Dear all,

Well here I am in Canada. I’m in an extremely jolly mood after a really lovely evening last night. I write to you on a lovely day – the sun is shining, birds are singing and the view is beautiful! Last night Meaghan and I began our tour with a house concert run by two of the nicest people you could possibly meet. Michael and Shawn are so hospitable and so welcoming and they gave us a wonderful gig. The audience were similarly delightful and I feel I’ve made some new friends here in New Brunswick. As regular readers of this blog will know, there are things about my job that drive me up the pole and international travel can be hard work and stressful but it’s so wonderful to come to another country, share music and meet such remarkable people. So quite a start to the tour and a lot to live up to!

Anyway, just to update you on happenings too I had a fantastic tour with UFQ. After Fishguard we played two delightful village halls in Wiltshire and stayed with some lovely people Continue reading “Canadian sun” →

Dear all,

It’s just a shade over two weeks til I return to Canada! Exciting stuff. Working with Meaghan Blanchard on two previous tours was an absolute joy and it will be great to collaborate with her once again. We were paired up by English Folk, Dance and Song Society and Music PEI to work together out in Canada in September 2013 then Meaghan came over here in November last year. The giglist is as follows:

11 Jun 2015 08:00 pm	with Meaghan Blanchard	House Concert, Dieppe, NB, Canada
12 Jun 2015 08:00 pm	with Meaghan Blanchard	House Concert, Sackville, NB, Canada
13 Jun 2015 08:00 pm	with Meaghan Blanchard	House Concert, Dartmouth, NS, Canada
16 Jun 2015 08:00 pm	with Meaghan Blanchard	Company House, Halifax, NS, Canada
17 Jun 2015 08:00 pm	with Meaghan Blanchard	Roots and Soul Room, Frederiction, NB, Canada
18 Jun 2015 08:00 pm	with Meaghan Blanchard	Magnolia Cafe, Saint John, NB, Canada
19 Jun 2015 – 21 Jun 2015 07:30 pm	Solo	Small Halls Festival, PEI, Canada

So exciting stuff! Norway, France, Belgium, Germany, USA and Denmark also await before the end of the year. Dashed exhausting really! Exciting times of course though. My I’m using some very short sentences today.

Anyway a couple of gigs to tell you about. First up UFQ Continue reading “The adventures of Fishguard!” →

Dear all,

The UFQ tour is in full swing and we’re having a ball. After such a relentless solo tour, it’s great to be back with the band for a while. People often ask me which I enjoy more and it genuinely is impossible to answer, I’m not just being a politician. There’s a magic about being up there just on my own with total control over what happens both musically and in terms of the gig. Then there’s that brilliant feeling when 4 musicians are playing really well together and bouncing off each other. Both are priceless and both are currently going rather well!

So then to report on the latest…after my rather bizarre non-brush with the law, I had the rare experience of actually going to a gig on the night of my last blog and it was none other than my old chum Lucy Ward who played at the Gatehouse in Stafford. As ever, she gave a very entertaining show and showed her fine voice to typically compelling effect and even managed to Continue reading “Carefully planned touring…” →

Dear all,

Apologies for a bit of a delay since the last bloggage, it has been a manic old time. Lots of gigs to tell you about so without further ado I shall bring things up to date after the end of my mammoth spring solo tour.

07/04 – Green Note, London

One of my favourite venues and once again it was lovely. Marvellous.

10/04 – Swan, Staunton

A return to pub gigging and I rather enjoyed it! Knocked out a few Saw Doctors song I hadn’t played in a long long time owing to some big Saw Doctors fans being amongst those present.

11/04 – Kingswood Wine Vaults, Bristol

Well this was quite a night. Thanks one and all, I had an absolute ball and a good old drink and rant with a few folks afterwards too which always helps I find. A mammoth set is testament to how much I was enjoying myself!

12/04 – Nailsea Continue reading “POLICE!” →

Dear all,

London today for to launch Incidents and Accidents at the Green Note in Camden, one of my very favourite venues. It’s been one hell of a time with a lot of travelling and playing but I’ve been having a lot of fun on the road. To bring you up to date on the gigs:

25/03 – Faversham Folk Club

A cracking little gig with plenty of my extended family present which was nice! A bit weird playing in front of a mirror but this was corrected midway through the gig by a willing member of the audience…

27/03 – Hales Club, Market Drayton

A lovely little place this and somewhere I have always had such a lovely time. A bloody brilliant night.

28/03 – Bromyard Sessions Continue reading “Rocking out to AC/DC…at 80.” →

I am thought of by some as a ranter. It is indeed true that many things do cheese me off but really I just like discussion and find it interesting and worthwhile to analyse and question rather than simply accept things how they are. There’s one area I’ve largely kept quiet about but I thought maybe it might be time for a confession and it’s a while since I wrote an ‘article’ on this blog rather than my regular gig updates and silly stories. I get unbelievably bored, irritated and drained by the endless apparent need to justify the instrument. There, I said it. I’m bloody sick of banjo jokes, I’m bloody sick of most radio interviews turning into a ‘justify why you play a weird instrument that was in that film’ session, I’m bloody sick of hearing that it takes a lot of persuading people to come to a gig where it’s just one guy, a voice and a banjo (with a bit of guitar) for 2 hours rather than a more ‘normal’ instrument. Yes, it drives me mad.

Some may be saying, well yes of course it would. Some may be saying chill out man it’s all a joke. Some may say get over yourself. I’m not saying any of them are wrong either and the whole reason I’ve never had this rant, other than with people I know well of course, is because I do understand. Whether people like my music or not I think most would admit that my show is not a usual banjoist’s concert. But I completely get that that is hard to explain to people. Whether I like it or not, Continue reading “It’s good to be proved wrong” →

Dear all,

It’s been a rather breathless time of it all and there’s no let up any time soon! The tour has been fantastic and I’m loving life on the road and it’s been great to play at, for the most part, full houses and sell loads of CDs. It’s pretty full on though and my mileage has been nothing short of outrageous and my sleep deprivation is quite considerable! Thank god things calm down after this…oh wait.

Anyway, a bit of a report on my gigs:

05/03 – Unicorn Theatre, Abingdon – Oh my god! What a venue! What a venue! A beautiful and extremely old theatre with stunning acoustics. Added to which the crowd were lovely, CD sales were phenomenal and the host Geoff was just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. A wonderful night.

06-07/03 – Moonbeams March Weekend, Driffield – What a cracking little festival! Really enjoyed my sets and nice to catch up with some old faces. Discovery of the year in Plumhall too whose song ‘Never Forget My Name’ is a truly stunning song.

08/03 – Folk On The Moor, Plymouth – Continue reading “Tales of the twat with a laptop” →

Dear all,

Well it’s been a rather breathless time since my last blog! As I write, I am being the steretypical twat with a laptop in a cafe. Ah the joys of being self employed. The tour is underway with three gigs down and another up tonight in Abingdon – what a pretty little town. Last night was Dorking, also a very nice town and I had a lovely gig with some of the loveliest praise to come my way. Thanks everyone! Twickfolk was equally lovely and great to have some family amongst those present! People seem to like the stuff from the new album which is of course always a plus as I now have bloody hundreds of them…The other gig to report on was The Bulls Head in Chelmarsh, a cracking music pub which always has a lovely crowd.

Early reviews for the album have also been great with glowing reports from Acoustic and Froots as well as some online ones and one even in Dutch! Waiting for reviews is a little like waiting for exam Continue reading “Pride comes before a fall…” →

Dear all,

Well I’m going to begin this entry by raising a glass to my wonderful little car which today passed its MOT with flying colours. Given the onslaught of outrageous mileage, a driver who is rubbish and knows nothing about what goes on under the bonnet and a couple of bumps it’s had (one not my fault, one most definitely my fault) I think it’s done really rather well. As you may be able to gather I’m just a little bit happy/relieved it passed its MOT. The tour could have been fun without it…

So what’s been happening then. Well Nic and I had a fun week up in Cumbria playing care homes (see previous blog for why we were doing this…). Grange is a quirky little place and this is where we were based and some good times were had. The response in some of the homes was very moving indeed and I’m very proud to make a difference to the folks in Continue reading “Silly doors” →

Dear all,
I write to you from sunny (no really, well it was earlier it’s dark now) Cumbria where I’m based til Thursday with my mandolin playing chum Nic Zuppardi. We’re playing a series of care home concerts courtesy of Live Music Now (www.livemusicnow.org.uk) and had the first couple today after a rather unpleasantly early journey up the M6. They were both lovely and seemed to make a real difference to them and us, what music should be really. It follows on from a pretty hectic couple of weeks kicking off with a gig back in Newcastle, my second home where I spent six happy years in the not so distant (although becoming slightly scarily distant) past. The Cluny is a great venue and it was a great gig with some welcome familiar faces. Thanks to Ian Courtney for the gig and the accommodation. We had a rather surreal journey to said accommodation when a dreaded red light appeared on my car dashboard saying the car was beginning to overheat! It turned out to be nothing major and was fixed by the AA guy the next day but given we were four miles from the house and it was stupid o’clock in the morning we decided to make the journey stopping every half mile to Continue reading “I was working I swear!” →