Tim Manning and Paul Divers on the Pure Local Extra show

Paul (accompanied by his daughter Roxy) came to talk mostly about his promotional company “Honest Dog Promotion”. Tim is a part of a band called “Blind River Scare”, throughout the show we listened to some of their songs and learned a bit more about them.

Firstly: Honest Dog Promotion. Paul has been in bands before but right now he is focused on his company. Honest Dog gets gigs on in different venues. Paul is originally from Chepstow,  he had been touring around the world for a while and he hadn’t noticed that there wasn’t much in his home town. He returned and noticed there wasn’t much, he started the company to bring something to Chepstow and it has since become bigger than just Chepstow. The company is a rebrand of something old, it was originally still a promotions company but was much less serious: the rebrand takes itself more seriously and focuses on making good gigs. 

Paul said that his ultimate goal with Honest Dog is to make a festival. The promotions business is the start of it and a way to make enough money to host a festival.

Next, Blind River Scare. Tim’s band has quite an interesting name with an interesting origin.

Tim is a massive Neil Young fan. Young would use a hearse to carry equipment around. The vehicle ended up breaking down in a location called Blind River. In his biography, it was described as quite a scare. Upon reading the biography, Tim thought of how Blind River Scare could be an interesting name and it came from there.

We listened to Tim’s song “The Moral Higher Ground”. The song is about getting involved in something when you probably shouldn’t. Tim described it as ‘like getting involved in a fight in the town centre and getting the blame for starting it’.

Back to Honest Dog, Paul gave us some insight into how it works. He works with Dirty Carrot Records and our good friend Joe Kelly. With booking venues, he tries to get at least 6 months ahead of himself, which is what he is doing right now. Right now, Paul is trying to book lots of artists into lots of venues. He added that he loves when people approach him to get booked for a gig, Facebook and Email is the best place to reach out.

Since it is festival season, we asked both guests for their opinions. Paul regularly goes to 5 or 6 festivals a year, he likes going because you can get time off from real life and just enjoy the music. On the other hand, Tim doesn’t go to many festivals, being the opposite of Paul.

Finally, what’s upcoming: 

Paul has organised a gig at The Lions Lounge, Chepstow with Bryony Sier playing at the bar. Tim has lots of gigs coming up in which you can find online under Blind River Scare.

You can listen to the full show here