November 2012 tour!

Did a little tour in November with Serious Sam Barrett, returned to some places we’ve been playing for years and played some we’ve never done before.

Started off in Sheffield with an Opus Acoustics show at the Riverside. These guys are great and always put on a good show for us. There’s this guy who sits at the front and draws pictures of the performers, this is us in action:

 

Saturday night we did the Tap and Spile in Harrogate, it  was a rowdy do, there wasn’t a real PA so we just unplugged and tried to shout over everyone, which was quite fun, guess that’s how most of the human race have managed to perform.

Sunday we managed to fit in two shows at the north east. Firstly went up to Newcastle to do an afternoon slot at the Cluny then down to the Waiting Room in Eaglescliffe. Must have been years since I first played there with Ben Wetherill (in his acoustic days), been going back in various guises, probably the one place outside Leeds I’ve played the most. Luke always gives us a warm, if eccentric, welcome. Still not sure if he’s forgiven us for messing up accompanying him on First Time Ever I saw Her Face when he got up to sing with the Lovesick Cowboys a few years ago…

Then south to London to play at What’s Cookin’ At the Birbeck Tavern in Layton. It was a great regular night they had down there with a local following and all kinds of Americana, Folk and Country people playing there. Unfortunately the owners are moving on shortly but hopefully they’ll be getting the night up and running at another venue, possibly in the north! Stayed with some friends, drank some whiskey then headed down to Folkstone to play The Chambers. Played here back in April and love this place, get treated well by Chris the landlord. Looks line a 1920s Parisian cafe from the outside, most of the action goes on downstairs in the massive underground bar. Stayed over in the same place we shot some videos last time. You can see the coast of France from here.

The next week was the southeastern leg, where we experienced incredible hospitality from Nuala Honan during our time in Bristol. Played at her Live in the Lions’ Den night at the Golden Lion then did a bit of busking during the day before playing at the Canteen in the evening. I remember good food and booze at this place. Saw this guy watching while we were busking.

 

Had a day to get to Stroud to play at the Prince Albert. Fortunately there was a petrol station with a fried chicken department.

 

At the weekend we drove over to play Glossop dropping in at Sam’s Aunty’s house for dinner on the way. She lives on Snake Pass and the postcode area is several miles along that road. There is also no phone signal round there. After snooping round several potentially possible farm houses we asked in a pub. We were an hour late but quite relieved not have been eaten by wolves.

The final date was at the Manor Folk Club (soon to be renamed Wallesy Folk and Acoustic Club) on the Wirral. This night has connections with various other nights such as Radical Liverpool and the Woody Guthrie Folk Club. The left is still strong over there! The compare had us in stitches, was a tough at to follow! But think we did it.

That’s it for now, hopefully see you on the road in 2013!

 

Southern Leg Part 1

Our first southern show was in Folkstone so we set off early. This gave us plenty of time to hang out in roadside cafes, which are abundant on the A1. Here is a fine specimen:

They were showing Bargain Hunt which reminded me of home

We got to stay in a B&B! The Southcliffe Hotel. This doesn’t happen very often. Pretty good view:

We had some time before the show so we made a cup of tea then we had a play in the room. I mean a practice. Here’s a traditional song, Silver Dagger:

And this is one of Serious’s:

One the way to venue we did another:

The venue was really nice and they treated us right well. Yep, that’s a gormet steak right there.

The weather was good when we woke up and we had a few hours to spare

so we did another couple of songs. This is a rock n roll number

and one of mine

This is just a car

We arrived in London midday to record some songs for Imperial College student radio. It costs about a weeks rent to park round there so we went through a load of stuff as quick as we could. There is some video from it but I might wait till the recordings are ready to put them up.

Headed over to Camden, Sam had a bit of a skate while I felt like a dad, had a beer then went to sound check at the Green Note. We’ve played here a few times and we’d sold all the tickets in advance! Good to see a few people we hadn’t seen for a while. We don’t hold it against them for moving to London. Not much…

When Sam gets lonely away from home he sleeps with a toy shark

The Brighton show was cancelled but we went down anyway as Sam’s friend had sorted us out with a last minute show nearby. We had a busk in the day then went for a quick nap on the beach.

We were playing at the Duke of Wellington in Shoreham, filmed a folk song in the beer garden before hand. It’s about a massive sheep.

Went to a rock n roll night afterwards which was just what we needed.

Had to get up early as we were playing in the afternoon in Norwich. And the south is bigger than I though. And it was the Brighton marathon.

As we had no time for breakfast (and Sam’s trying to put on weight…) we had some chicken on the way. We didn’t eat for another 10 hours after that…

Our names in chalk

It’s a long way from Norwich to civilization, stopped off at a diner I’d played at before with the Lovesick Cowboys. They’re still worried about the Germans down there…

Met lots of nice people in the South but was confused by the way they served beer. Back to Leeds for a few days. Slept very well.

 

Bad Friday

Friday night was supposed to be in Bradford but it was called off due to illness. Goddamnnit. So after trying to think of a plan B the best we could come up with was to go and busk in Leeds. In the cold. It wasn’t bad though, we made a bit and got some smiles. And some potential gigs.

The highlight of the day was I found that someone had hidden a potato in my guitar case. Can’t work out when this could have happened, can you tell the age of a potato from the length of it’s tentacles?

Plan C was to go and see if they’d have us play at the Grove in Leeds. It was closed. Do pubs usually close on Good Friday? Dunno. Hopefully tomorrow’ll go better…

Busking in France

Just came across this! Some guys from South America asked if they could film us then tried to pay us with a packet of cigarettes. The very first guy you see, he used to play ‘Hotel California’ all day, every day. I guess if you find something that works… This must’ve been October 2010 sometime. I wish things looked this colour all the time:

Musique de rue from Ampai Studios on Vimeo.

Leeds and Haworth

Back up to Leeds for some gigs, both at Sela Bar in town. It’s my favourite place to play in Leeds, and to drink. It looks good, the people who work there are nice and there rarely any trouble. There is also good live music on a lot of the time, jazz, blues, rockabilly, that kind of thing. Played as the Leeds City Stompers on a Righteous! night doing mostly ragtime and blues stuff then with the Lovesick Cowboys doing the country stuff. It had been a while since we’d done a Cowboys gig, but with the nicest man in show business, Jonny Hick joining us, I think we did ok. He plays in an amazing western swing band TC & The Swing Cats and you can often find them down at Sela

Spent a few days busking up in Haworth with Martyn and Daisy, just managing to dodge the rain. And played with their recently arrived kittens!

Busking with Rossiter

Mike‘s on school holidays and at a loose end so we went out busking. We hit Harrogate, Skipton, Knaresborough and Ilkley, Skipton was fun despite the rain and the lady who couldn’t hear the phones in Vision Express due to our racket (she didn’t use that word). Think we worked harder than the girls doing charity work in the street, they seemed to spend the morning in Greggs and the afternoon in Costa. Old people tell us we sound like skiffle. This is me in Skipton!

Mike painted that sign, lovely job.

Back From Paris!

I’ve been in Paris for about the last year, I took a gamble and went with my guitar and a determination to busk for my life. Was living right in the middle in St Germain so I walked to Notre Damn every day and busked there (it was still sunny and warm for most of October). I passed an audition for a licence to play on the Metro too and did that a bit.

I kept a bit of a record of my busking for a couple of months here.

Due to a random sequence of events I ended up teaching guitar to English-speaking children and I got a weekly residency in a bar so the busking kind of faded out. Busking is great for your playing though, there’s nothing like a sold 4 hours a day of performing to push your playing and singing up a level.

Here’s the kind of thing me and Tom got up to…

Got My Mojo Workin

I met and played with some crazy people while I was over there and I’ll miss them.  And I’ll miss walking home in the sun, surrounded by beautiful buildings or at 2am when St Sulpice is lit up by the moon.

But now I’m back, it’s good to see friends and play with the people I used to. Feel good about it and going to try and play as much as I can now.