Taste is now part of a team called Check It Out which consists of the band plus Diversion which is a drama group. Diversion has two members Laura and Ben who when added to the six members of Taste and our manager/sound engineer Joy and lighting/visual technician Dan Wicks means that there are up to ten of us touring on the Check It Out team!

Dan was lighting engineer with Taste a few years back and is now Technical Manager of Viz-A-Viz Ministries (the charity we all work for) but will be touring with us occasionally. He's also been working very hard in the studio coming up with some great film footage for use in our shows. 

All this means that our trusty Mercedes van Linford is well and truly full to overflowing so we'll be taking a car with us on the road as well to fit in the extra people, equipment and luggage that we need.

It's also worth highlighting that fact that Ben from Diversion plays guitar very well and will be joining Taste on stage for a few songs now and again as additional guitarist.

September has as usual been a month of busy rehearsals for Taste. Unfortunately our lead singer Claire is quite unwell at the moment which means that our new singer Becca is taking on all vocal duties for now and she's handling the work-load very well. Becca is a long-standing Taste fan and actually did her work experience with us a few years ago so knows all the words to all the songs!

Jack our new bass man joined at the very last minute having seen Taste at Leading Edge (quite common it seems with bass players!) and moving down from north Norfolk in a hurry! Jack is doing a fine job getting to grips with all the bass lines, good thing he's a fast learner.

Last years techie Keel is taking a more up front role and has moved over to drums. He stood in last year for a German tour but it's great to have his fine drumming skills with us permanently this year. La Roche continues to spin the discs, lay down keyboard parts and add vocal stylings whilst Andy remains on guitar and vocals too. Hope you get to see and hear the new line-up sometime this year!

Back up north for Livit Camp found us in North Yorkshire once again on Hollybush Farm. Lots of new faces at camp this year and we missed a few of our old friends. However, we had a great week, the weather held out pretty well even though we got rained on during our day trip to Lightwater Valley! We were joined by lovely ex-Taste singer and keyboard player Jo Hobson and the very hard working Andy Dimon who along with Laura and the Tastey boys put on some amazing drama! We also ran some music / technical / drama workshops and it was great to see much young talent on display!

Leading Edge is our finale and a brilliant way to end the year! Numbers were down a bit this year but we had around a hundred people who all piled into our venue every day for fantastic time. Sadly, Claire wasn't feeling to well so upcoming new Taste singer Becca Caesar filled in for us on a few occasions and did a brilliant job. She and Claire also got to sing together towards the end of the week which was a great warm up for when Becca joins us in September. Thankfully, Claire was also well enough for our end of year concert featuring a classic Taste All-Star line-up for the grand finale! At one point there was 10 of us on stage when we were joined by Taste girls Joy, Jo, Hev, and last years funky rhythm section Lukey D and Luke the basscat (still viewable on the top of our website pages)! Matty Boy and Lukey D swapped drumming duties for different songs and a real highlight came in the Taste classic Sitting On The Fence where, after a blinding basscat solo, there was a magic moment of duetting basses with Sammy J and Luke C alternating notes! The audience was incredibly loud and seemed to enjoy every minute of one of the hottest and noiseiest Taste gigs on record!!!

Our second trip to Germany took us just over the dutch border to the Wolfsberg Youth Centre where we met 200 young Germans who were there to learn more about God and what a friendship with Jesus really means. We had a fantastic time joining in with all the fun and activities and Matty Boy was with us this time as well as Dan Wicks packing out the van with extra lights and trussing. The boys were well crammed in the back! Despite the language barrier the kids really enjoyed having us singing in their sessions and our concert was one of the sweatiest ever, which is always the sign of a good gig! Check out our myspace blog page for more details.

Well we've started our season of festivals and events which are a little different to the usual stuff we do in schools. Spring Harvest was great fun with 400+ people in the Distinctive venue at Butlins, Minehead. As well as joining in all the madness and mayhem we did a gig on the first night which was a lot of fun. Over the week our new song Following You had a good airing and seemed to go down well. Soon after that we did The Mix up near Norwich in a lovely little venue out in the sticks. We only had one complaint from someone in the village when we started sound checking at 9 in the morning! Oops. Never mind, I think we're still invited back next year. Then it was down to sunny Bournemouth for Innovation at the Baptist Assembly. Our venue was in the basement ballroom of a hotel which again was a small venue but we made it look really cool down there with all our lights and stage set and everyone had a great time. On the last night we also went over to another venue to do a special acoustic set which was also a lot of fun. Now we're all off on holiday for a couple of weeks before we go to play at Konfi Camp in Germany. We'll let you know how that goes in our next blog! Have a great summer!

Our trip to Scotland got off to a dodgy start when our van Linford failed it's MOT so in a hire van and a car we eventually found ourselves in Newton Stewart a little way over the border. We were all staying together which was a lot of fun and we were very well fed every night by the lovely people at the Cinnamon Cafe. We had a brilliant time in Douglas Ewart High School taking loads of lessons and had a great gig on the Thursday night, lots of crazy jumping around going on!

Then we had a picturesque journey further north to Port Glasgow High where we performed not only in their lecture hall but also did a few unplugged lessons in their 5th from common room. It was a lot of fun and the concert night was another great gig.

With a brief overnight stop in Essex to pick up and reload Linford we headed south to Torbay to work with the Linx Trust, once again in Brixham College. Many people remembered Naomi and the two Lukes from last years line up but the new guys were much appreciated, especially Sammy J's cool dance moves!!

The overnight trip home was a long one but we managed to get out of Devon okay despite people being stranded in the snow on the roads the previous evening. Now we're all thawed out and ready for the next tour!!!