January 2011 - Newsletter

Hi everyone!

2010 has been a fun year and it was great to meet so many of you at our gigs.

Like many musicians, I thrive on new challenges and 2011 without doubt, is going to be my busiest year to date. I’ll be playing in two bands. Joe Gooch and I have a new band called Hundred Seventy Split, formed to play music that rocks outside of the TYA box. You can listen to some sound bites from our debut CD The World Won’t Stop on our web site www.hundredseventysplit.com. In December of 2010 we played CD-release shows in Germany and France and I want to thank all of you who turned out to support us despite the ice and snow. It took our band bus six hours to drive 7 kilometers around Paris.

Hundred Seventy Split kicks off another tour on February 9th starting in Poland and we’ll continue touring throughout the year. I hope we get the chance to play in a town near you. You. Look for gigs as they come in on www.hundredseventysplit.com

How does the new band affect Ten Years After? It does not affect TYA at all. I want to make it clear that Hundred Seventy Split will not be playing any TYA classics in the set. Fans who want to hear TYA songs will have to go to a TYA concert.

Many of you have asked me if this means the end of TYA. No it does not. TYA will continue working for as long as you want to hear us play. I appreciate the support our fans give us and I enjoy working with Ten Years After. It gives me pleasure to play the songs you request. I hope that in 2011 we can add more songs from the TYA catalogue into our live set.

Ten Years After starts the year on January 21st with shows in Germany and we continue on and off throughout the whole of 2011. Again you can see the gigs as they come in on the TYA web site.

Here’s wishing you all a great 2011. Thank you once again for your continued support throughout 2009. I consider myself lucky to be doing the job I love. I hope to see some of you out there on the road.

Kind regards, Leo

www.myspace.com/leolyons and www.myspace.com/hundredseventysplit and www.myspace.com/leolyonskick

August 2010 - Newsletter

Hi everyone!

How’s your summer so far? I’ve managed to meet many of you out on the road and that’s been great. Thanks from all of us in TYA to all of you for coming to see us play. Forty-one years later it’s still a thrill.

TYA has had a quieter time this month compared with last year's hectic dash around the world including the US dates on the ‘Heroes Of Woodstock Tour’. But we kick off again in mid-September with a pretty heavy schedule through to the end of the year. Check the web site for gigs near you.

Seems I’ll be playing with TYA until I’m old and grey… well okay, for as long as you want me to. To those of you who know me well it’s no surprise to find that I’m always working, either songwriting, recording or playing on other people’s records.

With the change in TYA’s work schedules I’ve had time to work on a new CD project that I’ll run alongside my TYA commitments. Last year I was asked to do a Leo Lyons solo record. I’m not really a solo person but I thought I’d make a record and have guests on it. I asked Joe Gooch if he’d like to write some songs with me and perhaps play on some of the tracks. We made a start and somewhere down the line the direction changed and we both decided to make it a project for the two of us and something different from our work with TYA.

The band is called Hundred Seventy Split and we’ve just released our debut CD The World Won’t Stop. We're playing some live gigs - check the band's web site for dates - www.hundredseventysplit.com

You can read more about the record and listen to some selections from the mini-CD on this site and the Hundred Seventy Split website.

I’m very excited by the new record. I hope you’ll enjoy it. One thing I should point out is that when ‘Hundred Seventy Split’ plays a show don’t expect TYA songs. To hear those you’ll have to come to a TYA gig and see us with Ric and Chick!

See you all soon I hope. Kind regards, Leo

www.myspace.com/leolyons and www.myspace.com/hundredseventysplit and www.myspace.com/leolyonskick