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Writing this biography, I realise just how amazing our Journey has been, and the fantastic achievements that my brother Carl and I have accomplished.
My earliest memories of music becoming such an integral part of our family are of our parents buying Carl his first guitar at the tender age of eleven from the local school fete. From that moment on we were born into the music and were destined to perform together.
The journey to get to where we are now is about 16 years long so ill try to just stick to the main points. Basically it all started with the two of us performing as a duo in local pubs and clubs around our home town of Middlesbrough. Back then we called ourselves 'The Answer' which we came up with after being inspired by our favourite song at the time called exactly that, 'The Answer' by Bon Jovi's guitarist, Richie Sambora - clever I know!!
After at least a year of singing covers in the pubs together we felt we were ready to take things to the next level and looked for other musicians to set a band up around us. Looking back, I thoroughly enjoyed those days; we had so much fun together and played some great gigs, including Middlesbrough FC, a couple of battle of the bands competitions and lets face it, some absolute dumps. However it was all valuable experience and with it we began to write and perform our own material.
Things had now become a lot more serious for us as we found it was our passion to write music and we wanted now to be recording artists and reach the ultimate goal of securing a record deal. We felt it was time to move on from singing in the pubs and clubs and to move to London - so we did! Just like that!
I took it upon myself to go down to London with a credit card close at hand and purchased a caravan, yes you read it right, A CARAVAN!! I was desperate and nothing was going to get in my way. We all felt the same and the whole band took the plunge. We all gave up our jobs without hesitating, and moved into the 5-berth bandwagon.
It was this move that inspired the name change and from then on we became known as Journey South, and not for any other reason other than that we had moved south!!! Clever again I know!!!
That was again a crazy time, we worked as a duo to bring the money in for the lads as much as possible but we couldn't help all going into massive debt as we continued to record demos of our original tracks and try to push them around the London music scene, even sending one to Simon Cowell, where not surprisingly we had no reply! We rehearsed every day at a studio in London, which just racked up the debt and we eventually performed at a showcase event in London where we hoped it would finally gain us the recognition we yearned for. It didn't work as so many other things had not either, and we started to realise this was a huge thing we were trying to achieve and we were up against a mass of competition.
The band eventually dispersed and we were back just the two of us again. We stayed in London for another year, performing in posh restaurants and trying anything to get that break, with yet again pure disappointment. I cant describe in words just how hard it was to swallow that pill and decide it was time for us to return home and maybe think about getting used to the idea it would never happen. It was less hurtful to just forget it, so we did! We began performing at weddings and tried to just make a living from that to avoid getting a 'proper job' as most parents would say. We didn't quite manage to make enough money just singing so we had to get jobs, and we did so with the company we left 3 years ago to move to London. (They were a very understanding company)
That was it, we were set for a life of work, performing at the odd wedding and slotting in a few original songs now and then. It sounds ungrateful, we are certainly not and having a steady job is fantastic, but when your heart is in something else so deeply that through no fault of your own, and not for the want of trying you just cant have, nothing can compare to it and there will always be a hole that would need to be filled.
It was, big time, just a year after being home the x factor came on our screens and we applied. We left our jobs - again, and the same company as before. No way did we think that we would get anywhere. We had given up almost and all our disappointment had made us a little pessimistic to say the least. It was just a whirlwind and we kept getting through each round and we were hearing that Simon Cowell really liked us. We started to get excited at the thought of making it to the live finals and before we knew it, we had done it, and the fires inside our bellies were well untruly re-lit.
We had the time of our lives on the show, making it all the way to the finals and coming third, out of 75,000 applicants, unbelievable. The X factor was like a bubble and we had no idea the scale of the support we had from the whole of the UK. We literally could not go anywhere without being mobbed. If I'm honest, it was great, I loved it, and it was like the biggest ever pat on the back you could ask for.
Immediately after Simon Cowell signed us up, we had our fist album released which shot to number one and sold over half a million albums. The best bit was that it went to number one on mother's day. For those who don't know us will not know that our parents are our biggest groupies and have been there every step of the way and lived through all the good times and bad times with us and felt just as much as us, every bit of disappointment we felt. They have been incredibly supportive and undoubtedly without them we may not have ever been singing together. So you can only just imagine how special this particular mothers day was as we actually finally released an album and it went straight into the number one spot. Even as I write it, I still can't believe it, we are truly grateful that we have had the opportunity to do this.
Since then, there is a long line of achievements, including 2 massive UK tours taking in over 100 dates and playing to over 100,000 people. We have released another studio album that has done very well, not only here but also in South Africa. The best bit is that we wrote the songs and picked the cover and the name of the album (HOME) and just about everything on it ourselves. We also released it on our very own record label. It was a lot of hard work but worth every bit, as personally I am extremely proud of that album, more so than the first as its an original album and symbolises everything we have always wanted to achieve all those years ago.
We are pretty much up to date now, and we are busier than ever, working on licensing our album around the world, looking forward to touring South Africa this year and hopefully the UK later this year. We are writing more and more songs and hope to release a third album later this year or early next year. We have lots of appearances around the UK and Europe this year to look forward to also and we cant wait to get started, and we hope to see you all there……..
So that's it, after all those years of trying we are finally working full time as musicians doing what we adore. We love performing and it means so much to us all the support we have had. I want to thank my family, especially Carl, everyone who voted for us on the X factor and bought our records, and all our incredibly faithful fans, you know who you are……
Thank You
Andy x
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