"A university arises..."

Good evening, ladies and gents, I trust you are well?

  I found myself thinking about the odd things that pass through one's mind during those half-hour stints upon the stage, today.  I think about those odd things a lot, actually, usually when I'm on stage.  You inhabit two very different forms of existence when you're playing music in front of people, where you're living inside the song, and equally aware of what's going on around you.  My attention was drawn to this earlier today as I was playing a solo set for Burslem Festival, when what I can only describe as "a piss-soaked drunk" happened upon the outdoor stage, and made varying lurches to and away from the stage.  On the one hand, I'm singing a song called 'Change' - a tender song about heartbreak, and a song that can get me a little teary if I'm not careful, and as such, the song is thankfully brief - and on the other hand, I'm watching him carefully in case he makes any move to join me on the stage for a mid-song cuddle.

  That duality is precarious, or at least it can be, because at any one time you can weigh too heavily one one side, and either become so engrossed in the song that you don't realise you've fallen off the stage until you're in mid-air, or become so distracted by your surroundings and the people therein that you can't play for shit.

  If you were to make me choose between those two states, I would plump for the former.  At least if someone gets his cock out during a love song, I'm not going to notice.  I have played songs while minor ruckuses (rucki?) have broken out and subsequently extinguished before now, which still doesn't beat the time my parents and their friend John were playing a gig in a pub's snug lounge (out in the middle of nowhere), when a fight broke out in the bar, which ended up with several police vehicles turning up and the rozzers hauling several people out of the premises.  Only Dad was placed to be able to see any of this, and so while John & Mum played their parts undistracted from the blind spot, Dad was left to try and get through the lead guitar part to The Shadows' 'Apache' with blue lights flashing in his eyes.*

  I don't seem to get too distracted when the band are playing, and walk the tightrope fairly well, I think.  I seem to be totally immersed in the music, while also looking around the room and taking in what's happening, mentally looking out for things on which to pass comment when the song's finished.  There are slips, though.  Sometimes I'm so caught up in what I'm doing that I don't think about the lyrics, and occasionally an entirely wrong lyric comes up.  I will either get lines the wrong way around, swap whole verses or a similar word appears on my tongue and nobody notices.  The other week we were playing in Birmingham and over the course of the set, all of those lyrical errors turned up once each.  The one that stands out to me, was on a song called 'Universe Colliding' where the lyrics runs "There's a lot of things we want to do, but we never get chance / The opportunity arises so I'm gonna stand up / And sing out..." and even now I can hear myself sing "The university arises..." and two weeks later, I am none the wiser for why that happened.

  But it's all part of the magic, getting from the first song to the last.  Every time it's fresh and exciting, and these days, with the band especially, utterly joyous.  It's a genuine pleasure to be on stage with Angela, Matt & Paul, playing all these songs and turning to them whenever possible just to enjoy what they're doing, and share a smile.  We played a show at Fenton Manor Sports Complex (in the cafe bar - it was unusual, but actually pretty sublime, like a German TV studio taping) a week or so ago, and we had plenty of room to move about, no one felt like we were going to trip over each other, and it was a pretty relaxed feel.  What made it weirder was turning to face the band and seeing people walking around behind us with towels under their arm, ready for a swim.  Still, it was good.  It's not happened yet where I've been reassuring the band during an instrumental & realised I should be singing, but there have been a few races back to the microphone...

  The coming weeks hold promises of joy and treasures galore, with some studio time ready for May, June & July (where we hope to make further significant progress on our debut record, among other things), and where we are also playing shows for the Newcastle Jazz & Blues Festival, at The Rigger and Old Brown Jug respectively, and there are other shows coming up that we're waiting to announce.  We'll also be playing at The Sugarmill on June 7th, which is really exciting for me (for all of us!).  I have wanted to step onto that stage since I was 18, so I'm very proud to have that chance.  We'll be supporting Junction 16, and I hope it's the first of many times we get to play there.

  So with all that to look forward to, I'm going to go and think about things, plot stuff, and try and get the image of that bloke with the wee-stained trousers out of my head.  Oh yes, and drink some tea!

See you soon, keep behaving nicely!
Love,
John xxx

*It was bloody weird.  About ten minutes prior to this, I had left the gents' just as a man with a sharp farming implement walked into the bar.  How there weren't any casualties I don't know.

Tried and Emotional

  Evening, blogwatchers,

  A fine malaise has settled over me these last two days, which has left me in something of a reverie.  There is absolutely no reason for this to be the case, because it's been a perfectly lovely weekend, but I can actually pinpoint a thing as a cause for it - emotional residue.  (This is not a physical object, thank the heavens, I'm not sure I would have any idea what such a thing would look like, were it to exist.  Differently-coloured candlewax, perhaps?  The colour could vary depending on the emotion it represents, couldn't it?  Er, anyway, I've drifted off-point.)

  The band & I spent a full weekend in the studio, trying to get as much work done as possible on our record.  To say we were successful would be a massive blimmin' understatement.  Drum tracks, guitar tracks, and bass tracks were recorded for six songs, two of which have also had lead vocals recorded, and one has piano.  Things are coming on leaps and bounds for 'Unexpected Sunshine', and all the songs so far are surprising us with how well they are taking shape.  There are all sorts of stories I could tell you, but I shall probably wait until we're about to deliver the record to you.  That will make a nice parcel of anecdotes (or nonecdotes, as I sometimes call them).

  Anyway, Angela & Paul powered through, and we hit target by Saturday night, getting the bass & drums down for those six songs, and then on the Sunday we transferred the analogue tape reels to the computer to begin recording guitar parts, and we also crossed our fingers that we would get to do some vocals.  Sadly, Matt didn't get a great deal of a chance to do anything other than a piano part for one song, as he was needed on more urgent business, but he was with us for half the weekend, across the two days.  (It's so much fun to watch him fizz with ideas when we're playing back the takes, I think the phase of production where we're adding effects, extra vocals, and who knows what else will be the most exciting part for him!)

  The last song we worked on is called 'It Was You', and is a pretty intense song, and after a few takes in the vocal booth, and trying a few ideas to attempt making a vocal take that was equal to how it sounds when we play it live, we finally tried putting the mic in the control room, and have me sing it in a similar way to the way the guide track was recorded the previous day.

  I had sung this song about five or six times by this point, and was starting to suffer from the effects of living in the song.  When you write & perform a song that was borne of difficult & emotional times, it's initially cathartic.  You play the song on stage, and are briefly transported back to those circumstances, but the audience response helps to re-vanquish it, you play another song, and you shake it off.  The here and now takes over again, and the past becomes the past.  Not so much the case when you are recording, because you are not only striving to maintain the technical quality of your voice, but the emotional weight of what you're singing needs to be at full whack - there's no let-up, it's you and that song, fighting in the vocal booth.

  We tried out the mic in the control room, Paul & Angela stayed on the settee at the back - I needed them with me, subconsciously for emotional support, I think - and we managed it in one take (hopefully - we'll know for sure when we hear the rough mixes).  I managed to keep myself together, although there were a couple of moments I felt my throat tighten & a couple of tears make vague threats from underneath my eyes, but it sounded pretty good.

  Sadly, at that point, time beat us, and it was time to pack up our instruments, bid Dan Rowley (producer at Tremolo Studios) a fond farewell, and be on our way, but there was one thing that I never got chance to do - shake the song from off my shoulders.  Its melancholy embrace hung on me, and instead of doing something cheerful to eradicate it and leave it behind, it came with me.  And so, as I sit & write this, it remains, and I find myself feeling so proud of my band, so indebted to Dan, really pleased with the progress we are making on our record, but also - at the back of my mind - weighed down in a fugue for things that happened so long ago, and I need a way to shake it off.  We have a band rehearsal tomorrow night, so I suspect that will be done then.  We'll try and make it a garage party.

  That's all I can think to tell you for now, there are gigs coming, which will be announced as soon as is humanly possible (under wraps for now, but trust me - really exciting news!), so for now, I will leave you with a piece of video I made last night, with some footage we took whilst recording over the weekend.  Hopefully the first of several, I present 'Studio Stories, Episode One'.



Lots of Love, be nice.
John xxx

CALLING ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS!

CALLING ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS!

  We want to collaborate with you! You might have heard from some wanton source that we're recording an album.  In light of what we're making, we'd like you to get your nice cameras at the ready and take photos of beautiful sunsets, sunrises, or just take photos that might involve the sun in a surprising way.

  Take your photographs, and then get them to us, either by e-mail, Facebook or Twitter, or however you like, and hopefully it won't be too long until we can reveal all. (Also, if you have any photos already that fit this criteria, send them on!)

Thank you in advance, lovely folks, we can't wait to see your sun-based photographs.

Happy snapping,

John xxx

Unexpected Sunshine and Mattress Trebuchets

  Arfternoon.

  I'm almost a bit disappointed, because I'd managed to write two blog entries on consecutive days, and was really hoping for a third, but it didn't quite happen.  I'm the sort of chap that always hopes to get into a good routine - early nights, regular shopping, remembering to do my laundry at respectable intervals - but never quite manages it.

  And it's always once I've managed to, say, get up at 7am on two days on the trot that I think to myself "Yes, finally!  I've turned a corner!  All these unwanted lie-ins are a thing of the past!" and then wake up the next day at least an hour later than I wanted, resulting in a frenzied gallop around the house, grabbing stray pieces of clothing and trying not to fall up the stairs.

  I once worked as a senior member of staff in an independent record store, and over Christmas we would pull early shifts in order to get through the backlog of deliveries that used to logjam the staff quarters over the Festive period (there are probably many and varied stories I could tell you about the time I spent working in that lovely old shop - no longer with us and is currently a bland Virginmedia death-hole - but I can't remember any of them right now, so will try and stockpile them for future blog entries).  My early-morning shift was due, and I went to bed early with that reverence you can only achieve when you know you are doing a Good And Proper Thing, you know, instead of staying up all night and playing computer games until you can hear the dawn chorus of birds in the park outside your flat (this has happened - again, another story).

  That reverence is something else, isn't it?  If you really want to be smug at yourself, make a cup of tea to drink in bed while you read a chapter or two of a book.  That night, I did all that (I might have been trying to read Lord Of The Rings at the time, I have only ever made it to the end of the second book, and the chances of me getting beyond that have have gone past slim - I console myself by knowing what happens after having watched the films with my folks, but that's a bit like making yourself feel better about not having read Wuthering Heights by saying "Well, I've listened to Kate Bush..."), and I went smugly to sleep in anticipation of getting up early and arriving at the shop at half-six in the morning.

  In much the same way that nothing feels quite like that early-night smugness, nothing matches that shot of adrenalin when you wake up and look at the clock, only to discover you should have left the house.  It's as if you've actually been thrown out of bed by a mattress-mounted trebuchet.  If you've ever leapt out of bed following one of those startling moments, ask yourself how you never actually hit the wall when you got up.  I awoke at 8am, a full hour after I was supposed to be at the shop in the first place.  I raced around my flat, picking up stray clothes and calling a taxi, with that breathy panic that you know you'll still be feeling long after you apologise to your boss.  I was hanging up the phone to the taxi firm (and, unfathomably, trying to pull a sock over my head), when I remembered that my early shift wasn't today.  It was tomorrow.  It was, in actual fact, my day off.

  So there, in three paragraphs, we have covered the key facets of human existence: smugness, panic and relief.  I often feel that these three states of being are the cornerstone of humanity.  I will quite happily continue to believe this until someone knocks me off my perch, but until then, I will keep excitedly chattering about the record I'm making.  (Wow, I didn't think I'd be able to get this blog entry on-topic - miracles do happen!)

  The excitement gathers apace.  Our producer Dan re-tweaked the rough mixes from what we recorded on last weekend, and I sat down the other night to listen to them.  It's all a bit thrilling, to hear someone working on stuff that I've written, to make it sound nice.  It makes me think about what's going to happen with it when it's all finished, and what I hope people will think about it when they hear it.  It also makes me wonder what I'm going to say about it once it's finished.

  I mean, why does anyone make music?  At a guess, because they have something to say, and feelings to express, because they want to be heard, because they want to move people in some way.  They want to be identified with, to know that they aren't on their own.  Music is that thing that, when you hear something that you connect with, makes you feel less alone in the world.  That feeling when you listen to a song that makes you think "This is exactly what I am going through now," that puts a spring in your step and gives you the strength to keep moving forward, is invaluable.  Nothing matches it.

  So we'll keep going until it's finished.  And I will keep talking about it.  I don't want to give too much away about the record, but if I'm going to tell you anything about it that will leave you intrigued, I will tell you that it's called 'Unexpected Sunshine'.  Was that exciting?  I hope so.  (It certainly bloody was for me, leastways!)

  I shall go now, I plan to watch a Rich Hall DVD and get a good night's sleep, as Angela is coming round to practice some songs.  Wish me luck, and let's hope I don't need my bed-mounted catapult come morning...

Lots of love,
John xxx

A Whole World Of Exciting

  Good day to you,

  It seems so long ago that I was smack-dab in the middle of an existential crisis.  It was a couple of years, now that I think about it - directionless, frustrated, and somewhat alone.  I knew what I wanted, but didn't know how to get anywhere close to it.  Bit by bit, that frustration and solitude have been beaten back, and I didn't realise until now.  (In fact, I had pretty much forgotten that period altogether, until the night before last.)

  I was playing the occasional open mic, and had been pointed towards a radio session with Moorlands FM (thanks to Paul, who is now playing bass in the band), which had played a massive part in properly reigniting my passion for music, and I started writing songs again.  I started to reconnect with myself, and the songs came fairly regularly.  I wanted to record again, I wanted to play shows, I wanted to really get my stage legs back.

  As the songs came, they started to fit into a theme, which was one of optimism for the future mingled with sadness at the immediate past.  These songs persisted, and would begin a process of me writing potential tracklistings for an album that I would never get around to recording, bar a couple of demoes.

  More songs came, superceding older, less articulate ones, and lists were rewritten and rewritten until it started to get ridiculous.  By 2012 I had about 30 songs, some more relevant than others, and still no demoes.  I also had regular bouts of listless near-depressions up until then (I hesitate to call them depression, although it was close - I have seen depression up close, in myself and in others, and am not keen to trivialise it), and regularly felt like I was in a catatonic limbo.

  What it came down to was that I had a glut of ideas, for albums, for EPs, titles, videos - you name it, I was thinking of it - but no good outlet for any of them.  My ideas had outgrown my scope to make them into a listenable thing, music was the one thing I could do, and I was fast struggling for ways to make it creatively satisfying.

  Cue Angela Lazenby, Paul Hancock and Matt Tyrer.  The band assembling was a first step - my songs became exciting again, the company and friendship was a tonic, and their ideas and talent were like a spark.  Then Angela & Paul got studio time at Tremolo sorted, and that first day in, last Saturday, opened up a world of possibilities.  Ideas that I have can be passed among the band members, and going into the studio means we can try them.  On Sunday, it dawned on me that the one thing that had been dragging me into a fug of nothingness was that I could think of, say, an introduction to the Record I Would Never Get To Record Properly, and there would be no way of making it.

  Today, I can text Matt and say "What about putting trombone on 'The Tallest Tree', and he can reply "And how about full brass section and a choir on the last chorus?"  This is a whole world of Exciting, isn't it?

John xxx

Day One...

  Happy Monday, Blogwatchers!

  On Saturday, we went to Tremolo Studios in Silverdale, Staffordshire, to begin our debut record.  Everyone was shattered, as the night before we played our debut headline show at Bad Edit venue in Burslem.  (It was such an amazing night, thank you if you were there and enjoyed our set - there was dancing, good-natured shouting, and we enjoyed every single song.  I woke up on Saturday morning stiff of leg after a very boisterous night, it's safe to say I was highly elated, as were we all!)

  Being in the studio was an amazing process.  As I wrote this in my notebook, I was listening to the rough mixes of the day's work.  We recorded bass, drums and guitar tracks for three tracks, and then recorded proper vocal tracks for the one of those three, including harmonies.  The other two songs have guide vocal tracks, which were made during the drums and bass takes for Paul and Angela to follow.  For those takes, Paul, Angela and I essentially played live, with my guitar and vocals done as guides, and then my guitar and vocals got replaced with proper, polished takes.

  We've set a high standard, I think, both musically and personally.  One song, 'Don't Tell The Folks Back Home' had their tracks recorded in one take, and the work we did on all three songs was pretty swift, good-natured, and accurate.  And laughing - so much laughing.  We are a jolly band.  We're back in next week to do the vocal takes for the other two songs, and add more detail to everything, and then a month later to get more basic tracks done for the rest of the record.  Dan Rowley, who runs the studio, is a great guy and it's an absolute joy to work with him, I'm really enjoying this.

  The really hard thing is going to be keeping a lid on all this work until it's ready to be released, because we're so excited about it, it's sounding amazing already.  I've never been so excited!  I can tell that the record does have a title, and a set structure, but you'll have to wait to find out what it is!

Have a lovely week everyone, stay happy!
Love,
John xxx

The time is almost upon us...

  So, tonight will be our first headline show at Burslem's Bad Edit.  I'll be honest, I can barely sit still, I'm bobbing up and down in my chair.  I really can't wait to see Frank Cerioni and Delamere, and REALLY can't wait to play for you all.  Matt, Angela and Paul have worked so hard, and I ask you to give everyone who takes to the stage your attention, applause and love.  Everyone is amazing.

IMPORTANT BIT
Tickets will be available on the door at Bad Edit, but the Buy One Get One Free offer was exclusive only to tickets from us personally.  Please don't expect the venue to run the same deal, the tickets are £5 each.

Finally, our tickets have all but sold out (there is a tiny handful left from us, if you want them), and from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for supporting us, and helping us on the road to making our debut record.  We love you for it, and will do our level best to give you a show you'll enjoy.

See you tonight,
John xxx