bit of a break from gigging to work on new material for our 4th album - we debuted a brand new song at our gig in Taunton and hope to have more ready in time for our gig in Plymouth on the 20th. Watch this space!
Teddy
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[ Sunday 27-02-11 ]
Had a great time up in Mid Wales last night, fantastic crowd as always! Out next gigs see us head North for shows in Derby and Edinburgh - check our gigs page for more details!
Teddy
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[ Friday 21-01-11 ]
We've been in hibernation for the past month or so, with terrible weather affecting travel plans... we were snowed in for 2 weeks out here on Dartmoor! The weather has finally taken a turn for the better and tonight sees our first show of 2011, a free entry gig at Timepiece in Exeter. Next weekend sees us head down to Plymouth for a gig at the Junction, followed on Saturday by a long trek up to Derby for Purplestock - see the gigs section for more details!
Teddy
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[ Thursday 11-11-10 ]
We're about to have our first band practice in a month today! It was good to take a break from gigging and recharge our batteries - we feel we're ready to get back to gigging and continue writing our new album!
Our first new gig booking is up on our gigs page now - The Royal Oak in Ilminster on 25th November. Apparently the venue does a live streamable video feed of every gig, so we'll post a link nearer to the time!
Teddy
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[ Sunday 03-10-10 ]
Due to personal health reasons, we are cancelling our tour of Italy at the end of the month and will be taking a break from gigging for the next couple of months. Fear not, we will return better and stronger soon - we'll also be working on a 4th album, so watch this space! Apologies to our booking agent and the venues in Italy, we hate to let people down but felt this was the right choice for our own wellbeing right now.
We've really enjoyed the gigs we've done over the past few weeks, thanks to all who came along - see you all soon, watch this space!
Teddy
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[ Thursday 09-09-10 ]
We had a great time in Belgium and the Netherlands, thanks to all who came along, especially the great crowd in Tielt! There are some new videos up on our Youtube channel, check them out.
A busy couple of weekends of local gigs coming up for us now, with the Ivylive festival tomorrow, the Nowhere Inn in Plymouth on Sunday, then Trent's in Torquay on Thursday 16th, Timepiece in Exeter on Friday 17th and the Manor Festival on Saturday 18th.
We're also excited to announce that we are planning a tour of Italy in late October!
We're going to spend the next month writing and will hopefully have a new album out by the end of the year - watch this space...
Teddy
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[ Monday 30-08-10 ]
Today we're busy getting ready for our trip to Belgium and the Nethlands - we leave on Wednesday, we're very excited! Our show at the Aeon Festival on Saturday was a great experience as always, thanks again to Niki and the Aeon team! Here's a video of the first three songs we played:
Teddy
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[ Wednesday 18-08-10 ]
We're delighted to be playing the Aeon Festival again on Saturday 28th of August. It's a fantastic festival that gets better and better each year! After that, we're returning to Belgium and the Netherlands for some great shows in early September, after which we'll be cracking on with writing a new album and preparing for Ivylive on September 10th, where we'll be supporting Athlete.
Teddy
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[ Wednesday 28-07-10 ]
We have a last-minute show in Paignton booked for this Saturday at The Lighthouse, supporting Chieftown - details at the Facebook event page below.
Chieftown + Iconyx + Le Chat Noir
Teddy
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[ Friday 23-07-10 ]
We had a great time in Bristol and Exeter - thanks again to Pint O' Spirits and Rough Cut respectively for asking us to play the two shows! You can see a couple of nice videos from Exeter below:
Le Chat Noir - Silver City Burns @ The Cavern, Exeter, 20/07/2010
Le Chat Noir - Deserter's Lament @ The Cavern, Exeter, 20/07/2010
Teddy
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[ Saturday 10-07-10 ]
It's been a quiet time in the world of Le Chat Noir over the past month, so we're excited to be heading up to Bristol tonight to play at Fizzycyst, a 'monthly crap-science themed gig/club night in a cavern, under an old pub, with a laboratory for mixing liqueurious and intoxicating chemicals, a particle acceleration area for atom bonding and vigorous movement, a decontamination area to fuse and regenerate, plus toxic chemical deposit rooms for leaking'. Sounds like fun to me! We'll be playing with Pint O' Spirits, who kindly invited us to play the show - they're great lads who we have giged with before at the sadly-defunct Area 81.
Last night we played at Ryan's Bar in Torquay, and worryingly Eileen suffered stabbing pains in her wrist at the end of the show, so we had to cut our set short - we're both hoping she'll be OK tonight!
Hope to see all you Bristol-dwellers there!
Teddy
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[ Friday 04-06-10 ]
We're off to Twangfest in Whitchurch tomorrow - we've played there twice before and we're really looking forward to it, particularly due to rumours regarding a certain special guest who might make an appearance!
Teddy
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[ Sunday 30-05-10 ]
We had a great time at Kingsfest in Wales, as always - here's a link to a video of us covering Helter Skelter by The Beatles!
Teddy
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[ Tuesday 20-04-10 ]
Firstly, for some reason some of our e-mails have been going missing. Because of that, we've decided to set up a Yahoo account for e-mail correspondence from now on - if you have tried to contact us any time in the past few weeks/months and never got a reply, we'd appreciate you trying again via this new address: lechatnoirband@yahoo.co.uk - thanks!
Secondly, we just got back from Belgium - we had a wonderful time, as always! 5 great gigs, we can't wait to get back over to the continent later in the year! In the meanmtime, we're gonig to start working again on album number 4 - watch this space for news!
Teddy
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[ Wednesday 07-04-10 ]
This Sunday we're playing at The Old Firehouse in Exeter, then a few days later we're off to Belgium for 5 gigs in 4 days!
A couple of the shows have only just been confirmed, so the full tour now looks like this:
15/04/2010 @ Bar Mondial, Antwerp
16/04/2010 @ JH Lido, Grobbendonk
17/04/2010 @ Delirium Bluesfestival, Lichtervelde (16.45)
17/04/2010 @ JH De Styx, Peer (23.00)
18/04/2010 @ Kaffee I.P. Tende, Zwevegem
We're really looking forward to hitting Belgium again, it's probably our favourite country to play! We hope to see lots of our Belgian friends and fans there!
Teddy
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[ Monday 29-03-10 ]
We finally got the video footage back from our gig with Nick Oliveri at Muziekgieterij in Maastricht last November.
He says some very nice things about us from around 2:30 in and dedicates Millionaire to us!
Teddy
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[ Monday 22-03-10 ]
Our second album, Deadwood, is now officially SOLD OUT!
All 1000 copies have been sold, and it joins Tales From Silver City in being out of print... for the time being, at least!
For those of you who have not heard or do not own either of those albums, you can still hear them streamed in high quality at Bandcamp - and if you like them, you can download them in a variety of lossless formats for only 5GBP per album.
http://lechatnoir.bandcamp.com/album/deadwood
http://lechatnoir.bandcamp.com/album/tales-from-silver-city
Teddy
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[ Thursday 18-03-10 ]
It's been a quiet couple of months in the world of Le Chat Noir - after 3 years of non-stop gigging and working hard, in which time we've played around 300 gigs all over europe and recorded 3 albums, we decided it was time to take a step back and have a little break for a bit.
Trying to keep momentum going at this level in the music 'business' can be tough - whilst we're proud of all that we have achieved in a relatively short time - and without much in the way of outside help - it is sometimes hard to stay positive and focussed when you're putting all your energy into something and not always getting the results you want.
Having done a lot of soul searching, we've both agreed we want to continue playing together - in the end, we just love playing music! Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of why you are doing something in the first place when you're dealing with all the other stuff around it.
So, what's the future for Le Chat Noir? Well, we have some good shows coming up, including our first 2010 visit to the continent in April, and we're starting to think about album number 4. After a few false starts we're looking to return to our roots - raw, full-on garagey rock.
However, this time we intend to try and find label backing and possibly management - though we have had a bad experience or two in the past with getting involved with outsiders, we both feel that to take it to the next level we really need some help in terms of promotion and distribution.
If anyone thinks they have any contacts that might prove fruitful to us in our search, please get in touch!
Teedy & Eileen
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[ Monday 25-01-10 ]
We did our first gig of 2010 on Saturday - we had some booked previously but we were snowed in!! It went really well, Eileen and I have been going to the local gym for the past month and I really felt a difference - my lung capacity felt better, in the past there were some parts of the set where I was really pushing myself vocally that felt much more within my limits now. The turnout was really good and we had a great night - my new Orange bass amp performed admirably in my guitar rig, pumping out plenty of noise!
We have a last-minute show booked at The Old Firehouse in Exeter on Wednesday (27th), it's free entry so don't miss out! We'll be playing at 10PM.
Teddy
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[ Monday 11-01-10 ]
WE ARE PULLING OUT OF THE CAVERN GIG IN EXETER ON WEDNESDAY.
We're totally snowed in out here on the moor and the weather forecast this morning says more heavy snow is coming in tomorrow - we're going to be the worst hit area of the country!
Sorry to that for anyone who was thinking of coming, hopefully we'll get an Exeter gig some other time soon!
The start of 2010 has been a bit slow, we've spent most of it holed up at home due to the aforementioned snow. We have, however, started work on album number 4! We'll let you know more as it progresses!
Teddy
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[ Click here to see an archive of news from 2009 ]
[ Click here to see an archive of news from 2008 ]
[ Click here to see an archive of news from 2006-07 ]
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