Louise Somerville Williams

Louise is our Road Manager. Not all the time you understand, because she’s a very busy person. When she can be there, she is…1000%...

Being a road manager is possibly the least enviable of all tasks within a band outfit…she has driven to London in the middle of the night and brought us cookies and fruit, Nacho’s and Salsa, a home baked cake, juice and tea…everything you could possibly want after a long time on the road. She made a meal for 19 of us, in a muddy field, (while it was raining) at Glastonbury Festival. She has even made tea, and eggs on toast at midnight!

When we did our naked protest at the Radio 3 World Music Awards 2003 – Louise was the decoy. We had become ‘the band the beeb banned’ because of our strong anti-war stance for which they disqualified us from winning the Audience Award. Three of us stripped off and got onto the stage before the final encore with the words PEACE – NOT & WAR written on bare chests and the words BBC – COVER – UP -on banners covering our privates… lifting the banners at the appropriate moment to reveal, among other things, the slogan SEIZE – THE – DAY. …I haven’t heard of any other road manager, before or since, who has been prepared to bare a breast to distract security. That is commitment!

On a rather more mundane level Louise will arrange for band riders (food and drink - not people on horse back!), provide towels, check routes to gigs, make sure the sound engineer has the correct stage plan and PA specs… and occasionally she will look after Rosa – ‘Shannon and Theo’s exquisite daughter - who is delicious.’

In the past Louise has booked gigs for us and sent out countless packages to festival organisers.

Despite many physical challenges she is a whirlwind of activity and a truly lovely person with one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen…

Other strings to Louise's bow:

Being a (former) dedicated and effective anti-GM campaigner www.gmwatch.org
Doing virtually all my shopping on Bruton High St as the Awesome Alwyn goes to the Meadow School (When I’m not doing an order with the groovy whole food co-operative Essential Trading)
Being exceptionally close to taking re-usable shopping bags EVERYWHERE. My sister-in-law, Megan sent me an awesome one for Christmas www.bangconsortium.com Mind you, Essential also do a fab green hemp bag although I did prefer their organic cotton one….
Passing lots of exams and becoming qualified in Teaching Adults, Fixing Computers, and generally doing a lot of study while caring for babies.
Smiling a lot, using very positive language and creating excellent affirmations, while making great tea and baking delicious cakes of course
Coping through 11 days of Vipassana Meditation without enough tea or roll up's
Mothering the Felicitous Felix and Awesome Alwyn, who features on the song "Globalisation"
Saying "I love you" in 12 languages when I was 18 years old
Passing my NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner exams
Passing my driving test 5th time lucky. I was a very good cyclist until babies came.
Marrying the delicious guitarist David Williams.
Spending three days and nights sleeping on Glastonbury Tor during the harmonic convergence in August 1987.
Being a former festival organiser and booking my favourite bands, who, with the notable exception of Seize The Day are, Hank Dogs & Martha Tilston and The Woods featuring the exceptionally talented Matt Spacegoat who is lovely
Growing healthy houseplants and building creative indoor gardens

Please get in touch with me, lsw500@yahoo.co.uk I’m happy to talk about the band, riders, their needs when out on tour and, of course, cake recipes - (and the address to post your gifts to…!)

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