Just thinking how grateful I am to Mike for setting this site up for me- I must go to Offline this month. I haven't been for ages because of book proof gazing and staring, multiple gigs-as-therapy to cope with book proof staring and gazing, and various life complications, both nice and not.
Today's menu consists of a roughly 50/50 mix of ousting a rat from under the cooker (I know you are there, furbag, even if the stoopid cats and even stoopider dog can't smell you) and refining (yes, I am poncy today) a new song I started yesterday, inspired by listening to Arthur Big Boy Crudup (genius). It has a complicated thing in the left hand, which I am going to have to do some serious practicing to get right. Already my fingers hurt, which is something, because I usually play guitar for more than an hour a day. But although I am fairly happy with my fingerpicking (I can usually learn what I need to reasonably quickly), I don't know much about the rockstar boystuff like hammering-on, and I'm definitely crap at doing runs; my left hand is a lazy slowcoach and was hoping to get away with it for the rest of my life. But I've taken it in hand (har har), and it's gonna have to learn some new stuff as I have PLANS that involve becoming a much better guitarist. I've found a postcard with Mahalia Jackson on it and she's there to inspire me, along with a postcard of the Carter Family (Maybelline invented a fingerpickin' style called the Carter Scratch and I think I play a bit like that, having been a bass player and needing those little riffs going on whenever I play). Combine that with Singing Season (I have between June and September to do the best vocals I can of the year) and I hope the new album and any other recordings I do will be a step up from the last one, which, after all, was an accident.
I still want to bring out a vinyl EP befre then with lots of short tracks on it but it costs £600 to press up 300 which is just too much. I know someone who has done a vinyl release before and I think I'll ask her if she knows anywhere cheaper.
I have a distributor now which means that soon Suburban Pastoral will be available on Amazon, but not the Helen and the Horns Etc one, as the record company has gone to ground. I still have some and take them down to Rough Trade when they need them.
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