John McKeown’s online presence required an overhaul to prepare for the release of his official debut album. The brief for the new website was to keep it simple, strong and bold. With the existing content in place, I developed a new custom WordPress theme based around the new press pictures.

The site uses a few custom plugins and widgets. I developed a simple facebook fan box widget that can be configured from the WordPress dashboard making it simple to change the widget size and number of fans displayed.

The “listen” page uses an adapted version of the Tierra Audio Playlist Manager plugin, making it easy to add and edit the playlist.

Adding new live shows is made easier by integrating data from artistdata.com. Artistdata submits event information to numerous sites, including the official John McKeown website.

The new site is configured to display correctly across browsers and monitor sizes. The background image even resizes dynamically to fit larger monitors (see this screenshot of the site on a 27inch iMac).

Charly Coombes & the New Breed live at the Monto Water Rats (London, United Kingdom). Supported by John McKeown, Nicole Fermie, Dixie and Radio Riot.
19 January 2010.

This show had some very odd lighting. The entire stage was lit up by bright blue lights that created a very difficult environment to shoot photos. I Photoshopped the hell out of these pictures to try and compensate for the blue haze that covered them all. I always process my RAW image files in Photoshop, but I don’t like to mess with them too much. This was an interesting experiment for me.

Mike Dignam Myspace
Gabrielle Aplin Myspace
John McKeown Myspace
John McKeown Official Website

The official John McKeown website is built on a WordPress back-end. I created a custom theme to represent the album artwork for ‘Things Worth Fighting For’ and have used and adapted a number of powerful plugins to enhance the website’s appearance and usability. The website is content-rich, including photo galleries, music videos, lyrics, a gig guide and an integrated streaming mp3 player. The site includes a password protected press area for high resolution images and full album streaming.

A VIP Area also exists to provide exclusive content for fans that become members of the site. The sign-up process has been customized and enhanced to automatically add members to the mailing list. This VIP area was used for an exclusive online broadcast of John McKeown’s album launch showcase.

The John McKeown myspace page is an ever-changing project. The site has been created with various CSS modifications. The page header changes depending on the marketing strategy. It is used to stream videos, promote releases or photos. The header can include regular HTML and images or Adobe Flash animations.

I designed the Beatroute Records myspace page to mirror the label’s official website. I had to write custom CSS and HTML to update the page and include all the new elements of the design.

When I started working at Beatroute Records the company had just been resurrected, so I was given a blank canvas to start with. We went with a clean white design with a sketch theme. The site is built on a WordPress back-end with a bespoke theme.

The site includes a customized online store, powered by the WP E-commerce Plugin. I enhanced the site’s functionality by editing plugins and writing custom code for widgets and sidebars. The website is optimized to streamline the process of adding or updating news, artist pages, links, digital releases etc.

On Monday ‘Things Worth Fighting For’ took on a whole new life as John McKeown and co. met to start rehearsals for the album’s showcase. If the first rehearsal is anything to go by then the 10th September is destined to be a very significant day in the rock ‘n’ roll history books.

John called on his friends and colleagues Elliott Randall and Reverend Basil Meade to assemble the finest musicians capable of bringing this album to the stage. During this first rehearsal the calibre of the team shone through vividly.

‘Things Worth Fighting For’ may be one man’s album but he is a man with an epic vision; a vision that will see 25 stellar musicians teaming up to recreate an ambitious and excellently crafted album.

I was invited to take photos of the first rehearsal. Take a look at the photos below to see what went on.

‘Fade Away’, the first single from ‘Things Worth Fighting For’, is a powerful song about love and loss. We would spend the day witnessing director Martin Pickering’s vision for the song come to life.

We arrived at the first location in Hertfordshire to find the crew hard at work preparing the set. It was instantly clear that this would be a top-class video. Everyone was incredibly professional and knew precisely what they wanted from every second of film. It’s amazing how much time was spent simply setting up shots but once the cameras started rolling it was easy to see why the details are so important.

All the performance scenes in the video were filmed in an old barn. The lighting was perfectly placed and highlighted with strategically wafted smoke setting the mood. The legendary producer & guitarist, Elliot Randall even made a guest appearance playing his guitar-part in the song.

The lighting on the set was really nice and moody, so I got some photos I’m really proud of. I can’t wait to see the final video at the end of the month.

A few of my photos are below. To find out more about John McKeown visit JohnMcKeown.net or myspace.com/johnmckeownandco.