Becoming an outlaw

This is something I’ve been working towards for some time and I’m very excited about it. What you’re seeing in this photo, is Jessica Law and the Outlaws. I’m an Outlaw now, and this makes me very happy. It’s not obvious in the photo, but James is doing backing vocals and percussion.

I first encountered Jessica Law through her work as a voice actress on the horror podcast The Magnus Archives. I met her for the first time at steampunk festival Raising Steam last year, where I heard her performing her own entirely fabulous songs. We spent some time together at a steampunk event in Shrewsbury last autumn, where she mentioned wanting a band. I desperately wanted to offer to be part of that, but we were living a long way apart, neither of us drives and I was only just getting back into playing the viola. 

However, we’re now in the same geographical area, and both in easy striking distance of Gloucester. This photo was taken of us rehearsing at The Folk of Gloucester – a wonderful place where a lot of local steampunk events happen. 

Jessica is one of those people I find it incredibly easy to accompany. Her melodies are really unusual, but the music makes sense to me at a gut level, and I can work with her in fairly intuitive ways. If you aren’t familiar with her work I heartily recommend sticking her name in a search engine and looking her up.

We’ll be gigging a few times this summer, and hopefully beyond. It’s an exciting prospect, and we gel nicely as a band. It’s a good sound, and a good working dynamic, and also a lot of fun.

This is being a year for chasing things that call to my heart and for making radical changes in my life. There have been quite a few of those already. Becoming an Outlaw is something I’m very excited about, and is very much the kind of direction I want to keep moving in.