Said a final goodbye to Bradford this week as we sold our house and my family officially left Bradford after 37 years (and are now full-time Londoners). It was sad, I was born in Bradford and have many fond memories, awkward growing up episodes, it’s where I ignited my passion for music and had many first-times.
In fact the house we sold was our family home for 29 years! Mrs T had only been Prime Minister for a year when my family got the house. yes a lot has happened in that time. Emails, internet, downloading and blogging – unheard of.
I have my school friends and family friends up in Yorkshire/Lancashire still so I will go and visit them – but I will keep the Bradford of my youth in my memories.
Also saw Brandi Carlile perform her only date in the UK this year and she was simply amazing – she has an awesome voice and the songs are so beautiful. The concert had to be rescheduled due to power cuts in Kings Cross (!) but I was lucky enough to be able to make the new date. Below is a video of her singing ‘Turpentine” at La Scala pretty apt as this was the week we left Bradford for good.
Searching high and low for suitable producers for the past few weeks – I feel we are ready to record our songs with a quality producer/s over the next couple of months and it has been cool this month to work on new songs and arrangements for both recording and live gigs, with the boys.
I think the most important thing about the producer has to be that they really understand us and the music and don’t try and mould it to their vision, but instead work with us, listen to us and that we work together to create music that we all love. This is the advantage of not being tied to a big label at the moment and having complete freedom to choose the producers that we want to work with.
It will be great to work in a proper studio, with great equipment and work on the songs in pre-production with the producers.
I’m so excited as now we are getting to where we want to be – now to write those songs
It’s the end of July/August and I’m starting to get the out of office e-mail replies and suddenly everything is slower as everyone goes on holiday. Of course there are the Ashes to look forward to if it doesn’t get rained out and sometime mid-August football season will start again.
Then there are the festivals – V and Leeds/Reading at the end of August and lots of little festivals en route. No holiday for me this year – my trip across USA gets delayed for another decade – but I’m pretty sure it will be next year.
We are also only playing a couple of gigs this month as we get ready to record in September and October exciting for us. It is always hard to turn down gigs for me but I really want us to release our record end of this year/early next year. We have been recording our rehearsals in anticipation.
In other news, we met Chris from Waxdolly at our Cavendish Arms gig which he videotaped in June and this month he will put on his show as his featured artist – (date of show 08/08/09). Later this year, we will go along to the studios for an exclusive interview and acoustic session (look out for a similar deal with Propaganda Radio).
Yes it’s that time of year again where I celebrate popping out into the world.
A few people out there say it’s no big deal – but you can’t really forget it’s your birthday as hard as you try so you might as well celebrate it big time. I usually end up reflecting and this time last year there was no band and I hadn’t played all these great venues and met some amazing people along the way. In fact this time last year I didn’t even have anywhere to live! So yes what a year! Looking forward to releasing our first record before my birthday and making a music video so lots of firsts to come.
Just like last year I decided to celebrate it by playing a gig the night before at the Bull and Gate – again another one of those venues that I always wanted to play. Kaleb good friends of ours headlined – they are pure British metal – in fact this was the band that GreG our drummer started off with Adam the bassist in Kaleb, so lots of memories for GreG.
The gig was amazing and lovely that people came and said happy birthday and bought me drinks. Bull and Gate has a proper raised stage and a big capacity for holding people and the whole show s videoed from different angles.
Ok festival season is here again and on July 4th I did three gigs in one day! I started off at the Dolphin Stage at 1030am in the morning outside the Dolphin Pub in Sydenham as part of the Sydenham Festival, then I played the Post Office stage further up the street at 1230pm and finished off with an acoustic set with the band at The Albany as part of the Today Deptford Festival in Deptford at 4pm.
It was hectic but fun and I saw Randolph Matthews at the Sydenham Festival who has a great voice. At the Albany I heard the dulcit tones and story-telling form Damien Renouf a popular local troubadour, Paintings of Ships and the Poetic Wizadry of Kate Tempest – that girl can slam.
The following Saturday it was our big festival slot at Lewisham People’s Day (25th anniversary) – it poured buckets – but we met some lovely people and we rocked out – We shared the bill on the Rocklands Stage headlined by the awesome Officer Kicks – another local band making big waves in the industry. Other bands we loved were Short Skirtz, Edit/Select, Jimmy and the Banned, Rawfox, End of Spectrum, The Kut and Sixty Second Silence. I have played with Short Skirtz before – they were finallists in the Surface Unsigned competition.
The local talent in the South East of London is amazing – so many talented and friendly bands and we are running into them at more and more gigs. Venues in the SouthEast include, The Albany, Bird’s Nest, Deptford Arms, Fox and Firkin, The Marlborough, The New Cross Inn. In fact the Music Tourist Board is a big collective of assorted music types based in the South East and the more I get to know them the more I love it. Propoganda Radio the local South East London radio station also featured Nobody’s Fool on their weekly Thursday night show.
Sydenham Festival called me back to end the festival in Mayow Park on Sunday and that was lovely – again met some lovely people there include festival organiser Juliette.
Maybe it’s because I’m a South Londoner – that I love London town doo do do do.
Got a free ticket to see Florence and the Machine’s album launch for Lungs.
Florence is a local gal so the launch was done at the Rivoli Ballroom that is literally down my road, next to Jam Circus. It’s a historic building one of the last few ballrooms left in the UK. It was packed with trendy and beautiful media types. In fact Florence’s mum and family were there too! It was very hot in there – Florence had an awesome voice – in many ways reminiscent of Kate Bush – dancing with wild abandon and primal songs about primal feelings. I did indeed get her album the next day.
Set up my twitter account today – woo hoo micro-blogging
For someone who never kept a regular diary – it’s a whole new world blogging and micro-blogging – a continuous stream of thoughts that tumble forth and get plastered all over the internet – information overload or technological brilliance. Twitter is amazing because you now get the news through it rather than on TV or through news agencies – the Iranian protests being a case in point of real unedited events that are currently happening. Is this power to the people direct one to one knowledge sharing. I can’t wait to make my first twitter friends people you have conversations anywhere in the world about anything at anytime in as much depth as you want that I have never met/seen. Connectivity has never been so prolific.
Michael Jackson died today and a twentieth century musical icon was no more.
The thing with icons is we all feel we know them – their songs, their lives, their personal demons – somehow they are untouchable and god-like – yes people try and drag them down and they are human, but you will find that their songs formed part of the soundtrack of your life. I admit when I heard about his death I was shocked – despite the stories he has been around for as long as I can remember.
I had tickets to his final tour at the O2 – we were meant to go in September and never for a moment did I think he would cancel – because he loved performing on stage – that was his heaven and what he lived for. When all the speculation about how, why and when he died dies down – his music will live forever.
This week we played the Water Rats in Kings Cross and fulfilled one of our dreams
Oasis, Suede, Katy Perry and a whole host of big names had played gigs here when they were upcoming – so I guess we were standing on the shoulders of giants (pun intended) So many of our friends and family came to support us that we really felt the love. It was special for us to have them share that with us. Even more exciting we had three cameramen to shoot the gig and take a backstage interview with us – which we will be editing and putting out for people to access in the near future. We also had Stone, a guy who has photographed Pete Entwhistle and other rock legends and the Glastonbury Festival many times to take pics (below)
Th backstage interview was fun as we were asked lots of questions about who we were and why we made the music we did. I guess if you are not used to these questions then it can throw you but we soon got used to it and started sound-biting without realising it. We discovered later that our bassist Roger was a regular on a morning Football TV programme as an Arsenal fan and was very used to soundbites. Like I said in my last post – the camera brings out undiscovered sides to everyone’s personalities…
First TV appearance this week on internet TV station Balcony TV. Even though I video our gigs there is something about a camera being pointed at you and talking to a presenter which turns brains (or at least mine) to jelly. A strange phenomenon.
Otherwise it was loads of fun – Layla (the presenter) and Greg ( cameraman/producer) were lovely and made us feel at home. The Location just outside Yumchaa coffee shop over looking Camden Lock ( Camden again!) was lovely and it was a cool evening. We saw lots of bands perform and chilled out and played Nobody’s Fool. It was fun to do an acoustic version of the track and GreG brought his Cajon along.
