Next Gig: Hastings 24th April

 

Playing Dreamhouse Records, Record Store Day

 

Tomorrow (Saturday) Afternoon, 2.30, Leyton

 

The Ginger Line on Gideon Coe's Show Last Night

Thank you Gideon for playing The Ginger Line last night- and also Pheasant Attack by Asbo Derek, after some intense lobbying by Mark last Saturday! 

This was particularly poignant, after Jem's story about throwing the album over the high barrier at Bob Grover's behest when the Radio 6 roadshow was in Brighton!

Man Paints Wall With Lilac Paint

 

Cappuccino in the Upholstery Shop Café

 

Skateboarding Lesson

 

Rock and Roll Brewhouse Gig, Birmingham

Of course by the time I got home I was well and truly knackered! So here is Thursday's gig report, in the wrong order. 

Adrian Goldberg does a radio show as well as promoting gigs at this lovely bijou bar in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. Some clever person had set the line alight on the way there. We were chucked off the train at Northampton, told to go over the bridge to a different platform, told to go back over the bridge to the original platform, then told to go upstairs to the booking hall to await further instructions. 'Just go through the barrier and wait, and we will let people through when the train gets here', said the man in the hi-vis jacket. I looked at the ocean of angry people. 'No', I said. 'When the next train comes, I will get stuck in the stampede and I've go a heavy guitar, a bag of merch, I'm recovering from an operation and I don't believe you'. 'Just go through the barrier please madam, and when we are told what is happening we will let people through when the train gets here', said Mr Aye-Eye. 'No', I said, and at that point, the ocean of people attempted to squash through the gaps in the ticket barriers in response to an announcement that neither me nor Mr Aye-Eye had heard.

Anyway, I ended up on an overstuffed train with a young couple being given instructions in how to buy and sell silver and gold by a wheeler-dealer who told them (and the rest of the carriage) what a friendly lovely bloke he was, meanwhile leaving his suitcase across two seats while exhausted people were standing in the corridor.

I'd planned to get there early, check into the hotel and rest for an hour before soundcheck. Alas, I also got lost on the way to the venue, being misdirected by someone at the tram stop when my phone stopped working.

Argh! Gigging!

However, all was gracious peace at The Brewhouse. Lynne, the owner, had seen me play on the train at Indietracks and came over to say hello. It's a lovely bar. The toilets are spotless and I've been dreaming of having a lime green toilet seat every night since Thursday.

The support act was Humdrum Express, a comedian/musician who made me laugh several times. I particularly liked the suppository advice line joke, but then I'm smutty that way. Lo and behold, all the Nightingales came apart from Andy, who lives in Germany. Julie, Rob's wife, is lovely to talk to and I had a chat with Rob as well. They have a fantastic new album out, and I told them how much I'd enjoyed listening to tracks from that on the radio. 

Once the gig started, all was well. There's a really good PA in that place, and the sound guy Harvey really listens: he got a great sound. It wasn't a big crowd: I realised that most of my friends in the Birmingham area are single women around my age, and it's difficult to go out to a gig if that's you. Selfishly, though, it was perfect for a first proper gig since being ill. I was so excited that I kicked my water over and soaked the set list. The guy who asked for it afterwards had to dry it under the hand drier. 

Lo and behold again, Julie from The Sunbathers was there as well. She told me they are beginning to record again, which is good news. After selling a bit of merch (Jim from the Nightingales showed me how to circumvent the stubborn electronic card reader), Adrian urged us out and I went back for a jolly good sleep at the hotel, The Frederick Street Townhouse. It was so nice that I got up extra early just to have a bath in the swanky bathroom.

The journey home was fine. I took in the joys of the huge steampunk bull in New Street Station, which (ahem) I didn't even notice at first, as I sat and gorged myself on sandwiches and cakes after realising that all I'd had the day before was a banana and four hotel biscuits.

Ahh gigging!

Album Launch at The Betsey Trotwood

 From the first rehearsal next week, I had an inkling that this was going to be a particularly unique afternoon. The rehearsals were so good, in fact, that I became really anxious in case someone got ill and couldn't turn up, or something like that. Luckily, from the outset everything went really well; the Betsey Trotwood staff are incredible and the room was being set up when we got there at 12. Soon, we were sound checking, ready, and set to watch The Would-be-Goods Three. Upstairs, I'd cracked a joke that made Andy Warren (who plays bass for them as well as The Monochrome Set) laugh. I wish I could remember what I said. Famous for being non-expressive, he walked off down the room until the smile left his face. Result!

A queue was forming outside the door. 'Gideon Coe is here!' said someone. I went out to say a quick hello. I only saw two of The Would-be-Goods Three's songs, but they were absolutely on form, and did an excellent job according to the applause that reverberated up the stairwell. I sat upstairs to count my blessings, of which there are many.

The gig itself went by seemingly rapidly. I had to work hard to remember the words. One prompt I'd unwisely written on my left hand, which of course was pointing away from me playing guitar. I missed out that verse. For a band some of whom hadn't met each other before the day, things went remarkably smoothly. I could sense a feeling of pleasant surprise as people in the band heard songs that had been rehearsed on a different day- or even not at all. It was hard to remember to sing and not just listen to what was going on myself! What felt particularly good was the gentle gear-shifting of dynamics according to who was playing: Ruth and Karina's strong vocal harmonies bookending the line of musicians, Robert's powerful guitar parts and energy, Terry's sparkling trumpet style, and Jack's wonderful lap steel that completely transformed the sound. He seemed to be enjoying every minute and started playing on our final song, Three Cheers for Toytown, just for the joy of it. We did it twice at the end (we got an encore) and everyone in the audience roared along with it, which was perfect. It was just the atmosphere: the sun shone in through the windows, everyone seemed to be in a good mood, the audience smiled and nodded along to the music, laughed at my jokes (I wish I could remember what I said), and completely got into the whole thing. Caryne and Dave came up from Frome, there was a large Brighton contingent (Mark AsboDerek and Sarah, Steve and Anne, Simon from The Popguns/Perfect English Weather and more), family contingent (Offsprogs One and two plus friends, Little Bruv), band contingent (members of the aforementioned Asbo Derek, Perfect English Weather, The Loft, Papernut Cambridge, Drew from Drew Morrison and the Darkwood, and more), friends from long ago (Valerie!), and our own Instagram influencer who took a pic of me with Terry and Gideon. 

It was hard to go home at the end. I'm exhausted, but have already started doing backing vocals for an album that Robert has recorded with a bunch of friends, plus beginning to sort of a Bandcamp page for Big Bruv.

It was a perfect afternoon, all the more perfect for its imperfections. How brilliant to be back gigging again!

Electrician with Yellow Ladder and Green and Red Cables

 

Through The Barber's Window

 

Yesterday's Rehearsal

We had another great rehearsal yesterday, this time with Ruth and with Robert Rotifer. The chap's a genius- he picked up my guitar overdubs from the album and could play them in seconds! 

We've also added his backing vocals to a couple of songs. It's going to be so interesting on Saturday, performing with musicians some of whom have never met each other before! It's thrilling hearing the songs change like this, though.

Today I was up at the crack of dawn, actually before the crack of dawn, because I had to buy a new cooker and I was the first on the delivery list. When I've recovered I'm going to do a bit of drawing and then practice the solo set for the gig at the Rock and Roll Brewhouse in Birmingham tomorrow evening. I'll be doing a few of the songs off the album, will have albums and CDs and free-badges-with-each-purchase and the ticket link is here: https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Birmingham/Rock-And-Roll-Brewhouse/Helen-McCookery-Book-Plus-Humdrum-Express/40471794/

Yesterday's Rehearsal

Yesterday Ruth Tidmarsh and Karina Townsend came over to rehearse vocals, bass and melodica for Saturday's gig at The Betsey Trotwood. Part of the rehearsal was just catching up with each other, which was a really good way to rehearse. If you're going to harmonise vocally you need to know the person you're going to be singing with, and Ruth and Karina hadn't met before although they have a lot in common.

Their voices blend together beautifully. There will be a lot of other musical stuff going on during the songs on Saturday, which made the rehearsal something of a treasure-chest of an experience. There was something timeless about the whole afternoon: three women sitting singing together in a kitchen (with an obtrusive cooker that's waiting to be taken away and recycled, and that's too heavy to push back where it's supposed to be). Calmly, we went through the songs, ate a bit of food, drank a lot of coffee, and had the sort of afternoon that can never be replicated. It was a bubble of beautiful sound, listening while singing, singing while listening, facing each other and working it all out. I can tell you that their voices sound gorgeous together; as experienced musicians they know how to blend and find a timbre that works with the other. I felt honoured to spend the afternoon with such musically intelligent women; it was a 'thing' in itself, almost like going to an art gallery and being blown away by the work of an artist you've never heard about before.

Incidentally, we discovered that the three of us learn out parts in entirely different ways. That's the great thing about music: it gives itself to people in ways that they can personalise and mould to their own ways of being creative.

The rehearsal recordings sound well, awesome. Very few people will hear them, I suspect, but different incarnations of Saturday's line-up will appear over the next few months (as well as the solo shows), and whenever I can practically do it, I'll augment the gigs this year with people who've contributed to the album.

Brian And His Owner

 

Brighton x 2

Even the afternoon of Thursday's exhibition was nice. Gaye Black's friend Eric had bought all the paraphernalia for hanging the pictures in advance, and there was no scrapping about who hung what picture where. with a pair of ladders and a lot of good will, we got six pictures each up on the wall. It was lovely to see Dominic Warwick of Rebellion Literary Festival fame sitting at a table when we got there, too.

After a fish supper on the seafront, we went back to the Pelirocco and people started filtering in, including Pauline Murray and her daughter, and Tracy Preston from The Smartees. Caryne and Dave had driven all the way over from Frome, en route (sort of) to a Loft concert in Newcastle. Pete Chrisp and Lisa came, Neil from Oldfield Youth Club and his partner, and Steve Clements. It was well busy, as they say. Ably aided by Del Strangefish on sound, I played a short set of songs, followed by Charlie Harper, who brought the house down with his versions of Streets of London and Wild Rover.

It's such a nice hotel- small, perfectly formed and eccentric: a great place to start performing again after  along break.

Next day, we met Pauline and Grace for a late lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon rehearsing the Asbo Derek songs that I was playing on that night. It's impossible to describe the Tribute Night for Bob Grover. There were members of The Ammonites, Midnight and the Lemon Boys, Theatre of Hate, The Objekts, The Lillettes, The Golinski Brothers and many more in the audience. Nick Linazasoro\s review here gives a bit of an insight: https://sussexonlinenews.co.uk/2025/03/30/boring-bob-grover-of-the-piranhas-gets-a-wonderful-send-off/

And here I am guesting with Asbo Derek. Ric Blow took over for the rest of the set. It was really good fun, but also very sad.

I had a great chat with the Piranha's bagpiper, who hailed from Oban. Zoot had flown over from New York for the night and there were other long distance travellers. The Prince Albert was packed. I didn't last the night because it's going to take a while to get match-fit again, but jumping in at the deep end like this was a bloody good way to start gigging again.

Tonight In Brighton

 

Wagtail On Embankment Footbridge

 

Person Carrying Tuba

 

IMC's Cover Version of 'A Good Life With A Bad Apple'

Listen here, and buy it for the Missus (or the Mister):

https://stickyfrogrecords.bandcamp.com/track/a-good-life-with-a-bad-apple

Busyness

I haven't written a posting for what seems like ages. It's been a busy time- I had prints made of six of my drawings for the exhibition at The Pelirocco in Brighton that I'm having with Gaye Black and Charlie Harper. They have come out very well. Then I had to go and buy frames, and I'll be framing them tomorrow.

I've been contributing ideas to one of Gina's songs, which is turning out really well. Every time we work on it, it gets better, and that's really fulfilling. I'm also supposed to learn three Asbo Derek songs on guitar before next Friday. They are very short and not hard to play at all, even though they are thrashers and not finger-pickers, but at the moment I can't tell which song is which! I'm supposed to learn a Piranhas song to sing but they haven't sent the lyrics yet so that may be impossible, because I'm learning my own songs for the album launch in April.

Naturally, my fingernails have all snapped. They can never be relied on to support me, the little buggers.

I've drawn some illustrations for Robert Halcrow to use for one of his songs. I did four of them, but I'm not going to post them here until he has filmed them for the video. He's done a cover version of A Good Life With A Bad Apple in a genre that I described as 'wobbly lounge', on which he's playing sax. It's very different to my song, but it's very good. Or maybe that's why it's good! Ha!

It's possible I'm going to sing some backing vocals on Kenji's solo album, but I'm not sure if they can wait until after my launch. Robert has written the songs, I think; but I've had to wait to see if I could still sing after quite a drastic operation at the end of last year. I hope they wait. It would be such an honour to contribute to that.

Funny, isn't it? I left my lecturing job and felt very upset by that. I felt as though I was living a lie: the University was not abiding by its own Equal Opportunities manifesto, and by working there I was helping them to be dishonest. Plus, I was effectively working full-time and being paid as a part-time worker. As a consequence, I have a tiny pension, so instead of going round the world on a wonderful holiday like many of my contemporaries, I've had to just have a holiday in my head, and get on with art and music.

Part of that wonderful holiday would have involved visiting Vermont, San Francisco, and New York again. Naturally, I can't even do that in my head. The situation in the USA is the stuff of nightmares: wannabe Roman Emperors in their new clothes, strutting about celebrating their own vanity. What horrible specimens of humanity, or rather inhumanity, they are.

Maybe I'll get to Cuba and listen to some wonderful music! A day in Paris wouldn't go amiss, either.

Until then, I'm art-ing and musicking like mad. The Pop-Up Chefs EP will be coming out in about a month's time (I hope). It's just being manufactured. I hope to get my brother James's music up on Bandcamp shortly too. Let's have a bit of Chefs energy out there in the mix!

Chefs First Badge Design Proof From Better Badges

 

Being A Clue In The NME Crossword, 1990

 

Coming Up In June In London

 

Tickets: https://dice.fm/partner/loud-women/event/k6bdp9-chlu-helen-mccookerybook-juju-kat-five-14th-jun-the-hope-and-anchor-london-tickets?

From Theater Am Spittelberg, 2023

 

Next Gig: Birmingham, Thursday 3rd April

This will be my first proper gig for almost 5 months. I'll be playing songs from my new album, as well as some older ones.

It's about 10 years since I last played there- and of course many more years that that since Helen and the Horns appeared on Pebble Mill at One!
Thursday 3rd April, tickets here:
https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Birmingham/Rock-And-Roll-Brewhouse/Helen-McCookery-Book/40471794/

Busker With A Lot Of Drums

 

Donkey And Man, Soho, Last Week

 

Pelirocco Art Exhibition Private View, 27th March

 

Betsey Trotwood Matinée, Saturday 5th April, Now Sold Out

Coming up 5th of April, a matinee gig at The Betsey celebrating my album 'Showtunes from the Shadows' on Tiny Global

Guest musicians Robert Rotifer, Ruth Tidmarsh, Karina Townsend, Terry Edwards and Jack Hayter will be joining me to play songs from the album. The Wouldbegoods Three (Jessica Griffin, Peter Momtichoff and Andy Warren) will be playing too!

Only seven tickets left: https://wegottickets.com/event/646434

Only three tickets left now

Two...

Sold out!

Bar Italia, Soho, Friday

 

Pelicans, St. James's Park, London

 

Man With Working Newfoundland, Blackpool

 

The Rock & Roll Library, Farsight Gallery, 4 Flitcroft Street, London WC1

When I first heard about it, I couldn't imagine what it would all be about; Mick Jones's collection of personal ephemera? How could that be more interesting than my own?

Well, there was something very uplifting about this walk-through two room exhibition. Three huge frames hold collages: red, yellow and blue, of cuttings, ads, and (yes) coloured vinyl records, mixed together in an impression of 1960s childhood that was oddly moving. There are scary plastic-headed glove puppets, old media tech (TVs, film cameras, still cameras), strips of coloured film on lightboxes, zines, a booth with old comics (Hotspur, Beano, The Dandy) amongst other things. There are old Clash posters; there are armchairs and rugs and lamps.

 There's a notable absence of guitars (possibly far too risky security-wise). When we got there, Sean McClusky the gallery owner (and ex-JoBoxer) was just opening up. He told us there's a 28-year lease on the place and he's going to open a music venue in the basement. Yay! That's just what we need- a positive thought amongst the 'live music in small venues is dying' narrative.

On the way out we bumped into the DJ Steve Proctor and his friend, the Walthamstow Rock and Roll Book Club man, who is also a tube driver apparently. We chatted for ages.

I gather many pop stars of a certain pedigree have been to visit: Vic Godard, Shanne Bradley and more. I don't blame them: this was more than an exercise in nostalgia, because it took me right back to being an art student in the 1970s and the sort of clutter we worshipped with an irony that was beyond the comprehension of our elders. We deconstructed the madness of our world and held a mirror up to it's contradictions by juxtaposing all it's silliness by reconstructing it in an utterly different way.

I particularly liked the two dogs in the yard behind the gallery, energetically play-fighting and completely oblivious to human culture.

It was sunny, it was friendly, and it was the perfect antidote to the ghastly orange man and his demented henchman. Go!

Review in Deutsche Rolling Stone

 

The footprints that Helen McCookerybook left behind in the past 40 years of UK pop history may not be large or deep. She may have lacked the ambition or the elbows for that, but record collections that lack the legacy of her early bands are deplorably incomplete. Take the delectable discs of Helen & The Horns (the singer surrounded by trumpet, trombone and sax!), the 7inch delights of the Chefs with their fruity punky pop (“Thrush”!) and, last but not least, the world's best version of “Femme Fatale” served up by Helen's sadly short-lived quartet Skat. Fast forward: Today Helen is an active academic writing books, making films, also and especially so about the beginnings of Girl Punk and its heroines. One of whom, Gina Birch, formerly of the fabulous Raincoats, can also be heard on this new LP, next to Robert Rotifer, known to readers of this magazine as an author. Helen herself sounds hardly aged since the old days, she is crooning and trilling (hard to find the right translations from German here...) delightfully, and her twelve new tunes are testament to an unstoppable temperament and an enviable joie de vivre that she has saved up for the present. Charming!

By Wolfgang Doebeling

Translated by Robert Rotifer

Bandcamp Friday

It's Bandcamp Friday!

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/

Photo by Ruth Tidmarsh

Upside-Down Deflated Pikachu Balloon In Tree

 

Woman with Birthday Balloons

 

Gina's Gig At The Troxy

This was an amazing night. The Troxy is an incredibly well-run venue: spotless toilets backstage with cleaners on duty all the way through, really nice staff, good treatment of the engineers (they stopped the sound-checks on the dot so they could have an evening meal before the gig started), nice security people, the lot.

The sound-check was quick and relatively stress-free. Jack White's tour manager was formidable but fair: seconds after asking me to get off the low bars of the lighting rig where I was sitting, she brought me a chair to sit on. And she tuned up all the guitars for Gina, Marie and Jenny before they went on. She also allowed them to go on fifteen minutes later than originally scheduled so that the venue was nice and full.

Boy was it full! Not only that, everyone was squashed up against the barriers already, in anticipation of Gina's set. Watching from the side, I could see a few fans-already, but I could also see new people gradually realise what was going on with the music and really get into it.

They started with Digging Down, and played a storming set that included Feminist Song with an intro from Gina that even had some of the lads in the audience punching the air, I Play My Bass Loud, the three of them strutting their stuff magnificently, Causing Trouble Again, and more. Half an hour isn't a lot of time to pack a punch in, but they sure as hell did that. In a flash, it was time to get on and sing I Wanna Live Forever. It's a fabulous song, so strong and powerful. I gave it lungfuls of air; there was no lack of confidence, because these women had made me feel welcome from the second we met. They are supporters not competitors, and that's the best sort of musician to be: they melted their own musicianship into Gina's music imperceptibly from the outset, completely understanding how to contribute to her songs. They stand tall beside her in their bright colours, and give it their all.

The set ended with Lola, and almost as soon as it began, the crowd joined in at full volume. 

LOLA, L-O-L-A, LOLA!

Just beforehand, we'd all shaken hands with Jack White and his wife. Afterwards, there were photographs, even one with me in it, but I don't think that will ever see the light of day! I filmed Digging Down but the file's too big for Blogger so I may try to share it from Youtube eventually.

And then I went home: I'm still quarantining really and a big full Jack White crowd was simply too risky. But oh, how happy I was! Thank you so much for inviting me along Gina. It was utterly cathartic!

Tonight at The Troxy

Well, tonight at Gina Birch's invitation, I'll be joining her, Marie and Jenny on stage for a couple of songs at the end of their support set for Jack White. 

You could have knocked me down with a feather. 

I've learned the backing vocals for the original song I'm singing on, but Lola is proving to be more of a challenge. Jenny says I can take the lyrics on stage with me, which will be a big help. It's actually the structure as much as anything else, but we'll have time for a run-through at sound check time.

I'm the green one (each person has a different colour) and I bought some cheap green trousers off eBay and have dug out some old green jewellery that I'm wearing already in case I forget to take it at the last minute.

This is the first gig singing I've done since mid-November, so it's a Big Thing. I haven't been keen on being at gigs, so will mooch about backstage and just soak up the atmosphere, for verily the Troxy is a dude of a gig!

Dixy Chicken, Leith Walk

 

Cazz Blase review of 'Showtunes from the Shadows'

Cazz is a writer on female-led music and I am delighted that she has reviewed the album on her blog! Take a look here: https://cazzblase.blogspot.com/2025/02/album-review-helen-mccookerybooks.html

Empty Launderette

 

Influencer Crosses Road, Brighton

 

On Being Free Range

In the Northumbrian village Wylam where I was brought up in the 1960s, we felt that we children ruled.

Yes, there was the vile and violent village school, but all round the edges was Us. There were four of us in our household, four children exactly the same ages as us across the road; plus their neighbours, first a Canadian family with children and then a British one, same. Behind us were  family with three children, and along the road, another family with three. The latter two families belonged to a different social class to us (mcMum called them 'County'), and relationships between the parents cooled a bit after McMum and McDad outed themselves a socialists.

A lot of the time, ten or eleven of us would rampage through McDad's garden, swinging upside down from trees, playing with the water hose, tending bonfires (I made some particularly disgusting rhubarb and cauliflower soup in the pan McDad used to pour oil into the lawn mower), play 'pirates on a ship asleep' on the shelves of the shed amongst rows of waxy apples with bruised surfaces (maybe that was just me), climbing on to the corrugated iron that covered the woodpile, and running along the tops of walls which were probably five metres high at great speed. 

We got sent round the allotments with the dog for being naughty on Sundays, got locked in the old henhouse by a child who lived in another road, and ate sour raw broad beans straight from the shell.

I made miniature houses from sticks and muddy earth in the flower beds, tried to make fabric out of smashed nettle stems after reading about how linen was made, and swung upside down from a rope hung from a tree branch, with my hair swishing the dust underneath it as I drifted back and forth.

We ate ice lollies and too many sweets, and pretended to be Arabs (one of McDad's patients had given us the headgear). We swore and told each other the Facts of Life (how disgusting). Within our child-world, there were subsections: we would pair off, get up to age-appropriate (according to us) mischief, and then gang together again. Bruv and me would eat the flowers of Red Hot Poker plants to see what they tasted like, for instance. Little Sis and her friend across the road used to disappear off, we knew not where. Little Bruv's friend waited at the bus stop with a random lady and got on the bus with her to the next village, aged four.

We'd take the dog to the woods, where she learned how to pick blackberries and went back to ransack McDad's raspberry bushes. We learned Holly trees were great for climbing and hiding in (internal ladders and thick bristling carapaces), Yew for playing 'house' (twisty branches and thick, dense 'walls'), crab apples were too tart-tasting to eat as windfalls,  and even nice looking apples could be full of worms.

There were few broken limbs: Little Bruv broke his arm, and I dislocated a cartilage in my nose after whacking into a fence post face-first in a sledging accident. Once, Little Bruv had his arm in a cast and Little Sis had her leg in one too. 'Two cripples!', bellowed one of the 'County' neighbours delightedly when she came to the door one day.

A local admirer chap brought a bag of Brussel's Sprouts round for Little Sis once (she was about 13). We incorporated other children into our community. McMum once told me rather indignantly that the late Scottish poet Hamish Henderson came to stay and left his children with us, vanishing in a puff of poetic smoke for days before returning to collect them. One guest family brought us catapults, which disappeared just as rapidly as they appeared.

Overwhelmingly, we felt like our own bosses. The house was where food was (hooray) and where bed was (boo). Is it any wonder that I didn't want to grow up to be a 'lady', after all that freedom and wonderful chaos? I could not see the benefits for me, not one bit. I still can't, not at all.

More Tickets Added, Betsey Trotwood

I have just added some more tickets. Advance tickets are cheaper- and probably a good idea because this is a bijou event in the downstairs bar of the Betsey. Tickets are going fast!

https://wegottickets.com/event/646434

Riley and Coe: Three Cheers for Toytown

Exhausted after a trip to Brighton to meet Charlie Harper and his partner (plus Gaye Black on speakerphone), to begin sorting out our exhibition at the Hotel Pelirocco, and added bonus was to have Three Cheers for Toytown played on their show this evening by a solo Mr Coe.

I wasn't drawing along this time- too tired! But how exciting!

I forgot to have a Mr Whippy, but having the song played more than made up for that.

One book on from Tommy McCook!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027tj4

Loud Women, Resonance FM

First live performance since November! It was an absolute pleasure to chat to Cassie Fox this evening, and play some songs live (Almost There, Reaching for Hope, Puppet and Three Cheers for Toytown). Resonance has such a nice studio, cosy in the best way and with ace volunteer staff. Cassie also played two of my choices of tracks: Lotte Lenya singing Surabaya Johnny, and The Chiffons' Up On The Bridge. I think it's listenable-again here: https://loudwomen.org/2025/02/15/helen-mccookerybook-performs-live-on-the-loud-women-radio-show-on-resonance-fm-tuesday-18-feb-at-6pm-gmt/

Brighton 27th March

 

Veteran Collecting Donations

 

Singing Harmonies

Gina has invited me to sing backing vocals for her, with Jenny and Marie, for a couple of songs when she supports Jack White at The Trocadero on the 28th of February. We had a rehearsal last Thursday, four of us sitting around her giant kitchen table choosing harmonies to sing and singing together over the bare bones of the track. I have words to learn: it's not the words necessarily, but rather getting them in the right order. We sang for probably an hour and a half, and it was lovely to have the experience of slotting into a set of harmonies. On the recording I sang all of them (actually I think they may have replaced some of me with them, so to speak), but in real time, singing in harmony with other women is a unique experience. We were focused and each came away with notes and phone recordings to get the details right on the day.

I've had a long break from properly singing, and am hugely relieved to still be able to do it. Today, I've sung through some of my songs for Tuesday's live Loud Women broadcast on Resonance FM, which will be my first live 'gig' since November. I am looking forward to that: last time I was there was with Dexter Bentley for his show, so I know the studio (and some of the staff there too, probably). I'm trying to do at least two songs from the new album that I didn't sing on his show. Fingers crossed my voice will be with me on the night!

I am so looking forward to gigging again. I've had enough poor cats and dogs, stairlift and walk-in bath, cancer and funeral daytime adverts to last more than a lifetime. The same emollient voiceovers, sad piano, off-the-shelf graphics and gently threatening message runs through all of them. Then in the evening, it swaps over to gambling, fast food and cleaning products with an uplift in energy underpinned by barely-heard dance music tracks. I have not been tempted to buy a single one of the products on offer, and indeed have silently vowed never to do this in my lifetime, so there.

The Mojo review, and having lots of people play my songs on their radio shows, has been invigorating. If you know me, you'll understand how much this was needed.

Oh yes- a visit to the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the William Morris gallery in Walthamstow last week also were really uplifting. Three cheers for art, and three cheers for music! We need these cultural joys in these dismal, grey and threatening times.

Album Launch

Album launch gig alert!

Extra guest musicians: Robert Rotifer, Ruth Tidmarsh, Terry Edwards, Jack Hayter, Karina Townsend The Would-be-goods Three will be playing too Ding-dong! Betsey Trotwood, afternoon 5th April Advance tickets from here: https://wegottickets.com/event/646434

Adrian Goldberg's Brum Radio Show

Here's the link to Adrian's show that was broadcast this morning; Adrian interviewed me for the show and will be playing a couple of new tracks and an oldie too:

https://www.mixcloud.com/BrumRadio/adventures-in-music-with-adrian-goldberg-ft-helen-mccookerybook-15022025/

Mojo Review

 

More Airplay

Many thanks to Iko Cherie for playing Reaching for Hope on the Soho Radio show Little Trouble Girls.

Link here- there's a lot of really great music on this show:

https://sohoradiolondon.com/show/little-trouble-girls-feat-sassyhiya-01-02-2025/

This album is getting more play than anything I've done for years, and is getting a three-star review in Mojo in the next edition. It was worth all that hard work!

The Porter Rose at Dawn had its first play on Big City Radio's Beautiful Freak Show last Saturday by Wayne Moseley, and he'll be playing another track tomorrow.

Piglets