Brilliant Surrey-based rock covers Broken Switch helped avert a disaster at a windy Surrey Half Marathon this month when part of a giant old oak tree smashed across the route just before the race got underway.
We're playing The Manor in Tooting on Friday the 10th of August - check out the poster here!
Come on down and see us at work.
See you in July at the first ever Banfest - Banstead music and beer festival!
As you’ll know if you seen us play, Broken Switch are a fun, amateur rock covers band based in Surrey. We specialise in playing at local festivals and other outdoor events, as well as pubs and parties. More often than not we seem to end up playing outside. It’s what we love.
There is something wonderfully British when people gather in a field or garden with a drink or two, a sense of childlike expectation and that traditional foreboding about how the weather may turn out. We know how to enjoy ourselves as a nation and providing the entertainment is an honour.
Every year we play Bacchus Marathon, which celebrates the grape harvest at Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. Runners, all in fancy dress, race, jog or walk over the North Downs stopping off for wine, music and dancing on the way round. It’s crazy fun.
This year we’re also looking forward to taking part in a brand new festival, Banfest, the Banstead Music and Beer festival organised by the village cricket club.
It opens on Friday, July 13, with a cricket match, locals v the England Masters charity team made up of ex-national players, followed by two days of music, beer and dancing and more cricket.
There will be more than a dozen bands, headlined by a Take That tribute act on Saturday and an Ed Sheeran tribute on Sunday - with everything from blues to bhangra in between . We’ve got the midday slot on Sunday.
If you’re up and about, come on down to Avenue Road, Banstead, SM7 2PP, just off the High Street and we’ll help you wake up with your first - and the best - pint of the day.
We know the atmosphere will be as special as these events always are – whatever the weather.
Tickets available for one and two days from the cricket club.
https://banstead.play-cricket.com/
For information about England Masters cricket team.
Did the Beatles ever have a gig postponed halfway through because they were playing on top of a hill and it started to rain sideways?
No, thought not*.
Broken Switch have.
The venue was Ranmore near Dorking overlooking Denbies Wine Estate, which nestles in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. And the event was the Bacchus marathon 2017.
Yep, we’ve all now played Eel Pie Island, the tiny boaty, hippie community on a small crop of land in the middle of a not particularly wide part of the River Thames in Twickenham.
The big difference, apart from the maybe 50-year gap between our gig and the Stones’ last one there is that there’s now a bridge across from the mainland. Keith and co had to push their gear over in a boat. We had to push our drum kit, full PA with giant speakers, amps, guitars, keyboard and a couple of harmonicas over a steep footbridge then along the short winding path to the venue, the Twickenham Rowing Club boathouse. Buy boy it’s worth it; what a fantastic crowd and amazing, historic venue.
On Bank Holiday Sunday, May 1, if you were thinking about staying in your room with the door shut, light off and not coming anywhere near Epsom - think again.
So us folk all met at Realistic Rock – now the Realistic Music Academy - in Epsom. We were strangers and then we joined their Remastered course. The idea is that the older gentleman or lady who maybe tinkered with music in their youth now wants to get together, learn songs as a band and then perform them. Nice idea right?
Epsom’s musical heritage may not be up there with the Liverpools of the world.
But George Harrison, the Beatle, got married in Epsom, Jimmy Page, the rock God, formed his first band here and Petula Clark was born in Downtown... Ewell.
We thought this looked interesting. Speaking for Broken Switch, we think we're quite reasonable and come in somewhere between Prince and One Direction.
We've played in some odd locations. That much is clear.
We're a jobbing band. Happy to be in the business of playing music to an appreciative audience. In fact, history tells us we're happy to play to an indifferent or absent audience. We make our own fun as our Nan's no doubt would have told us.
Broken Switch were formed in and are based in Epsom, Surrey. Obviously, Epsom is known throughout the world as the Home of Broken Switch.
Ramblings on the topic of 'backstage' and the performer / audience paradigm.