Honour Before Glory in Germany - Day 3

These blogs are running into each other a little bit - so I hope, as well as being at least mildly interesting, they also make sense! The timings are slightly off. I originally wrote this on the drive from Munich to Stuttgart, but now write it the day after Stuttgart (does that make sense?!). I will write of last night's adventures later today!

As reported, the day in Munich was nice and relaxed. We stayed at an apartment in part of the venue (the first time I've slept on bunkbeds for a few years!). The whole venue itself was split into 3 or 4 different sections, and operated in numerous different guises, including hosting some youth / social work, and a radio station. All in all a very cool place!

The gig was a bit more comfortable for me, and I managed to play Lions acoustically for the first time which was good, though I still feel slightly uncomfortable being onstage on my own! I think it will work better when the band exists as a 'bigger' entity (personnel wise). But I think I try and make excuses for this too much anyway!

Sometree rocked it again, while I descended into Augustiner Hell. Watching Sometree you again feel it's odd they never reached a bigger audience in the UK. Is a large part of it because they're German? Or does that geographical problem mean an inherit problem in terms of touring and being 'out' of England

In the course of the day, while talking about pubs, football and lyric writing in English, I introduced the guys to cockney rhyming slang - a whole new world for non-English speakers. The well oiled end to the evening, culminated in loading Danny Dyer clips on to You Tube...

Today I've been reading about Kristin Hersh's Strange Angel project - find out more here. I always enjoy her music and the recent 50 Foot Wave stuff was great, so it's interesting to read about another approach to making music (and seemingly unheralded)

And to Stuttgart... (except in real life I'm about to leave Stuttgart, but will write of last night later...)

Honour Before Glory in Germany - Day 1/2

After my nice holiday, I only had a few days to get ready for the Honour Before Glory tour supporting Sometree in Germany. The joke was I had to burn CDs to sell, do my washing and even finish a couple of new songs. This was a bit of exaggeration, but I was hoping to play Lions and a cover that I hadn't played previously.

The first gig was Friday night in Berlin, and to make things easier I flew in the night before - as with everything on this tour flying over on my own with just a guitar was a strange and new experience! Everything went fine though, even though I was especially worried about the safety of my guitar!

In Berlin, I stayed with Sebastian, the guitarist of Sometree, and we spent more of Thursday night and Friday catching up on all the goings on since they came over to support Forward Russia in early 2007.

While Sometree went off to do a radio session in the afternoon, I wandered to some familiar parts of Berlin, in search of Wurst & Kraut, before catching up with them at Lido later on.

There was the usual big city anticipation for the gig, with Sometree playing their home town, the capital city, at the big club with an early start for the early finish.

In true whiskas fashion, I felt suitably awkward onstage - I'm especially paranoid about my lack of German - I just feel rude. Still the gig went well, though it was probably the hardest for me to start with as it was so early and to such a big city crowd. I didn't brave Lions, but Mazzy Star's Fade Into You slipped in just perfectly

Sometree were awesome, playing the perfect Berlin set - so so good to hear the new songs, and worked extra well with help from old friend Sean on extra keys and guitar. No crazyness after the gig, as we had an 8am start the next day, with Munich our goal (a looooong drive), after Sometree stopped to at Restgeräusch studio to record an internet session.

During the session, I was total spare part and gourged myself entirely on chocolate and crisps while trying to keep up with the UK football scores. Like most Saturday in England really!

There is vague hope of using he time on this tour to write some more songs and work on how I'm going to record others. Maybe this will prove easier when there aren't football matches to get distracted by!!

It's been a beautiful day in Munich today, and we've mosty just chilled out in the sun while waiting to soundcheck. I did manage to watch Man Utd v Liverpool, so all is not lost. The gig tonight should be good, and then a short-ish drive to Stuttgart tomorrow, and hopefully the tour really gets going

Holiday (Celebrate)

I got back from holiday last Friday before heading straight out to see I Like Trains at The Cockpit. I'm keeping busy preparing for the upcoming Honour Before Glory tour of Germany with Sometree - I leave Tuesday morning, and ridiculously have songs to finish writing, lyrics to learn and EP's to burn / package.

The holiday was great, taking in Venice, Nice & Tuscany (dicacted by cheap flights) for one of the best & longest breaks I've ever had. Think it'll be a while before the next one.

I've had a fun few days since I've been back though, entailing the aforementioned I Like Trains gig, catching up with old friends Editors and a brief sojourn to In The City.

I'll try and add more bits and pieces once I'm on the road - as well as keeping the blog upto date with what's going on on the tour. But for now, I've got a plane to catch, and once I'm there, I've lots of travelling, so writing can wait for then!

Soundtrack to this post: Mazzy Star, Biffy Clyro, The Big Pink

Looking To The Future

It's always that irony when writing something like this blog, when you've lots of time to write, then there's nothing to write about, when there's no time for anything, there's lots to write about. And so here we are - I've finished my Masters degree (results end of the month), which also coincides with finishing the first Honour Before Glory recordings

But it's a brief respite - in a good way, as I'm dissapearing for a lot of October, but will be back with a vengeance afterwards.

HONOUR BEFORE GLORY

I have now finished the first Honour Before Glory recordings, and launched the compulsary Myspace page. You can listen below via the power of Soundcloud.

All the tracks were recorded by me at House Of Mook, and feature help from the talents of Simon Fogal, Jon Foulger, Francis McCrossan, Fran Rodgers and Dave Martin

After Germany, I'll be playing with Damien Jurado at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds - and then will be trying to do some more recording.

http://www.myspace.com/honourbeforeglory

HOUSE OF MOOK NEWS

After returning from Germany with Sometree in November, I'll be bedding myself down in House Of Mook and recording lots of bands. As ever, get in touch if you're interested here

The first fruits of Mook are being unveiled though - Just Handshakes (We're British) are releasing a split 7" single with my other faves Yonderboy. Listen and order the track through their respective Myspaces.

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Other than that? Business as usual

Soundtrack to this post: Yonderboy, Papercuts

Academia

I've got a few things I want to write about on here - most prevalent being attending Bingley Music Live on Sunday to see Editors debut some new material (an interesting and enjoyable experience) and then there's tonight's Mercury Music Prize fandango

But unfortunately I'm consumed by my Masters degree which I've touted on here before, the hand in of which is just 16 days away

As written previously, this ties up with the current 'development' of HONOUR BEFORE GLORY - academically I'm supposedly discussing the relationship of artist & producer. I say supposedly because it's a hard thing to be subjective about.

So at the moment I'm concentrating on making the best record possible and that's going pretty well - it's quite exciting finally hearing the realisation of songs that I've been developing for many years - some ideas have been floating in my head since before ¡Forward, Russia!

Simon of Leeds football hero's FC Lokomotiv has provided the pounding rhythms and at the moment I'm spending my days fucking them up and adding squealing noise over the top. Hopefully some majestic melody's will be added by myself and other people who can sing.

The plan is - a version of these songs (I'm currently working on 3) will be finished for the end of the month. I'm hoping by the time I go to Germany I'll be happy for the songs to be released into the world. But we'll see... there's a lot to do in a short space of time

Soundtrack to this post: Editors / Quack Quack / Get Well Soon

My Leeds Festival 2009

This year I've felt a little too self absorbed to induldge myself in Leeds Festival properly. I spent the Friday & Sunday bed down in House Of Mook perfecting the mix for You Animals forthcoming opus, and setting up for recording some Honour Before Glory tracks on Monday

I did have a great day in attendance on the Saturday, though as usual it was the social aspect as much as the bands that made it the occasion it was.

I started the day watching The XX, who's album has quickly become a bit of a favourite of mine. It was an odd entity live, I wasn't expecting it to be that much more than it was, but I still thought it was a shame there wasn't more to it. Still, it's made me listen to the album today and I've enjoyed it all the more.

After The XX, I wandered around the site a little bit and checked out the BBC Introducing Stage, caught a little bit of ex-Loiner Anna Prior in Metronomy, before watching the Grammatics in the Festval Republic tent. And very good they were too

Later on, we camped out on the main stage to catch Vampire Weekend (who reminded me more than ever of Gracelands), bits of Bloc Party (very festival) and then Radiohead.

Radiohead was a bit of an odd one as not the set per se, but the whole set-up seemed very hard for a casual observer to 'break through' - and what I find odd, is why a band that was doing a sponsor-less tour in their own tents, was headlining such a 'corporate' festival?? With the 'arty' set up of video screens and lighting it was hard to connect from a distance, so I lost interest. I'm sure if I'd have been in the mood for an intense Radiohead set it would've been outstanding. I guess it was the festival equivalent of The Wire - not one for the casual observer. But that's what I go to the festival to be.

Two brief links / mentions:

1) To the festival volunteers who are actively getting involved. Great work if you can get it:

http://festvolunteers.blogspot.com/

2) Check out highlights of loads of bands on 'death of independent journalism' website the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/videos/

Keep an eye out for Faith No More covering the Eastenders theme

Many thanks to the kind people at Festival Republic though for letting me attend again. Hopefully next year I can do something worthwhile to attend

Soundtrack to this post: Wilco, Fever Ray

You Animals

As mentioned at the time, a couple of weeks ago I was in the studio with Derby heart-throbs YOU ANIMALS to record their new single.. their Theme you might say

While I'm stuck in the studio finishing off the lead track, the band have put together this amusing video of our time together. Check it out:

Soundtrack to this post: Fever Ray