Dear all,

Good lord it’s been a little while since my last blog I am awfully sorry, I have received a couple of substantial bollockings for not posting one so I shall update you on all that’s been happening and have a little rant. Now calm down, I can feel your excitement.

So the UFQ tour continued after its slightly chaotic opening in Nottingham and an absolute belter of a gig at Lakeside Arts Centre. I have hardly come across a venue who did everything you’d expect like they did – great promotion, lovely staff, terrific venue, great sound. Bloody marvellous and the audience were great to boot. Much the same can be said of our outing in New Longton two days later as Lancastrians gave us a great night and indeed morning as we played live to a studio audience Continue reading “Just tell us the sodding platform!” →

Dear all,

Well UFQ are off and running on our tour as we kicked off with a couple of cracking gigs in Cornwall. First up was Calstock Village Hall at a rather funkily laid out gig which involved a lot of dancing around from us and the audience. Much fun was had although the gig was somewhat marred by Joe’s guitar falling off the back of the stage during a song thus rendering it unplayable…fortunately a nice couple in the crowd managed to source an acoustic guitar for us and even lent it to us for the next night which was very kind of them. Helland Village Hall came next even though the chap we met in the pub in the Continue reading “A few rants” →

Dear all,

 

Well that’s a UK solo tour over. What a jolly fine one it was too and I really did enjoy myself playing lots of new material alongside some familiar favourites. I was glad the new ones seemed to be a hit, means hopefully people will approve of my new record later in the year! I’m curious as to why I always call it a record…after all it isn’t anymore but anyway you get the idea. Lots of exciting stuff coming up, principally…

IT’S SOON TIME FOR MY FIRST URBAN FOLK QUARTET TOUR! Incidentally, I deliberately put caps lock on there to emphasise my excitement. I’ve been having some severe rehearsals with the UFQ and Continue reading “Another tour finished, a band one to come!” →

Dear all,

It’s been a busy old time just lately and much fun had. First up was a gig in Stourbridge, a place I’ve played a few times and this was a lovely gig at Stourbridge Folk Club at Katie Fitzgerald’s before a trip down to Somerset for a gig at Montacute Village Hall which was another nice night and always a pleasure to see the Cooney family. Then came a bit of excellent route planning on my part as my next gig was up in Gloucestershire on the way back to Stafford, I mean how sensible was that? Except of course, things come in and instead I drove up to Stafford to play at a wedding at 1 o’clock and then back down to Continue reading “Keep left, perfectly simple” →

Dear all,

Lots to tell you about from my gigs so far but before I do – I am running a workshop as part of my tour. An all day workshop on clawhammer banjo run by me at the beautiful Gleanings Rural Study Centre in Shropshire. Details can be found on their website: http://gleaningscentre.co.uk/events/. I’ll be going from the very beginning through some more advanced techniques so whatever your ability, do come along.

So then my gigs…Bury and Durham I covered in my previous outing but since then I’m three gigs further down on my UK tour. Baldock Folk Club was a fun gig, always a nice and receptive crowd at this one and this was no exception. It also has the remarkable bonus of a pub landlord who by coincidence is also from Stafford who has an extensive selection of very good real ale and phenomenally expensive whiskey with which he is very generous. I enjoyed that night.

Next up came a trip down to Exeter to see my cousin and I had a bloody marvellous time as we watched ridiculous youtube videos, drank a bit and generally had a bloody good time. From there I headed to Plymouth for my first ever gig in the city and what a gig it was! God bless the B Bar for a cracking night which you can tell from the ludicrous Continue reading “Workshop added to tour” →

‘That’s not how the original sounded’
‘Why don’t you play one we know?’

‘He hasn’t done anything with that song’
‘He’s too good to be playing cheesy covers’

Just some of the things I’ve heard from people when discussing the complicated art of playing other people’s songs. There’s the mob who want to hear the same songs they’ve always heard and utter the singularly irritating second quotation as a question indicating what they essentially want out of any gig is a tribute act or the real thing. There’s the other mob who believe cover versions of well known songs is ‘cheesy’ and beneath artistic merit or at the very least believe that if you’re going to do a cover do something interesting with it.

This last point I do think has some truth. One of the most staggeringly pointless recorded cover versions I ever came across was a cover (and I use that word in the loosest possible sense) of Queen’s Killer Queen by Travis. It was a b-side to a single as I remember and I couldn’t for the life of me see what the point was. It was quite literally a like-for-like cover with no change to anything at all except of course Fran Healy instead of Freddie Mercury and Brian May’s guitar part played by someone who wasn’t Brian May. With every respect to Fran who I do think has a terrific voice of its type, he ain’t Freddie Mercury (who is?) and that type of song was so manifestly unsuited to him. Had I heard it in a pub played by a covers band I’d think they did it reasonably well but released by a hugely well known pop band it seemed odd.

But then that brings me on to the point – surely these things are all about context? In a busy pub on a Saturday night or at a wedding reception, there is absolutely nowt wrong with a band reproducing a lot of very well known popular hits to entertain the crowd. In fact there is a great skill in it and I have spent an evening having a rollickingly good time both as artist and audience member in this context. ‘Too good for that’ – are you serious? Whatever music you’re playing, playing it well and tightly as a band is ALWAYS a challenge and is ALWAYS impressive. Doing like for like covers is certainly not easy.

While we’re at it, there’s also a myth that to be of artistic credibility you need to be writing all your own stuff. This criticism is particularly levelled at the X Factor brigade. For me, the reason most of them are not terribly impressive is not that they don’t write their own stuff…it’s simply that they’re so utterly generic and without any unique musical voice whatsoever and sometimes even with limited competence. But for instance, Alison Krauss is probably my favourite female singer of them all…never written a song in her life that’s been on record. Are you telling me she’s of no artistic merit? Or Sinatra, Presley, Ella Fitzgerald? There is a skill in doing a cover well, make no mistake.

But…outside of a ‘function’ context if you like, and frankly even within one, I do like to hear an interesting version of someone else’s song. I perform several frequently such as Hammer and Nail by Paul Thorn, Sword of Light by Horslips and of course Call Me Al but I like to think all three are very different from the originals and are reworkings in the truest sense of the word, even if you don’t like them! I loved Hothouse Flowers’ version of I Can See Clearly Now, it was just such an imaginative way to perform a song whose format seemed so set in stone. But then again I also regularly encore with a straight ahead bluegrass version of Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms so am I contradicting myself there? Probably.

The point is like all these things, people should judge things on artistic merit and not be blinded by snobbery whether it be inverted or not. As primarily a folk music performer, I recognise the importance of bands and singers out there who keep flying the flag for their traditions and idioms. I certainly wouldn’t want to see no straight-ahead bluegrass bands out there – that’s a sound I want to always be around! Equally, I don’t castigate a bluegrass band if they choose to do a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody. If they do it well that’s great too. All these different types of cover versions have a place, I guess much depends on what type of band you’re trying to be and that’s what puzzled me about Travis’s little effort. Surely they are a purveyor of Fran Healy’s type of pop song – so why a random straight-ahead cover of a Queen song?! Then again, I do You Can Call Me Al, but I like to think it’s not particularly a like-for-like cover.

Dear all,

 

My UK tour has begun and the opening two gigs were absolute crackers. First up was a premiere of the Dan Walsh trio with fabulous fiddler Patsy Reid and mighty mandolinist Nic Zuppardi at Bury MET theatre and it was bloody fantastic, we had a wonderful time. The walk from the theatre back to my car was somewhat interesting. Bury on a Friday night is quite an experience I tell you…Anyway the next night it was up to Durham to play in a launderette. Yes you did read that correctly. The Old Cinema Launderette is a cracking wee venue in Durham and it was a lovely gig with a great crowd and I was cooked extremely nice Continue reading “Meeting a hero” →

Dear all,

Well I am now well and truly back in Blighty (sounds like an album name, but don’t worry I’m not seriously contemplating it) and feel I should reflect on a mammoth trip. My first New Zealand tour was a year or so in the making and was certainly not without its little stresses but it must rank as a truly amazing experience with wonderful gigs, great new friends in quite the most remarkable country. Future trips there are planned and I’m sure I’ll have many more great times there but there’s always something special about a first trip that goes quite so well and I’ll always treasure it.

So to start at the beginning…always on the lookout for gigs of course I’ve more recently played abroad rather a lot and I thought I’d look into the New Zealand thing, principally because I have a very good friend from school who moved there eight years ago and it had been an ambition to visit him there. Secondly, some friends of mine did some gigs there so I decided to simply email every folky or appropriate looking venue I could find on the wonderful fantastic remarkable Continue reading “So how was New Zealand?” →

Dear all,

Applogies for a relative lack of bloggage our here in New Zealand. My laptop is still working beautifully with one rather notable aspect an exception – the screen is so faint as to make it unusable. Before anyone asks, yes I have tried turning the brightness up! However, as I believe I have mentioned in a previous blog, doing these on my iPhone is an almighty throb in the posteria so I thought I’d wait til tour’s end to tell you all about it. Just three gigs to go now starting in the lovely Boathouse in Nelson. Lots to tell you, will do when I get back (or in an airport bored out my mind if I can find wifi).

But in the meantime, just to say there’s lots of new gigs on the gigs page to look at. A big solo tour in March and April beckons when I get back with a few special guests on some then it’s my first tour as a member of the Urban Folk Quartet in April/May. Well, obviously I suppose my New Zealand tour is my first tour as a member of them since I am one now, what I meant was May will be my first tour playing with them as a member. Not that I’ve gigged at all with them yet but…sorry I’ll stop there.

Anyway, a little rant or observation for this entry. Recently I’ve had a selection of emails from ‘Yahoo’ who I have an email account with. The mails warn me that my account will expire unless I update it to a new format and they’re even good enough to provide me with a link. Isn’t that nice of them? I can’t help but think this scam would be more convincing if the email address wasn’t joewozereandisatotalprick@aol.com. Just a thought. Please don’t email that address by the way, it wasn’t exactly that but it did contain the words joe and @aol.com. In addition to this, I’ve had a number of comments on blogs recently from ‘people’ who’ve left comments such as ‘your writing is goods to peoples come find me at…’ or words to that effect. But the best one was on my 2013 review where it said ‘we all have relationship problems, you obviously want to get back with your boyfriend’. I didn’t publish these comments on the grounds that I have never had a boyfriend, despite my support of gay marriage I am not in fact gay and finally…these ‘people’ are obviously hacking bastards, hackstards if you will.

Dear all,

The tour is very much underway here in New Zealand as I go from beautiful place to beautiful place. After the festival in Auckland I spent a couple of weeks in the city with my old friend Tom and it’s a cracking city with lots going on but it’s been nice to see the stunning natural beauty of this wonderful country. On Friday night I headed north to Tutukaka where I played a very lively entertaining gig in Schnappa Rock bar. Everyone there made it a very fun night and it was great to meet more splendid people and see a few faces from the festival.

Last night I played in just about the most stunning setting I think I ever have played in! Kerikeri was the destination in a quite amazingly idyllic garden – do check out the photo on my facebook page. I would post it here but having one or two issues with technology! It was a lovely gig and great to meet Toby Garland who set up both the aforementioned gigs for me and Rachael, daughter of my old chum Garry Copeland from Stafford. A great time had aside from pesky insects who are rapidly beginning to irritate me…

Tonight I’m in Whangerei playing in a wonderful house, built by the householders themselves and then tomorrow it’s back to Auckland to play a sold out Devenport Folk Club. A TV appearance beckons the next day too, I’m sure I’ll look a treat…

It’s fairly hard to find anything to rant about out here. The weather’s been lovely and the people so friendly and the gigs highly enjoyable. And to top it all, Liverpool won 5-1 against Arsenal! So surely all must be well in my world? Well yes, but if UK gigs from months ago could pay me that would really really help…What these cretins fail to understand is I don’t care one iota that you only pay the thirtieth day after your granny’s dog dies. I need money. Thanks.