Glasgow Train

Just got back from Tom's via the car repairer's that I got the wrong bus to, and had to walk for ages with my guitar upon my back. My car is so happy though, it was worth it. It's out the front now, grinning all over its radiator. Bless!
The CD master is compiled, and I recorded two songs as well; I've put one of them on Myspace and I'm saving the other for later- I think I'll get Paul to put some soprano sax on it.
Tom was encouraging me to play piano so perhaps that could be my summer project. Along with learning the accordion (my summer project that doesn't happen, any summer)
I've been offered a space to run an acoustic night in Dalston which I'd love to do but I have some loose ends to tie up first.
I have also been doing a bit of selfadmiring (sort of) listening to Megane's mix of The Word is Goodbye
It's so good- I always wished I was a Disco Diva and it took a Japanese imagination to do it!

Jackie's Book

I have three foster cousins, and one of them, Jackie Walker, has just published a book called 'Pilgrim State' about her life with her mum in Deptford. There were articles about her book in the Guardian and in the Observer, and her story made me want to cry.
They are the most incredible family- talented and resourceful and very wise. The oldest boy was a total inspiration to me and Big Bruv when we were kids, cos not only could he balance a chair on one finger, but he also told us how to do it! He loved the Beatles and hated those black vocal groups that dressed in identical frilly clothes and did formation dancing. When we went to Tynemouth Ice Rink, he leapt on to the ice and was skating on one leg in seconds, although he'd never skated before in his life.
Jackie was also really exciting- a couple of years older than me, glamorous and from London, the Big City. It was a real thrill that she would sit and chat to me about her life- I was a total hicklet back in them thar days, and she was quite hippyish and very sophisticated.
There were three siblings in the UK and Jackie and her little brother spent time in childrens homes after their mum moved to London from Jamaica; their older brother travelled miles to see them each week until eventually my uncle and auntie fostered the whole family (my uncle was the Head at the older brother's school).
Every so often we have a gigantic family party, usually for Little Bruv's birthday, in Greenwich Park, and we all bring food and tubs of hummus for wasps to drown in. The foster cousins usually come, but not Jackie for a while- probably because she has been writing.
I hope she comes along this year.

I have been writing to Tony Hepworth, who was trumpet player with the Helen and the Horns on our last tour and who played on the studio side of the Helen and the Horns Etc album. We think we might get together to do a gig. I suppose it's a case of finding somewhere to play and someone who wants to put us on! I hadn't heard from him for ages and its amazing to be in touch again.
I have also written to Peterjon Skelt of Near Shore Records because Rough Trade has run out of the Helen and the Horns Etc CD and I haven't got any left- last time I saw him he had some boxes stacked in his hallway. I hope he hasn't sold them for drinks coasters or something, because Rough Trade does a good turnover of them, and I am hoping he will not only re-stock their supplies but also collect the money they owe him!
I do have some boxes of the vinyl version in the loft which I might ask them if they want- I hope to be moving house soon and it would be good to offload them.
I have also written to Carl about the Chefs CD (ain't I a busy bee?)
... and finally. I'm going to collect the master of the new one from Tom tomorrow morning!

Plastic Bag Trees

I don't know why we are worrying about global warming; some plants are doing very well in the current climate: in particular, plastic bag trees. Rather like the urban fox, they are flourishing in built up areas, no matter how desolate; their branches are festooned with bumper crops of billowing plastic bags, while beneath them the ground is strewn with their fruits, a truly miraculous harvest.

My friend took a nice photo in Newcastle

Maverick

I have just had an email from Maverick MAgazine, a country music mag, to say they have done a half-page article on my music in the February Issue. I haven't read it yet (I'm gonna send off for one) but I'm hoping it says nice things. Their URL is
www.maverick-country.com which I will html properly after the dinner's cooked
(it doesn't work, I don't know why. Just copy and paste if you're interested, because it's the right www address)

Guitars in Dumfries

I spent the weekend at the Friar's Carse Hotel in Dumfries, at the guitar weekend.
I went last year and really enjoyed it but this year was even better!
It took me 8 hours to get there- hampered by a two-inch snowfall in Barnet on the way that meant it took an hour to drive 45 miles- and then more snow, a humungous jam on the A1, a cross country experience to escape that and straight into another on the M!
But I got there, and had a whale of a time; there were about 20 of us, all with our acoustic guitars, learning blues scales and strumming country chords. In the evening, Gary, Brian and Martin kicked off a lovely little acoustic night, performing in the huge hotel fireplace that did wonders for vocalists (some strange acoustic thing). People sang their own songs, weird covers, and played instrumentals. What a bunch of characters!
Next day, we all sat in a circle and played our favourite chords in sequence, and Trois Gymnopedies by Erik Satie, and the Bond theme (well, we just played the last chord- the teachers played the complicated bits), before bombing back to our nerdy homes and trying to remember what we'd learned.
I'm going to do a workshop at the next thing Andrew is organising- a songwriter's weekend in the Lake District.
And hello to Ragtime Steve! I enjoyed your rags, don't know how you manage to remember how to play them!

Breakfast Meeting

I met Rob Ayling this morning at 8.30 in the Columbia Hotel, and talked about the CD. It will come out in September and will have a proper booklet (yay!) with lyrics and all, good, that's what I want. And I am going to try to find a really good location for a launch party and arrange a little tour to go with it. It means that it will be available in HMV and from Amazon (instead of review copies that dastardly journalists put up there second-hand!)
I'm a happy bunny and will spend the drive up to the guitar weekend in Dumfries thinking about photo locations and other thinsg for the CD cover.

Oopsy-daisy

Well that last posting sure as heck was a moan! Issues, issues- somebody got burned by the music business in their youth!
I just always seemed to be a square peg when the holes were round and a round peg when they were square.
Well, now I've got a tartan terror-dress, and that will sort 'em all out!
So if you hear howls of angst and screams of shock
And your knees begin to knock
And your heart begins to leap
And your mouth begins to cheep
And your legs begin to tremble
And your guts begin to rumble
And your hands begin to shake
And the earth begins to quake
And your teeth begin to chatter
And your brain turns into butter
And your hair stands right on end
And you start to fear your friend.....

It's only me!
In my suburban tartanry
Roamin'-ah
In the gloamin'-ah
On the bonny banks of Lloyds TSB
Three cheers for bad taste!

The Brit Network

Estelle was talking in a newspaper last week about the British record industry, and how she was dropped after having a hit, and had to travel to the US to be taken seriously, while meanwhile lots of white girls with 'black' voices enjoyed maximarketing and consequent chart success in the UK, claiming Aretha's legacy to boot.
Years ago when I started working at the University of the West, the idea was that graduates not only became performers, but also entered record labels as gatekeepers, opening the gates to- guess what? Performers from the University of the West!
The Brit school put this into practice much better, mainly because its students are so much younger and haven't reached their rock'n'roll deathbeds (the age of 23 for girls) by the time they graduate.

A taxi-driver friend benefited from the seventies concept of meritocracy by gaining a place at the National Film School and making films that people like him, a taxi driver, might want to watch. Now he says all the film-makers are called Damien and have rich daddies in the Shires.

Dangitall, the music biz always has been able to block out the oiks, until the oiks get their revenge by reinventing irritating noise that's much more appealing to the likes of them than custardy old Adele or Kate Nash, and tips the lot over. The 'Industry" (meat pie manufacturers to you and me) has an iron grip that squeezes the life out of hope and freshness and chucks disillusioned husks of people on to a pile of rejects. Avoid at all costs! Be an outsider musician unless you possess the noise and energy to frighten the life out of the cosy twats who filter what we listen to!

Busybusybusy

I've just got back from Edinburgh, where I marched up and down Salisbury Crags with all the other weirdos and bought an amazing red and green tartan dress from Armstrongs, the vintage clothiers. It's so disgusting, it's totally camp and should be worn as a weapon only.
Now I'm clearing up loose ends before a breakfast meeting with Rob about the CD and then a drive up to Dumfries for the Guitar Weeknd that Martin runs with Gary from the Daintees and another tutor, Brian, who runs a guitar shop in Newcastle.
Then there's a gap... hardly any gigs, no recording planned although I have lots of new songs.
I'd love to play a festival this year but I don't know whether that will be on the cards. I'm crap at networking, I know I am.
I will turn into a spider and start spinning a web, right now.

Happy Birthday, Mr Slocombe!

A Day In The Life Of A Superstar

Practically crying as I tried to negotiate the trillionth roadworks, I comforted myself with the thought that all superstars Go Through This.
We all wonder why Watford Gap is called Watford Gap when it's nowhere near Watford.
We all buy wine gums and then try to find only the black ones and the red ones while keeping our eyes on the road.
We all watch flirting buzzards, oblivious to the frantically rushing traffic beside them, and ducks doing sexy things in the sky
We all curse the bit of Yorkshire where there is fuel promised but a swathe of closed-down petrol-stations
We all, yet again, buy disgusting coffee (coffee?) from Welcome Break at 1 a.m. even though we did that last time. Will we never all learn?
We all wonder if we could pretend to be a motorcycle instead of a car on the M6 toll road, thereby paying much less
We all wish high-top white vans and multiple-wheelbased articulated lorries were forbidden from overtaking, particularly uphill
We all wonder why iPod shuffle thinks we want to hear the same track four times on a two-hour journey


Oh yes, and Superstars do gigs. And get lost on the way, and even the lovely shipbuilding cranes of the northwest coastline do not compensate.
A five hundred mile round trip!
They were panicking at 9.30 at the Cafe Matisse; it was raining ( I think it does in Southport) and nobody had arrived yet. Then suddenly, people started turning up. I had asked to go on first because of driving back. It was one of those gigs that's a kids-night-out gig, so there was a big bunch of people at the back yakking like there was no tomorrow. But some people came specially to see me (thank you, if you read this!) and there was a group of girls down the front who were really into it. One had plaits, so it could have been coiffure-bonding, but they were listening and they laughed at the funny bits. And the guys from another band, Chrik, were there scrutinising my fingers. I heard their soundcheck and thought they were brill so I was dead flattered.
It was a nightmare getting there and worse getting back (I discovered that if I had come the proper way instead of getting lost I would have ended up having to turn round and go back the lost way anyway because an entire huge road was closed) but hats off to the guys at RockPaperScissors for organising it- I can imagine Southport is a bit of a desert for live music that alternative crowds will enjoy, and they are really dedicated to their nights. I enjoyed playing even though I was knackered, and I have a fantastic photo of some plastic whistling policemen from a Southport shop window to upload just to prove I did it!
I've had a banana in the car for more than a week now and still not eaten it.

A Nuisance

Into my car I shall hop and whizz up the M6 to Southport, the Cafe Matisse, for tomorrow night's gig.
I am on at about ten to ten, I think, and then back dahn sarf again.
I'm looking forward to playing!
and then
and then
and then
only one more gig before no gigs!
It's because I am a bit lazy and sit under the gig tree with my apron spread out, waiting for a ripe gig to plop down from the branches into my lap.
I must become proactive, leaving hassling messages on everybody's Myspaces, demanding support gigs and telling them how wonderful my music is.
I must turn up at gigs at soundcheck time with my guitar and a yearning face.
I must pretend to be another, more famous artist, and trick promoters into booking me.
I must, if need be, busk.
I must be a nuisance!

Ah Brother Tobias

Ah Brother Tobias, as a neo-Novo Castrian, you were lucky to observe the peccadilloes of the city as a visitor.
For those of us brought up in the straitjacket of the Ouija-fearing minister of Jesmond Presbyterian Church, Newcastle held few joys.
City Hall- oh dear, a dreadful concert by Yes with a duff PA that reduced all their pomp to a whisper, the fibreglass pod wobbling on its plinth, and horrible stretchalot Rick Wakeman with his four-square keyboards and his smug grin.. those of us who dwelt in the outlying hamlets had to make a mad dash for the last train (10.30) and missed the last half hour of everything. We were too fresh-faced for lots of things anyway and our lives were burdened by the Saturday job at Littlewoods (lunch entitlement for Saturdays one and a half fish fingers and a half portion of chips) where the lady spat on the knife to clean it before slicing the meat and where the loose bread rolls that fell on the scuffy floor were picked up and re-stacked on the pile.
The most exciting thing that happened was me and Kathleen being chased through the streets by two drunk youths who were riding a massive wobbly fake phallus they'd made by unravelling a long cardboard tube.
We were very pleased to see you, Brother Tobias, because you were the most interesting person in our lives at that point!

Actually, one thing about Newcastle at that time was really brilliant- the Hoppings on the Town Moor. The Hoppings was a congregation of all the travelling fairs in the North, and stretched for a quarter of a mile. You could find everything from bearded ladies and candyfloss stalls to daredevil motorbike stunts and the Rotor (which i never dared to go on).
Standing by the dive-bombers, I remember wondering whether everyone who had vomited had eaten diced carrots, or whether diced carrots made you vomit.

Northumbrian Children

Just returned from two days in the north-east, finishing off the childrens' songwriting project.
I feel as though my head has been emptied and stuffed with grey felt.
Actually, today was great- all four schools congregated at Ovingham Primary School and each took to the stage in turn to share their songs with each other. They were all great- even boistrous Ovingham who had been a huge sea of energy threatening to become a gigantic tidal wave at any moment- they all forgot the words in fright and had to go for it again!
They were great kids though- very different from the Song Club children I work with normally that do not come from such comfortable backgrounds. Big up the teachers, too, who took the ball and ran with it, doing all the cross bossy stuff so we didn't have to sergeant-major and spoil our creative vibe.
I liked being in Newcastle, drinking coffee at the Baltic Gallery, whizzing up in the lift to look at the view, and wandering round the streets and across the eyelid bridge. I can not believe how much it has changed since the 1970s when it was all grimy stone and grey moods, little sinister streets and cheap shops. Some of it's still there, the poverty hidden by chainstores, but the general impression is of a lively and prosperous city, with, wait for it, art. Where was that when I was there? It was a cultural desert except for the Theatre Royal, where we went to see Lenny the Lion in pantomime every year, except for the year Terry Scott was a fairy in a pink tutu that kept slipping down to reveal his luxuriantly hairy chest. I was very little and thought it was an accident, and was scandalised.