Jul 8 2009

The “Sorry, It’s Been Ages” Mega-Blog…

Hello folks,

Sorry, It’s Been Ages…
I know. I haven’t posted anything for such a long time. But I haven’t forgotten about you all. I promise!
I have been meaning to tell you all about what I’ve been up to recently but keep getting side-tracked with various projects along the way. Those of you that follow my (deluge of) updates on Twitter or Facebook will no doubt be fully aware of all that’s been going on recently. I’ll try to keep it fairly succinct (yeah, right!)…

Where do I start? Well, at the beginning of June Katy and I ventured over to her hometown in Jersey to play five shows at the Blue Note Bar. We played as a trio and brought pianist Alex Hutton along with us from London. The Blue Note is a great little music venue right in the centre of St. Helier. We played two sets of mostly standards to packed audiences every night. In fact we had to turn away about thirty punters on the last night! The week was a resounding success and we’re looking at going back soon for a repeat performance. We had such a great time in Jersey and it was great to play five nights in the same venue. Big thanks are due to everyone who helped make the week such a success; Jack, Ronni & Dave, Noel and Thomas. We got some great photos too, I may well publish a few more in another post.
Keep an eye on my MySpace page for upcoming dates with Kate Eden in London…
A few months before the Jersey trip we went into the studio to record a five-track EP called Lean Baby. I’ve literally just started a page on Last.fm where you can now listen to the tracks. Once again, Kate’s band features Alex Hutton on piano, me on bass and drummer Josh Morrison. What are you waiting for? Go and have a listen…
The touring with Clare Teal and Lea DeLaria has been storming ahead over the last few months. I’m presuming you all saw the little video I posted here last time from the Queen Elizabeth Hall? If you didn’t, you can find it Here. I’ve been up and down the country with both bands (I wound up playing at the Hull Truck Theatre twice in one month!) and have done an awful lot of driving. This has once again taken it’s toll on the bass-mobile and another small fortune has been spent keeping the poor thing on the road…
Some highlights? Let me see… The last two ‘Wall To Wall’ shows with Lea at the Pizza Express Dean Street have been fantastic. In May we played the Gershwin songbook with Ian Shaw and a couple of weeks ago we did songs from the movies with Clare Martin. It was one of the best shows yet. Next month we’re reuniting The Dirty Martinis to play some serious 50’s lounge.. you’ve got to come along to this one. We’ve got Simon Allen and Gabriel Garrick in the band. Tuesday July 21st at the Pizza Express.. stick it in your diaries!
We’ve just got back from two gigs with Clare last week, in Stockton-on-Tees and Loughborough. The tour has been going great. We’re still promoting our new live album Clare Teal Live At Ebeneezer Chapel, which is now definitely available on Clare’s website Here. We’re off to play the Bansko International Jazz Festival in Bulgaria in August. So expect a little write-up afterwards on the blog…
The last couple of weeks have been rather exciting too. The wonderful new album from The Duckworth Lewis Method was released in the UK on Monday. Neil and Thomas asked me to come to play in the band alongside Tim Weller from TDC and guitarist Tosh Flood from Pugwash. The album has already caused quite a storm in the press and made album of the week on Absolute radio last week. We played the album launch show last night at The Oval. The whole event was sponsored by The Times, who gave away 150 pairs of tickets in an online competition. Plus we had all the journalists of course. Even the torrential rainstorm didn’t stop folks from turning out to see us play the entire album from start to finish (!), as well as a couple of old favourites in the encore. Had a great time.
We’ll be playing a little in-store show at Rough Trade East London on Monday 13th, and then we’re off to play Latitude next Friday. I’m not sure what’s going to happen after that, but do keep an eye on their website (and of course my MySpace page!) for any future dates. Who knows, there might even be a tour! Let’s hope so. In the meantime, go out and buy the album. It’s ever so good…
There’s also some gigs with Duke Special on the horizon. The seven-piece lineup from the Irish tour last year will be playing Peter’s DukeBox Festival in Belfast on 29th August and Greenbelt on the 30th. There should be a couple of other dates too in August/September (hopefully including something in London) so once again, keep your eyes peeled and you ears to the ground. I’m also going to be playing for Mother Courage and her Children at The National Theatre with the Duke boys in the autumn. Peter has been commissioned to write the score and is beavering away on the songs right now. There’s a little more info on the National Theatre’s website…

Ah.. busy days! Pretty sure I’m meant to be learning some songs for somebody right now. Might have to leave you for now folks. Thanks once again to all of you subscribers out there…
See you soon I hope.

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Dec 10 2008

Tales From The Undertaker; On Tour With Duke Special, Part III

Well, we don’t have to pretend I’m still in Ireland any more. The last two posts were written whilst still on the road with no internet access, but from here on in I’m back home and writing in the present! So, where were we…?
The Cork Opera House show was fantastic. What a great audience! It never fails to amaze me how enthusiastic the Irish audiences are and how receptive they are to the music. They always sing along in the raucous tunes and stay quiet in the ballads. Just perfect for a show as theatrical as the Duke’s.
On the Saturday we played the Clarence in Sligo, which is a hotel venue on the main high street next to the cinema (and yes, we all paid a visit after sound check, in fact some of the band caught two films in one day. I went to see the new Robert De Niro film What Just Happened?). The stage was a little small and negotiating your way between this and the tiny ‘dressing room’ on the third floor soon became a bloody nightmare. The promoter only managed to rustle up one electronic key between the twelve of us and when you take into account the three locked doors and the lift that stood between us and the dressing room you can imagine the logistical chaos that ensued… It was like the Crystal Maze that place. In fact Chip and I had to wait so long for the lift to come back down after the show that we ended up packing down our gear in our stage clothes. Far from ideal and slightly less than cool. O yeah, and it was another one of those venues that miraculously turns into a shit disco as soon as the act has left the stage. Nightmare.. But the gig was great.


We went on to the Royal Theatre in Castlebar the following day. This is also in a hotel complex, but comparatively enormous and really well thought out as a venue. We had another massive stage to fill and the gig was great.
We rolled up to the Black Box in Galway on the 1st December. It’s a proper sticky-floored rock & roll club that I remember playing with The Divine Comedy a few years back, and one of the venues I’d been looking forward to revisiting. Really great place. It seemed they’d had some kind of panto event going on there recently and they were throwing out a bunch of costumes and staging gear. Now, as you can imagine, this was music to the ears of the Duke Special crew! Peter and Paul discovered a discarded pantomime camel outfit in the morning and decided to try it out for size and take a walk into town… I can’t even imagine the looks on the faces of the unsuspecting locals when, sat innocently sipping their cappuccinos in a quiet Galway cafe, a pantomime camel saunters in and starts ordering coffees. And then turns out to be Duke Special. A bit of rock & roll history in the making there I reckon.. Maybe not, but a good story if you were there… Apparently Peter drew the short straw and wound up at the back end. We also gained an extra band member on the tourbus after the show. He made surprise appearances in most people’s bunks at some point for the rest of the tour…


The Galway show was one of the best nights so far on the tour. There was a great atmosphere (as there always is at any gig I’ve done in Galway) and the audience were brilliant once again. Looking forward to playing there again soon.
The big Belfast show was on the Tuesday. Peter had taken over St George’s Market for the day, erecting two big stages opposite one another in a mini festival setup. I think we eventually had about six (!) support acts, including of course our very own Paul Pilot who’d been opening up for Duke the whole tour (We love his bones). The great Australian comic/singer-songwriter Tim Minchin performed a thirty minute set on the opposite stage just before us and went down a storm. I spent quite a bit of time with Tim during the day and we got on really well. Lovely chap. He’s doing two nights at the Queen Elizabeth Hall this month with (for the first time) a full band. Well worth checking out if you’re in town…
The atmosphere at St George’s Market was electric. There were a few stalls set up selling food etc, it was beautifully lit and the two stages looked amazing. I think we had about two thousand people in for the night and it really felt like a special event. The Lowly Knights walked around the audience playing just before we went on (as they did in Dublin; sorry, forgot to mention them in the last post).
The show itself was brilliant; easily the highlight of the tour for everyone involved. They filmed the whole set so hopefully they’ll put together some kind of DVD version for release. The Duke crew are very good with that sort of thing; I just finished watching the great DVD from their five nights at the Belfast Empire boxset. It’d be great to have a permanent record of the St George’s Market show, it was a real night to remember.
We had a few guests up with us for the show. Tim Minchin came back on for Our Love Goes Deeper Than This during the encore and the crowd went crazy. It was an absolutely stunning show. I really do hope the recording came out well…

The tour finished with a show at the Nerve Centre in Derry, another indie club but much smaller than the Black Box. Being straight after the big Belfast gig, everyone was totally wiped out by this point. We’d played a load of shows by this point with almost no break. Progress was not helped by the fact that we discovered that the in-house PA was shot to pieces. The replacement PA wasn’t due to arrive until right at the last minute, so we spent a lot of the day hanging around waiting and didn’t get much of a soundcheck. 
It’s funny how it doesn’t seem to matter how tired you are before a show, the minute you get in front of an excited audience you suddenly come alive and forget all about it. I do anyway. The audience were brilliant.  We stretched out a little as it was the last night and Peter played a couple of extra tunes in the encore. We all had a great show and it was a perfect way to end the tour.
It was a great experience touring with Duke Special. Everyone in the band and crew are great fun to be around; you really couldn’t hope to be with a better group of people. I love the whole vibe of the band; they’re all so creative and spontaneous in everything they do, it makes it easy to create great music when surrounded by people like that. As a big Duke fan already, it was a real honour to go on the road with him. I’m really hoping they put on some UK dates next year with the same lineup. It’ll be a riot!
If you haven’t got Duke Special’s new album I Never Thought This Day Would Come, go out and get it! It’s available over here for download at the iTunes store, or you can buy the CD direct from the Duke Special Store. What are you waiting for?!
Until next time…

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Dec 8 2008

Tales From The Undertaker; On Tour With Duke Special, Part II


I’m writing to you today from the Cork Opera House. We had a day off yesterday in Cork. The only hotel we’ve got on the whole tour. It was so good to sleep in a bed that stays still, although I swear I felt it go around a few corners during the night…

ON the 25th November we played the Dublin Olympia. This is by far my favourite venue to play in Dublin. I’ve played there a few times with The Divine Comedy before, and once with Eddy when we supported The Beautiful South.
I’ve always loved playing in Dublin. It’s such a great city. We wound up not having a great deal of time to walk around town so I headed straight for the parts I knew best surrounding the venue. I found a few new (to me, anyway) second-hand record stores and a couple of great little vintage clothes shops in Temple Bar. I finally managed to get my hands on a top hat that actually fits my big head (joy of joys!); it looks very classy with the tailcoat.
I returned to the Olympia after a slap-up binge at Eddie Rockets next door. It was great having the run of the Olympia’s massive stage having mostly been playing much smaller venues until then. We were able to spread out more and get a great sound onstage which helped no end during the performance. We had a huge crowd in and they were really receptive to the music.
Our lighting designer Dom really went to town for Dublin, creating a really dark and moody setting for the show. The new album is pretty dark compared to Songs From The Deep Forest. The only trouble was that as a result the stage was so dark you daren’t put anything down that you wanted to find again later on in the show. My little corner of the stage has become pitch black apart from occasional bursts of green and red haze for the majority of the show. In fact, I haven’t seen my set list for the last two shows! I resorted using the florescent ‘W’ on the front of my Warwick amp to find out what songs are coming up..
Incidentally, for those of you so inclined, this is the set list we’ve pretty much settled on for the show now..
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (Duke & Ben)
Sweet Sweet Kisses
Those Proverbs We Made In The Winter
Brixton Leaves
Diggin’ An Early Grave
I Never Thought This Day Would Come
Portrait
No Cover Up
Flesh & Blood Dance
If I Don’t Feel It Anymore
Salvation Tambourine
Nothing Comes Easy
Why Does Anybody Love?
Let Me Go (Please Please Please)
Our Love Goes Deeper Than This
Freewheel (Pete solo/Duet with Swinging Dave Rowland)
Ghost Town (The Specials)
Last Night I Nearly Died
Neil came to watch the show at the Olympia. It was great to catch up with him at the aftershow over a Guinness. He didn’t get up to sing this time as he and Peter had just performed their ‘dueling pianos’ show at Vicar Street in October. I think he really enjoyed the set.
I should, in true British tradition, take a brief moment to mention the weather. It has rather suddenly become bitingly cold here in Ireland. Whilst this has no effect on the shows, it has made some of the loading pretty bloody unpleasant. Pretty much the last thing you want to do when stood outside in the freezing cold is to grab hold of a bunch of increasingly heavy, awkward and, most significantly,  cold metal flightcases and start schlepping them about. Having said that we’ve been pretty lucky since the Loadout From Hell in Dundalk where we not only had to deal with the cold, but the pissing rain too. We all got utterly soaked through…
We went to Limerick the following day to play Dolans’s. I’d only played there once before when we did the trio tour with Neil and Squeezy. It really is a fantastic venue and the guys that run the place are brilliant, they really know how to look after musicians there. And as for the food.. wow! I’d been looking forward to that show for a while. We had a great vibey show and a really fun night. The Dolan’s crowd are always amongst the best in Ireland.

Yesterday we had a well-deserved day off in Cork. Great place. I spent the afternoon wandering the town centre before meeting up with Ben and Phil for some food and a trip to the cinema. We went to see My Best Friend’s Girl, an American Pie type film starring Kate Hudson and Jason Biggs. It was one of those films that you vaguely enjoy whilst watching it, but come away with nothing. Still, it helped pass the time! We went to see Quarantine before the second show in Waterford. I absolutely loved it, but it did put us in a funny mood for the show…
WE play the Opera House tonight. We’ve had a few issues getting into the venue and onto the stage. It seems panto season is upon us… O well, we’re in now. I’ve got to get my gear set up so I’d better leave you now. I’ll let you know how it all goes. Only five shows to go now. I’m really looking forward to the Belfast show in St George’s Market. We’ve got a whole host of special guests and support acts lined up, it sounds like it’s going to be a great night.
Until then…

Duke Special’s fantastic new album I Never Thought This Day Would Come was released in Ireland last month. It’s available over here for download at the iTunes store, or you can buy the CD direct from the Duke Special Store.

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