Funeral for a Friend play secret fan shows in Cornwall

This weekend saw 3 very small shows by one of the UK's hottest rock bands take over the music scene in Cornwall when Funeral For a Friend hit the county.

It all began back in January and SW1 were contacted by the bands agent with the brief that the welsh group wanted to do 3 shows in Cornish fishing villages to coincide with the 'watery, shipwrecked' theme present in the new album soon to be released. Obviously we jumped at the chance and set about calling pubs that were keen to host the special dates.

The shows were initially kept a secret and all the ticketing was done through the bands website with fans being given a chance to enter a lucky dip style competition to win the right to buy 2 tickets for these exclusive dates. Fans came from all over the country for these gigs with a proportion of the tickets being saved for fans with local postcodes to a few people travelling all the way from Scotland for all three shows!

This was a fantastic opportunity for Funeral for a Friend to get back to basics and planned to do the shows pub style by announcing that they would be taking a 20-minute beer break in the set! This meant the fans got to hang out with the band, get photo's, autographs and to buy the band a few drinks at the bar!

The nights were a complete success and despite colds and sickness starting to take over the boys ploughed on through playing a mix of old favourites and new tracks from the forthcoming album. The band started to call the nights Funeral For a Friend Karaoke with the small but perfectly formed audiences belting out song after song on all 3 dates!

Of course how could we forget Mr Ruarri Joseph who kicked off every night in style winning over audiences that ordinarily may not have gone to see him with his well crafted acoustic set from his soon to be released album on Atlantic. Label mates Funeral chose Ruarri for these dates after being slipped a demo CD a couple of months ago and what a perfect opener to their shows they chose which culminated in Gareth (FFAF) daring Ruarri to do a stage dive on the last night! Stage dive he did to a roaring applause - keep your eyes peeled on You Tube for that one!!!

We'd like to say a big thank you to all the venues that took part in these shows putting their faith in the fact that such a big act would work in their pub - The Oyster Catcher (Polzeath), The Lifeboat Inn (St Ives) and The Acorn (Penzance). I can highly recommend the teams at all 3 for unlikely Rock n Roll shows!!!

Of course these dates wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the band and I think all the fans and everyone that attended the dates would join us in thanking Funeral For a Friend for choosing Cornwall for these dates.

You can check out photo's of the nights by visiting the gallery.