I bet you thought we’d forgotten again, hadn’t you? Or maybe you know us better than that and realise that sometimes we just can’t be arsed. But, never mind all that. Here’s a blog that actually contains references to our music. Hooray!
I’m here to bring you up to date with all our musical shenanigans, and guess what? Our 2013 gigs have begun with screaming vengeance. In a good way. Truth be told, I personally can’t say I was looking forward to getting back in the gigging saddle. Our winter break had left me lethargic, I couldn’t remember any of my parts to any of the songs and I certainly didn’t want to have to practice. Well slap my face and hush my mouth because every gig so far this year has been awesome. In fact, I’d go as far to say they have been AWESOME.
It all began again with the rather odd task of setting off for a gig at 9:30am. We had been booked to play two sets on two stages at Moonbeams Folk Weekend in Driffield, the first at noon. The audience could have been described as sporadic, but keen none the less. It was actually an ideal first gig back as it felt like everybody was just waking up from a deep sleep and finding their way into the day. It was helped in no small part by some excellent sound courtesy of Ian ‘Hippy’ Baker, the only soundman who has ever offered us a choice of entrance music and not batting an eyelid when questioned about his rap and metal collections.
Setlist on the hand.
Having time to kill until our next set at 8pm, we set about exploring Driffield’s charity shops, eating too much cake, listening to the football and nodding off. Motley Crue we are not. Our second set went well enough and gave us chance to air out some different songs. Despite a distinct lack of Guinness, the audience seemed to enjoy themselves with one particularly enthusiastic man complementing the ’metal’ of my finger-tapping guitar solo during our version of Michael Sembello’s Maniac. I get the impression he’d waited along time to hear such out of place guitar widdle.
Next, in celebration of International Women’s Day, came a rather rare solo set from Holly. Myself, banished from the event for not being an International Woman, was given the night off to tediously categorise sound equipment (this I actually love to do. Really). Despite reports of Fibbers being “freezing cold and smelling of wee,” the gig itself was considered a success and a wide variety of performers made for an interesting night. Holly reports that even though she had rather wobbly legs from being nervous and her head being cold because of her new ‘up-do’, it was a good thing to test herself on stage playing without me and also airing a new song.
Fibbers (good job no smell-o-vision yet)
Our busy schedule continued with our own show, The Underground Acoustic Club which takes place rather exclusively twice a year. This time we opened the show for the quite simply wonderful Alastair Artingstall (www.alastairartingstall.com), who not only played an excellent set but gave us insider knowledge into some top sound engineering skills and helped us pack away, all the time in Cuban heels. Brilliant. Closing the show were our scarily good American friends Stephanie Lambring (www.en-gb.face book.com/StephanieLambringMusic) and Ben Danaher (www.bendanaher.com), who’d come to England all the way from Nashville and seemingly brought some hidden York fans out of the woodwork at the same time. It’s wonderfully refreshing to hear Americana done by actual Americans and everyone seemed very happy with the mix of music and cake (is there a theme here?). Top marks must also go to both Holly’s mum Tricia and brother Mark for manning the doors and the raffle (we raised over £50 for Arts in York Hospital) and to my mum and dad for dealing with the cake requests and braving their loft for fairy lights. Also the fact that anyone came out and paid money for a gig on such a rainy Saturday night was greatly appreciated. Also apologies must go to Ben Danaher, who rather too late realised that our inflatable camp bed had a hole in it.
Underground, overground
What followed next was that we opened the show for Stephanie and Ben again, this time at the fantastic (makes me very jealous) Wombwell Wheelhouse. It’s a log cabin. For music. With excellent sound. In a garden. With beer. After playing, we were fed pie and peas. I squeezed in more cake. We met Rory, a dog who looks a lot like the Luck Dragon from The Neverending Story, but smaller. Minus the flying (as far as I know). It was an excellent night and huge thanks must go to Hedley and Lynne for being such wonderful hosts.
Rory (Roary?) - AKA The Luck Dragon
The week after saw us both struck down with various cases of lurgy, myself with the sneezes and Holly with the coughing. We had a gig booked at Cambridge Folk Club at the end of the week, and while I recovered somewhat, Holly’s cough got worse and worse. A quick run through on Thursday night left Holly sounding a bit like Kurt Cobain and a phone call to the promoters telling them it was touch and go. Friday came and it turns out it was go. Were we going to drive the three hours to Cambridge in the pouring rain to snuffle and splutter out way through five songs and then drive all the way back again? You bet we were. Our sound check did little to dispel the idea that we’d made a mistake. Holly was really struggling with her voice and I didn’t have enough breath to sustain long notes, meaning we had to hastily rearrange our setlist to include songs we hadn’t really practised. It wasn’t looking good. To compound all of this, we were supporting local based band The Willows (www.thewillowsband.co.uk) who were not only excellent, not only one of the nicest bands you’ll ever meet, but had also sold the club out. It was standing room only. People were hanging out of the fire exit. Suffice to say, when stepping onto the stage, we weren’t at our most confident. What followed was an exceedingly bizarre situation whereby the worse we sounded, the more everyone cheered. We apologised several times. People didn’t care, they loved it. They laughed uproariously at all our befuddled Northern banter. Upon leaving the stage to rapturous applause, people were patting our shoulders and congratulating us. I felt a lot like Hulk Hogan, which was nice. Holly had promised that any money made from our cd sales would go directly to Comic Relief. After stuffing my face with Nachos and Guinness, I wandered to the merch table in the interval to find a queue of people waving cash at me. For some crazy reason, our snotty, coughy set earned £150 for Comic Relief. Top stuff Cambridge, top stuff.
To prove how nice we are.
Much medicine and Red Bull later, we find ourselves here, right now in the middle of our month of March madness. The end of the month will see us taking in a Southern Tour again, so be sure to stay tuned for more accounts of our travels and hopefully a continued run of excellent gigs.
Welcome back Ladies and Gentlemen, to The Honest Music Blog. This week has seen myself temporarily left to my own devices - with Holly away on a no doubt thrill-a-minute trip to Oxford with her day job (that’s right folks, music ain’t paying no bills), I found myself adjusting to life without my partner in crime. And what did I do you ask? Did I trawl the internet making contacts and enquiries about gigs and venues? Did I sit down and work on my modal scales? Did I do anything musical worth mentioning on this blog about music? The answer is: No. I went swimming. Which did in turn lead me to ask myself - is a swimming pool anything like the music business? The answer is: Yes. Yes it is.
Now bear with me here, because I thought this up while slowly paddling round the deep end. Imagine if you will, a swimming pool. This swimming pool is the music business. Its big, its potentially fatal and full of strange people. Upon arrival, you never really know what you’re going to find. It smells funny and is slightly confusing. It’s not really like anywhere else. Your response to all this? What is the first thing you do? You take off all your clothes. Now, I not saying that being part of the music business requires you to get naked. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn’t, but that’s by the by. My point is exposure - is changing into Speedos in front of a room full of people really that different to getting up on a stage and playing a song that you have written? Both open you up for potential criticism or possible admiration (in a weird way), but the fact remains that without this initial vulnerability, nothing would happen. You can’t swim without your Speedos and you can’t play music without people hearing it.
Anyway, having braved the first stage, you find yourself with two options: sit on the side and watch everyone else having all the fun, or take the chance and chuck yourself in. You may as some people do, dip your toe in to test the water first. What do you always find? Its lukewarm. The water, like public reception, is never quite as hot as you’d hope for. Some people may be put off by this and pack it all in before even really starting. They go and sit next to the vending machine and read Heat magazine. Some people don’t even notice and dive in anyway.
Now, assume you’ve got this far and find yourself in the water (music business). This is how my train of thought started - my approach to swimming is pretty much like my approach to music - I don’t take it too seriously, I change direction without warning and mostly wish I was a bit better at it than I actually am. I then wondered whether everyone’s swimming style was comparable to people’s musical style? In both instances you meet the same types of people. You have people like myself, changing strokes like I change instruments, going backwards and forwards and sideways, making big noises and little splashes. I’m the musical equivalent of an impressionable youth with a short attention span. There are those who hurl themselves in with an almighty crash and thunder down to the shallow end. These are your Rock’n’Rollers - noisy, hairy, short lived and really only in it for the women. There are those pairs who swim very slowly, holding long conversations between themselves - these are your folk musicians, using far too many words which are only really relevant to themselves and wondering why anyone else bothers to swim any differently. There are those who bring all the swimming paraphernalia - caps, goggles, nose plug, verruca socks - these are of course the prog musicians, never leaving home without far too much kit and taking an age before anything happens. Those who insist on fighting a losing battle with the water - groping their way along with pleading eyes and shocked faces because in truth they’re slowly drowning (those who want to be in it but just aren’t good enough to get by), those women, the pop stars, who enter the water with full make up and a salon styled hairdo are an example of style over substance, those kids who think its all such a laugh until one of them has a asthma attack (read drug overdose). What about the opera stars you ask? Overweight men involved in situations that require them to strain every sinew in effort while everyone else strains to understand what they’re doing? Look around you. Somewhere, there will be an overweight old man using a beach towel to strenuously floss his undercarriage, gleefully unaware that people around him are struggling to hide the horror on their faces. I could go on. And I will. Look at the Life Guards. These are your audience. Are they paying attention? You hope they are, but in truth, they’re not. Unless you do something crazy that is. Or you are so crap at swimming that they are forced to intervene. A musical audience would leave. A Life Guard would dump you on the side, cold and embarrassed. They’re really the same thing.
On leaving the pool and returning to the changing room, I noticed a genius piece of scrawled graffiti. I once read that the novelist Stephen King writes down all the graffiti he sees, because he says that it is the closest, most concise insight into the human psyche as you can find. I hope for Phil D’s sake that this is not true - ‘Phil D has shitty wort nob’ it read. Poor Phil D. Although, this analogy once again serves to highlight the plight of another swimming pool/music business contender: The Groupie. Stay safe kids, stay safe. You don’t want your dirty laundry (or in Phil’s case, your STD) aired in front of strangers via shower room walls.
Maybe I was onto something. Maybe a swimming pool is just like the music business. When I eventually left the bath house, I had less money than I went in with, a lingering doubt that I probably could of tried harder, and bad hair. Would you not be in exactly the same state if you gave up music right now? I know I would. And that’s why I’ll keep on trying. Music that is, not swimming. But probably swimming as well. But not simultaneously. That wouldn’t make any sense at all.
Hi folks – Holly here, checking back in on the Honest Music
Blog. I hope you all enjoyed Chris’ offering last week, I sure did. He doesn’t
let me read these things until he has spent a lot of time poring over them,
reading and re-reading, then when I finally get chance to see what he has come
up with it always reminds me of how funny, dry and honest he is. Sometimes I
think you forget appreciating something when it’s right there with you all the
time, so to be reminded of it once in a while is very refreshing. Thanks Chris.
You should be a blogger for a living (and still find time to gig with me, of
course).
This leads me nicely into the subject of this week’s blog. We
had a rare January gig this week at the Last Drop Inn, York. When Winter is in
full flow, I try really not to book too many gigs, partly because there’s often
inclement weather conditions which make it difficult for audience or performers
to travel there, or everyone’s just too cold, miserable and skint to come out
of Christmas hibernation and you’re playing to nobody. However, happily this
was not the case this Tuesday evening! We played a couple of 45 minute sets at
the Drop, which is a long gig for us but is a good way to air some songs we
play less frequently, in a relaxed atmosphere. Imagine our surprise then, when
we turned up expecting a fairly quiet night and waiting for us to play were a
couple who had travelled all the way from Rutland in the second week of January
to come and watch us. Brilliant!
Picture: Acoustic encore of Toes, 08 January 2013, Last Drop Inn York
Also in attendance were my friends Matt (birthday boy of the
night) and Guy, several of their friends too, the two Irish chaps who work in
York during the week and always come to see us if they can, two younger chaps
in hoodies who correctly guessed the ‘Name The Artist’ game, our housemate James
and of course my ever faithful Mum, along with a whole bunch of other people in
the pub who had happened on the gig by accident – as well as the super
excellent bar staff, who are always so welcoming to us.
I am not trying to impress you here with how many people we
managed to get to our gig. The point is that human beings are wonderfully
surprising creatures. The way I approach gigs at our level is to just get there
on time, play as best I can and perhaps introduce our music to a few new ears. I’m
never expectant of anything coming from the show because I think if you do that,
you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. And after each one, I am pretty
much instantly thinking of the next one, glowing or otherwise from the experience
and thirsty for more. But the more gigs we have done, the more people have seen
us and somehow felt a connection with us, enough of a connection to create
enduring relationships (ideological or otherwise – I do like to chat). For the
past few years, we have been gigging, writing, recording, playing everywhere we
can, playing for free, playing for charity, emailing the world and his wife to
ask for opportunities to perform or for radio airplay or suchlike. This kind of
input from our side is not an instantly gratifying pursuit – often we don’t get
replies or there aren’t hundreds of people queuing to buy CD’s at the end of a
gig. HOWEVER – all that giving from our side is seemingly coming back to shake
our hands further down the line. Just when you think that nobody cares, people actually
will show up to support you. Those little seeds we have been planting do
occasionally flower and have a habit of doing so just at the right time.
Tuesday evening at the Last Drop was one of those vintage evenings, full of much laughter, lots of songs and, I assume, lovely beer (I was driving, boo hiss). We even got an encore from our gathered audience, my song Toes which we did completely acoustic as we had turned the PA off. There's a pic above of that. Thank you to everyone who was there this week. And really, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who
has, or ever has had, any interest in us whatsoever. I am sorry if I sometimes forget people’s
names and I’m sorry if sometimes I forget where we have met before, but please
know that I truly do appreciate having just a few moments of your brainspace
and your heartspace, even once a year or less frequently. I hope that the
effort that we put into what we do makes your day a bit better or makes you
forget your troubles temporarily. I am going to continue to give whatever I can
unconditionally to the world, not in the hope that it will pay off for us in the future,
just in the hope of making some sort of positive change somewhere, for someone, at some time. But just
this week, it has been really good to reflect on the impact that this positive
change has had on the people at our gig – enough positive change to bring them to our
show. Our fans. FANS! :)
And as an extra thank you, here is a video of my version of
Joni Mitchell’s gorgeous ‘A Case Of You’. It’s a favourite song of mine and a favourite for several
people who were there on Tuesday.
So, here it is. It seems we’re
back. Not that we went away physically, we just lost our virtual way somewhat.
But since Holly has reignited The Honesty Blog fire, I’m here to stoke the
flames.
Or actually, I’m not. December and January find us with a self-imposed
musical exile, partly because it’s cold, partly because there’s so much
chocolate to get through and partly because everyone is skint. This is our time
to be merry and jolly, not bellyache about the state of the musical nation. And
so, my blog isn’t about music. It’s about Hollywood’s representation of kids in
the Eighties.
While spending the post Christmas Holidays in a sort of calorific
stupor, shuffling around the house, gazing out windows and occasionally going
into rooms and forgetting what I’d gone in for, I found myself with a kind of
mental unrest. I found myself putting rather too much thought into the purchase
of a pair of slippers. As much as I appreciate the new level and warmth and comfort
engulfing my feet, the depth of thought going into this was leaving me a worrisome
nagging in my brain. Is this what I have become?
Whenever I don’t feel right, I’m a big believer in going with one’s
instincts. You know sometimes you get a random craving for a particular foodstuff?
I believe your body is in need of a particular thing found in that food, and
your brain responds by telling you to eat that food. I’m not talking about
constantly stuffing your face with cake and crisps, but say your body is in
need of vitamin B6, you may suddenly find yourself wanting a tuna sandwich. You
get the idea. I listened to my body and what did it want? 80’s kids films.
I was
born in 1985, so while missing out on most of the classics of the genre at the
cinema, I was ideally placed to reap the bountiful supply of these films in the
50p section of the local video shop. They all made sense. I related completely
to every aspect of them. Fast forward twenty something years later, and here I
was finding myself watching them all over again. They soothed my mind. But why?
They mostly follow a similar pattern. Kids (preferably in a gang) are faced
with mild peril and respond with adventures. All adults are either evil or
dullards, there’s an innocent love interest, and at some point they all ride
bikes. Job done. But why was this putting my mind at ease? My best guess is
that although as a child I never found pirate treasure, or hacked into military
databases with my BBC school computer, or met aliens, I truly believed that I could. What I was missing was that
sense of childish imagination. As adults we retain an imagination – imagine a
pink elephant, right now. What you see in your mind is an image of an elephant
and the colour pink. This is your boring, grown up, logical brain computing
what a pink elephant might look like. As a child, your imagination took you so
much further. It didn’t just stop at the elephant and the colour. The world
seemed like a much more interesting place.
This was highlighted be the scene in E.T where Elliot is explaining to
said alien what the things in his bedroom are. ‘...this is Lando Calrissian,
and this is Boba Fett,’ he says, holding up worn action figures, ‘and look, they can have wars you
see, Pioww! Pioww!’ Can you imagine what that scene would be like today? Should
the child be able to tear its attention from their inexplicable need for a
mobile phone, it would be all Ipad this and Hi Def that. Would E.T care anymore,
or would he still just want sweets and beer? Is there an app for that?
What I realised was that sometimes it’s far too easy to become bogged
down in the world of adulthood and it can leave you exasperated. It’s
all pay this and plan that, drive here and work more. Health and Safety legislation
forbids it. Your account is overdrawn by...
Bizarrely, kids today act like little adults,
and given that a lot of adults have developed into materialistic simpletons, I
wonder if they will ever feel that liberating sense of adventure that used to
seem just around every corner. Now everyone knows what is around every corner, because
the internet tells them. There’s an app for it, so you can sit on your arse on
work’s time and not have to find it for yourself.
And so my New Year’s Resolution is to live my
life more like my Eighties self and retain a sense that however unlikely
something may seem, it just might still be possible.There is still pirate treasure out there,
aliens do exist and while you may not ever have any closer friends than the
ones you had when you were young, count yourself lucky that you were there to
actually experience it all in the first place. There wasn’t an app for it.
Now, I’m getting out of this horrible virtual
reality and going to ride my B.M.X wildly through a building site.
Firstly – a thousand apologies to those of you who started
to follow this blog when we first appeared online in the Spring and have since
been disappointed with our lack of activity on it recently. To be quite honest,
we did a few blogs early on and then went away for a little tour and then once we’d
missed a few weeks on the blog we just sort of, didn’t do another post for a
while. There we go. Nice and honest.
So a big well done if you have stayed with us this far,
thank you and we promise to be more timely and regular with these things from
now on.
Which leads me (Holly) nicely on to the topic of this particular
post. With the closing of one year and the opening of another, combined with
the lovely time off that some are fortunate enough to have (we are amongst the
lucky ones), I’m always drawn into the trap of thinking what I will do
differently next year, what I want to change, things I would like to do more
often etc. This sits fairly strangely with me, as one part of my mind says that
real change should come from within at any time and shouldn’t need a different
year number to prompt it. But it just so happens that I have some idle time
right now and therefore I have had some time to think about it. Here’s my list.
Listen to even more music
I had a bit of a panic early in 2012. Years
ago, I wore out my iPod because I walked around a lot listening to it almost constantly.
I now cycle far more and, since I don’t listen to music when I’m cycling, I
often found that a day went by and I hadn’t made time to listen to just one
song that I’d either never heard or truly loved. On realising this, I hastily
got hold of a new little pod and invested in some new music and have felt
completely enriched by the whole experience. Recorded works are often
completely different to the artists’ live show as there’s more space to play
with imagination and work beyond the realms of what is achievable live. Only by
actively listening to recordings can you fully appreciate the artistry which
has gone into developing them. The music truly can and will speak to you
through those headphones. I want to do even more of this. I want to listen to
music whenever and wherever and however I possibly can.
Go to more gigs
Live music plays a big part in my life.
However, the times I spend listening to live music are often a result of us also
performing at the same event. This can lead to listening to similar types of
stuff which, although wonderful, might get a little restricting. I want to
experience a much wider variety of live performance. I want to challenge my own
assumptions about what I like and what I don’t. I want to travel somewhere to
take a chance on a show I’ve never seen before and I want to immerse myself in
it. I want to be surprised. I believe I have a fairly open mind when it comes
to most things but I want to actively expand my horizons in this way in 2013.
Make more things
This encompasses quite a lot of things, not
least of all songwriting. Over the last few years, I have been learning so much
about being ‘free’. I once thought that this solely meant not working and
writing music all day. I now know that it doesn’t work like that. My current definition
of ‘free’ (which relates closely to my definition of ‘successful’) means
enjoying every single thing that you do. And when I constantly put pressure on
myself to write better and better songs when it’s not coming naturally, I start
to not enjoy the process of songwriting. But what I have realised so far is
that by occupying my brain and hands with other creative things that I enjoy,
the songs will formulate themselves and all I’ve got to do is pick up my guitar
and play them out. So I resolve to SEW, COOK, KNIT, RUN, DANCE, READ, LEARN A
NEW GUITAR PIECE and do anything else that I fancy and not feel guilty about
doing something else other than songwriting, because they are essential
activities in the formulation of a healthy mind and hence good songs. (It also
helps that many of these things can be done whilst listening to music, which
can only provide a catalyst for those good ideas to come). And when I have made
said things, I am going to share them with the world – which leads on to the
next resolution.
Get better at keeping in touch
I have always been useless at this. But in
the age of the Internet, there really is no excuse. I am going to remind people
that I exist at least once a day in the form of a little story, quote,
pondering, link, gig plug or new video. Without you lovely people supporting
what we do, we won’t be able to do it any more so the least I can do is say
hello.
Love everyone and everything
This goes without saying. There have been a
few acts of fate happen this year which have made me lose a bit of hope that it
really will all turn out alright in the end. But you simply cannot go through
life being miserable, can you? So I am going renew my enthusiasm for laughing
in the face of adversity when it hits me and finding the positive where there
seems to be none. Nobody else can do this for me and it should be an enjoyable
process for me to do anyway.
So there we go. Five (admittedly broad) things that I vow to
do more of in 2013. Previous resolutions of ours have included 2010’s ‘Never
Shop In Tesco Again’ and 2012’s ‘Go Vegetarian’. We have kept both of those
faithfully and life has been immeasurably the better for it, so here goes. Come
on 2013. Show me what you’ve got.
HT x
PS Here's a lovely video we did last week to say thanks for your support in 2012. Turn up the volume, it's quiet xx
A warm welcome back to you all here on The Honest Music Blog, seems like forever ago that I was last here, bitching and moaning and generally having a good old rant about the more unsavoury side of our musical adventures. Well not anymore, because what a difference a week makes...
Last week saw us depart for our Southern Tour. Now, the word 'tour' is used loosely, but it was more than one gig and we didn't come home in between, so if that's not a tour then I don't know what is. So we headed out with guitars and good intentions to Norwich to meet our good friend Steve Howlett and play a set at the lovely Grapevine@Bedfords. Last time we were in Norwich, it was very sunny, we went to a mustard shop and Ian Hislop gave Holly a fiver. This time it was raining, our 2012 vegetarian status renders mustard useless due to a lack of ham and Holly only spent money, on shoes. Having recently come back from Barcelona, we are now all about Tapas, and lo the biblical rain forced us into Norwich's finest Tapas Bar. Honestly, we were along way from Spain but the lady that ran it gave us a free umbrella, which was nice. Gigwise, all was well, we met some wonderfully kind people, sold a bunch of CD's, they had Estrella on draught and some epically comfy sofas. Steve and his wife Jan were kind enough to once again put us up, which is great because they are perhaps the only people we've ever met with a fully stocked bar in their living room - the sadness only came as we had to be up early to catch a train because I know from personal experience how good their black sambuca is.
And so to our next day, which consisted of a rainy drive to Cambridge, a rainy walk through Cambridge and a rainy wait at the train station in Cambridge. We jumped on the train to London with fistfulls of CD's and bright ideas in our minds about strolling into the headquarters of major record labels, pushing Jessie J down the escalator and being offered suitcases full of money for doing jack shit. Firstly though, Spitalfield's Market is one of the few places in Britain where I'm able to get even mildly enthusiastic about clothes. I bought a hat and also high fived a man who looked alot like Wyclef Jean, which was worth the price of the train ticket alone. Now the thing about London is that it's very big and record labels try very hard to make their offices look as none descript as possible, mainly for the safety of Jessie J and to deter surly Northerners from wandering in and cluttering up the place with talk of deals and contracts. What I mean is, we couldn't find any. We stood outside the BBC building for a while, hoping to bump into someone influential, but people like that probably have some sort of secret tunnel so they don't have to talk to people like us. Holly swears she saw someone who once acted in Doctors, but I don't even know what that is. So we passed up the opportunity to visit Madam Tussauds (£30 each to see aload of elaborate candals), saw a man knocked of his motor bike, lying in the road while taxis swerved to get past him, went to Regents Park and ate The World's Biggest Pretzel and The World's Best Chocolate Brownie. We did see Frank Skinner in a health food shop, but genuinely couldn't think of anything we wanted to say to him. We fought our way through rush hour tube stations and caught the train back to Cambridge with all the bankers. A particular highlight was watching the man sitting opposite me repeatedly fall asleep and gradually slip further and further from his seat into the aisle, dropping his Kindle and dirtying his very expensive suit.
London: worrying.
So, onwards and downwards we went, this time to Essex and the quite wonderful High Barn. We'd heard only great things and the venue itself didn't disappoint. A huge 800 year old barn, converted into a totally acoustic music venue and recording studio, in the middle of fields full of sheep. And, the sun shone, which was a welcome change. Having arrived unfashionably early, we were told that one of the other acts wasn't going to turn up, so our set time would be increased to thirty minutes, which was good news for us as we rarely agree on which songs to drop for shorter sets. And so, with the place sold out and deathly silent, we took to the stage. Now, an unusual thing for us is our reaction to our sets is often at odds with the audience reaction. Sometimes, we leave the stage feeling particularly smug at playing to the absolute best of our abilites only to be greeted by some quite frankly luke warm reactions. Our set at High Barn worked the other way round. We played, in all honesty, poorly compared to our usual standards. So much so that I actually apologised to Holly after our last song, convinced we'd blown a great chance to win over a room full of people new to our music. Whether our quaint Northern banter won them over or whether our set wasn't actually as bad as we thought, we came off stage to be greeted by queues of people with beaming smiles and handfuls of money. We sold an obscene number of CD's, some people forgoing their sanity and buying the entire collection. Shrugging befuddledly, we sold even more as everyone was leaving. What a fantastic night. Maybe that is what is meant by the only way is Essex. Although probably not.
Essex: warm and fuzzy.
(It's Holly here now - this is such a long blog that we decided to do half each). After late night chips and experiencing the world's loudest snoring through the wall of our hotel room in that most cosmopolitan of locations, Peterborough, we headed off at 8am for the even more cosmopolitan Scarborough to play at a wedding. There's really little to be said about this wedding - apart from imagine every wedding that you have ever been to, and you are probably quite close to it. There was a very enthusiastic (and drunk) Tracy Chapman fan who reacted quite badly to the fact that we didn't know 'Fast Car'. There was also a dog called Patsy wearing a ribbon.
After the tour, we were forced on Monday to slide effortlessly from being proper musicians back into our respective day jobs. This can't have been good karmically, as no sooner had we returned to work than we were both struck down with colds (or as I like to call them, Girl Lurgy and Man Flu). No amount of mildly amusing names could have made them more fun. Colds are just crap.
However, what we did enjoy was the fact that one of the live videos we shot a few weeks back with the team at Ont' Sofa arrived happily on YouTube. If you haven't had a chance to see it, here it is:-
When we did a show in February with Liverpool Acoustic Live (another bunch of fantastic people there), we met the lovely singer songwriter Stephen Langstaff who was headlining. After watching our set in which we played this song, he told us that he knew the man behind White Town, and asked if we had a copy of our arrangement to send to him. When the video arrived, I sent Stephen the link and he promptly passed it to Mr White Town (real name Jyoti Mishra) and he has now watched the video, commented on it and re-posted it on his own Facebook page, to the tune of many likes and good comments from his fans! This is hugely brilliant news for us as we both completely love the song and it's so bloody excellent to know that the person behind it all approves of our version. What's more, we have found that Jyoti is a super-nice chap, and it's always good to know that having success doesn't make everyone act like a dick towards the normals like us.
AND to add more glee to the existing glee of the last week and a half, we found out this morning that our chum Steve Lamacq played our song 'The French One' on his BBC Radio 2 show yesterday evening! Given the fact that we are both still feeling pretty sorry for ourselves with our Glurgy and Man Flu, we were both fast asleep when the show went out live, however via the medium of the Internet we were told by a friend that we had been played on his late Thursday evening show. Bizarrely, it was during a programme entitled 'Rock College' - but hey, Chris is not complaining, and neither am I. Any time anyone plays us on the radio we are extremely grateful! Plus we were played amongst the good company of Richard Ashcroft and Radiohead, as well as super Yorkshire band In Fear Of Olive, who we have met and gigged with before. You've got a few days left to listen again to the show if you like, we're from about 42 mins in:-
I always thought that Steve Lamacq was way too cool to play our music. But someone told me last year that he does open and play every CD that he gets sent (which I imagine is pretty much hundreds or thousands every week), and surely this is the sign of someone who is truly devoted to championing new music. For this we say a big THANK YOU to Mr Lamacq. Not just for us, but for all the other unsigned musicians out there who you've helped. To know that our song has been heard by potentially thousands of people listening to the show last night, well blimey that's just ace isn't it? And to cap it all, both our names are listed and spelt right on the programme information. Well done that man. Or his team.
So that brings us nicely to the end of this week's Honest Music Blog. Hope you have enjoyed reading about these excellent things - we're quite sure that there will be more tales of pitfalls for you to read and laugh at soon, but until then we're going to ride the wave of the good times until it breaks. Happy Bank Holiday Weekend everyone!
Time for another large slice of musical honesty, this week with a slightly bitter aftertaste. Whilst making sure that here on The Honest Music Blog we rightly praise all those who are worthy of such notable commendations for attitude, commitment and general all-round niceness, we must also cover the other 50% of people who would seemingly climb a hundred foot ladder just to make sure the dump they're aiming in your direction has a more satisfying impact.
Firstly, cudos must go to festival 'organisers' who in a rather backward move, ignore two successful year's slots on the Main Stage and the people who pay to come and see us there, and demote you to a pub, under the banner of 'Emerging Artists.' Perhaps it's like a musical hibernation, emerging periodically from your lethargic unproductivity to be spat blinking and naked as a newborn to desperately salvage what remains of your confused followers before your time runs out and you're replaced by someone less talented at music but much better at fawning and kissing backsides.
Further on, we are graced with the presence of an ego so swollen it rather obscures an ability to 'scat' and create rhymes so awkward I found myself blushing with embarrassment just being in the room. Suffice to say we were the only ones who thought so (again a healthy nod to our own lack of cool and 'down with the kids' awareness) and we were left to waste a few peoples time after the real star of the show had made a swift exit, explaining that all communications were directed through their Manager, so as not to dirty oneself with the humdrum of everyday humanity. I may add to this that Mick Hucknall and Chris De Burgh are quite frankly, worse than Hitler.
As a final kick in the teeth, we received a rather blunt retort at our request for a support slot at a particular venue. Now, I must make it clear that the venue and it's organiser have been more than helpful, and we shall be visting later in the year and are genuinely looking forward to it. Our particular gripe is with a certain group on being offered our support. When you are musicians actively seeking to further your fanbase in a certain area, it is customary to support a local or established act of a roughly similar style to yourselves, hoping that some of their fans become some of your fans. Its like social networking, only real. The promoter at the venue promptly contacted what booked acts they already had with the offer of a support slot from ourselves. Most replies were generally positive with a hint of unconcerned shoulder-shrugging, however the most spectacularly unhelpful reponse was this;
"We won't spend a long time doing their sound, they will have to plug
and play, we like to have some time to chill before the gig. - They
MUST supply their own mic cable, guitar cable, mic, guitar and mic
stand and get everything off the stage before we play."
Now, had this certain act been say, Neil Young or perhaps Rodrigo Y Gabriela, we would have doffed our caps reverently and bowed while shuffling away. The fact is though that this act has officially less than half of the online fans that we have and are quite frankly, terrible. So, just incase there is any doubt, they can take their shitty equipment and have a lovely 'chilled out' time inserting it up each other's arses, while we are playing with people who would at least appreciate our efforts.
Now, being honest is one thing, but being a whinging tosser is another. So, to end on a more positive note, we come to our house gig in Bolton. This was held by a man who had seen us play at The Deer Shed Festival last year and liked so much what he saw, he subsequently travelled from Bolton to York on a rainy Tuesday night to see us play again, and asked if we would play a small celebration he was having in his home for his friends and family. Upon arrival, we were adopted as part of his family, shown the most amount of free beer and spirits we have ever seen, fed with a specially created vegetarian meal and given the world's best cheesecake, played a set of our own songs with a few requests thrown in and finally paid for the privilege of being there. My hat goes off to you kind Sir, and if the music business was filled with more people like yourself, perhaps I wouldn't have to moan so much.
We're off on a Southern jaunt next week, to reaquaint ourselves with some old friends and play some wonderful venues, so expect a happier blogging experience next time on The Honest Music Blog with Holly and Chris.
