2009 on the road

The Camel's Back In Warwick

2010-05-25T11:23:00.004+01:00

Sunday 20th December. Warwick Arts Centre, Warwick University.
Accommodation: The Ramada Hotel, Coventry.
29/30
Apart from the obvious ones, there are a number of requisites to being creative in music - requisites that largely - through emotional discomfort - are designed, perfectly, to counteract any pleasure that might be derived from the creative process itself.
One of these requisites is to feel that the profound quality of what you do is largely ignored by the rest of the world; this is also very closely related to the requisite which asks that you feel completely misunderstood and underestimated by critics and reviewers.

There is an important distinction here when examining these conditions. It’s important we note that - just because you feel ignored by the rest of the world, that this doesn’t mean that you’re not.
No, you mustn’t look at this in an ‘ironic’ or ‘romantically paradoxical’ way, thus creating a euphoric sense of what might be called reverse reassurance. Indeed, it’s far more than just a remote possibility that you have it exactly right.

The next important point is - when it just might come to pass that those out there in the ‘listening community’ are in actual fact recognising your existence, maybe even favourably, it is crucial you continue to feel ignored.

It was back in the year 2000; my fourth year in the Albion Band; a special ‘live’ Mike Harding Radio 2 ‘In Concert’ show. It was a day that fractured the back of a camel that had had an ever decreasing centre of gravity for a good eighteen months, maybe more.

An early start. A late finish. In between, before setting off from my Preston home, I first had to load up with amps, guitars - electric and acoustic, along with all the other accessories that feel ever increasing in both number and weight as energy levels and work schedules fall and rise.

‘Still’, I used to tell myself, ‘just be thankful you’re not a drummer’.

Leading up to the 8 p.m. show, there was going to be plenty of preparation through the afternoon, so it was important to arrive with plenty of time to spare.

As I hinted earlier, I’d been troubled for months now by the style and shape of the Albion’s (Band’s and agent’s) approach to its PR material.
It had been decided to promote the band on the basis of youth, given that we had the ‘twenty something’ Joe Broughton clowning about and playing fiddle for us (brilliant fiddle playing - I should add), and the ‘twenty something’ Kellie While singing lead on most of our songs (again, beautifully - I should add again).

As I think back, I’d have to say that my contribution to the band was quite substantial - both creatively and physically. I always looked at it as an investment, but it was an investment that saw me doing all number of things, one of which was sharing the driving (much of the time) with just one other band member - Neil Marshall, our drummer (brilliant drummer - I should once again add).

My limits were truly tested. Here was one scenario that was regularly repeated. We’d be only, say, three or four dates into a tour, and probably after yet another lousy night’s sleep, I’d be setting out, driving the bus to that day’s destination - the next stop along the way.
I’d often reach levels of tiredness that transcended the desire or ability to sleep. This required me to ‘think’ my way through the day, as in - the body would be going through motions that the spirit was not really party to. I’d be kind of - dead, in a way; just living for the moment it would end.

Looking, straining through this distortion of fatigue, the miles would pass - and then! Then I’d hear the sound of snoring from the seats behind. I’d look in the rear view mirror; turn my head slightly, and yes, these fellow band members, some of which, I felt, had never took it upon themselves to dig deep enough - through finance and intent - to learn for themselves the art of driving on the roads. And for yet another day they were once again being nicely taken care of.

I was in the process of learning that if you take care of your own logistics in life—as I had begun to do through a sense of necessity when arriving back in the UK in 1988—you might only have to be slightly accommodating, and that’s all that’s needed, before you can find yourself taking care of the logistics of others. And for me it wasn’t just a case of driving, it had gone well beyond that.

The snag with anything like this is that it’s never black and white; the hard part is weighing up your gains against your losses. And as with any number of things in life that we care about, our losses might have to become painful enough to force resolve upon us.

Now - in a literary way - I need to navigate my way back to Warwick.

We were to perform three songs, one I remember was a Richard Thompson piece; another I can’t recall; the third was to be either ‘The Complete Angler’, a song I wrote with Ashley, and on which I played mandolin and took lead vocal, or the Julie Matthews song - ‘Go North’.
The decision as to which one of those two songs were to be performed was to lie with the BBC producer of the show.

My view then, was that The Complete Angler was a great song, one of the best that Ashley and I had written; but here’s the crucial issue. For a start I couldn’t work out why we should be affording that decision to the show’s producer (unless, of course, it was about getting into his ‘good books’ which then might lead to more radio work?); then, secondly, it began to dawn on me; the producer; he actually owned the publishing on the Julie Matthews song.

I was getting a very bad taste in my mouth, and the show was still hours away. I knew, if I were being honest, I shouldn’t be doing this. But the truth was I’d be letting too many people down if I just walked away now.

Show time arrived. And I needn’t say which of the two songs had been chosen.

‘10, 9, 8, 7’, etc … ‘Now, live from Warwick, the BBC proudly presents Folk On Two with your host Mike Harding’, the intro went. We stood on stage, poised and ready, but before I hit those opening chords, host, Mike Harding was first to welcome the listeners to the program, and announce the first band up - us.

His reference to the Albion Band went very much like this: Founded by Ashley Hutchings, here’s a band that been around ‘forever’, but now, dragged into the modern age, it features the wonderful vocals of Kellie While and the brilliant fiddle playing of Joe Broughton, two young and shining talents who’s youth brings the average age of the band down to seventy.

And that was it, that was his introduction.

So the only reference to my presence on that stage was first of all - nameless, and secondly it appeared to negate my creative input on the basis of age. In my view, it was cheap … well, worse than cheap, it was offensive.
To quote a line in an earlier paragraph, ‘our losses might have to become painful enough to force resolve upon us’, and resolve was what I felt; I doubt it could’ve been any stronger; so it was only a matter of days before I announced my departure from the Albion Band.

Moderate Blessings And Relative Insularity

2010-05-25T10:51:00.004+01:00

Friday 18th December. Travel Day (to Hove).
Accommodation: The De Vere Grand Hotel.
More snow and ice than I can remember. Do I like all these extreme winter conditions? No, not really. The wintery weather is OK as long as it’s all viewed through a window from within a warm and cosy house, and preferably a house you know you’ll be staying in for more than one night at a time. As moderate luck has it, we’ll be staying in the Grand Hotel for two nights, so I’ll count my moderate blessings.

The hotel is superb; very comfortable, and as stated on the tin - very ‘grand’. Outside it’s a skating ring, or to be grammatically correct - skating rink (English, what a strange language?). They both amount to exactly the same thing: you need to tread very carefully; but treading is exactly what you can’t do, instead you sort-of shuffle using very tight, short movements of the feet, and then every so often, feet together, you slide a little. It takes constant concentration, and is, in an accumulative way, quite exhausting.

The danger after periods of successful negotiation is becoming momentarily just that little bit too self-confident, and —just to see if it works—making the decision to revert back, almost, to your normal style of walking. So you widen your step, and no sooner is it widened than the arms and body go into an instinctive series of self-corrective motions, your confidence replaced by a surge of adrenaline and a sudden increase in heart rate; yes, you were doing it right in the first place!

I discovered a couple of decent looking Indian restaurants in the afternoon, both within sliding distance of the hotel; so considering that I was under no obligation this evening to present myself to the world, or Brighton, in the guise of a performer, I committed myself to an evening of relative insularity - just me and my Eastern cuisine. I later discovered that in my pursuit of solitude that I missed out on ‘the Band meal’.

You know, I wouldn’t describe myself as out-and-out anti-social, but I would normally, given the choice, opt for a quiet time alone, or a one-to-one situation, than an evening around a big table, listening to lots of banter, waiting for waiter or waitress to arrive, then for the food to be served, and having my choice of restaurant and evenings schedule determined to a greater or lesser degree by the whims of a collective force.
I spend enough time on tour already, being taken places - towns; theatres; hotels; journeys; departure times; arrival times; people; all things that I have had to surrender, or rather - suspend, any desire to self-determine.
I enjoyed the Indian, and I enjoyed my room.

Jackie said I could claim the price of my meal back (everyone else had theirs paid for), but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it; it was ‘my’ food, and ‘I’ paid for it. And for one night it was ‘I’ who was in control.

Saturday 19th December. The Hove Centre, Hove Town Hall.
Accommodation: As last night.
28/30
There’s a distinct accompanying feeling when arriving at an unlit venue on a freezing cold winter’s night; a venue that appears empty and completely locked on all sides.
There will most likely be people in there; the PA will have arrived well before us. But it’s a sense of - ‘how long are we going to have to wait, banging on the windows and doors, before someone appears from along these dark inner corridors, to either tell us —using the combination of hand waving and mouth movements—that we are on the wrong side of the building, or perhaps if we’re lucky, allow us in to relative warmth?’

Here, today, there was something desolate about what was in front of me, and my mind’s eye flashed back to Arizona in the 1970’s when I passed through the ghost town of Jerome; a feeling that fused together two locations that couldn’t have been more different.

Big match on tonight: Nottingham Forest v Preston North End. Looking to grab whatever brief piece of commentary and live match excitement I could - pre-gig and interval, I was ready and prepared with laptop and mobile internet dongle, I just had to find an area of the building that provided me with an adequate signal. I walked the corridors, went from top floor to basement, from east wing to west wing, and alas, such an area could not be found.
It is interesting how quickly the frustration of not being able to follow the match was replaced with a feeling best described as indifference, on learning that Forest won 3-0.

Sage And Tyne

2010-05-25T10:40:00.003+01:00

Wednesday 16th December. The Sage, Gateshead.
Accommodation: Thistle Hotel.
26/30
Second time here for the band; it’s a new and pretty spectacular concert hall. Going from the more antiquated venue to the very modern helps put into perspective some of the progress made over the years in acoustic design, and these developments are significant. The on-stage sound at The Sage is a dream; you can hear each person, vocal and instrument with a clarity I don’t think I’ve experienced anywhere else.
Pre-concert, and it feels good, poignant even, looking out from this stage at the vast array of seats that are yet to be filled, then what seems to be just moments later, each of those seats will be taken, and the show begins.
It’s a modern, well organised operation here; the staff - smart and efficient, good food backstage, all stated and scheduled times—onstage, off-stage, etc —adhered to.
Outside, the weather was becoming increasingly unpleasant - but what do you expect, this is the north-east - still though, a bit extreme for my liking.

Thursday 17th December. The Guildhall, Preston.
Accommodation: Home.
27/30
Probably less than forty five minutes out of Newcastle, and it began to snow. The further west we drove, the heavier the snow became.
If it had only been a case of motorway driving, the journey would’ve been quite a casual affair, but the Pennines—the range of hills and mountains that separate our intended destination, Lancashire (on the west) from Yorkshire and the North-East of England—has, at the best of times it’s very own weather front - colder, windier, and in this case snowier.
It wasn’t long before the cars and trucks were slowly crawling along these country routes, and then not much longer before all traffic gradually came to a standstill. From a passenger seat perspective, however, this wasn’t at all bad; the scenery was spectacular, and I soon had the camera out.

It was obvious there was not any real danger of getting stuck - we were getting too close to the M6, and once on that stretch of motorway it was a straightforward drive south to junction 30. What we were more concerned about was Gareth and David in the van somewhere behind us (hopefully) - the van that carried our sound system. The weather was worsening.

Our concern centred on the fact that when the band was about to leave Newcastle, Gareth was desperately trying to locate the whereabouts of young David. It seemed he, David, had gone out on the town after last night’s show and either hadn’t returned to his hotel room, or was, for what would be somewhat obvious reasons, completely unconscious.
Gareth’s problem here was that he didn’t know David’s room number, and because of data protection, the hotel wouldn’t give it to him.

David, as stated above, is young - maybe twenty one or thereabouts. He’s also extremely likeable and personable. Part of why he’s so likeable is that although he comes across as a confident soul, he also has an air of innocence about him, bordering on naivety maybe. But the more one finds out about him the more you can’t help but see him as an accident always about to happen. Today was just one example of this; whether it’s with women; dubious characters he befriends in dubious drinking establishments; losing or misplacing of money; you name it, trouble and David are never that far from each other.
Already he’s been in hospital for all kinds of tests as a result of the detrimental effects of some highly questionable (yet legal) substance he’d been inducing. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him.

On this particular day—the way things eventually transpired—there hadn’t been any real justification for anxiety; everyone eventually arrived safe and sound in my hometown of Preston.

I was so pleased to be going home again, the only downside being that it was for just the one night; tomorrow’s a travel day - we head south to Brighton.

Enjoying The Walk

2010-05-25T10:03:00.011+01:00

Some of these notes below were made during the final week of the Winter tour, some I’m adding now as I look back at events and locations, recalling and reviewing the mental imprints and pictures I carry from them; the backstage corridors, stage doors, the town centres I walked through before sound-checks; the faces of friends and those who came backstage to say hi after a show.

Of course, to write ‘as-you-go’ makes life easier than writing retrospectively - in theory it is, anyway; but this, of course, does involve a degree of consistent self-discipline.
Even then it’s not only a consistency factor that holds the key.  As discipline and resolve don’t come in standard sizes, I find they sometimes can’t quite keep up with the movements of circumstance and mood swings that constitute ‘life on the road’. It’s not as though ‘resolve’ itself weakens, it just gets out-punched on occasion; but then, given time, hopefully, it can re-assess, then re-group, before rising to the next level of resilience.

Another thing I’ve encountered - and each time it’s as though it’s the first time - is the obstacle that often stands between a piece of work in progress, and the completion of that work. There’s a significant part of me that lives only for the finishing line, yet another part that would actually prefer to leave things hanging. Maybe I do have an issue with commitment after all?

Metaphorically speaking, it does seem important to ‘enjoy the walk’. That is to mean, if the goal becomes the only focus, then little or nothing can be gained from the process of getting there.  I was once likened to the captain of a ship, who fixed his eye only on the horizon, consequently neglecting the upkeep and well-being of his craft and crew - the very people who where assisting him on the journey.  
However, in the same breath, if the only preoccupation is with one’s immediate circumstances, then the absence of direction and intent will arguably limit one’s achievements.

Monday 14th December. St George’s Hall, Bradford.  Accommodation: Home 
24/30 
I have a huge fondness for both Bradford and for the St George’s Hall.
Ever since I played here with Al Stewart in the 1970s, this has seemed like a special place. Then, some thirty two years later came the poignancy of that final concert on my maiden 2002 Steeleye Span tour; a beautiful night, and one I wrote about in the diary I was keeping at the time; these were my words …

'Friday 20th Dec 2002 .
St Georges Hall, Bradford.
Theatre capacity: 1500 Sold out. 
Final show.  Checked in at the Hilton at 3pm; I'm feeling close to home now. Carol arrived about an hour later from Preston. Originally the plan had been that we would go straight home to Preston after the show, but now I'm thinking that it's only right and appropriate to spend the rest of the evening with the band and crew.  Emotionally, I arrive at this last tour date with both - considerable sadness, and relief. This has been one of the most satisfying and fulfilling experiences of my career. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will not be the end of my working relationship with these guys.  It's possible to state that tonight's show was the very best of the tour, we were relaxed and 'up for it' as was the audience. The on-stage sound seemed faultless. There were quite a few familiar faces and friends in the audience, some of them joining us back-stage after the show for wine and food. Later, back at the hotel, the band and those closely associated with it, gathered together for one last time. We found a cosy, but appropriately sized function room, where we discussed the events of the past four weeks, and ate Indian food - after all, we were in Bradford. Tomorrow morning Carol and I will head back to Preston - and wait for Christmas.'

Tuesday 15th December. Parr Hall, Warrington.  Accommodation: The Viaggio.  
25/30 
A small, old fashioned looking venue; maybe could do with a face-lift, perhaps, but I’m not completely sure; it does have plenty of charm.
The crowd was great tonight; the hotel was dubious.  

One thing that absolutely amazes me, especially at this time of the year, is how as a paying customer at many hotels, you’re expected to put up with parties and discos that can go on as late as 1 p.m.
Tonight we were comparatively lucky; the music stopped at around 12:30. My room sat more or less directly over the disco, and it literally shook with the volume of the music - just what you want after twenty five concerts, eh?

It's Behind Me

2010-01-05T12:42:00.008Z

Thursday 10th December. The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury.
Accommodation: The Bell Hotel, Tewkesbury.
22/30
 As with last night’s theatre, it’s a little unusual to be playing only one night here.  Once again, and as with so many of the halls on this winter tour, it’s my second visit to the Roses within a year (see: Third Night Nerves. Monday 2nd February).

Touring at any other time of year, there would most probably be a tendency, to some extent, to forget which month one was in. But as we move further along through the duration of these December days, the reminders are both more frequent and harder to ignore.
Tonight it’s the pantomime, and the first of many I’m certain. This means that we can’t use our usual dressing rooms due to the number of Widow Twankey, Ugly Sister or Mother Goose outfits which occupy all available space. Instead we are all (excluding Maddy) upstairs in the Eric Morecambe Suite - Oh yes we are!

Friday 11th December. De Montfort Hall, Leicester.  
Accommodation: The Sky Plaza Hotel. 
23/30
 I've had a soft spot for the De Montfort Hall and for Leicester ever since I’d travel here as a guitar-picking nineteen year old to see June, my girlfriend, back in 1970/71.  
She was an exceptional person who got involved with an exceptionally mixed up person. Yes, that was me.

 We met in Preston, the first part of our relationship being very problematic on account of her protective, middle-class and somewhat–as I recall–snobbish Father expressing profound disapproval towards me. Some might say he was very perceptive!
But he actually tried to force us not to see each other, which was rather ambitious seeing we were both in our late teens.

June moved down to Leicester to study Psychology at the university, and I would sometimes catch the bus, sometimes hitch-hike, down there for a weekend, sometimes longer.
Later I’d be travelling ‘up’ to Leicester from London. This was after Christmas 1970 when I took the plunge, and decided to seek fame, fortune and disillusionment in the big smoke.

Every visit to Leicester was special back then. Along with the bands we’d see and other events we’d go to, I even loved being inside that cupboard sized room of hers at the halls of residence in the suburb of Oadby. There’s so much more I could write about our last few months together, but I’ll save that for the autobiography.

One thing's for sure though, the peaceful setting of a pleasant and middle-class Oadby is a million miles from the surroundings I find myself in today at the Sky Plaza Hotel. It’s a decidedly dodgy hotel in a decidedly dodgy area. God knows how we got booked into this place. I keep telling myself that it will soon be over, and then I’ll be wending my way home for two - yes, ‘two’ whole days off.

Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th December. Days off. 
Accommodation: Home.

Ritual And Regalia

2010-01-05T12:29:00.004Z

It has been a long year. And yet, the year’s end seems to have arrived swiftly; a contradiction? Not really; it all depends which part of you is doing the talking

The light at the end of the tunnel is almost blinding, but for some reason the last few steps always feel the longest. I suspect I’m way too busy trying to get things over with - too preoccupied with the idea of the ‘result’ rather than the ‘journey’. The key, I believe, is to enjoy the journey, whether it be a tour, or maybe one’s journey through life. I’m working on that one.

Before I know it I’ll be at home, sat there wondering when the next day off is. To make the transition a little easier I’ll get a ‘do not disturb’ - ‘clean my room now’ sign for the bedroom door - oh, and a telephone in there too so I can call down for room service. It might be difficult though finding someone to clean, vacuum, slam doors and talk loudly in the hallway outside at 8 a.m.

I don’t actually mind Christmas too much; but I absolutely loathe–what I typically think of as–the alcohol fuelled over-sentimentality of New Year. Rituals of any kind raise some kind of question mark for me; obviously we humans seem to need them - otherwise we’d not have so many, but I can’t help but wonder why. I have seen no evidence that ritual and regalia does anything to influence what is or isn’t already in the heart. And it may even serve as a distraction. Perhaps that’s the point?

How many sing about remembering old acquaintance, only to–once having sobered up–can’t even remember where they were the night before? How many–for any longer than the duration of the song–as they tearfully link hands, really do care about those around them?  Look, if you actually care about people you don’t need to do this.  I think the same about the ceremony of marriage also, but I’m sure it’ll come as some relief when I say that I’ll leave that topic alone for the time being.

Wednesday 9th December. The Borough Theatre, Abergavenny.  
Accommodation: The Kings Arms, Abergavenny.  
21/30 
Not one of the larger venues, and one that on previous encounters we’ve played twice in consecutive nights. It seats something like 350, sits above a market, and has, as the title perhaps suggests, a municipal feel to it. If I’m making it sound a bit ‘cold’, that’s not at all the intention; when inside the hall it’s warm, and friendly - as the general population here seem to be from my experience.
It’s difficult to get lost here in the town centre, it’s quaint and similarly small - falling somewhere in between the prosperous, and the typically austere nature of what one finds in quite a lot of Welsh towns - usually due to their dependence on obsolete industries such as coal.  Each time I come here it looks slightly trendier - now there’s even a newly opened Café Nero - maybe the new measure of a growing economy?
All-in-all a very fine evening I’d say, and with only only one small blemish, which was when the theatre manager walked into Maddy’s dressing room at a very inopportune moment. I don’t know the details, all I heard were the screams.

The Spirit Is A Non-Conformer

2009-12-31T13:03:00.004Z

Winter has certainly moved in, and I’ll admit it - I’m finding this last phase of the tour a challenge to my morale.
For a good few days now, my attempts to locate the necessary inspiration that would help create the motivation to put finger to keypad, have met with no success - despite this being the very thing that usually lifts the spirits.

I’m so curious as to how many out there ‘handle’ their ambitions.
By that, I don’t necessarily mean the stereotypical ambitions - the ambition to ‘get on’ in life, to make lots of money, etc. I mean whatever it is that one can only ignore at a significant cost to the spirit and the morale of that individual.  

My observations lead me to consider that there are those who without too much hesitation follow what they feel is intrinsically correct for them. They, perhaps, have always done this. Of course many, many people do this, and in that breath, what is there to consider?

But if I put this into some kind of larger context, there are also those who appear to either have a need of some kind to prevent themselves from following this natural course, or maybe? - don’t actually have one, as such, to follow (though I do not actually think for one moment that any one of us ‘does not have a course to follow’).

In the book ‘The Soul’s Code’, author James Hillman puts forward a hypothesis he calls ‘The Acorn Theory’, in which he claims that - just as the acorn holds within it–in the form of a blue print–the mighty oak that it will one day become, so we too, individually, carry our own unique inner map that is to be, or is intended to be, our destiny.

This strikes a chord with me, as I’ve seen myself do two things in life; I’ve seen myself take to one thing or another without a second thought: e.g. kicking a football, painting, fishing, writing, or playing guitar; then on the other hand I’ve observed considerable self-instigated–and debatably successful–attempts to block this natural flow of self-expression.  
Along with this there has been a direct correlation between - my mental health - and which one of these two exercises are taking place at the time.  

Potentially, it can take years of soul searching to recognise such a deafeningly obvious relationship - as this one certainly is.

But if it’s true that we all have our paths to follow, I think it important that we don’t just perceive the notion of an individual’s destiny as one that represents the common view of greatness.
To me, it’s also perceivable that it might just as well be what we think of as destitution. I’ll go back to these points later.

A logical question to ask when it comes to whether or not one has a path to follow, would be: for what reason? Who, or what, has determined what the path should be? And though, again, it seems quite a natural and logical thing to do, I believe the one big mistake we mortals make in light of this question is equating the concepts of ‘reason’ and ‘decision-making’ only with our own mental processes.

 By all means, it might be valid to use one’s own means of deduction as a marker, but also one’s thinking power can be used as a measure of much greater possibility - whether it be within, or outside of the human condition.

I’ll illustrate my point, firstly by taking just about any one of us as an example as we go about our day to day actions; for much of that time there is little, if any, doubt in the mind that the reality we alone experience of the world is anything other than ‘absolute’ - that is, it’s the same experience everyone else is having of the world.
Notice I stated - ‘of’ the world, and not ‘in’ the world. So by ’experience’ I mean one’s perception of circumstances, rather than one’s circumstances - rich, poor, etc.

 If one pauses for thought, and considers that, OK, some areas of that assumption may be correct, it’s quite possible, or more likely probable that it is incorrect.
Certainly, if viewed existentially, such a consideration couldn’t be made at all; a reality as experienced by a separate consciousness is bound to be totally unique.

In truth, one can literally only imagine someone else's world.
 Also our levels of comprehension vary.
Metaphorically speaking, we might look in one direction and see those who we are smarter than, then turn around to see those smarter than oneself.
 But to see human intelligence and coherence as a line that starts at ‘simple’ and ends at ‘brilliance’ is in itself an illustration of the need to simplify; there are lines in all directions.

Our modern lifestyle takes for granted much that could once only have been seen as belonging to the realms of magic. And yet it’s easy to think that ‘possibility’ is pre-set; even though an idea, a concept, might appear only to belong in the ethereal, once it’s been actualised and has become a normal part of our lives, it’s as ordinary and as three dimensional as anything else.

In light of this it looks as though there is in fact no limit, or maybe I should say - there are no limits (in any direction). Now, is ‘possibility’ something we ourselves make up, or is it something we tune into? This is what I inferred earlier when I used the phrase ‘within, or outside of the human condition’.

Returning to the ‘path’ idea; again, the notions of whether all in life is random, or whether it is ‘by design’ are concepts created by us - within the constraints of what we perceive as random or designed.

Study and research over the centuries has explained much in the way of the intention, cause and purpose that lies beneath much animal and human behaviour in this world, behaviour that may once have appeared irrational. So why should, and how could, anything be without reason or cause? The only thing we must not do is make the mistake of thinking we know what that reason is - until, that is, we know it.

And herein lies the catch; as one ponders, or agonises even, over what to do in life; over what path you should be following; this is so often done with a preconceived view of how the true path of destiny will appear before your very eyes, waving at you, shouting, ‘here I am … over here; come and get me’.
 The truth is that you may already be on it. Maybe.

 But when I write, be it music or verse, that’s when life appears to make a bit more sense; a bit more, what am I talking about? - a lot more sense.
That’s when there’s a feeling of, call it what you like - Feng Shui, maybe? It’s when everything falls into line - when life is quite OK.

What makes you feel that way?

Don’t get me wrong; everything comes with a price attached.
That old writing adage speaks volumes: One percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration.
Realising your dreams can be very hard work, and can take courage; but the cost of not attempting to realise them is much, much greater - and, who knows, you may still have it all to do later on (though, to be honest, I can’t vouch for that).

So what is the definition of true success?
 I, over the years, like many others out there, have pursued ‘the object’ of what I perceived as success; but as time passed, the most curious thing took place. First I began to see success less as ‘the’ object, and more as a by-product of action.
Then from there I went on to see the action itself as the object.

This might go some way to explaining why there are plenty of unhappy wealthy people as well as miserable poor people (and of course, why also there are both rich and poor who are quite happy).

When you do what’s right for you, you can’t really lose, and what comes with it, whether it be financial wealth or not, is a by-product of that success.

Remember: The spirit is a non-conformer

In a world of ‘shoulds’ and shouldn’ts, the fear of where following one’s spirit might lead you is understandable.

The Buddhist may say: what you’re meant to do, and to learn here, now, in this mortal life, is a direct result of what kind of mortal life was lived before.
As I mentioned earlier, albeit briefly, this could equate to a life as a beggar, or as a king - or anything else, come to that.  
Whatever it is, and wherever that might be, there is where your point of power lies.

On that note I’ll leave you with one of my all time favourite passages:

Think of a river fed from the mountains.  See that river flow.
It has no perception, just a course to run.
On its run it passes over many rocks, effecting many banks - making them wider depending on the flow, eroding the rocks as it flows, with no memory of what the terrain was once like. 
Intent on its purpose of reaching the estuary, it becomes part of the ocean. 
The cycle continues as it evaporates, becoming clouds and falling again on that same mountain to pass over the now further eroded rocks, with no prior knowledge of ever passing afore.
 See how existing in ‘the now’ causes effect.

Let He Who Is Without Sin . . .

2009-12-12T10:39:00.016Z

Friday 4th December. The Maltings, Farnham, Surrey.
Accommodation: The Mercure Bush Hotel, Farnham.
17/30
I’m compelled to ponder for a while on the subject of Tiger Woods - only because my golfing comparisons made yesterday caused a drawing of attention, initially, in his direction. Of course, once the attention had finished being drawn, there were, and are, a number of details to observe that make up the drama that ‘is’ Tiger’s life at present.  

This isn’t so much about golf, it’s more about life. And it’s not wholly about Tiger Woods, but more an observation of just how polarised those members of the public appear to be that respond and react to subject matter such as this. And not just the public, it's even his colleagues.

I read that the Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik was the one responsible for introducing friend, Elin Nordegren to Woods, and she subsequently went on to become Tiger’s wife.
Parnevik now says he misjudged the character of Tiger Woods, and said, amongst other things, “We probably thought he was a better guy than he is”, and “When you’re the world’s top athlete you should think before you do stuff”.

We can probably all understand any sympathy, or sense of responsibility he might be feeling, but there’s an air of self-righteousness in his words that I struggle to embrace.  
I’m only using this guy as an example.

It appears there are those who can understand some of what I’d describe as a behaviour known to have existed in humankind since the beginning of time. By that, I don’t mean a complete understanding of the behaviour, but an understanding that we are prone, as (imperfect) human beings, to all manner of injudiciousness, indiscretion, unwiseness, folly–call it what you will–very often just in thought, but sometimes also in deed.

We are driven to such things; we don’t make it up. I’ll go as far as to say we are meant to act like this; it’s part of what nature wants.  Obviously though, in the same breath, it cannot be expected that those who are nearest and dearest to us should even come close to endorsing any of it; so pragmatically speaking, if you want to keep your life on a more even keel, it might be very wise to channel some of that primal energy in a way that doesn’t consequently screw it up.

I neither condone or condemn. What I do know is that a great many of us struggle in some form with all of this - being tugged one way and then another; and trying to work out exactly what feelings to act on and which ones to leave well alone.  
And while we’re trying to make some sense of it all, I can't help but become curious as to what goes on in the minds of those who spout so many ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’; those whose words would portray a world without any shade of grey - as many seem to when a story such as Woods’ hits the headlines; it’s as though somehow, uniquely, they were all borne with not a errant, wanton, devious or desirous bone their body.
And I don’t believe that, not for one minute.

To conclude: the next time these two professionals play golf together (if ever), I have a feeling there’ll be adjectives such as ‘self-righteous’ and ‘sanctimonious’ flash through my mind as I look at Parnevik; then I’ll watch Tiger Woods and just think, ‘what a fantastic golfer’.

Saturday 5th December. Day off in Chichester.  
Accommodation: The Park Hotel, Chichester.

Sunday 6th December. The Festival Theatre, Chichester.  Accommodation: As yesterday.  18/30 
Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick turned up at the hotel early afternoon. Tonight’s going to be something like a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s show at the Barbican.  
Both Martin and John will join us on stage at the front of the second set, for the songs: The King, Four Nights Drunk, Lark In The Morning, All Things Are Quite Silent, and a carol that John’s introduced us to called The Boar’s Head. 

After all that, we proceed with the second set pretty much as normal, before the two of them come back onto the stage for the encores: All Around My Hat and Hard Times Of Old England.
As would be expected, the show had one or two rough edges, but taking everything into consideration it went remarkably well.  It was ‘sold out’ tonight with around 1200 in attendance.  

Monday 7th December. The Barbican Centre, London.
Accommodation: Travelodge, Old Street, London.  
19/30 
A successful night on all counts. The hall was virtually full; the atmosphere - expectant, accepting and appreciative.  

This is ‘the’ big showcase gig, as was the London Palladium five years ago during our thirty fifth anniversary tour; and as you can imagine, there’s a great sense of occasion at these shows, one that everyone seemed to rise to on the night.  

There is something quite special about walking out onto a stage as big–physically and figuratively–such as this. You can tighten up a little, or you can let go. It’s like taking certain elements from both festival and concert settings and amalgamating the two.
I’m trying to think how best to describe those elements; it’s probably about ‘formality’ more than anything, the formality that comes with having an audience sat before you on rows of theatre seating in a perceived (from my point of view) state of attentive scrutiny and thought; then you have the festival audience that is often standing, looser, and usually more vocally expressive and ‘up for it’ from the word go. 
So this was a pleasant mixture of the two.

It was a great pleasure to be on stage with Martin and John; what they added to the overall sound, instrumentally and vocally, was awesome. With Pete Zorn it meant there were up to eight of us onstage at times which gave a real fullness and power to the material.

I need to mention the hotel we stayed at, and how disgustingly awful it was. I used to be quite a fan of Travelodges, but I’m having to reconsider after this and the one we stayed at in Reading. We even had squatters here - on the fifth floor - the one on which my room was situated. I got out of the lift, and there they were sitting around, with their belongings in carrier bags.

The rooms were about as basic and austere as you can get; there wasn’t even any soap - just as well I carry my own.  I could go on, but never mind. I’ll just say - stay well clear.  

Tuesday 8th December. The Grand Theatre, Swansea. 
Accommodation: Express by Holiday Inn, Neath Road, Llandarcy. 
20/30 
And what a ‘grand’ theatre this is; the maze - there’s no other word to describe it - of corridors around and behind the theatre is about as Spinal Tap-esque as you can get.  Just as well I had a ball of string with me!
But, as I said, the performance hall is quite majestic - not at all unlike the Buxton Opera House with its two circle/balcony areas and very high ceiling.

Friend, Richard Ellin turned up tonight; we go back quite a long way I suppose - but I only appreciate that when I deliberately count the years, otherwise I think of him as a very recent acquaintance.
Richard runs a company called Fairplay Replication; they’ve manufactured pretty much all of my CDs. He also owns Rock And Reel magazine, and has his own independent label.

Back in 1994 we entered into a short-lived business arrangement when another friend of mine - John St Ryan landed a major role on the soap opera Coronation Street. As well as acting, John sang and played guitar, so we formed a little duo, released a single and hit the TV circuit. It was an interesting exercise that didn’t really work out.
To some extent it exposed my naivety; John was too big - probably in the wrong way - for it to work as a twosome. Honestly, I was taken aback by the attention he received; I didn’t appreciate the power of mainstream television; nowadays, as a result of everything, I might appreciate it, but I still don’t understand it.

It appeared it was impossible to present ourselves in the way we intended originally - we wanted to be taken somewhat seriously, and because he acted the part of ‘Charlie the trucker’ on the TV show, that’s what the public wanted.
See what I mean when I say ‘naive’?

It’s a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it too; it’s one thing to think you can take advantage of a seemingly easy opportunity when instant exposure is handed to you on a plate; but there’s always a catch, always a sting in its tail.
The truth is that very little, if anything, that’s really worth something, comes easily.  
I’m glad the single didn’t take off, it could’ve been a darn site more complicated than it turned out to be.

And it was a painful experience, financially speaking, for just about all involved, including Richard. I was the only one not to lose money in the project, and that was only because of song royalties.

A Back Nine In All Things

2009-12-11T09:16:00.002Z

Monday 30th November. The Playhouse, Epsom. 
Accommodation: Holiday Inn Express, Langley Vale Rd, Epsom. 
13/30
 Pete Zorn said to me in bus, “Ken, have you ever played Epsom before?” At almost the exact same time I was asking myself, ‘have I ever played in Epsom before?’.
These days it’s not that often you end up anywhere you haven’t visited a good few times.  
The square in the town centre looked somewhat recognisable, but then a lot of these quaint town centres in this part of the world are not dissimilar.

The hotel was located in an interesting spot - and area that leaves you with no doubt as to what this place is famous for - the racing track actually running right along side my room, room number 054.  
This is a very pretty, and a very prosperous area - reminds me of Lambourn, the cosy little Buckinghamshire village where my ex manager Tony Gordon used to live back in the seventies. Lambourn is another horse training and racing area; maybe there’s just a very distinct similarity of character that runs through all of these equestrian type of places.

I pay a certain amount of attention to various sports; I’m pretty interested of course in footy, for example, and I do keep an eye on what’s happening in the cricket world - not so much county cricket though.  
Even boxing is becoming more interesting to me - for all kinds of reasons, reasons that I won’t address just now, or I’d be here forever.  But I’m far from what you’d describe as sports mad, I just view it all with a moderately keen eye. There are some sports, however, that I absolutely cannot get a handle on, and horse racing is one of them.  I know, it’s probably a bit, or a lot like golf - in so far as until you know what it’s like to hold a golf club in your own hands, and to strike a ball with it, you have no connection - no comprehension, no feel for the sport.

The other element, of course, is gambling. Many are drawn to the sport solely because of this.
Again I struggle to understand.  

I do have a friend that studies the horses; he’ll tell you not just which ones have won which races, or where they were placed in the field, but also the horses that run better either clockwise or anti-clockwise, or on firm or soft ground, and so on. OK, now it’s beginning to get a little more interesting - but only a little.

I have tried; I thought that by placing some bets on a Saturday afternoon, and then watching my horses run on TV that I’d start to discover what it was all about. This was something Carol and I tried about five years ago, I went online and subscribed to the bookies Ladbrokes. I transferred all of £30 into the account, and then we placed bets, a pound each way on this or that horse; the horses on which we bet were determined through a thoroughly scientific process, using such criteria as - whether we liked its name or not.

As you’d expect we lost more than we won, and five years later there is still something like £20 of the original 30 sitting in that account accruing interest for Ladbrokes.

The show was another good one, and the theatre staff were so friendly and complimentary about the band’s performance.  Snooker player John Virgo came tonight with his partner Ruth. I met him backstage, and I can tell you what an incredibly decent chap he seems to be.
Pete (Knight) and some of the crew went for a curry with John later on; I declined though - it was just a little too late for me.

Tuesday 1st December. The Stables, Wavendon, Milton Keynes.  Accommodation: Moore Place Hotel, Aspley Guise. 
14/30 
Changed both sets again today. Maddy, last night, said she needed to give her voice a little less work to do for one or two shows, so we reinstated the songs ‘Cold Hailey Windy Night’ and ‘The Three Sisters’, sung by Rick, and myself respectively.

It’s good to have two days at the same venue, it means there’s no equipment to worry about after the show tonight.

Wednesday 2nd December. The Stables, Wavendon, Milton Keynes.  Accommodation: As yesterday.
 15/30 

Thursday 3rd December. The Regents Theatre, Christchurch. 
Accommodation: The Kings Hotel, Christchurch. 
16/30 
I’m on the back nine now; for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a golfing analogy - one of many that can be used - but ‘the back nine’ is the one I’m thinking about just now.

 It’s not like there are nine shows to go, or anything, it’s just that tonight we’re past the halfway point. I can’t see the clubhouse as yet, but even when actually playing golf it’s often not usual to see the clubhouse until you’re on the last hole - so that’s not a very good analogy really.

I compare walking onto tenth hole–the first of the back nine–with the idea of reincarnation; it’s a chance to redeem yourself after the complete rubbish that aptly describes the standard of how you played the first nine. Conversely, it’s also an opportunity to ruin a potentially great round, after having played, as they say - ‘out of your skin’.  

This is one of the most incredible features of a back nine, almost as though it’s there for you to maintain the status quo; to push the score up, or down, so as to make sure that normal service, one way or another is resumed. Or, and this is a big - OR, it’s there to allow you the opportunity to finally raise yourself, not just to that next level of sporting ability, but to a place where you seize the control and coherence that’s just waiting for that right moment - to step out of what I think they call the ‘comfort zone’.

It’s not just a tour that has a ‘back nine’, there’s one every night; it’s called ‘the second set’. And now that I think about it, there’s more than one each night; there’s a back nine in every song.

What a distinctive place the Regents theatre is; very ‘art-deco’, and very ‘looked after’ by the looks of things. It was a full house tonight.

Sticks And Stones

2009-12-11T07:44:00.008Z

Saturday 28th November. Day off (travel to Oxford)

Accommodation: Longwall Travel Inn, Cowley.  
An opportunity to further walk the path of glamour that comes with the territory when living life as a folk/rock icon; yes, I’m catching up with my laundry today.
There’s not that much to do though, just one or two bits and pieces - ‘smalls’ I think you call them; and a couple of Steeleye Span 40th Anniversary sweat shirts.
Where did the word ‘smalls’ come from, I wonder? Maybe it’s better than saying, ‘underpants’? - Yet it means the same thing.

Moving away from the subject of laundry, I’ve so often pondered this issue of how certain words are, lets say–generally speaking–unacceptable, or at least they are less acceptable to many of us even though they share the same meaning, and we are fully aware of that meaning.
This has always been an area of complete fascination to me.
 
An example is when the word ‘fuck’ is spelt or printed as ‘f**k’ so as not to offend.
Now why is it that so many people find it OK to see ‘f**k’ written and are consequently not offended, yet they know exactly which letters are missing?

It’s apparently fine for mainstream entertainment such as the Carry On films (entertainment?) to constantly make inferences that are apparently amusing; inferences that - if they were actually spelt out, would shock and outrage many of those rolling around in stitches. And yet, they know exactly what the inferences mean (or I guess they wouldn’t be laughing) - just as much so as if nothing had been left to the imagination.
So the same thing, name, action is in the mind of the listener but elicited by a different sound.

So, can a word itself be offensive?
My answer would be a resounding ‘no’. All you have to do is think about how a word, any word would not be comprehended by one who does not know the language and vocabulary the word is a part of; it means nothing.  
You can take a group of people and present the same expletive to each, and you’ll find a varied response from one person to the next. So this points to one thing only; that we individually pull feelings and emotions from various recesses of our psyche, at a moments notice, in response to the learned perception of a sound.

Now if I were talking about ‘intent’ this might be different. If I sense that there is aggressive, or demeaning intent in the words of someone towards ‘blacks’ or ‘immigrants’ for example, I find that worrying; in this breath I’ve heard jokes that just aren’t funny, but also, I’ve heard many, again deemed unacceptable, that are actually hilarious.  Yes, I absolutely don’t care what the PC brigade say, there are some brilliant gags about blacks, the Irish, Muslims, and yes, even the English.

I know the above ideas will seem quite obvious to anyone who’s thought about this to any extent, but a great many obviously haven’t thought about it at all. This is why when they talk of ‘offensive language’ it is clearly the language itself that is being blamed without any of the responsibility placed on the offended.
But the listener surely has to accept some responsibility.

I’ve even seen people become offended, enraged even, as a result of something they’ve misheard; so sometimes, you see, one even imagines the word that one then goes on to be offended by.

I’ve observed the kindest, most compassionate people castigated on the basis of interpretation, interpretation that’s shaped by nothing other than the passing geometry and agreed protocols of that particular time.  

I have a hunch about this. There is something in our primal makeup–a two sided syndrome–that gives cause for us to feel the potential to become either the victim or the victor in life, and the perception of our own ‘safety’ plays a key part in this - something we innately seek whether by running or by ruling. (Reading this back, I feel that this point is not so understandable, and needs to be expanded on).

OK then, let's think about this. The emotion that a word, a sound, triggers; if this is unpleasant, it follows that the emotion has its roots in an area that feels–probably unconsciously–to some degree threatening. To know precisely why it's perceived as threatening is potentially complicated.
Although it could be as straightforward as the look of disapproval on a parent's face when a certain word is uttered, the impact can be strong enough for the connection to be a difficult one to make later in life. Nevertheless, all the wiring is in place for the feeling to be re-experienced.
One thing that we innately do is to find whatever safety is available to us, again, as we may well have done after that very first experience of disapproval; this may not mean we find the most self-beneficial method, but it will be one that's familiar.
To feel or express a sense of moral outrage, or even disdain, is, I am saying, a position of safety.

I'd even suggest that there is something primal that draws us to the very area we seek safety from, which may well have everything to do with why we tinker so with double entendre.

Am I arguing that we should all go around swearing at each other all the times? No I’m not. I’m just saying that we need to stop thinking that it’s always others who are responsible for the way we feel.

Sunday 29th November. The New Theatre, Oxford. 
Accommodation: As last light.  
12/30 
A cold theatre. It’s not often you watch people wrapping coats around themselves as you perform. I went on stage in a sweater, for–as far I can recall–the very first time. It warmed up a little by the time we got well into the second half of the show.

Given that it was cold, and that the very large auditorium was perhaps just two thirds full (if that), and that it was wet and miserable outside, and that it was a Sunday night; it was a great evening. The audience was vocal and appreciative, and I’d say everyone in the band felt we played well.

An Experienced Shower

2009-12-11T07:24:00.007Z

Sunday 22nd November. The Marina Theatre, Lowestoft. 
Accommodation: as yesterday. 
8/30 
Pete Zorn joined forces with us today.
A decision had been taken within the band to have him bring an array of wind, percussion and string instruments with him to Norfolk.
Originally, the intention was to have him step in for Rick on bass who’d expressed doubts as to whether or not he’d be able to complete the tour. When Rick felt a little more hopeful about everything, Pete’s role switched.

Monday 23rd November. The Corn Exchange, Ipswich.  
Accommodation: The Ramada Encore.  
9/30 
After the last two nights of accommodation in Lowestoft, more attention is now focused on internet reviews of our future hotels. As a result we’ve changed our accommodation arrangements for the next four nights.  
The guys at the Park Records office have so much to consider when arranging our hotels; one minute we ask if we can stay in town centres as near as possible to wherever we’re playing, in the next breath we complain the standard isn’t good enough, and want to be moved somewhere else - usually at the last minute.

I’m increasingly convinced that standard should be our priority, and not solely location.

Tuesday 24th November. Travel to the Isle of Wight.
 Accommodation: Lakeside Park Hotel & Spa. 
Had to make a pretty early start from Ipswich; the ferry time at Portsmouth was 4 p.m.

These last few day the weather across the British Isles has been grim to say the least; there’s been incredible floods in the north-west, particularly at Cockermouth and Workington up in Cumbria where six bridges have literally collapsed under the weight of the flood water.
In the south here it has been pretty unpleasant on and off, but I’d say we’ve probably experienced the least severe end of the storm.  

I did think though that once we reached the coast, and consquently were a little more exposed to the elements, that the crossing might be a bit rough, but no, even though the sea looked slightly choppy, once I had the laptop out and my mind was on other things I didn’t even notice it.

Back to the subject of hotels, the one we checked into today on our arrival on the IoW. is nothing lass than sensational. I have to wonder if it’s the best I’ve ever stayed at, and I mean - ‘ever’.  
It’s perfect - everything works. The rooms are beautiful. The beds - so comfortable. The staff so friendly. The food - amazing.

The spa has a shower - as spas do, but this one is state of the art; it’s called an ‘experience shower’ . There’re a number of buttons that let you choose between four types of aromatherapy sprays - White Cloud, Atlantic Ocean, Tropical Rain, and one more I can’t remember.  

On my arrival I headed straight for the spa, reminding myself of just how gaudy my Bermuda shorts are - they hadn’t improved a bit since the last time I wore ‘em.
Still, why should I care? - I was the one and only sole in the steam room. The temperature was exactly right - not quite, but almost painful.
And as I sat there collecting my thoughts and sweating in the steamy blue light, I thought I might have just gone to heaven.

Thursday 26th November. The Medina Theatre, Newport, Isle of Wight.  
10/30

Friday 27th November. The Town Hall, Birmingham. 
Accommodation: The Thistle Birmingham City Hotel.  
11/30 
An amazing building; second time I’ve played here this year, but it’s even more impressive than the last time; or more likely - I’m taking a bit more notice of it.
And things are getting very Christmas-like out there. All too busy for me as I walked from the hotel to the venue; it wasn’t far really, but the street map I was following, the one I’d been given at the hotel, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the layout of the streets.

So it was the result of a little luck and a few road signs that finally guided me to the correct location, not that I recognised it at the time though; I approached a young girl, and asked, “Can you tell me where the town hall is?”. She pointed in the direction I’d just walked from, and said In a broad Birmingham accent, “The Symphony Hall’s over there”. “What about the Town Hall then?”, I repeated. “Sorry, haven’t got the faintest”, she replied. As she walked away I raised my head slightly, and without doing anything that constituted ‘moving’, I looked directly forward, and there it was - standing tall directly in front of me.

I should update the set list. Not that it’s all that different - just a couple of switches here and there have been made.

Set 1 
Little Sir Hugh 
Creeping Jane 
Seagull  
Bachelor’s Hall 
Sheep Crook 
Babylon
 I Love Not Where I Live 
Si Beag Si Mor
 The Gallant Frigate Amphitrite

Set 2 
All Things Are Quite Silent
 Ranzo 
The Silky 
Unconquered Sun 
Van Dieman’s Land 
Peace On The Border
 Fiddle Tunes 
Thomas The Rhymer

Hatfield And The East

2009-12-11T07:09:00.006Z

Saturday 21st November. Day off. Travel to Lowestoft.  Accommodation: The Hotel Hatfield.
 It took a good three and a half hours on the road before the bus pulled up outside the Hotel Hatfield in Lowestoft. We were greeted by that ominous sight of a hotel surrounded by scaffolding, and a sign reading, ‘building work being carried out’. Not sure why it needs a sign to tell us that; it’s possibly there to eliminate any idea we might have that the builder, on his weekend off, might be erecting scaffolding for purely recreational purposes.

I know there’s a somewhat sarcastic tone to what I’m writing, but this is one of the all-time-most-dreadful-excuses-for-a-hotel-I’ve-ever-ever-had-the-terrible-misfortune-to-lay-my-eyes-on-and-set-foot-in. 

Look, I don’t want to get overly negative, so I’ll begin with the good points. It’s on the sea front; that’s nice, especially on a day such as this (Sunday morning) with the sun in the sky.
 The breakfast was good, also; and, one more thing - the staff seem pleasant.
Now, onto some of the other features here: the heating seems to be set to ‘full’, regardless of the outside temperature. I was first put into room 114; it had that slightly old and tacky feel that one comes to expect in many of these seaside resort hotels, and although I’d been struck be the heat in the corridors, it hadn’t as yet fully worked its way into my room.  

I took it easy in the afternoon, and caught up on a little sleep, but intermittently I took note of an irritating underlying sound, that of a constant bass drum beat, the kind you hear in dance music. The noise was there, occupying a ‘space’ if you will, the kind of space or place that makes it hard to decide whether it’s subliminal or not; whether it’s annoying or not, and if it is, whether its annoyance is more volume related or persistence related.  I wondered, because of the constancy of it if indeed it was an idiosyncrasy of the hotel’s heating system, or some such thing.
Still, I did manage to largely switch off the attention I was paying it and consequently get some rest on my day off.

In the evening I met up with Liam, Pete and Jackie at an Indian restaurant called the Red Rose in the town centre. By the time we rendezvoused, they, the three of them had already been enjoying the pub life here in Lowestoft for quite some time, and so our coherence levels were not . . . how can I put it, ‘aligned’ maybe?
I did my best to catch up though.  Just for the record, the food was incredibly good. I’d recommend the Red Rose.

So, back home I go, my home being the Hotel Hatfield, room 114. And after watching a little footy I switched on my DAB radio, and drifted off to the sound of Radio Four.

01:30. I’m awake. I’m sweating; the heat of the corridor has finally and fully worked its way into my room. I take off my pyjamas, and lie on top of the bed; the bass drum beat is still, unmercifully, continuing, and now it’s louder - this, as well as laughter, shouts, car doors slamming, engines revving, etc.

Looking out of my window, it becomes clear; there’s a night club adjacent to the hotel, and it’s on my side. Despite this, I try and open my window; my logic being that I didn’t know at this point which was worse, the heat or the noise.
At least if I could get cool I did have ear plugs.
 The window was in quite an awkward position, and half awake I reached over beyond the television and my suitcase (the floor area was so small that the only place I could open my case was on the shelf next to the TV), and I tried to turn the handles, three of them, that would allow some air into the room.
Each handle was securely locked in place; there was no way I could open anything. I guess the logic is - who would want to have an open window on the side of the hotel next to a dance club!?

I phoned reception; I’d had enough. The man came to my door, and gave me the key to room 109. At 2 a.m. I was now dressed and transferring all belongings to this new location.

Room 109: the first thing I noticed was the Bell 40W light bulb packaging on my bed. I guessed someone had changed one of the lights, and neglected to clear up properly after themselves. At this point I wasn’t going to worry too much about that.
 Then there was the empty biscuit wrapper under the desk.

I ‘part-opened’ the window, I had no choice, every time I tried to open it any wider, as I let go, its own weight returned it back to a partly opened position again.  So, as with room 114, my sleeping was carried out pyjama-less and on top of the bed, but at least it was marginally more comfortable - and quieter.

The bathroom had no bath, just a shower, one of those with a plastic tray that you stand in. My plastic tray was cracked; you could see that someone had attempted a repair job - to glue / tape it back together; maybe the shower tray repair man had been temporarily successful, or had failed from the outset, I don’t know, however, when it came time for my morning shower it felt like the ground was moving under my feet, and my sense of balance was, not in-substantially, put to the test.

There comes a point when I start suspending my emotions, a point where I live with the knowledge that all things must pass, and that before-I-know-it I’ll be in the next town, the next hotel, the next shower tray.
And speaking of suspended emotions, there are things happening presently within the band, things that at some time soon I could possibly write about. Certainly from my position, and from a cathartic point of view, I’d find that helpful.

Swings And Roundabouts

2009-12-11T00:45:00.009Z

Saturday 14th November. Day Off.
Accommodation: Worcester Whitehouse. 
Not sure why, but I noticed that there are a good number of Saturdays when the band enjoys a night to itself. I very much doubt if there is anything, deliberately speaking, behind the fact that this, today’s leisure / travel day falls immediately after night one, however, I’m starting to believe it’s an effective strategy. What it does is give you time to reflect, discuss and appraise what happened on that adrenaline charged first night.

It felt as though the drive to Worcester took forever.
I usually sit in the back of the bus, over the back axle, a position where every bump, every twist and every turn is experienced with a greater degree of connection. I won’t go into too much detail, but if I were to say that I didn’t like the experience of travelling in a tour bus day after day, I would be expressing my most favourable feeling about that experience.  

One of the greatest things for me has always been the point in the tour when I eventually climb back into my own car; I always equated this moment with getting my own life back - to be again in the drivers seat; to take whichever route I choose; to stop whenever it pleases me.
In the meantime, however, as the bus swings around each corner and roundabout and I get thrown from left to right, and back again, I shall endeavour to travel with all the graciousness I can manage to muster.

I compare getting my car back with the first time I went ice skating. It was a profound experience. My skates were so painful; it was the pressure on the arches of the feet that caused the discomfort; not a sharp, but a chronic pain - a type of pain you even get used to. When I removed the skates at the end of the session, I would describe the relief as nothing less than glorious.

The evening was good. I noticed there was a spa at the hotel, so I went into town to buy some shorts or swimming trunks. I’d never even considered this before, and I suppose it’s pretty obvious, but in the world of retail clothing ‘they’ - swimming trunks - are very much season related, consequently there wasn’t a short in site. Yes, I did say ‘short’ - I only wanted one. 
Luckily I found a lady at Debenhams who recalled seeing one or two pairs in the stock room. She vanished for five minutes, then she came back with three pairs of Bermuda shorts. They were all hideous; I chose the least hideous pair.

After a half hour split between the sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi I went back to my room - collecting a pint of Grolsch lager en route - then settled down to watch the Brasil v England friendly.
Then the night got even better; I found an Indian restaurant, and ordered a take away: a tandoori mix grill; on the way back to the hotel I picked up a bottle of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc.

Sunday 15th November. The Swan Theatre, Worcester. 
Accommodation: same as last night. 
2/30
 Another relatively small venue. A nice, and (I think) recently renovated theatre. Always when I played Worcester in the past it’s been at the Huntington Hall venue, but I get the impression that The Swan’s new opening has made way for a venue more suited to electric bands.
The difference in the band’s performance and confidence level was striking tonight, it seems that the day off worked well for us.

Monday 16th November. Reading Concert Hall, Reading. 
Accommodation: Travelodge, Oxford Road, Reading.  
Show 3/30 
I love the venue even though it was never designed for any kind of music other than orchestral - a typical town hall really in that respect, but in aesthetic terms it appeals to my eye.
The acoustics in these buildings I’ve written about a number of times before, most recently in my account of our Adelaide show: Friday 9th October.

I know some of those in the audience would have struggled to hear things clearly - especially the lyrics, but nevertheless it was an enjoyable night.
One change was made to the set - we dropped The Butcher (second song in), and replaced it with Seagull.

Tuesday 17th November. The Playhouse Theatre, Weston-Super-Mare. 
Accommodation: The Commodore Hotel, Sand Bay, Kewstoke.  
4/30 
Hardly recognised the place from the last time I visited one of my childhood-favourite places. My last visit though, I should make it clear, was not in my childhood, it was in fact Friday 6th February (Second Thoughts First posting) when this entire area of Britain was covered with snow and ice. Thankfully, today the weather was surprisingly pleasant - certainly surprising given the time of year.

The hotel’s in a neat location - right next to the beach in what the name of the area describes perfectly - a bay with lots of sand.
Didn’t feel as though the band clicked at all tonight. I think we all felt like that to some extent or another, and it’s somewhat unusual for that kind of consensus. Yet as I’ve stated so many times, seldom it seems that the two worlds, the two realities - the one on stage, and the other in the auditorium, are wholly synchronised with one-another.  
When Jackie, our tour manager, tells of great business at the merchandise table, and Maddy, who usually goes out after the show and mingles with the public, returns with tales of joyful ebullience, you begin to realise that it’s best not to dwell on these matters.

Wednesday 18th November. The Corn Exchange, Exeter. 
Accommodation: Jury’s Inn, Exeter.  
5/30 
The hall, according to my official schedule, that presently sits in front of me has the capacity to seat 500 people; this, the same hall that more than comfortably - much more - seated a grand total of, I think, twenty five when I played here with Phil Cool back in March earlier this year (Sunday May 31st. Over-Egging The Collective).
I did had a fairly strong inkling that we’d exceed that figure today, and my intuition proved correct, with the attendance figure increasing by around four hundred and seventy five.

Went through a bit of a time warp in the second set when Pete and Maddy did their duo spot - Silky. I was sat in the dressing room with a sense of having all the time in the world, and wasn’t at all poised-and-ready to go back onstage by the time the audience applause had died.
The next song was one of mine - Unconquered Sun. ‘Conspicuous’ could accurately describe my feeling as I eventually walked onto the waiting stage in a very quiet hall.

The hotel, Jury’s - I’m not impressed. I stayed years ago at the Dublin Jury’s, and loved it. So I was pretty happy when I saw this one here in Exeter on our schedule - especially after the Reading Travelodge experience. Alas, my room is poky; the staff at breakfast are unhelpful; the cleaning crew are noisy first thing in the morning, and the room doors, when left to close unhindered, slam shut with ferocity. Not recommended.

Thursday 19th November. The City Hall, Salisbury.  
Accommodation: The Mercure White Hart Hotel, St John Street, Salisbury. 
6/30

Friday 20th November. The Assembly Rooms, Tunbridge Wells.  

Accommodation: The Royal Wells Inn, Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells.  7/30

UK Winter Tour - A Wing And A Prayer

2009-12-10T19:23:00.001Z

Two days at home, actually more like a day and a half, and now I’m back on the road again. 
The car problems have continued (read ‘Sunday August 30th’). My fears of the Toyota Previa needing at least a new cylinder head gasket where dispelled, at least temporarily, a few weeks ago - I was in the US or Aussie - when the garage phoned Carol to say they’d installed a radiator, and the car appeared to be fine. 
When Carol went to pick the vehicle up, the man at the shop - so she told me - said, ‘it runs a bit sluggish, doesn’t it?’ And on the way home it was stalling.

I knew that it would probably at least have a flat battery after having sat in the drive for as long as it did.
Sure enough, on the day of my return, when I turned the ignition key there was barely enough power to turn the engine over. So I hooked it up to Carol’s car; this I was sure would start the car. No such luck. 

I called the Automobile Association man. He was amazingly persistant; very helpful. He even had the driver’s seat unbolted and out of the car - the only way to actually get to the engine. This, alas, is why so many car repair people refuse to repair these cars, they are unbelievably difficult to work on.
 Anyway, it looked as though this man’s determination would have only one outcome; I felt confident. It tried to start. In fact, it couldn’t of got nearer to starting without starting. But it didn’t.

Next, I was being towed to George’s, he’s my mechanic (though not the one who installed the radiator). I had previously, with a phone call from New Zealand, booked it in for Monday, my thinking being that perhaps it just needed a couple of new spark plugs or something and then all would be fine; and with ‘all being fine’ I’d have a car to drive to Oxford in Tuesday morning.
Now it was just a case of parking it outside George’s garage, putting the key through his letter box, and then figuring out an alternative means of transport to Oxford.

I’d completely forgotten, but then when the AA man reminded me - I remembered. I remembered that some two and a half months ago - when my car problems began - I had a call from a lady at the AA. These are logically, I suppose, the best times to sell new packages to AA members; I doubt that there are many of us that took out an AA membership in the first place until we felt we had no alternative.  Well I went for it, I bought into this deal where they give you a hire car for up to three days if your own is off the road. I was saved. Perfect. It was a very shiny and very new model, and I picked it up on Monday afternoon.

Tuesday 10th to Thursday 12th November. Rehearsals at The Warehouse, Kennington, Oxford.  
Accommodation: Longwall Travel Inn, Cowley.
A tough three days, that’s the only way I can describe it. A lot of new songs have been proposed for the tour. All but one are actually old Steeleye tracks, but they are completely new to me, I’d never heard them until today - Tuesday, when I listened repeatedly to the CD I’d burnt that morning as I drove south.
Complex arrangements.
It’ll take some time to absorb all of this. 

We ran the complete set on Thursday, the final day, working exclusively on the new stuff up until then.  

The New songs: 
1. All Things Are Quite Silent 
2. Bachelor’s Hall 
3. Sheep Crook 
4. Peace On The Border 
5. Little Sir Hugh
 6. Around Cape Horn (from the new album)

Friday 13th November. The Mick Jagger Centre, Dartford, Kent. 
Accommodation: Express by Holiday Inn, University Way. 
Shows 1/30 
With a capacity of just 350 it’s not the largest of venues, but a perfect way to launch the tour. The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful, and on the night every seat was sold.
As with all first nights, and possibly more so today, I’d guarantee that every band member felt there was a ‘wing and a prayer’ feeling at many points during the set.

The set list:

Set 1 
Little Sir Hugh 
Creeping Jane 
The Butcher
 Bachelor’s Hall 
Sheep Crook 
Babylon 
I Love Not Where I Live
 Fiddle Tunes 
Around Cape Horn

Set 2 
All Things Are Quite Silent 
Ranzo 
The Silky 
Unconquered Sun 
Van Dieman’s Land
 Peace On The Border
 Bonny Black Hare
 Thomas The Rhymer

Campervan Vocations

2009-12-10T14:24:00.017Z

Sunday 1st November. Solo. Bailies Bar, Christchurch.  
Arriving in Christchurch at around 3 p.m., we parked the camper in Hereford Street. With Hereford Street running parallel to Gloucester, Worcester and Lichfield Streets, it’s easy to forget exactly where you are.
For a Sunday the city centre seems quite busy, but very pleasant at the same time. The Cathedral Square where Bailies is situated is a modern looking pedestrian area that stands, not surprisingly, directly in front of a cathedral, one that has its origins in the mid 1800s.

In my world of imagined symmetry, we had not just reached Christchurch, we’d reached the very beginning of the very last episode in our New Zealand story.  And as is so often the case, whilst I’m looking forward to not having to think about playing a gig for a while after tonight’s show, I know that at some point in the following four days I’ll feel like a drifting, aimless tourist.
This is not to say that we don’t have the most definite plans; we know exactly where we’re going, the things we’re going to do, and when we’ll be doing ‘em.  
It’s just that the purposefulness expressed through a campervan’s persona as it heads this, and then that way - fulfilling all that it was ever meant to achieve in life, does not always reflect the absence of direction carried by those doing the steering.
 Already I’m casting my gaze towards 2010; given no blow-outs, or aviation mishaps between here and Preston, there are so many projects I’m looking forward to getting underway.

Another one of my cousins, Mike, lives here, and I’m so glad I got in touch with him. I haven’t seen him since he lived in London back in the seventies and eighties.
Mike used to travel up to my parents house to see his Uncle Jim and Auntie Alice - my parents, and would always leave Preston with a good supply of local tap water; he brewed beer, and always rated the Lancashire water for its softness.  He met a Yorkshire woman called Elaine, and they moved to Christchurch. Both came to the gig tonight along with their children, Tim and Kitty.

Russell, the man who put the gig together for me arrived at seven complete with PA system; he did a good job on the desk.

It really was an excellent last New Zealand show; and once again, the bit that happens after the show was just brilliant; to be sitting in Mike and Elaine’s house, drinking red wine, getting to know a bit more, quite a bit more, about my long lost cousin was, well, perfect really after my final gig. You relax in a way–when you don’t have something imminent–that you wouldn’t relax otherwise; I was suddenly on holiday; I can’t tell you how good it felt.
Both son and daughter had left home some time ago, and we slept in one of their bedrooms - with a cat - which made it even more perfect.

Monday 2nd November.  
Today, the order of events is as followed; I buy a new tire, and then we head across Arthur's Pass to the west coast.  
Elaine guided us to various tyre venues around Christchurch until we finally found a place that not only had one of these commercial types of tyre which fitted the camper, but that would fit it without us having to book a time and come back hours later; I mean, we didn’t have hours - we had plans.  

The remains of our rear tyre

Well, eventually we found one; I can’t recall the name just now, but they didn’t mess about - I was impressed. They had the job done in a hundred and fifty dollars and a half hour later. Then we set out on Highway 73 towards the Southern Alps and Arthur’s Pass - a mountain pass–originally used by the Maoris–that was discovered by Arther Dobson in 1864; it’s an outrageously scenic means of making ones way to the west coast.  We parked up at Hokitika for the night.

Over the next three days we just followed Highway 6 to Franz Josef, turning east through the Haast Gorge and Mt Aspiring National Park, along the shores of Lakes Hawea and Wanaka, on to Queenstown, Arrowtown and Cromwell, eventually arriving back in Dunedin late on Thursday afternoon.  

It’s difficult to point to any highlights along the way because it was more like a continuum of highlights, but if I ‘had to’ I’d choose a couple; first the fifty minute flight at Franz Josef which took us over and around Mount Cook and the Fox Glaciers; the second would be visiting Arrowtown; a former mining town with a fascinating history and a great museum.

So, one more night at Alan and Nicola’s, then we’ll drop the campervan off at Dunedin airport, and fly via Christchurch from there to Sydney where we have a twenty four hour stop-over. On Saturday evening we began the long haul back through Bangkok on to Heathrow, and then finally the short hop to Manchester airport on Sunday morning.

I’ll leave you with pictures from our last four days in this amazing country.

Mount Cook and the Fox Glacier from the sky

Blow-Out At Mount Cook

2009-12-03T13:35:00.046Z

I have to be careful; I mean I could spend way too much time on things–family things–that are only relevant to me. I’ll try to proceed with caution, and not over indulge myself too much in all this family business.

These next two days, Thursday and Friday, had a heightened feeling of eventfulness about them; exploring Dunedin, visiting the house my Father grew up in, and the most fascinating thing - talking to the relations I knew ‘relatively’ little about.

From right to left: Nicola, Carol and myself, outside Dad's childhood abode.

Also getting a perspective, not just of my Father’s life beyond the context of my own (perspective) and my immediate family’s relationship with him, but gaining a greater knowledge of his family’s view of what he did with the rest of his life.  
It might sound like a cliché, but It really did help me get closer to seeing him more as a real person and not just as a Father figure.

Nicols Creek, named after Great Great Grandfather, David, who bought the land believing the newly developing railway system would be routed through it, and hence he'd sell it to the railway company for a huge profit. Characteristic of that time, it was a 'get rich quick' scheme that didn't quite go to plan.

Thursday, I played golf with Alan and Nicola, and enjoyed every single cold, wet and windy minute of it. I’d looked forward so much to just getting out there and hitting a ball around.  

Alan’s a neurologist, and when I learnt that the clubs I’d be using belonged to an anaesthetist colleague of his, I told him the old gag about the woman and the anaesthetist.
It goes like this: 
A woman has sex with an anaesthetist, and afterward she says, ‘boy, you must be really good at your job’.
 ‘Why do you say that?’, he asks.  
She replies, ‘because I didn’t feel a thing!’.

Alan said he’d tell the joke to his friend; I was kind of surprised he hadn’t heard it already, I mean, there are so many musician jokes, and we musicians know just about all of them. So don’t all who work in the medical profession know every doctor joke?

Talking of jokes, my Father was famous for a few, and Nicola reminded me of one as she drove through Dunedin. Bringing the car to a halt she announced, ‘we’ve now reached the dead centre of town’.
I was slightly puzzled for a moment, then I turned to my left and saw a huge cemetery.  

This actually is where my ancestors are buried, but no one seems to know the exact location of the graves.

On the Saturday morning we visited the Otago Farmers Market, next to the railway station. It has a good feel to it.
 The parking is just across the street in the Cadbury’s car park, and they’ve come up with the most fantastic idea. 
I can’t recall all the details of what led up to this being put in place, but I think there had been one or two problems with how the Cadbury employees car park was being used, perhaps it was a legal issue.
In the end they decided not to have an official charge for those who wanted to park there on a Saturday morning, instead accepting donations; every penny taken (by volunteers) goes to charity.

We bought one or two things at the market, bread, cheeses, before starting out on our journey to Mount Cook.

Pictures taken on our journey to Mount Cook:

Lake Pukaki

Left to right: Sir Edmund Hillary
and Carol at Mount Cook

Travelling back from Mount Cook en-route to Christchurch, only about 15 / 20 kms into the journey on highway 80, and on a couple of occasions I was thinking to myself that the van was feeling slightly unsteady; I figured it was probably something to do with the camber of the road. 
Then, suddenly, very suddenly, my concerns were more focused on whether or not I could keep the vehicle on the road. It was the back of the van that seemed to be gliding, swinging to one side and then to the other.
This had never happened to me before, and it was extremely unnerving! 
If ever there was affirmation for the argument to keep ones speed down this was it; I swear, if I’d have been taking full advantage of the 120 kph limit I believe the vehicle would have at least ended up on its side - or maybe even in Lake Pukaki which ran along the left side of the road.  

As it slowed, I guided the camper off the highway and onto a gravel covered area between the road and lake. It was an early Saturday evening; the weather was absolutely beautiful - the sunlight bouncing off the water. And there I was - in the middle of nowhere, the rear near-side tire was in shreds; I was very tired - and somehow I had to summon the energy to change the wheel on this monster.

Carol was fantastic. She asked where the handbook was - it was in the glove compartment.
She found the ‘how to change the wheel’ section, and began shouting instructions at me.
 “You’ll find the car jack and the wheel wrench by the base and to the right hand side of the drivers seat”, she began.

I followed each move to the letter, but did struggle to locate a good position under the van for the jack. It took forever to raise the vehicle even just slightly. I eventually felt confident enough to start loosening the lug nuts; yes, of course, there is always one that won’t move. It was impossible; it appeared to have its corners rounded slightly, so whenever the lug wrench reached a certain torque it lost its grip and slipped off.  

It was becoming more a test than anything, a test of my strength of character, and I felt that I was failing.
I was having to stop periodically to get my breath back and collect my thoughts. 

I looked at my hands - the ones that were meant to play guitar, not work on cars - they were black, and one of my fingers was cut and bleeding. The two colours contrasted nicely.

‘If I could raise everything a little more’, I thought then I’d be able to turn the wheel around slightly and get a different angle of attack on the nut.
No, the whole thing wouldn’t go any higher, the jack position was proving to be at fault; there was only one thing to do, and that was to start all over again.
I reversed all that I’d done, then moved the bus backwards to a more level area - I figured that might help.
Now I placed the jack underneath the axle - an alternative position as shown in the handbook - and it seemed to be working. This time the problematic lug nut was in a different position, and with a lot, and I really mean - ‘a lot’ of huffing and puffing, the nut moved slightly, and then a bit more. I got the wheel off and then managed to get just enough height on the van to slip the spare on.

We were back in action, back on the road - yes; totally exhausted and with an enormous feeling of uncertainty - just waiting for the next thing to go horribly wrong. Of course, as the miles pass, in this case - as the kilometres pass, a most organic, unmeasured, process takes place, as calm gradually reintroduces itself - replacing and displacing all notion of catastrophe with unquestioned surety.

Lake Tekapo

Later we parked up at Lake Tekapo for the night. I hate to repeat myself, but the location and the views were absolutely incredible; but what do you expect? - we’re in New Zealand for Christ’s sake.

Lores Of Relativity

2009-11-30T13:00:00.035Z

Monday 26th,
Tuesday 27th, October.
Picton to Dunedin. 

On arrival at Picton, and after a little confusion as to the exact rendezvous point, we eventually located our campervan.  
An extremely likeable chap called Brian–who not only looked just like my Father, but also seemed to have his demeanour–showed us where everything was and how to refill the water / gas tanks; how to dispose of things / hook up to electricity supplies, etc.

‘Maybe everyone, well, every male, down here looks like my Dad?’, I thought to myself; ‘maybe it was something to do with the Scottish descent?’.
A lot of cash changed hands. I was a little unclear about this part. I’d taken care of the deposit before leaving England, and though I knew the balance would need to be paid on our arrival here I felt certain that there would be a means of paying with a credit card; I was wrong, and it was just as well I’d received cash in hand for the work I’d done thus far.

So this was it, after all these years I was finally on New Zealand’s South Island. And from all that I’d been told, I was in a ‘holding pattern’, a state of suspended anticipation; and I wondered when my jaw would start dropping.
There was little need for a GPS, all we had to do was find Highway one, and keep going until Dunedin gets in our way. Our plan is to stop about halfway between Picton and Christchurch, and tomorrow about the same between Christchurch and Dunedin.

It’s very difficult to write on a regular basis, let alone write at all when constantly on-the-move and travelling as I have been these last two weeks. Much of what’s been written has been done so well after the event, and I’ve struggled to recall many of the small backwaters we passed through or stayed at as we journeyed south along the east coast.

It’s almost not even worth saying - because we all know it; I already knew it; but you don’t ‘really’ know it until you’re there seeing it for yourself; but the scenery is actually remarkable. As my Cousin, Nicola stated to me later: ‘if the sun is out, it’s difficult to take a bad picture’. Here are a few more pictures taken on our first two days here. . .

Wednesday 28th October. Solo. Celtic Music Arts Festival, the Otago Settlers Museum, Dunedin. 
I’ve dreamt of this day ever since I sent my first tentative email enquiry to NZ. I knew I’d probably get the odd gig, but didn’t think it would go much further.

The prospect of playing in Dunedin was something I had a feeling about that I’ve tried often to articulate without much success.  I don’t get overly sentimental or precious about matters of heritage and ancestry. If I’m to be completely honest, I’ve looked toward some of my relations here in England with a somewhat conditional view; it’s a view that was coloured very much by the difficulties I had growing up. Some of the rubbish that was said to me as a kid was nothing short of brainless; and whether it was a school teacher, an Auntie or an Uncle, it gave the phrase, ‘you can’t chose your relations’, significant meaning.

I know that it’s not necessarily the smartest thing to go through life viewing things on the basis of what your impressions were as a seven year old, and I’m not sure that’s even what I’m doing. I just like the idea of relating to one-another as people rather than swearing some blind allegiance on the basis of bloodline. But of course, if you’re interested in the lives of others, you do also become interested in your ancestry, and interested in your relations - as people.

Marcel Safier is someone I met for the second time when I was in Australia a few weeks ago. Marcel’s a doctor who lives in Brisbane, and as well as being pretty handy with a camera (see his pictures: Courting With Kangaroos. Saturday 3rd Oct, The Tivoli, Brisbane), he’s very much into the subject of genealogy. I told him a little about my family on my Father’s side, and within a couple of days I received two family trees, and this, a picture of a newspaper cutting from the Otago Witness, dated 6th March 1890.

This was my Great, Great Grandfather, the original Nicol who spent not much short of four months at sea, taking his wife and eight children with him to start a new life here in New Edinburgh.

On ‘my’ arrival in Dunedin I phoned Cousin, Nicola, for the directions to her house. For the next three nights we’ll be lodging with her and husband Alan; not forgetting their trio of children: Hannah, Kate and Amy.
 They have a lovely house overlooking the fifth hole of the Balmacewen golf course - purported to be the oldest course in the southern hemisphere. Speaking of which, we have a tee-off time tomorrow afternoon.

But back to the show. It’s at the Otago Settlers Museum, a building dedicated to all of those, like David Nicol, who took the fateful decision to board one of those primitive sailing vessels of the nineteenth century.
This is ‘the’ place to not only learn about these early settlers, but also to carry out research into your family history; as they put it, they have 'an extensive collection which includes manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, directories, cemetery records, church registers, and diaries'.

So from my own point of view it seemed the perfect place to play.
I kept thinking, ‘I bet my Dad came here as a young man’. As I stood on stage I looked out and imagined him in that same room - oblivious to the day I would be standing there myself, performing to these people. It’s surprising I could remember the lyrics.
Actually, when I got to the encore, ‘If Ever I Return This Way’ I couldn’t remember some of the lyrics, but that was more because it had been so long since I’d last played it - not very professional, I know; but I just thought the sentiment was fitting.

The agreed fee for the concert wasn’t particularly high, but I was so pleased to play here that it was the least of my concerns. Based on what else was happening in the city tonight, the organiser had anticipated a small audience; we were, however, more than pleasantly surprised; it was sold out, and the fee was doubled.

The evening concluded with food and wine in the company of family and friends of family. A truly magical night.

Gumboots At Wellyfest

2009-11-28T20:54:00.050Z

Tuesday 20th October. Turangi and Lake Taupo.

Hot mud pools at Turangi

Lake Taupo

Wednesday 21st October. The Paramount, Wellington. 
Arrived at Musichaven - a bed & breakfast run by Ruth Birnie and Gerard Hudson - at about 4 p.m.. The arrangement here is that we’ll be staying for the next four nights; Acoustic Routes, the organisation who are staging today’s show are covering the first night of accommodation, and tomorrow’s I’ll be paying for.
For the next three nights, however, we’ve struck a deal; Carol and I house-sit, feeding the cats, etc. while Ruth and Gerard stay at the Wellington Folk Festival, and we get to stay here free of charge.  I think it’s very generous of them; it feels good to be in a house, in one location for a while. And it gives me a chance to catch up on laundry.

Ken at the Paramount

Pictures: Gerard Hudson

Acoustic Routes is headed by Mary Livingston, a woman of considerable energy and organisational skills. I have been nothing less than humbled by the help she’s extended to me, not just in relation to tonight’s concert, but towards my entire NZ excursion. She advised on places to visit, helped get me booked at the weekend’s folk festival, arranged for the above accommodation, and even on how best to get my CDs to New Zealand without incurring a fortune in postage and excess baggage costs.

The Paramount is a good venue - a cinema, but with an artsy, café-like feel to it. Opening tonight was duo: Rob Joass and Jo Moir.
The audience size was respectable, though a little down on what we’d hoped for, but never-the-less, I enjoyed the evening enormously.

Thursday 22nd October. Solo. The Mayfair Cafe, Upper Hutt. 

This was the most recently arranged of shows here. I received an email from Paul Lambert, someone who works for the Upper Hutt City Council, on the 27th September asking if I could fit an extra date into the schedule.
The only problem I had with this was the issue of whether it would have an adverse effect on audience numbers at the other shows close by. There was no way of knowing really, but I was concerned after Mary had told me what a small-knit music-going community it was in the Wellington area.
It took a fair degree of deliberation on my part, and a few phone calls to make sure I wasn’t doing the wrong thing and stepping on any-ones toes, before saying yes to Paul.

This afternoon, 4-ish, I met with producer Sean McKenna and presenter Chris Whitta at Radio New Zealand to record a half hour interview. Chris certainly seemed to have does his research; I was impressed with the questions he asked. Obviously, because of the internet, it’s much easier these days to get background information on just about anyone, but still, he came across as having done a more thorough job than most.

As well as talk about the usual - music-related - subjects, a big area of discussion related to the New Zealand family origins on my Father’s side, and I mentioned I had many cousins, half-cousins, etc, over there.  
We didn’t just talk; I played / sang three pieces: Midsummer Night Dreams, 2 Frets From The Blues, and the instrumental I.H.. 

The show goes out this coming Labour Day Monday. I should mention that the radio slot was yet again something Mary Livingston had organised for me; I wonder if she’d like to go into management?

Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th October. The Wellington Folk Festival, Wainuiomata.
 I’d been booked to perform two sets here this weekend, the first on the Saturday morning, and then again on the Sunday evening in the final concert - both in the main marquee.

That was the plan. However, when I arrived there was a problem, the power had failed earlier that morning, and in the meantime nothing was happening in the main marquee.

Everyone did seem very confident that the power company would rectify the situation by the time I was due to take to the stage at 12:45, but should the problem not be sorted, I was to play in the Maire Hall at 1:30 - and that’s where I ended up playing - totally unplugged.

I was a little unnerved by the prospect of doing an acoustic set, but there was actually something that felt very good about it once I got going.
The crowd was great; there was a good feel to the session.  

Probably within a couple of hours, maybe less, the fuse had been fixed - yes, that’s what it was - a fuse. Must’ve been a bloody big one!; I understand that all of the houses beyond a certain point in the valley where the festival was held had been effected.  Power or no power, this was the beginning of a memorable weekend.

We’d been warned by more than one person to bring gumboots with us. The weather here is notoriously unpredictable, and the need for footwear that will equip for the rain and mud, which is by all accounts oft encountered, has certainly not been understated.  
The term ‘Gumboots’ is, here in New Zealand the terminology used for such foot protection; they are, of course, what we in the UK class as ‘wellingtons’, a noun that most, if not all over here are fully aware of. So, although I’ve not had this totally clarified, when they talk about 'Wellyfest' I get a strong impression that the inference is twofold.

Tim O'Brien / Two Oceans

Photagraphy: Gerard Hudson

I made sure I caught some of the headline act: Tim O’Brien and Two Oceans Trio. Well, that’s a bit misleading and implies there’re four in total. He is one of the trio, so perhaps I should call it: The Tim O’Brien Two Oceans Trio, or just - The Two Oceans Trio?. Either way, I loved it. Very tight. Brilliant musicianship all round; knocked out with the mandolin playing.  As well as Tim, there’s Gerry Paul on guitar, and Trevor Hutchison on bass.

Sunday, and the final concert. I felt I wasn’t at my best, but I have to say it appeared to go well - certainly if the line of those interested in my CDs was anything to go by.  
I met some lovely and interesting people here this weekend. Our five days in the Wellington area is a time I’ll never forget.
Tomorrow we drop the car off, and hop onto the ferry that will take us to the South Island.

The North Island

2009-11-25T17:46:00.050Z

The Auckland Sky Tower at night.

Tuesday 13th October. Travel to New Zealand.  Travel: Flight Q.F. 762 / Flight Q.F. 131 
Depart Perth: 8:10 a.m.
Arrive Melbourne: 2:35 p.m. 
Depart Melbourne: 4:10 p.m.
Arrive Auckland: 9:40 p.m.
An important day for me. I’ve only ever spent one day in New Zealand before today, and that was last time Steeleye toured Australia - the last anniversary tour (35th). We flew to Auckland, played the concert, and flew back to Australia. Ironic really, considering I’ve held a NZ passport for over ten years now.

I acquired the passport on the strength of my late Father been born and having grown up in Dunedin on the South Island, a subject I wrote about in some detail when I was in Scotland back in March (see: The Circle Game).

The plan here, once having arrived at Auckland, is to head for the Quadrant Hotel where I’ll see Carol for the first time in almost a month.  Tomorrow I pick up the hire car from the Omega office, which I gather is just around the corner from the hotel. We’ll spend the next two days in the Auckland area before heading off to the various folk clubs and arts centres where I’m performing.

Albert Park

Wednesday 14th & Thursday 15th October. Auckland. 
I Love the place; it just doesn’t have the same hurried and crowded feel that one might expect in a major city. The population of 1.4 million here is almost four times that of New Zealand’s capital Wellington. And incredible really when you think that in the rest of the county there’s only just over another 2.5 million people.

 A lot of time was spent just walking, drinking flat whites*, walking, eating, drinking more flat whites, walking and eating.
We found a South Indian restaurant which was pretty good.
And I bought a ukulele at the Rock Shop, a place I visited on a previous visit here.  

My last visit to the Rock Shop back in 2004 was quite eventful. I got chatting to the guy who was serving me, maybe he was the owner? - I can’t recall. I told him why I was there and who I played with, and then he said he’d show me something. I was full of curiosity as I followed him upstairs to a locked room. He unlocked the door, and ushered me in. You wouldn’t believe it! - I know I couldn’t; before me was the greatest collection of Beatles memorabilia I’d ever laid my eyes on - Ludwig drum kits, Hofner Violin basses, Gretsch and Rickenbacker guitars, Reslo microphones, Beatle suits, sheet music, LPs, 45s, pictures & posters; a stockpile that must be worth, well, many thousands.
I’d told Carol all about this, and so I figured that when I went for the uke I’d once again have a friendly talk to sales assistant, and she, Carol, would be able to see it for herself.  This time the chap who served me was pretty young; he didn’t seem very interested at all in conversation, only interested in selling a ukulele to me. I told him how I’d been escorted up to this room, and he said, “you must’ve caught the boss in a good mood. I’ve been working here three years, and I only got to see it last week. Now would you like a receipt sir?”.  
And that was it.

Friday 16th October. Solo concert. Katikati Folk Club.
We started our journey at midday. It was good to get out into the country side, away from the city, and to see some of the much anticipated scenery. With a brief stop at Waihi Beach - about fifteen minutes from our destination - it took more-or-less the expected three hours to reach Katikati. 

The club is held once a month at the Katikati bowling club. The people - organisers and audience alike - were brilliant, it was good way to start my mini tour of NZ.

Ken at Waihi Beach

The sound man didn’t seem all that guitar-friendly though, I’d have to say. As I played I struggled to hear the guitar against the voice, but figured it just had something to do with the acoustics of the room. Then, when more than one audience member started to say, ‘the guitar’s not loud enough’, I knew that it wasn’t just me.
He did seem a little reluctant to push that fader up on the desk - a bit of a handicap for someone like me who depends so much on having my guitar work heard loud and clear.

This has often been a problem for me, something I’ve encountered many times with even some of the most experienced sound engineers. I believe a great many of them have a stereotype view of how a guitarist / singer should sound - the voice out front and the guitar well behind. Classically speaking, I suppose that’s what we all became accustomed to with the likes of Dylan and Paul Simon and all the other singer songwriters heard over the years. With these guys the words and the voice were always more important than the guitar playing.

There is only one way to absolutely guarantee that you are heard in the way you want to be heard - the way that expresses what ‘you’ do, and not what others might have done, and that’s to have your own man on the desk, someone who understands exactly what you do, what you’re about and what you want; this is fool-proof, and, of course, expensive. 

There are other ways that will get you close, like having a long enough guitar cable to go out, for at least some distance from the stage, and hear it for yourself. This is something you’d do, of course, during the sound check. Potentially, this approach fails in a couple of ways; it fails to allow for the changes that occur to the acoustics of a room when the audience arrives; also, once back on stage, the power again falls into the hands of whoever has them on the faders.

Again, the mantra comes to mind: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . .

We stayed over with John and Di Logan, and were made to feel very welcome. John, as with many of the people actively involved in the folk music scene over here are UK ex-pats, and all have their own fascinating stories to tell of how not only how they ended up in New Zealand in the first place, but also about the emotional, and even physical ‘to-and-froing’ before eventually settling down here for good.

Saturday 17th October. Solo. Onewhero. 
Set off on our drive from Katikati after a walk along the Uretara river with John and Di, and getting caught out by a deluge of rain in the process.

It took us about two hours to reach Onewhero (pronounced: On-e-fairo), on the way driving through the spectacular Karangahake Gorge.

This is the second day of travelling here in NZ, and I cannot explain how completely fantastic the scenery is. And judging by what I’ve been told, I ain’t seen nothing yet!

The show itself is in the OSPA Theatre. It’s hard to fathom; it looks like the middle of nowhere, and they’ve not just built a theatre there, they manage to keep it going.  The day I arrived was the final day of an arts festival in which they were exhibiting, and selling the works of local artists.  Non of the above would be happening was it not for the dedication of Richard Gemmell - a sheep farmer, and a great lover of the arts.
Carol and I stayed with Richard and wife, Jan on their farm; it had a great feel to it. Again, it seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere, a feeling one is inclined to get often here in New Zealand.

The show went well, but again there were PA issues. They’d not long had a new public address system installed, and no one appeared to know just how it needed to be set up and what outputs should be connected to what inputs, etc.
I helped out as much as I could until we got some level of functionality from it. I actually thought we’d got it all figured out, but discovered at the evening’s end that everyone had been hearing me in mono through only the centre speakers; the two outer ones, both left and right, had been left unplugged.

Sunday 18th October. 
Spent much of today taking it easy at the Gemmell household before Carol and I made our way back up towards Auckland and on to Devonport where we booked into the Esplanade Hotel on the waters front - not too far from tomorrow’s venue.

It just so happened that Richard and Jan had planned to see a movie that evening at Northcote, very close to Devonport, so we rendezvoused later that day, and watched the German film: The North Face; it was absolutely chilling and gripping; sorry, I couldn’t think of two adjectives that didn’t sound like puns.

Monday 19th October. Solo. The Bunker Folk Club, Devonport, Auckland. 
The early part of the day was spent sight-seeing as we took a drive further north to Snells Beach.

Roger Giles has been running the Devonport folk club for the last forty years, and both he and his club are about as characterful, colourful and notorious as you can get.  We arrived at the house he shares with partner Hilary at around 4 p.m. ate dinner before making our way up the hill to The Bunker, and that’s actually what it is - a bunker - a property with some historic importance that actually belongs to the city of Auckland.

It has been rented out to Roger for a song (for the last forty years), solely to accommodate the folk club which is held each fortnight.
This place; this club - it’s an institution. It’s unique. The club was packed, and the crowd was up-for-it from note one. 

Then, after my first number a head came round the door. The owner of the head, in an announcement that carried much volume, informed everyone that the fire brigade were conducting an exercise outside, and because one or two audience members had left their cars parked in a manner best described as … well, ‘not very clever’ the fire engines couldn’t get through the very narrow road which winds it way up the hill.

I’d only just begun, and my audience were deserting me in numbers. But it was OK, it contributed even more to the feel, the content, the eventfulness of that night. And anyway, I felt sort of honoured to be the very first guest at The Bunker - in its forty year history - to have their set halted by a fire fighting exercise.

*Flat white: a coffee beverage prepared by pouring the creamy steamed milk from the bottom of the jug over a single shot (30ml) of espresso, it is most commonly found in New Zealand and Australia.

Agro In The Antipodes

2009-11-17T15:32:00.003Z

Monday 12th October. Guitar workshop (afternoon), Solo concert (evening) The Midland Arts Centre, City of Swan, Perth.
Making the switch from the lead guitarist in a band to performing solo takes a good deal of mental preparation for me; I have to think my way into it - that, and do a regular amount of practice for a week or two before. The two roles are different. Much of what I play on acoustic guitar is not only fairly complex, but there are figures, moves, sequences, that the fingers have to get accustomed to and reacquainted with.  I’ve made time to rehearse during my time in America and here also in Australia.

Another requirement is energy, so rest and relaxation is fundamental here; talking of which, I was probably the first to retire to my room from the previous night’s end of tour gathering.  I knew I had to keep the energy level up for the events of this next day, however, I wasn’t at all ready for the events that were about to precede it all.

It was maybe 4:30 a.m. - maybe a little later when I first woke. I was aware that Carol would be heading for the antipodes as I was sleeping; the plan being that on Tuesday I fly to New Zealand, and we’d meet up in Auckland.

I awoke early, as is pretty usual; I checked my phone for messages. Carol had sent one text that read, ‘Just arrived at Sydney. Boy, these customs officials are so rude and unpleasant here!’. I thought little of it - I mean, the officials at airports are often a bit unpleasant, and unfortunately it’s one of those things one comes, at least to some extent, to accept.  I turned the phone off, and then tried for a little more sleep. My efforts were unsuccessful though, so at about 6 a.m. I turned the phone back on. There was another message, ‘Ken, please phone me now, it’s urgent’.
Also, I noticed a voicemail message had been left, it was a desperate sounding Carol. “Ken, call me, please. They’re threatening to send me back”!

Christ! I phoned immediately. She answered. “What’s happening”, I asked. “I was waiting to board the plane to Auckland”, she told me, “and they just came and took me from the gate. They need to see evidence of my flight back from New Zealand to Australia. Ken, you have the ticket for both of us; what’s the flight number? Quick Ken, please, I don’t have much time!”.

I had so many tickets in my case and in my shoulder bag. Schedules, tickets to America, Australia, New Zealand, back to the UK; and at 6 in the morning I was trying to make sense of all these documents, documents with rows and rows of times and numbers and dates and airports. “Hurry, Ken, hurry”, she shouted.

 The pressure I felt caused all of this information to make no sense at all, it was just sheets of paper before my eyes with nothing more than shapes on them. I was skimming over the same things again and again; nothing connected. “Ken, I’m running out of time”! I heard her say somewhat faintly - my phone lodged and gradually slipping away from between my head and shoulder.
 Then I found it; flight 5050 from Dunedin to Christchurch, and on to Sydney. “Carol, I’ve got it”. “It’s too late, Ken!”. “No, listen”, I shouted back. “It’s flight 50 …”. The phone went dead.

I tried repeatedly to call her back but there was no answer. I left the ticket details on her voicemail.

Now, here I was, sat on the edge of a bed, in Perth, Australia, with a fair amount of adrenaline in my system and a plane ticket in my hand, and given the day I had in store, there was very serious need to weigh up my choices. I’d had a total of less than four hours rest, and there was no way I’d successfully negotiate my way through these next eighteen hours or so without more sleep.

A pragmatic approach was needed. My options were: I could worry about Carol, and fear the worse - that they’d send her back to the UK.  
I could accept there were some things, circumstances, that in my present position I had absolutely no control over, and that no degree of worry and anxiety would have a jot of influence over the outcome of these events.
I could also choose to trust that the outcome would, in one way or another, take care of itself in a positive way.
Choosing the latter options, I took half a zopiclone pill and grabbed the precious three hours I needed.

We spoke later in the morning; she’d been allowed to travel to Auckland, but only after having to buy a ticket from NZ to Sydney; a ticket she had absolutely no need for.

Here is the deal. When the immigration official looked at Carol’s ticket they could see she was booked from Manchester to London, then on to Sydney with a connection to Auckland. Then there was a gap; that was the ticket I had in my possession with both of our names on it from NZ back to Sydney. However, they could clearly see she was booked from Sydney back to London on November 7th.
Now why in God’s name would they suspect that she would stay in New Zealand illegally when she had that flight booked back from Aussie to London?
Not only that; why were they so incredibly unpleasant; well, from how she describe the whole affair to me they were nothing short of rude and disrespectful.
They had her in tears at one point. What’s that all about, really? Are they trained to treat people like that? Is it all to do with effectively achieving required outcomes, or is it an arbitrary approach carried out by only certain officials because they have the power to do that - because they can?  
I would dearly like to know, and I do intend to try and find out.

The main thing of course was that she was safely in New Zealand. And the day got better from there on.

I enjoyed the workshop even though ‘attendance-wise’ it was thin on the ground, but it was a Monday afternoon after all, most people were at work.

And the gig in the evening? The Midland Arts Centre was a perfect sized venue, and the staff extremely helpful. 
Richard James was there (Australian tour organiser), also Richard Collins who promoted the previous night’s show came along, and even Maddy turned up.
I loved the night - had a fantastic time. It was just great to be playing solo again, and to know that everything was neatly in place - at least temporarily.

A huge thank you has to be given to John McNair for giving me the opportunity to play over here. He organised both the workshop and the evening concert.  John is a highly creative and intriguing individual; a man with some great ideas. He has his own podcast at: The John McNair Show.

Courting With Kangaroos

2009-11-15T08:57:00.059Z

Darling Harbour, Sydney.

Wednesday 30th September. The Event Centre - Southern Cross Club, Canberra. 
Travel: Flight QF1477 (Terminal 3) Depart Sydney: 11.55 a.m. Arrive Canberra: 12.45 a.m.
Accommodation: Rydges Hotel, 1 London Circuit, Canberra.

I guess it’s natural to think of Sydney as the capital here, when in fact it’s the relatively new and purpose built Canberra, which has been Australia’s capital since just 1927; the previous distinction was held by Melbourne.
 This is where all of Australia’s major political policies are shaped, and, as you might expect in a capital, where the houses of parliament stand.  It has all the looks of a recent city - square, wide, lots of concrete. Reminds me a bit of Milton Keynes.

The Parliament building, Canberra.

Since our arrival in Sydney on Monday we’ve had two–more-or-less–days off. The band did have to play live on an A.B.C. radio show on Tuesday, but we kept it simple - singing one song with only a strummed fiddle as accompaniment, called Ranzo.  

So we’ve had a chance to both recover and adjust to the time difference; believe me, it takes more than two days though. Presently, I’m nine hours ahead of UK time, and fifteen hours ahead of Chicago where we last played.
On our travels here from Chicago via San Francisco, we departed on Saturday, crossed the international date line and arrived in Australia on Monday. Sunday has been lost forever.

You do meet some very nice people on the road, and today was no exception; we were well looked after. The evening went well; it was a good way to kick-off this Australian leg of our tour.

Thursday 1st October. Day off in Canberra.
 This is definitely the way to do it - one show and then a day off.

I had a plan. Following my golf shoe drama at the airport, I figured they should be put to use, so I made a few phone calls in the morning. I called three courses before finding one that we could play.
Can’t remember all the names, but the first place - the recommended course - had a tournament going on all day, so that was out.  
The second was the Royal Canberra Club; the pro explained that a letter of introduction was needed from ones own golf club in order to be allowed anywhere near the place.
I appealed to him, “But we’re on tour; we’re from England; we’re only here for a day - and I’ve brought my golf shoes!”. “I’ll put you through to administration, they might waive the rule for you”.  “Hello, club administration here, can I help you?”. “I just spoke to the pro”, I said, “and he explained that I have to have a letter from my doctor, mother, golf club, whoever, in order to play on your course”. “Yes - your club, that’s correct”, she replied. “But we’re on tour; we’re from England”, I said. “Sorry it’s a club rule”, she responded. “But we’re only here for a day” … “I’m afraid I can’t change the club rules, Sir” …“But I’ve even brought my golf shoes!”.
Silence.

Time to ring a third golf club … ‘I need a place that’ll accept any Tom, Dick or Steeleye Span member’ I thought to myself.
We ended up being accepted at the Golden Creek Country Club, and I felt uncomfortable by how ready the pro was to let us play there. In fact I almost declined on the basis that we’d been accepted.

Pete (Knight) and I were driven to the course by tour manager Richard, and on arrival we hired two sets of clubs, a buggy; bought tees, balls, pitch mark repairers and two hats. Now, we may both have been considerably poorer, but we had the joy of eighteen holes of golf ahead of us - and in glorious sunshine.
 Matchplay. A dollar on the front nine; a dollar on the back nine; a dollar on the eighteen. Pete won the front nine by a hole, before I rallied - taking the back nine and the eighteen.

The highlight of the game was just as we turned to walk from the 16th green to the 17th tee. As I looked ahead, about thirty to forty yards beyond the tee I saw a group of kangaroos, maybe twenty or thirty of them; mothers, offspring, just lying around in the sun.  I’ve since found out that the correct description for such a gathering is ‘mob’.
I have, in the past whilst playing golf in one part of the world or another, encountered all manner of wildlife - even coyotes and the occasional rattle snake, but never until today have I seen a mob of kangaroos. 

I was very disappointed not to have my camera with me, but did take a few shots with my mobile phone.

I heard that in the tour bus Brian looked out through the window toward a field of cows, and he made some remark about how they were all trying hard to look like kangaroos.
Pete Zorn quickly retorted, “oh, they’re just wannabes".

Friday 2nd October. Seymour Centre, Sydney. 
Travel: Flight Q.F. 1472 
Depart Canberra: 11:25
Arrive Sydney 12:10
 Accommodation: Southern Cross Suites, Darling Harbour.

The night when everything came together. The onstage sound; the way everyone in the band played; the audience response; it all seemed to fall into place. The type of evening that we’ll measure all other nights on the tour against.

Pete Zorn

Steeleye Span in Brisbane

Pictures: Marcel Safier

Saturday 3rd October. The Tivoli, Brisbane.  
Travel: Flight Q.F. 524 Depart Sydney: 12:05 p.m. Arrive Brisbane 1:35 p.m. 
Accommodation: Rydges Hotel, Glenelg St, South Brisbane.

Sunday 4th October. Lismore City Hall. 
Travel: Depart: 10 a.m. - tour bus from Brisbane to Byron Bay. 
Accommodation: Friday on the Beach, Lawson St, Byron Bay.

Monday 5th October. No concert. 
Day off in Byron Bay. 
An absolutely ideal place for a day off. Byron Bay is were the young hang out. It’s where the backpackers and surfers alike make a beeline for.
It’s laid-back and fun.  And what’s more fun than doing laundry! Yes, I found a coin-op. It was $5.00 for a cold wash, $6.00 for a warm or hot wash.
The tumble dryers offered six minutes of tumble drying for the price of a dollar.  This is what’s called ‘cutting edge’ blogging.

Byron Bay

Tuesday 6th October. Fly to Sydney. 
Travel: Flight D.J. 520 (Virgin Airlines) 
Depart Gold Coast airport: 12:05 a.m. Arrive Sydney 2:35 p.m. 
Accommodation: Southern Cross Suites, Darling Harbour.

Darling Harbour

Wednesday 7th October. I.P.A.C. Wollongong. 
Travel: Tour bus to Wollongong. 
Depart: 3 p.m. Arrive at venue 4:15 p.m. 
Accommodation: Southern Cross Suites, Darling Harbour.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Thursday 8th October. Balmain Town Hall, Sydney. 
Travel: Tour bus to venue.
 Depart: 4:30 p.m. Arrive: 4:45 p.m. 
Accommodation: Southern Cross Suites, Darling Harbour.

Sydney Opera House

Friday 9th October. Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide. 
Travel: Flight Q.F. 751
 Depart Sydney: 12:35 p.m. Arrive Adelaide: 2:15 p.m. 
Accommodation: The Hilton Hotel, Victoria Square, Adelaide.

Met with old friend, Don Fogg. It must’ve been 1969 when I first met Don; he was an art student at the Harris Art College in Preston, and we shared the same intense interest in all things acoustic-guitar related. Since those days we’ve seen, or run into each other with what I could describe as regular infrequency.

Don Fogg

Each one of our last four meetings were notable in character and in chance:

1. In 1970 I spent the summer in Worcestershire. I was 19 years old, and had decided to hitch-hike my way down - with friend, Paul Daber - to the town of Evesham. We spent an idyllic few weeks there working on a farm, first gathering peas, and then, in the later summer months - as the plums ripened in the orchard - spent most of our time on ladders picking fruit.

 The image; the feel of that warm early evening; it’s still there in my mind. I spotted a familiar shape on the opposite pavement walking through the main street. ‘That looks so much like Don’, ‘but it can’t be, surely’.
On my side of the road I walked at his speed, and as I looked across, he looked only straight ahead. Eventually I caught his eye; neither of us could quite believe it. He was en route, hitch-hiking, to an air show (his passion for air travel is just as strong now as it was then, by the way).
 At about 120 miles from home, OK, this was not the greatest moment of improbability, but one that felt, as many did back then, as though it had an element of design to it.

2. Messing with a volume pedal on stage at Newcastle University; 1975; touring with Al Stewart. It was afternoon, and we, the band, were just setting up.  With a purely equipment-related focus, similar maybe to that of a man on his way to an air show, I heard the sounds of a Liverpool accent. I had no idea that Don had moved north-east to study on a teachers training course, but there he was.  It was to be almost three decades later before we were in contact again.

3. Twenty nine years on, and an email arrives from Australia. It’s 2004, Steeleye Span’s thirty fifth anniversary year.
He’d seen a poster that advertised the band’s show at the Norwood Concert Hall. We arranged to meet at the Hilton. He explained how he and his wife, Linda - who’s also a Brit, moved out here many years ago. Since then he’s worked as an art teacher in a high school here in Adelaide.

4. Same thing as last time really. Same venue, and even the same meeting place. Don turned sixty this year, and as well as continuing to teach, he volunteers his time to his local fire service, and plays in a folk group called the Bogaduck Bushband.

Don & I. Adelaide 09/10/2009

As regards the venue here - The Norwood - I have to say, for acoustics, it’s one of the most difficult venues I’ve ever played with Steeleye. I imagine for small, and purely acoustic acts it’s probably fine, but very challenging for the man on the desk with a full-on electric band like SS.  The style of the venue is reminiscent of many town halls that you find in the UK - very square or rectangular, high ceilings, hard and shiny surfaces - perfect for bouncing sound waves right back at you. More and more these days you will now see large baffles and curtains placed in various strategic positions in many of these old buildings for the purpose of reducing their reflective and cavernous qualities.

Saturday 10th October. The National Theatre, Melbourne. 
Travel: Flight Q.F. 862 
Depart Adelaide: 11:40 a.m. Arrive Melbourne: 1:25 p.m. 
Accommodation: The Cosmopolitan Hotel, Carlisle St, St Kilda.

Sunday 11th October. The Octagon, Perth.
 Travel: Flight Q.F. 769 
Depart Melbourne: 12:35 p.m. Arrive Perth: 1:45 p.m.
 Accommodation: The Sheraton Hotel, Adelaide Terrace, Perth.

Last date for Steeleye here in Australia. I enjoyed the final show, after which we all went back to the hotel bar for one of those ‘glad that it’s done but sad that it’s over’ last few moments together.
Most will be UK bound tomorrow - all except Maddy and I.
After one more day with friends in Perth, Maddy heads to Darwin, and then to Bali.

The next episode of my own adventure is just about to begin - with a solo date here in Perth, and then another eight in the land of my Father: New Zealand.

The Best Laid Plans

2009-10-07T01:18:00.032+01:00

Sunday 20th September. BB King's, Times Square, New York.
An early start. Kari said it was about three and a half hours from Boston to New York, so we got on the road at nine.
The idea was to arrive at 1 p.m. and then have a couple of hours acting as tourists; but as the saying goes, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry". Once in New York, it took almost as long to get to the venue in Times Square as it had taken to reach the city it self from Boston. It was madness. I did get to spend almost an hour walking around, taking pictures and video of Times Square when the rest of the band were eating; it was the only chance I was going to get. And it was worth it. I’ve never witnessed anything like it - this shameless and massive exhibition of man’s desire for gain and pleasure.

The ‘take’ of one or two band members on the place was interesting when I talked about it later.
One said it was all about greed; I guess it is really, but in my view, greed is something that not only takes many different forms, but can also be interpreted differently. I couldn’t help feeling that this glowing show of capitalism was, more than anything, a testimony to the human spirit, not dissimilar to the way I feel when viewing, lets say, a cathedral or the stunning Renaissance architecture of Florence; it’s less about the actual form in front of me, and more about the wonderment of what drives man to such lengths.
Whether it be money or God, the unrelenting driving force of ‘belief’ itself is there for all behold.

There’s an almost industrial, conveyor belt-like approach to the way BB King’s is run; in the afternoon they staged a gospel production which meant we couldn’t load in and get the equipment onstage until the stage area was completely clear - with every artist and audience member all having left the venue. Yet, despite how it might appear a somewhat cold and impersonal way to run a music club, the staff at BBs were incredibly friendly and helpful. It was the only way a place like this could survive commercially, one of the staff explained.
And when it came to our show, we performed to an audience of around 380; I was told on very good authority it was an excellent crowd for the venue. Monday 21st September. Sellersville Theatre, Sellersville, Pennsylvania.

Picture book American neighbourhoods; this is the only way to describe the communities we passed through on our way to Sellersville. And probably the same should be said of Sellersville itself - a lovely town in which, yet again, we were made to feel so welcome. The theatre was intimate - probably about a 350 / 400 capacity, and it sat a few yards away from a restaurant, run, and possibly owned, I think by the same people.

I have the feeling that as far as entertainment is concerned, there isn’t a great deal going on in these parts, so the theatre looks like a good local focus for music and the arts, and a popular one too. After the sound check we were fed at the restaurant; the food and the choice of beers were both superb, and the too often committed sin of eating before a show was yet again a temptation unable to be declined on my part.

Richard Burgess, Ken and Pete Zorn.

Tuesday 22nd September. Radio - Live session at Sirius XM, Sirius DC.
Another early start, this time so we could get to Sirius DC by 11 a.m. for a show scheduled to be broadcast at 1 p.m. on which we perform a one hour live set. The station blew me away, with it’s ultra modern, state of the art studios.
I was shocked and surprised to discover just how well known some of my past work was with a number of the presenters and production staff here; it seems that the Albion band has some fans in these parts.

A real highlight of the day for me was meeting up with Richard Burgess. Richard was the drummer with Easy Street, the band that, along with Pete Marsh, I had back in the 70s.
Richard had a fair amount of success around that time also with his own band Landscape, having top ten hits with Einstein-A-Go-Go, and Norman Bates. He also made quite a name for himself as a producer, working with a number of successful bands during that so-called ‘romantic’ period of popular music back in the 80s, including Spandau Ballet.
Richard is now the Director of Marketing and Sales for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and Smithsonian Global Sound in Washington DC

Photo: Daniel Coston

Concert: The Birchmere, Alexandria, Virginia.

We didn’t even have time to check into the hotel before the gig, and if it wasn’t for the shower I took at the venue after the sound check I might have gone crazy.
The word ‘long’ would not even come close to describing how today - Tuesday the 22nd of September - felt, and ‘tired’ would not be an adequate way of conveying the condition of each band member by the end of tonight’s show.
‘Long’ it may have been, but more than anything else I would have to describe it as deeply rewarding.

Wednesday 23rd September. The Ark, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Flight SWA777 took us from Baltimore-Washington airport to Detroit, taking off just after 11 a.m. and arriving at Detroit around 12:30 p.m.

Met with my good friend Gillian from Colorado. Gillian and I met back in nineteen eighty-something when we both worked for Rainbow Kitchen, a modest business in West Hollywood which every morning would supply sandwiches to the likes of us, and other young hopefuls trying to break into the music and film worlds, and we’d then go out selling them office to office around Los Angeles.
I was lousy at this, and found it all quite soul destroying. But, as they say, it’s all part of the great tapestry of life - and along with a considerable number of other very questionable scenarios, I do value what it has added to my own tapestry; I’m just bloody glad it’s over.

Great to see Gillian though.

The Ark is an intimate venue, possibly slightly too intimate for a folk / rock band like Steeleye. I only say this because of the close proximity of the people at the front by the stage.
The problem with this is that, even though to be seated at the front may seem like a choice position to be, there’s always the potential to hear too much of what’s coming directly off the stage, and not enough of that which is actually designed for the audience to hear, i.e. that which comes through the PA system. Consequently, they’ll hear too much drum kit, or electric guitar, for example; some will even be able to hear what’s coming through our stage monitors.
In this kind of room it’s often those people further away that are the ones with the smiles on their faces.
Saying that though, the place itself was fantastic. Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman opened the evening, and they blew me away.

Thursday 24th September. Travel day.
Travelled the 250 miles from Ann Arbor to Chicago by road.

Checked in to the stylish Majestic Hotel on West Brompton - stylish maybe, but the rooms were just too hot, and the AC system was too noisy, so it was best to just run the fans on the ceilings. I can’t imagine what it like in mid-summer.

Ate out tonight at the superb Angelina Ristorante on North Broadway; very highly recommended.

Friday 25th September. The Old Town School, Chicago.
The Old Town School is a whole building, very community based, that is dedicated to one form of musical activity or another; there’s a lot here that pertains to the history and traditions of folk music. There’s all sorts going on here, including music tuition, and it even has its own music shop.

The concert went well. Maria Dunn from Canada opened the show for us.

During the day I found a music shop on N. Lincoln Avenue called the Chicago Music Exchange , actually it would be more accurately described purely as a guitar shop. The range of electric and acoustic guitars was staggering. I needed to buy a couple of jack to jack cables; one that I’d brought with me had given up the ghost, and so I’d been using one of Pete’s (Knight) for the last couple of shows.
If you like guitar shops, then this is for you. I asked where they kept all the cases, and was told that there’s an area beneath the shop - equally as large, and believe me, it’s large - where all the cases are stored.

Saturday 26th September. Travel day.
Quantas Airlines - Flight QF3106 Chicago to San Francisco
Dep: 17.10
Arr: 19:45
Flying time: 4:35 mins.

Said our the first round of good-byes at the hotel before setting out to O’Hare airport for the short first leg of our journey to Australia. The final good-byes and thank yous were as we parted company with she who had put the tour together, had shown considerable organisational skills, and had put up with the six of us (Brian included) for the last week - Kari. I had been impressed with her whole approach and demeanour. And she’s just a good person to be around.

On arrival at San Francisco decided to have a cappuccino; the choices of coffee outlets were limited, and I ended up in a bookstore that also appeared to have a little cafeteria section. A small Mexican looking lady then proceeded to create the worst cappuccino known to man. Be warned.

Quantas Airlines - Flight QF74 San Francisco to Sydney
Dep: 22:40
Arr: 06:20 Monday 28th September.
Flying time: 13:45 minutes

The longest continuous flight I’ve ever been on. Couldn’t get into the films, but did watch a few documentaries, one being about the Muhammad Ali, Joe Frasier - Thrilla in Manilla fight, and all that led up to it. I suppose on one hand it did disturb the hell out of me - but what a fantastic piece of drama.

Arriving at Sydney I got out my very infrequently used New Zealand passport, and glided through immigration. Next I helped gather the considerable amount of luggage and musical equipment we are carrying, then the final step was to be screened for whether I was carrying food, vegetables, plants, etc. For some reason they seem extremely rigourous down here about such things.
Now our bags were on a number of different trolleys, with the luggage on each one in no way corresponding with the person pushing it. On top of this, everyone had gone through this final checking process at slightly different times, and through different channels.
So, my turn arrived. The bags were placed on the conveyor belt. “Have you got any golf shoes in your luggage?”, the official asked. I said, “yes”, then I realised that someone else had already gone through with my case (I guess they are concerned about what foreign vegetation you might bring stuck to the bottom of your golf shoes).
“Can I see them?”, he asked. “Well, I don’t actually have them with me, in fact I don’t have my suitcase here”, I answered. I went onto explain that the band were randomly carrying each other’s luggage. “Where’s your case then?”. “Out there somewhere”, I said, “shall I go and find it?”.

He looked at me for a moment. “What’s your handicap?”, he asked. “Fourteen”, I replied. “OK, go on then”. . . “and enjoy your golf”, he said, and waved me through.

Once outside the airport, the band was met by Richard James, the tour promoter and manager here. We took a large taxi to Darling Harbour, and checked into the Southern Cross Suites.

Excess Baggage

2009-10-05T12:17:00.010+01:00

Tuesday 15th September. Rehearsals, The Warehouse, Kennington, Oxford.

With no car of my own on the road, the only way I was going get all of my equipment down to Oxfordshire was to hire one. Thankfully, the Park Records office took care of this. Right on the dot of 9 a.m. this morning the door bell rang, and their stood Mister Hire-Car Man himself. He drove me to the depot, filled in all the paperwork, and showed me the ins and outs of the new Vauxhall Astra I’d be driving.

I’d been preparing myself and my luggage for quite some time leading up to this day. As from today I won’t be home for, well to be precise - two days short of two months, and between now and then there’s America, Australia and New Zealand. The day I arrive home is Sunday November 8th; on my return I’ll maybe get one, or if Im lucky, two days at home before heading back to Oxford once again in preparation for the winter tour.

So with all this time away, and the logistics of that to consider, what I take with me today - guitars, amps, cables, clothes, etc, has to be carefully thought through. Due to baggage restrictions, what’s going to the States with me on Friday is a scaled down version of what I’d want to take. Then I have to think about whether, with my car problems, I’ll need to take whatever equipment I’m going to use in November on the UK winter tour to Oxford now.
I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I find packing before I go away stressful at the best of times.

It was about 2:30 p.m. by the time I arrived at the Warehouse. The following three hours were spent brushing up on what we played during the Spring dates. Bass player Pete Zorn is back with us for the international gigs; Rick should be back in action on the winter tour.

Thursday 17th September. The Village Hall, Nettlebed, Oxforshire.
The usual warm-up gig. Well it is, this where we always seem to play after the two or three days of rehearsals that precede our tours. It’s certainly one of the larger folk clubs, and can’t recall it being any less than totally sold out whenever the band has played here.

The most unique feature of the venue is the ceiling above the stage; if you’re looking for a good onstage sound, then forget it. It has a concave recess to it that has the effect of eliminating any kind of definition between one instrument and the next - and between one voice and the next.
There’s some law of physics going on here, maybe along the same lines of the famous Whispering Gallery at St Paul’s Cathedral; it’s something I experienced before we even started the sound-check; I was standing stage left when I heard someone speaking, and it was as though they were literally standing right behind me talking into my ear. When I turned around I saw they were in fact positioned on the far side of the stage.
But when the band starts playing, all that pronounced clarity turns into a, well lets say a ‘soup’ of sound, making it impossible much of the time to pick out its individual elements. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve listened to various band members here complaining bitterly that they couldn’t hear their instrument or / and their voice. And of course they’re right - neither could I.

As far as I’m concerned all you can do, to save oneself from any grief, is to trust that out-front in the house it probably sounds just fine; you see, I’ve never witnessed an unhappy audience at Nettlebed, which says it all really.

Friday 18th September. Travel day. London - Boston.
Last nights accommodation was close to Heathrow airport. We made an early start this morning, reaching the airport not much later than 9 a.m.. I got to witness Terminal 5 for the first time - now with all its famous teething problems evidently well and truly in the past.

The flight, British Airways flight BA 213 took off a little later than its scheduled 11:25 time, but once in the air the journey was smooth going. We landed at Boston Logan International, Terminal 3 some seven hours later.

Kari is the tour manager here in the States - she met us at the airport, and we went about loading our considerable quantity of luggage and musical equipment into what appeared from the outside to be a very sizeable Ford touring bus; in fact, to fit everything into the bus, and then to have any room left for humans, involved not an inconsiderable degree of creativity and strategic thought.
This was a job for a drummer, our drummer - Liam, a man who, luckily, just can’t help but to take control in such situations. It seems to be a double sided scenario; a compulsion to both take control, and then to complain about how difficult it is. I have to admit though, it was a heavy job, lifting those cases in and out of what was a fifteen person vehicle, but with seats positioned in such a way that there wasn’t actually any official space for luggage, so all the cases had to be lifted and placed over, onto, and in between the seats - a process to be repeated a multitude of times during the following days.

We checked into the Somerville Holiday Inn, and that evening went out for Mexican food - something I’ve missed terribly since my days in California. I can hardly describe the pleasure; nachos, quesadillas, chili relleno and margaritas - fantastic.

Pete Zorn & Liam doing the organising.

Maddy filming me, filming her.

Saturday 19th September. Somerville Theatre, Somerville, Massachusetts.
Got the train to downtown Boston this afternoon; it wasn’t easy. On arriving at the closest station - Sullivan Square - I was faced with a number of ticket machines; I had no idea where exactly I was heading, and no idea how the machines worked. Oddly, there were no instructions as to how to how the machines worked, and more oddly, no maps of the train system at the station entrance. And there was one more blindingly missing crucial feature - someone who might be able to help me.

I was stood there with a ten dollar bill in my hand; looking at the machine; looking across towards the platforms; watching others confidently inserting money, hitting buttons, taking tickets and picking up change, and moving smoothly through the automated barriers - not one of them noticing my inanimate behaviour. What I had to do, I decided, was to, more-or-less, jump in front of one of these single-minded commuters as they are in full flow, and hope they take pity.

“I’d like to go to downtown Boston”, I asked a young woman. “Could you tell me which station I should get a ticket to?”. “Well, when I lived here”, she replied, “I’d go to . . .”, then she reeled off one station name after another. Eventually, it was decided I would go to Park Street. Great. I said thank you very much, and she walked away through the barrier and towards the trains.
So then I turned to the ticket machine once again - to buy my ticket to Park Street; shit, I’d forgotten to ask about the ticket machine!

The next victim was a young black guy, and very helpful. He took the money out of my hand, and a second or two later issued me with a ticket, my change, and the instruction to get a train on the Orange Line going ‘that’–pointing to the right–‘way’.

I enjoyed walking round Boston; I like it here. First thing I did was find a T-Mobile shop, and buy a sim card.
It’s important if you bring your phone to the US that: 1. Your phone is either a Tri-band or Quad-band phone (UK phones are largely Dual-band, and won’t work here); 2. That one buys an American sim card for the phone - so as to avoid paying hideous international roaming charges; 3. In order to use a different network, your phone will need to be unlocked.

So I got the card into my mobile, and sent a text with my new number to Carol. We have this deal at home in the UK where you can register the house phone with a special website - there are a few of them - the one we use is called 18185.co.uk. Once registered, what you do is dial 18185 before the number you’re calling; this cuts the cost of your calls dramatically. For Carol to phone me here in the States, on my mobile, the cost is 1p a minute.
I remember a time when it was more like £1.00 a minute.

It was time for a coffee now. I noticed in the bookstore Borders there was a coffee shop; it’s usually Starbucks at any Borders I’ve seen in the UK, here it’s Seattle’s Best Coffee; ‘it must be good then’. Ordered a large espresso machiato, drank it and worried about the rest of Seattle’s coffee.

Tonight’s show. The audience was amazing; so vocal; so expressive. They just don’t hold back here.

Under-Rehearsed & Over-Heated

2009-10-05T12:10:00.003+01:00

Solo
Sunday 30th August. The Cumbria Guitar Show.
I’ve played every year at this guitar show for a decade now, and possibly a bit longer. It was seven years ago when Rick Kemp just happened to walk in during my set, an event that resulted in that historic landmark in the world of folk-rock, the merging of Steeleye Span with myself. Well, in our house it’s an historic landmark.

Just before the band’s 35th anniversary year, the band members were asked to each write a piece that would go into the program, or the brochure to be sold at all the concerts. I chose to tell the tale of that fateful day - it was a kind of ‘Sliding Doors’ scenario; a slice of serendipity. Here are some of the words I wrote …

I’m thinking back to August 25th 2002, a Sunday morning, and a day I been booked to perform at a guitar show in a place called Penrith, a town that sits about ninety miles north of Preston, where I live. I was feeling rather under-rehearsed, having not picked the guitar up for a few days, so I figured I should get some practice in before heading up the M6 motorway.
As I was getting more and more comfortable with my Fylde guitar, I was also getting less and less comfortable with the amount of time left to get to my gig. The agreed performance time was 1 p.m., and I was supposed to arrive forty five minutes before that.

You could say I’ve never been the most successful individual when it comes to arriving places on time - punctuality always appearing to be a most desirable attribute, and a most commendable one in those who achieve it. Today, yet again, the mould would not be broken.

Thankfully though, the organiser of the show was an understanding fellow, and gracefully he swapped my performance time with another artist’s, putting me on at 2 p.m.. So, that’s the time I eventually got up on stage and started my spot, during which, I recall thinking to myself that it was all going quite well and that the practice seemed to be paying off.

Anyway, unbeknown to me, and about halfway through my set, in walked bassist, Rick Kemp, and as they say - ‘the rest is history’.

That’s more or less how I ended up as a Steeleye Span member - something that may never have happened had I been more skilled as a time keeper.

Today’s visit to what is now called The Cumbria Guitar Show, again turned out to be a very eventful occasion, with the first event taking place a mile and a half from junction 40 on the M6, the Penrith turn-off.

On the way there, I could sense that there was something slightly different in the way the car was handling, and then when I put my foot down on the throttle, we started to lose power.
Instinctively, I looked down at the temperature gauge, and I knew we were in trouble.

Carol was travelling with me, along with our mutual friend Val. Carol and I had four nights in Scotland lined up, a mini holiday before I go travelling the world for the next few months. The plan was to play the guitar show (80 miles north of Preston), go on from there to Dumfries for the one night (Sunday), and then on Monday drive up to Ayr for the remaining three. Now we were sitting in a 1994 Toyota Previa on the hard shoulder of the motorway, and I was trying to work out what our next move should be.

The engine had died the moment the car came to a standstill, but once it cooled down a little I managed to get it re-started, and with hazard lights flashing we crawled along the hard shoulder to the turn-off. I parked up at a Little Chef on the A66, about one third of a mile from the Rheged Centre where the two day Bank Holiday weekend show was being staged.

After calling the AA I left Carol and Val with the car, while I set foot to find help; I needed to somehow get my equipment and guitars to the venue. I did find help - in the shape of someone called Simon who offered to drive me back to my car; the whole stretch of road from the venue back to the motorway was a dual carriageway with a central barrier running its entire length, which offered no opportunity for a U-turn. We’d have to go past my car, round the motorway roundabout, and come back on ourselves in order to reach the stricken vehicle.

I was due on at 1:30 p.m.; it was now about 1:25. OK, so we hit the roundabout; at this point Simon went into some kind of default mode - something inside him must of thought, ‘right, we’re going home now’, and he turned, automatically, onto the M6 - southbound. He realised almost instantly what he’d done, but unless we’d have wanted to have reversed the wrong way up a slip road–and ended up as stars of Police, Camera, Action–the only choice was to keep going.

It just so happens that the distance between next turning, junction 39 - the Shap turning, and the one that just led us onto the motorway - junction 40, is possibly the longest distance between two junctions I know of. It was now time to make my grand entry onto the stage, and I was travelling south on the M6 for the next ten minutes, before we could even turn back in the right direction.

It took some work to stay calm, I tell you, but stay calm is what I did. You have to be as pragmatic as you can be, there’s not really any choice if you want to make the best of a scenario like this - or at least if you want to limit the damage as much as is possible.

By the time we’d got to the car, picked up the guitars, and I was ready to launch into my set. it was close to 2 o’clock. It was good though, even if my head wasn’t all there and I’d not had an opportunity to warm up; I had plenty to talk about though when I was up there.

Carol didn’t get to see the show. She’d travelled with the breakdown truck back to Preston, where she dropped my car off outside the mechanics, picked up her own car, and drove back to Penrith. She arrived back at something like 7:30, and we proceeded–both considerably worn out–with our holiday plans.

Monday 31st August to Thursday 3rd September. Ayr, Scotland.
The calm before the storm; a time to relax and an attempted avoidance of any thought or anticipation of what’s to follow in the next few weeks.
First stop was Dumfries on the Sunday night (a late arrival after the car debacle), then on to Ayr the following day.

In Ayr we’d booked three nights in a hotel that in the pictures looked grand, elegant and stately - the pictures didn’t lie. The Name: The Belleisle Hotel. It sits in some spectacular grounds, much of which is the Belleisle golf course. The down side was that much of the hotel was not operational, as we had been led to believe from the advertising; due to the low number of guests the restaurant wasn’t open, and neither was the bar, although they would open it especially for you if you required it.
But it was quiet. And the staff were nothing less than brilliant.

I have to say, I can’t think of many other places I’ve been in the world where people are as downright pleasant and friendly as here in Ayr. I love this town.

On Tuesday we played golf on the Belleisle course, and on Wednesday played at one of the three Troon public courses. These public courses are quite pricey when compared to the equivalent in England, but I’d say they are maintained to a standard that justifies the price - in my opinion the greens are as good as the greens at Royal Lytham and St Annes, where I played just a couple of weeks earlier.

The Devil You Know

2009-10-05T12:02:00.005+01:00

Solo
Thursday 6th August. Macclesfield Tennis Club.
I’m not certain how what began as a casual invite to play in a charity golf event morphed its way into a solo concert; although, I’m not sure why I said that - I do know how it happened. In fact no morphing took place, it was something that just got added on.

And I still got to play golf, which took place at a particularly good course in Cheshire called Tytherington; it’s a fairly long course; and it was a very long day.

My friend, James, was the organiser of this event; he’s a member of Macclesfield tennis club, and the object of the day was to raise few quid, - one, for the club, and two, for the East Cheshire Hospice.
James originall asked me to play two sets, but I knew a whole evening of performing was going to be asking too much - not just of the performer (me), but of an audience that would be looking for a ‘certain kind’ of entertainment at such an occasion, so I suggested one short set of around 40 minutes, and James agreed to that.

I’ll describe the golf first: pretty steady - as is quite usual these days, but with a couple of complete disasters - as is quite usual these days. If I could only stop the disasters from happening! If it wasn’t for those errant two or three holes in just about every round I play I could be hitting in the 70s - albeit the high 70s. But they do say it’s all about staying in your ‘comfort zone’, and never have I found a comfort zone to be so uncomfortable - still, it is a familiar discomfort, which I guess is what it’s all about; I think it’s called the Devil you know.

If you’ve ever played a little golf you may have discovered that there’s so much about it that tells you about ‘you’, it’s an illustration of how you deal with - life’s challenges and hazards; your ability to think on your feet; to plan, and to stay focused when all doesn’t go according to plan. It’s a conduit, as in - a channel through which your hopes, frustrations, and whatever else you might be harbouring in the deepest recesses of ‘the self’ will be externalised; it’s a mirror that will bring you face to face with your fear - when ‘in truth’ there’s absolutely nothing whatsoever to be all that fearful of.

We may, of course, go through our lives with some level of realisation that certain fears, certain obstacles, are within us; the difference, when it comes to the game of golf, is the way in which one has to continue the desired and considered physical actions–the timing, the tempo, the composure–at the very same time as those often negative psychological influences have a greater or lesser bearing on that process.

Sure, there are a multitude of other areas in life that the same can be said for - performing music is one that instantly springs to mind. But the paradox with golf is so strong, so apparent - possibly because of its outwardly benign persona.

Certainly, if you don’t want to show the world your true colours, it’s best to stay away from the game.

Nicol & Cool
Thursday 13th August. The Cropredy Festival.
Very different from the average festival, this one, certainly when it comes to the age factor. It’s a club, a big one, a large collection of people who–separately–shared an experience once-upon-a-time, one that can now be re-lived, re-captured, reminisced over, and commemorated ‘collectively’ in this regular anniversary of folk music; that’s folk music in its broadest sense. I say broadest despite a personal feeling that although the festival attempts to, and does a good job of, presenting a very broad spectrum of music, one that extends toward genres that ‘typically’ speaking, would have a thread–tenuous to say the least–connecting them to the ‘common’ perception of ‘folk’, my suspicion is that a great many of the attenders would be more than happy with having nothing other than their small handful of favourite way-back-when artists performing here. Much of it is about what’s comfortable.
That’s not intended as an overly negative comment; it’s natural I think that we should reach for those familiar heroes. But in recent years I have reflected so much on the subject of what music actually is, and how it’s possible, or indeed not possible, to evaluate it on the basis of impartial merit.
There is indeed good argument to state that there’s no such thing as ‘impartial merit’ - that ‘skill’, musically speaking, in many peoples eyes certainly does not necessarily constitute ‘good’. This is why so much that’s seen as just ‘brilliant’ out there in the mainstream, would undoubtedly be described by the musically literate as nothing less than remedial.
What is seen as ‘good’ is what ‘connects’, and what ‘connects’ is what has emotional relevance to its listener.

Also, there is the always ‘jazz clap’ scenario - that which is collectively agreed upon as good, whether it sends a shiver down your back or not. It’s a self-induced shiver - induced because the listener has a preconception and expectation that gives cause to a manufactured euphoria, one which corresponds with an abstract, magical notion of how good a particular artist is purported to be.

My own desire to play music came at a time when I was inspired by something I saw within it as ‘absolute’. It was my way, at the time, of finding and expressing truth. Rather simplistic, maybe, but enough to motivate me in a very single-minded way.

Since that time my considerations and observations have become far from single-minded; the result being that the ‘absolute’ has been largely displaced by the ‘subjective’. If I were to put this into more simple language, it’s that I have appreciated more and more the ‘individual take’ that everyone seems to have on all things, music being just one of them.
At some point (or various points) in that observational journey one is bound to experience some disappointment and cynicism, a consequence of when such a majestic view has a little reality beaten into it. But ultimately it is the only way you can go; as a creative musician, or indeed as anyone who feels they have something to say, there is nothing more important than saying it - this is how to stay sane; and whenever ‘what you say’ strikes a chord in the heart of another, it is a ‘by-product’, and one from which you can take great satisfaction.

Just a few thoughts there to pass the time of day; but enough of that for the time being, we’re at a festival. And going back to the point made earlier, the subject of age, it was hard to ignore the significant number of younger faces here. I imagine these are the people who grew up with music echoing through their respective households that fell outside of the mainstream - the music, that is, not the households - although I expect some would see the two as inseparable.

The festival seems to be more popular than ever, and for a first day, a Thursday, the speed at which the field became more and more congested was striking; all this despite these difficult economic times - or maybe because of it?

Phil and I were officially due on stage at 6:30 p.m. It was tight before hand getting things set up - it very often is, and usually because of other acts exceeding their allotted time. But 6:30 it was when we launched into our opener - Sunny Afternoon, the Ray Davies song; and that’s exactly what it was - a sunny afternoon.

After the show, and the forty five minute signing session–they’re quite exhausting these signing sessions–Phil went straight back home to Lancashire to get himself ready for his week to come at the Edinburgh Festival, while Carol and I just hung out for while, with friend Laura Grace - probably until around 10 p.m., then we headed back to the hotel in Banbury. We made an early start the following morning back to Preston.

A great feature for me every time I’m here is the vegetarian Indian food. There’s something about post-show time, and something about the little things you look forward to - it might be the glass of wine or beer; arriving back at the hotel, and turning the television on maybe. One of my favourites has always been the twelve o’clock news on Radio Four as I drive back home. Here at Cropredy it’s about getting a pint of beer, and a mountain of that Indian food on a paper plate.

Sliding Floors

2009-08-17T09:48:00.006+01:00

Steeleye Span 
Thursday 23rd July. Recording, Preston. 
Late in the day; this would accurately describe the way today’s recording session was arranged; arranged, more than anything else, on the back of the band’s performance, due this coming Saturday in Doncaster.

Doncaster is probably a good hundred miles from here (Preston), but to many southerners, what’s most relevant is that it lies beyond a town in Hertfordshire, UK; a town that’s situated 19 miles north-west of central London - yes, Watford.
Everything beyond is, of course, the north of England, which just so happens to mean that in this region there is no distance, to speak of, between any two locations.

For some reason I can hear my Mother saying to me, "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit", - a phrase that used to be delivered with profound regularity (well, certainly during my teen years).  
I’d often hear these words, and wonder as to the criteria, or the research used to determine such a conclusion. Not necessarily convinced, I’d often think to myself, ‘Surely there must be a lower form of wit somewhere out there?’. I had learnt though that it was best at these times to not over-complicate things.

OK, I admit it is unreasonable to tar all southerners with the same brush; not completely  unreasonable, but unreasonable nevertheless.  
Speaking of which, I just recalled a golfing partner the other day who told me, ‘I hate Pakistanis’! My reaction was to enquire as to how he’d ever found the time to get to know them all?
 Then I half-jokingly suggested that the only Pakistani that worried me was one who belonged to the Taliban or maybe Al-Qaeda. His reply was, ‘yes, but these days there’s no way you can tell the difference’!

I personally have never felt qualified to make such generalised assessments of race, colour or nationality, although I do admit to often having a strong feeling of incredulity and dismay by the apparent human propensity towards the holding of certain beliefs - and certainly towards the words or practices of 'some' of those that hold them.
However, many of these ‘some’ are as likely to live next door or round the corner from me than in an Islamic state thousands of miles from here.

But yes, back to the recording; a session that was sprung on me, as I said - ‘late in the day’  The one thing we hadn’t spent much time on down in Cornwall was backing vocals. Without exception it seems to be one of the very last touches in the recording process. I’m sure there are others who approach things differently, but this has always been my experience. My studio is well equipped for these finishing touches; it’s equipped for much more really, but it’s a little compromised when it comes to space. I have recorded bands in there, even two albums with the Albion Band, but it’s not exactly ideal for that kind of thing.

It just so happens that I had spent the first three days of this week putting a new laminate (floating) floor into the vocal room of the studio; this was more through necessity than anything else, having discovered a damp problem the previous week. Although the resulting acoustic properties of the room were not a major concern of mine, I was curious as to how the hard laminate surface and its reflective quality would effect the sound of anything recorded in there.

So, early afternoon, and Pete, Maddy and Rick arrived; we set about getting these BVs done. As the day progressed it became obvious we’d need more time to complete things, more time than was available today, and anyway, we were all tired. So at 7:30 / 8 p.m. we called it a day agreeing to continue tomorrow morning before the trip to Doncaster. After I’d recommended a first class Indian take-away (The Shapla, Watery Lane, Preston) to the two of them, Rick and Pete went to their hotel; Maddy stayed here with Carol and I, and the three of us had dinner.

Steeleye Span 
Friday 24th July. Recording, Preston / rehearsals, Doncaster.
One thing leads to another - a timeless truth, and one that’s particularly noticeable given the virtual impromptu character of recent events.
As illustrated in yesterday’s writing, it certainly seems to be the nature of how so much has taken place of late.

Certainly, one set of circumstances has to develop in order to present the next set; every single thing is an offshoot of something else. In this regard, I see ‘us’, mortal spirits, call us what you will, as the designers of our own destiny; the utilisers and the creators of possibility and probability, yet–other than in our own minds–not ultimately the masters as we might like to believe. This could be where ‘destiny’ and ‘freewill’ are seen to coexist.

There is that which we can do absolutely nothing about, and that which we can.  Although it was Daniel Defoe who originally made the inference (The Political History of the Devil, 1726); the ‘immortal’ phrase: ‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’, is generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
Death is, of course, inevitable, but it appears that we can exercise ‘some’ influence over how and when it occurs. This leads me to consider the possibility of less visible inevitabilities - whether they be laid down, as some think, by an invisible governing force, or are an inevitable outcome of past action - the culmination of a sequence of events.

I loved the film Sliding Doors (and not just because Gwyneth Paltrow was in it, as has been implied by some). The story illustrates perfectly how events, although seen as profoundly important by the mortal eye, can also be regarded as transient and circumstantial in that they twist and turn depending on fleeting decisions, or timing - as in the film.
A difference of a few seconds between whether a train is boarded or not can potentially result in one’s life dramatically changing course.
However, as with the inevitability of death, the story also implies that there are specific people one is bound or destined to meet, maybe children to be had - and perhaps other life changing scenarios that have to take place at some time, in some way - whether you like it or not!.  These might constitute the core reasons for your life - your purpose here. And these core reasons take place regardless of things like one’s career or financial standing, etc.

It’s always possible that in our quest to find meaning in life we dream up such ‘divine’ ideas as these, but then to write them off is also possibly part of a quest, a quest to find meaninglessness in life; and if we are the creators of possibility, then I can’t think of a better reason than to choose the divine.  
Whatever the specific details are, whether the subject be matters of purposefulness or pointlessness, mortality or immortality, the sheer fact that we can conceive, let alone debate such issues is an indication of our unique position on this planet. And by this, I am not inferring that it’s a position of superiority; all living things have their uniqueness, but ours is set apart by our ability to create, build, discuss; and the coup de grâce - the ability to be aware of one’s consciousness and existence.

As humans we are very adept in the art of self-delusion; contrary to popular belief, I would state that this is an indication of an evolved state; if fact, I’d go as far as to say that to label the art of self-delusion as anything other than creative brilliance is self-delusionary.
Still, familiarity does breed contempt, and unless one makes a real point of reminding oneself of ‘the miracle of it all’, the miracle falls easily and comfortably back into the ordinariness of day to day life.

Apart from all these ‘developed’ attributes (or some might say ‘hindrances’) that are characteristic of humanness, we are still, of course, animals; speaking of which, I do sympathise with the–not insubstantial–numbers of people (and I know some of them) who see other members of the animal kingdom in two distinct ways: 1. That they, the other animals, know something ‘we’ don’t - as though they actually have a higher level of intelligence; and 2. That they understand the English language - oh, and can mind read.

The reason for my sympathy is that I too, effortlessly, am inclined to see them in the very same way (especially my cat), until, that is, I catch myself doing it.  Of course, there’s a lot of what I’d call ‘projection’ going on here; maybe those with a background in psychology might be familiar with this, and would use the term - transference.  If ‘transference’ is a term you’re unfamiliar with, it is when someone unconsciously turns the person or object they are relating to into someone or something other than who or what they actually are.  
Another good description I’ve found might be: "the redirection of feelings and desires, and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object.”
Now tell me, what more evidence would better illustrate the brilliant complexity of the human condition?

And so back to another phenomenon of the human condition - Steeleye Span; we finished our recording at midday. The rehearsal room in Doncaster was booked from 5 p.m. onwards.  It took me something like three hours to travel from Preston to my destination in South Yorkshire, and on arrival was told that Liam’s plane from Italy was delayed coming into Stansted, so the rest of us went through the set as a four piece.

Steeleye Span 
Saturday 25th July. The Dome, Doncaster. 
Called ‘Doncaster Rocks’ this is a day long ‘folk’, ‘folk-rock’ spectacular.
Fortunately the rehearsal studio, the one that Liam couldn’t get to yesterday was available again this morning, so we ran the set once more, this time as a five piece.

 After rehearsal, there was probably a good four or five hours to kill before our scheduled spot at 6:30 p.m. - enough time for me to buy two pairs of shoes, locate the stage door at The Dome, unload the guitars and amp, then to hang out and relax a while before the show.
I have to say these are the gigs I like - the bigger ones, where you just get on stage, crank the amp up, and away you go.
Today’s line-up, in order of appearance was:

Julie Felix 
The Popes
 The (Acoustic) Strawbs
 Steeleye Span
 Jethro Tull
 The Lancashire Hotpots

What impressed me?  
I didn’t get to see a lot, but the Strawbs–a name I do know well, yet a band who’s music I’ve never been familiar with–sounded mighty, and that was with just three acoustic guitars.
Their main singer, Dave Cousins - most likely ‘the name’ people associate with the group, sang with real power. We all know the art of singing can become increasingly difficult as age catches up with us, yet Dave told of how he feels that his voice has become stronger with time.

  What else impressed?  
The standard of musicianship in Jethro Tull.

And what was the down side of the event?  
I opened a bottle of sparkling mineral water in the dressing room, and in the process a small amount of water fizzed out onto the table. Just before going on stage I placed my mobile phone onto the same table; by the time I got back when the show was finished, I could see there was a small channel of water that had worked its way along the table towards my phone, and it had collected underneath it. That was it - no phone; it wouldn’t work (it took a week to dry out before working again).

Have you ever interviewed yourself before? 
I’ve always been unavailable in the past, so no, have never interviewed myself before; I quite like it though, and might well do it again soon.

Big Nights In Smallhythe

2009-07-31T21:54:00.004+01:00

Nicol & Cool 
Tuesday 14th July. The Railway Folk Club, Dartford, Kent.
 When Jim told me that Phil and I had the opportunity to play at a folk club in Kent called the Railway, I was really taken aback, or maybe I should say - transported back, back - I thought - something like twenty years; it had to be about that because it wasn’t long after I’d come back from the US.  On my return, I’d been spending a little time at John Hade’s house, a friend who lived in south London; he too had moved back to the UK from LA at around the same time.

I first met John on a golf course; he was in the music biz - managing the Thomson Twins; they were big, very big actually at the time, having already had at least two major hit records on both sides of the Atlantic. I had a band too, they weren’t at all big, in fact we were struggling, and we were called Versailles.

The golf course was on Griffith Park, not far from Hollywood; I would just turn up there, pay my green fee, and the woman at the counter would normally say something like, “there’s a threesome up on the tee, if you’d like to join them?”.  
On this one particular occasion John just happened to be part of the threesome, or twosome, I can’t recall just how many, but by the time we reached the back nine I was working out how to get this new found golf partner interested in managing a second band. 
And that is what eventually transpired; I do wish I could say that on that fateful day a story of success and riches was born, but it wasn’t to be.

As is the nature of the business for a great many of us, there were a very good number of ‘nearly’ moments; numerous deals that were ‘as good as done’ but didn’t actually get done. Very often it was all about that specific person in some publishing company or another who talked about contracts, percentages and advances, before he either got moved to a different department, or lost his job completely.
However, John and I did remain friends through and beyond all of this, and continued to play a little golf together in Richmond Park for a time.

I recall rehearsing at John’s flat on the day of my Dartford gig. As stated earlier, I was thinking it was probably twenty years ago, but tonight when club organiser Pam arrived at the Dartford Working Men’s Club, where the folk club is held each Tuesday, she placed  a small piece of paper in my hand; written on it was: KEN NICOL 23 AUG - 88.
She told me that along with her husband Allan, they have been running this club for thirty six years; in my books, that’s what’s called dedication and commitment.

It was a good night, the only questionable area being the house lights being left on whilst Phil and I were on stage.
These issues often aren’t regarded with any great importance in the rustic world of folk music, but it’s surprising what a difference it can make to the general atmosphere or ambience in a room.  So when I kicked off the second half with ‘2 Frets From the Blues’ I asked for, and got the lights turned off in the house; it did make a difference.

Nicol & Cool 
Wednesday 15th July. The Ellen Terry Barn Theatre, Smallhythe Place, Tenterden, Kent.  
This place, this Smallhythe Place is so Goddamn cool. It sits on National Trust land just outside the bustling metropolis they call Tenterden here in the Home County (I can now state with authority) of Kent .
 It was almost two years ago when I last visited this backwater; they had just launched their maiden - full scale - music festival. There were two, maybe three stages–all fairly modest in size; the one I performed on that night was the same we perform on today.
And it is, as the title suggests, a barn that has been converted into a theatre.

You’d think maybe it was a venue for music by the shear fact that we are here tonight, but in fact it was founded by Dame Ellen Terry the famous nineteenth and early twentieth century Shakespearian actress - and originally she created it as a theatre for drama.
In fact, this is what it’s still used for the great majority of the time.

This coming Sunday there’s a poetry and reading evening presented by non less than Nicola McAuliffe, Jenny Seagrove and Martin Shaw, accompanied by Simon James, called: Horses and other Beasties.

To put this into perspective, the theatre has a little over sixty seats, each of which carry the name of its distinguished sponsor; this is an indication of how highly regarded an institution it is.
Many, many legendary names from the world of theatre have walked these boards.

Sunday’s production is a fund raising event for a horse refuge, and with names like Jenny Seagrove and Martin Shaw, it sounds like quite a coup to me.

OK, about our show; the audience, the setting, the atmosphere - all were fantastic. Now when was the last time you heard me say that?
To learn more about Ellen Terry, and the theatre: Smallhythe Place

Nicol & Cool 
Thursday 16th July. The Met, Bury.  
“We were made welcome from the moment we arrived”, - this is what I wrote on the ‘artist feedback form’ in the dressing room; and it was true.  
I know I’m always harking back to the last time I played wherever it is we’re currently playing, but it seems like the natural thing to do, and it’s always interesting from my perspective to compare the ‘then’ to the ‘now’.
 Here at the Met, quite a bit has changed since my last visit with, it must be - the Albions; yes, that was at least nine years ago. It sounds like a long time ago, but it feels more recent than I can easily describe; in fact I’ve got a kind of Google search of my own going on in my brain - trying to locate what it was I’ve done here since, but it keeps telling me: your research did not match any documents. Guess it must’ve been the Albions then!

Like a lot of these small to medium size theatres, they’ve installed an automated tiered seating system. It’s very impressive to watch as the entirety of the theatre’s seats - either slowly retract into what looks like nothing more than a perfect symmetrical wall of compacted furniture; or - in perfect reversal - it expands into the only form the audience ever gets to see and sit on. 
Officially called: telescopic bleachers, or retractable platforms, each of these inward and outward movements are accompanied by an unsettling noise, a loud siren that tells you in an indirect but unmistakable tone as it retracts, that if you were to remain seated, you would become ‘one’ with this telescopic process.

And I’d probably have to recommend the café / restaurant - if the cappuccinos are anything to go by.

I often take the opportunity to write when Phil does his second half comedy spot; he’s presently doing his Rolf Harris impersonation. The audience is reacting in pretty much the same fashion as last night, only there’s a lot more of them. These last two evening have been tremendous.

I get to go home tonight; the next show I have to look forward to is with Steeleye in Doncaster a week tomorrow (25th) when we share the bill with Jethro Tull.

  The weather’s pretty awful considering it’s supposed to be summer, so it doesn’t look like I’ll get much golf in over the next few days. It’ll be a good opportunity though to finish up the Hutchings/Nicol album that’s been on the go for the last eighteen months or so.
To launch it we’ve put something like ten dates in place through February 2010.

Also, the one project that’s been well and truly pushed to the back burner is my Ypres video.
Last December Carol and I went to Belgium for three days. 
The First World War, and the history of the Western Front in the area of Ypres has a particular poignance to me.  My interest was sparked by a visit to the Dranouter folk festival with the Ashley Hutchings Dance Band in the late 1990s.
The band had the best part of a day off; I think it might have been a Sunday, and drummer Paul Burgess drove the band into Ypres, a town I knew absolutely nothing about at that time.  
I was struck by how the restaurants carried English beers, and they had food on the menus that, again, were very English. I then took a walk, alone, towards the east of the town, and ended up at this considerably large archway; on it was inscribed hundreds, thousands, tens of  thousands of names; this, I later discovered, was the Menin Gate, and I also learnt that it contains the names of 54,896 officers and men from all the overseas British and Commonwealth forces who fell during the Great War in the area that was known as the Ypres Salient before the war’s end on 16th August 1917 (these were just the ones that were unaccounted for). 
To stand there, in this memorial, even before I knew very much, well - ‘anything’ about it, was a profoundly moving experience. And so my interest in the era, and in the region began.

When we visited last year we went to just some of the many, many cemeteries and battle fields; also to the ‘In Flanders Fields’ museum.  
I took my camcorder, and whilst filming away I suddenly thought to myself, ‘why not put all the footage together into something to which I could later add a soundtrack?’.

It’s the old ‘then and now’ perspective again; I was so struck by how beautiful a town Ypres looked - especially at this time of year, adorned with all the sparkling decorations of Christmas; the trees and the lights.

After the 1914/18 war the town was completely rebuilt to be the perfect replication of its medieval origins.  When comparing this to the complete and utter devastation of its past, all I can say is that I think I’ll manage to convey more eloquently the mixture of emotions within me through the medium of music rather than words.  
On our return I bought the editing software (Final Cut), and got to work. There’s now a thirteen minute video that’s been sitting in my Mac waiting for a soundtrack since January.
Maybe now is the time.

Ferals Of Fortune

2009-07-30T20:45:00.030+01:00

Liam with (recording engineer) Mark.

Steeleye Span / recording
Monday 6th July. Propagation Studios, North Tamerton, Devon.
It had to happen eventually; I’m talking about the album, the new one, the 40th anniversary one. I have to admit to a growing sense of weariness; all these late nights, and all my early mornings are just beginning to take their toll.

This studio is a long way from Preston; yesterday when I put the address into my GPS I saw a milage of 221 miles, or thought that’s what I’d seen; it became quite apparent when en-route today that my selective brain had chosen to downsize the distance by slightly more than 100 miles.
The SatNav itself, of course, could’ve been giving a false reading, but if I’m honest I’d say it was most likely me who was guilty of the false reading.
I set off at 7:20 a.m. After three LPG/Coffee Nation* stops I eventually located the studio in an area more remote than any studio I’ve ever previously struggled to locate; this was at 2:30 p.m., that’s over seven hours of travelling by my calculations.

You might ask if such a long journey effects whether or not you want to get stuck into some recording on arrival, and let me tell you that - yes, it does effect whether you want to record or not, and the answer is ‘not’.

We’re here for a fortnight. Next week though I do have to leave for three days - having three shows to play with Phil; I’m truly hoping to get all my parts done and dusted by next Tuesday (the day I have to leave) so I won’t then have to return here and do a repeat of today’s journey.

In the past few days I’ve had two - producer related - moments of reconnection - or maybe synchronicity.
First was about a week ago when Carol and I were sat out in the back garden barbecuing. I looked towards the pond, and I recalled the time my Father was sat just to one side of it in one of those outside picnic style of chairs. The chair began falling into the pond - taking him with it. Someone, I don’t recall who, did manage to pull him back in the nick of time.

I often replay this event in my mind, and as on this occasion, it is always such a vivid picture, probably because I’m always in the same position looking towards the pond from the same place I was sat when it happened. My Dad was quite ill at the time, still, he, along with the rest of us could laugh about it. This event is one of a few that I associate with my Father’s illness; a marker along a process of gradual decline. Another marker is at the very beginning of that process, it was when I performed a concert at the Worden Arts Centre in Leyland, about five miles from where I now live.

It was probably 1994. I used to do these big shows once a year - well they felt big to me at the time - I used to call them ‘Across The Spectrum’ because I’d play music that covered so many years and styles of my music. It was at this show, sitting next to Carol that Dad spoke of his anxiety; he was having to visit the bathroom repeatedly, and was nervous about an impending doctors appointment.
It turned out that his fears were well founded; he had prostate cancer. He had another five to six years of life after that, most of it quite normal - apart from the odd pond he had to negotiate.

Back to the BBQ, and as these pieces of old footage were playing before my mind’s eye, I asked Carol, “and who was that producer that came to Worden to see me that night?”. “John … something, John Rav …?”, I asked. “I know who you mean”, she said, “it’ll come to me”.
It was time to clear things up and take the plates, napkins, leftover food, and those big long things you use for cooking at barbecues into the kitchen.

I walked into the house then looked over and saw my Macbook on the kitchen table; ‘might as well check the emails’, I thought to myself. Sure enough, I had one or two new ones; one was from John at Park Records; it was entitled: Producer.

This is exactly how it read … . . Hi Ken A while back there was mention within the band of finding a producer for the forthcoming recording.. Im not sure what your views are on this. I had put some feelers out .. and had some interest from a Producer called John Ravenhall.

He had been in America.. so have only just got to talk to him in depth He is interested and I feel he could do the job... for a reasonable price. I guess if we are to have a producer this is the time to think about it.

John Ravenhall has said that before we all commit it would be good to get together in a rehearsal situation.. I have spoken to Maddy and she is in theory up for it.. but could only do Wednesday and Thursday. Next week are you available and what do you think about the Idea.
I have emailed everyone else for a view.
With Best Wishes,
John

“Carol! Christ almighty! You will not believe this”. I think these, more or less, were my words. As it turned out, John Rs involvement has not come to pass; we couldn’t all make the rehearsal, and John felt that at least one such meeting would be absolutely necessary in order to move into a recording situation with the band.

The second piece of ‘producer reconnection’ occurred, or to me was apparent almost as soon as I arrived today at the studio. It was announced that the band was now considering using the production skills of a certain Joe Partridge, someone I’d worked with a good number of times when the two of us lived in London some thirty years ago.

As far as I was concerned this was great news; I always liked Joe, and I certainly always admired his guitar playing - not that he’d be playing guitar, but as a guitarist myself it’s quite reassuring to work with a producer who is particularly sensitive to how a guitar should be recorded. For the record, Joe had played with a host of top people which include names like Kiki Dee and Elton John.

Joe and I first met through mutual friends and colleagues who were associated in some way with Sarm Studios in London; it’s now called Sarm East, I think. This is where I recorded with Easy Street in 1976/77.

Maddy & Rick

From Sarm 'then' to Propagation 'now', and Mark our engineer, who has worked more recently with Joe, announced that Joe would call by at the studio at some point during the day to talk with the band. This actually happened quite late in the day, 6 or 7 p.m. perhaps. I was half expecting–after all these years–an ageing figure of a man to walk through the door (I bet he was expecting the same, also); well, my expectations were way off the mark - he didn’t really look any different, In fact I was quite taken-aback.

After the introductions, he watched as the band went back for a while to recording the song in progress; we were struggling with the arrangement somewhat, to tell the truth, and I had a strong and growing sense of collective self-consciousness in this disorganised attempt to illustrate to Joe how we go about our work. Eventually the band’s consensus was that we were heading nowhere with that particular song, and maybe it was time to sit down and talk business; to find out what Joe’s feelings are about producing Steeleye Span; and to tell him what the band’s vision is. All seemed to go well.

Next it was down to Joe and John Dagnell to do a little negotiating; to talk money–deadlines–percentages. Alas, I can tell you now that somewhere along the line these ‘high level’ negotiations broke down.
I would’ve loved to have worked with Joe again. In truth, it’s probably too late in the game in this project for a producer to either ‘take over’ or ‘blend into’ the process; such a thing would normally involve weeks, if not months of preparation and exchanging of ideas.

Plan B looks like once the recording is completed we’ll put it in the hands of someone who will mix the tracks; someone who might be able to add a little of the proverbial and illusive ‘fairy dust’.

Our accommodation is fairly basic here in North Tamerton; Liam, Rick and I are staying in a bungalow that sits adjacent to a farm, and from what I gather belongs to the farmer. In the interior it’s kind of old looking; Liam says it’s like ‘visiting your auntie’s.
We’ve befriended three farm cats that hang out at the back of the house; see the pictures I took. We couldn’t help but take some pity on them; they’re really not in very good shape. At first they were very timid - very frightened of us, and very, very hungry. Now they eat like kings. They will never forget this fortnight.

I can’t tell you how painful it is for me to see anything live like this - and I’m fully aware that it’s only because it’s there in front of me. I’m also fully aware of how easy it is to project one’s own pain onto something or someone that lives in a manner in which most living beings have lived since time began.
We, in our ‘developed’ and ‘privileged’ existence, by default, consider ourselves to be the fortunate ones, yet we’ve largely become detached from the fullness of what we are; the process that created us - and largely that which we are in constant denial of being a part of.

And despite all the repercussions of our evolved order; the anxieties, depression, alcoholism, violence, and at least a pervading sense of unfulfillment; we then feel sympathy for those who don’t have more food than they actually need.

I’ll still go on feeding them though. I can’t help it. One thing is certain though, back home our cat Flossy doesn’t know she’s born.

*Coffee Nation is, in my view, the best coffee to look out for when you're 'on the road'. One of the problems with many of the big names, for example Costa, is how incredibly inconsistent it is on the motorways as opposed to the high street. Many times I've spent good money on a cappuccino that's either bitter, or over-milky; and once you're back in the drivers seat it's too late to do anything about it. With Coffee Nation you know what you're going to get - and it's good. I recommend the cappuccino with a double shot - but with a little extra chocolate dusting mixed in. Coffee Nation.

In God's Afterimage

2009-07-30T08:17:00.008+01:00

Schools (with Ashley Hutchings) 
Tuesday 23rd June. Springcroft School, Staffordshire.
 One of the schools in which Ashley I work every year. For me it’s marked by Bernadette, the Head of the school - well, more marked by the fact she was once an Olympic cyclist; I can’t help but be impressed by such things.
There’s something about spending so much time on the road that is diametrically opposed to any level of physical fitness to speak of; I’m not sure what it does for your emotional fitness also.  
When I’m spending time at home I do reasonably well at staying active - visiting the gym three or four times a week, and in the summer months golf plays a fairly large part in my life - regularly spoiling a good walk. I’d love to be able to play golf to a very high standard, in fact if I were to have my time again–which I wouldn’t want, to tell you the truth–but if I did, I don't mind the idea of being a professional golfer; that, as well as a doctor or an airline pilot.  
Anyway, as things stand I’m presently not so bad on the guitar, so I’ll get on with that for the time being.

Nicol & Cool 
Thursday 2nd June. Assembly Rooms, Derby. 
If I check my records, I see it was only six weeks and three days ago I walked onto the Assembly Rooms stage with those legends of folk rock - yes, you know the ones.
On April 18th we played the main stage; tonight we, Phil and I, play on the other stage; it is, well lets say - cosier.  As we perform our carefully selected set to our very select crowd we are being well and truly dwarfed be the event taking place in the other part of the theatre, the main part I mentioned earlier. It’s a major production based on the history of Derby County football club, with some of the clubs personalities and players of past and present in attendance. If you are not all that familiar with the support and general sway towards the game of football in this area of the East Midlands, I can reliably inform you that it is considerable.  
Derby County has a very rich history, as does my club - Preston North End; however, despite Derby’s very questionable recent fortunes, they still can expect a large turnout of fans at any given match, very unlike - Preston North End.  
Jim (who by coincidence is from Derby) and I found ourselves deep in discussion on our final descent and approach towards the Assembly Rooms, on the topic of why such a contrast should exist in this tale of two cities.  Jim believed it was down to a gradual expansion of the city itself, not one that necessarily creates more urban areas, but rather gathers up the already outlying ones, creating a bigger populous with a more collective identity.  It’s not easy for me to comment on these things, I haven’t spent time on the subject; Jim, however, has a considerable background in politics, and I would suppose that politics concerns itself very much with things like boundaries, and how many people live within them.
What I do know is that the show next door could have, according to the theatre staff, been sold out a number of times.
Hmm, lets see; maybe it’s time to introduce one or two football songs into the act?

Nicol & Cool 
Friday 3rd June. Porkies Folk Club, Poynton, Manchester.  
A well know club that has been a venue of somewhat venerable proportions for as long as there’s been a folk scene. I played the club first in a solo capacity at the age of forty or thereabouts; it was a sensational night; I was taken completely by surprise by how well the evening went, and I was never quite able to repeat it.

Sometime later I went on to play Porkies with Chris While, and also a number of times with the Albion Band. The final Albion Band show I played here was actually on the day my Father died in 2001. Now that’s something - performing on the day you lose a parent, let me tell you. All I wanted was for everyone to stop telling me how sorry they were. That’s about all I remember of that evening; I just went into ‘coping mode’ - as is what happens at times like this.

I also recall the night I performed at the club’s old venue just down the road in Bramhall; it was 1996. I struggled a great deal with confidence, or lack of it, around that time, and the result of this often was the most incredible tension. I was constantly walking into one situation after the next - gigs, recording sessions, and the like, that I felt completely unable to pull off.
I was so terrified of fucking up that the amount of energy I used in attempting to appear as though I was in control was exhausting and debilitating.  I remember arriving at the club feeling quite out-of-it; my psyche was in a knot; inside I was a frozen man; it was as though there was a film going on in front of me, and I was just the observer. All the time my thoughts were, ‘I have a whole show to do tonight, and have no idea of how I’ll do it, but there’s no choice’.
I forced my way through the two sets, each of fifty minutes or thereabouts in length. When I was finished, any potential sense of relief that I may have had struggled to break through the ever purveying feeling of defeat and disappointment of perceived failure.
 
I loaded the PA into the back of my car, and whilst doing so I noticed a trail that followed anything that was bright and had any motion to it; it was a stream, a tail of light. When I moved my hand slowly in one direction or another, there appeared to be a second hand trying to catch up with the first.
I used to call these visual occurrences, or illusions: afterimages; they were something I’d originally experienced during an absolutely wonderful and idyllic time back in 1970, when as a nineteen year old I spent the summer months fruit picking in Evesham, Worcestershire.  
Friend, Paul Daber and myself had what I can only describe as the time of our lives; living and working in the orchards, sleeping in the barns; befriending the travellers and gypsies, and me being a bit of a local guitar hero.

When August had arrived, and the fruit picking season was almost done, the two of us hitch-hiked our way further south, down to the legendary Isle of White Festival, the one at which Hendrix performed shortly before his death.  
It was during this period I first experienced the ‘afterimage’ phenomenon; it was most certainly drug related; on the handful of occasions when we took LSD, the spectacle of any moving object having this trailing blurred image of itself following behind was all part of the spectacle and adventure of the experience.

I recall one such day when I was fixated, mesmerised by the sight of an army of ants on the pavement; individually they moved - this way, that way, and with such purpose; each one of them followed by lines, tracers, that shot off in all directions.
The second time these afterimages became an unavoidable feature of my life was during my panic attacks and breakdown a couple of years later after I’d moved to London. This time they were terrifying - further justifying my view of impending catastrophe and the feeling of losing any grasp of the reality I thought I had.

Now they were back, shit!
Something was happening, something was going on in my head; was it physical? Was all this stress and fear just burning me out? On the drive home I noticed a strange shape in my vision, a crystal-like shape; and my range of vision seemed to be narrowed; there was something different about the cars on the other side of the road, as if they were not really there.

Apart from tiredness, the following two days–Saturday and Sunday–were reasonably OK; I had to travel to Cumbria where a friend of a friend had hired me for the weekend to teach her husband some guitar (as a birthday gift).  Then, on the Monday - BANG! My head hurt - big style; it was just on one side, but it was bad. I looked in the mirror; the pupil in my left eye was tiny, and not responding to darkness or light. Yes, I was worried!
I was too frightened to go to a doctor; it was probably a good fifteen years since I last saw one. But after three days in bed, as a compromise, Carol instructed me to visit the optician. And what did the optician do? He sent me to the doctor. Then I was sent to the hospital.

By this time I was convinced I was dying. They carried out all kinds of tests, x-rays, etc.
One young doctor told me I had something, it was one of those Latin names; it sounded serious, and he even said he was sorry.  These hospital visits continued until the day I was to see a neurologist; as I waited, full of fear, I decided it was to be my last visit. I knew I’d feel better if I had a sense of being in control.

I walked into the consultancy room to be confronted by an array of people, with the consultant sat in the foreground. He asked me if I minded these people being there–I did–but I said ‘no’.
They were all scribbling things down into notepads. The chair I sat on became the slide on a giant microscope, and I was the subject.

I knew had to get out.  

He tapped me here and there; listened to what might be going on inside me through a stethoscope; shone a light into my eyes - all this while using words I didn’t understand, and discussing my symptoms with someone I assume was his junior.  
It was encouraging in a way to be told that he disagreed with the original diagnosis - even though I didn’t understand what it was.  
Then he said I should, just to be sure, have a brain scan! I said, ‘no thanks’.
I had already decided I would rather walk away and accept whatever the consequences might be. It was, in retrospect, probably quite foolish of me, but hey - here I am.  
And I’m still playing at Porkies.

Nicol & Cool 
Saturday 4th June. Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester & North Merseyside, Bamber Bridge, Preston. 
This is a private event - a 40th anniversary celebration, and mercifully one that involves a mere drive of fifteen minutes to reach.  I didn’t even know this place existed; it’s in lovely surroundings. I learned that this general woodland area was nurtured and developed by finance received as part of a deal reached with the very people that built the M6 motorway that runs adjacent.  Here a link to the web page: Cuerden_Valley_Park

The celebration was for Ken and Sara Linford; Ken was also a partner of Jim Minall’s – for other reasons I should add – and for a much briefer length of time. They were creators and partners at Friends of Folk for a while, parting company not that long ago - and on extremely amicable terms I should say.
The two of them (Ken and Jim) are the political antithesis of each other, being respectively about as ‘right’ and as ‘left’ as you can possibly get without warfare breaking out. Jim was actively involved for a good number of years in the Labour Party; raising funds, campaigning door to door, and generally promoting the principles he believed in - those of fairness and equality.
Ken, however, over the years has been actively involved in developing various business enterprises, and creating a good deal of prosperity for himself.  

The one common denominator that seemed to override all their differences–for a while, at least–was their shared liking of folk music, and in particular Steeleye Span, in fact that’s where they met - at a Steeleye concert.
So they decided to promote concerts; to give more exposure to the artists that in their eyes were, and the music that was, being sadly neglected by the outside world. For this reason alone, they get my vote.

 Jim, as you will have gathered from all my previous writings, gets Phil and I almost all our work.

Two days ago I received an email from Ken and Sara’s Daughter; she lives in Japan, and works as a missionary. This I can honestly say was the very first time I’ve had any communication of any kind from one of God’s messengers!
She asked me to read out a personal message to her parents congratulating them on their anniversary - and I enjoyed doing that on the night.

I was so struck by what Sara said when I talked to her at the very end of the night just before I left; she told me that her Daughter had lived in Japan for the last five years, and that she will continue her work there for ‘as long as God wants her to’.
The look of certainty on her face, and her comfortableness with the statement she’d made was, to me - striking.
Well, it's always possible that I read more into this than was actually the case, but as with Olympic cycling, I couldn’t help but be impressed - impressed more than anything, on the basis of imagining how I would be feeling whilst those words were passing my lips - if I ever did utter such words.
Before I go on, don’t imagine for one minute that I’m working my way towards an argument that is in anyway critical of such a statement; a smug, I know better than you sort of statement–or even implication. It's just that I don’t know how someone could know such a thing.

How does God tell you what to do?
I do a lot of soul searching; I tend to believe that there is an inner voice; one that knows and tells us what we should do.
Whether one listens to it, and whether or not one acts on what the voice is telling you, is not the point just now; but is this ‘inner’ voice perhaps easily, and maybe even mistakenly, interpreted as an ‘outer’ voice?
And let’s turn that around and say that even if it is an ‘outer’ voice that’s being wrongly interpreted as an ‘inner’ voice, why would it be God that’s saying it?

If I were reading this as something that had been written by someone else, I would logically be asking who or what the writer thinks God is.
I mean, if one actually thinks there’s an invisible person - THE invisible person HIMSELF, and he’s talking personally to YOU, then I am truly, genuinely and absolutely intrigued by the criteria used to reach this conclusion and the supposed certainty that seems to come with it.

We have little alternative but to represent all of our feelings and abstract senses with symbols of familiarity - and we only know ‘form’ in a way we have had experience of with some level of tangibility attached. This, of course, changes and develops as humans change and develop; but at any given time there are only so many symbols available to us. For example, many people these days who profess a religeous belief, would not use a male symbol to represent God, just as they wouldn't use the symbol of a throne in the sky as something 'he' sat on all day; but imagine how problematic it would have been once upon a time to profess such thoughts!

So I could have said to Sara, “what exactly do you mean when you say ‘God’?” But it was late, and I was far more concerned about going home.
I’ve not said very much at all about the show or the performance; to me though, next to such existential and theological issues, I’d have to say it’s just not as interesting.

Over-Egging The Collective

2009-07-29T12:00:00.010+01:00

Nicol & Cool .
Saturday 30th May, The Lighthouse Theatre, Poole.
 The drive from Ilminster to Poole was glorious; this is 'postcard Britain'.
You know, on examination, I’ve never truly understood what the ‘home counties’ are; where do they start and end?
But this, I’ve always identified as home county country, and whenever I witness it, as today, in its full glory, without fail I imagine what it might’ve been like living in these parts during the war, and post war years of the nineteen forties and fifties.  It’s about children playing in the fields; old valve radio sets; bicycles with baskets on; men smoking pipes; the Alvis, Bristol and Riley motor cars, with walnut dashboards and the smell of leather; The Famous Five; Haley Mills.

 And then there was this parallel existence, the austere one the rest of us ‘up north’ were living; where children were seen and not heard; we knew our place; walked along cobbled streets; wore flat caps and clogs; at school corporal punishment was dished out with regularity; and wherever there was muck there was brass. Sounds grim doesn’t it?

Stereotypes maybe, but I do know a little about the second example.
Just did a bit of research, and I’ve discovered that these are not in fact the home counties. Here’s what I discovered …
What are the "home counties" ?
The phrase "home counties" has no specific legal definition but as a popular expression it appears to have been around for many years. According to the OED it is simply "the counties nearest to London, namely Surrey, Kent, Essex and Middlesex; sometimes with the addition of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and ocassionally Sussex."

I love it: sometimes with the addition of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and occasionally Sussex. Basically, that means you can just make it up as you go along!   Anyway, I’ve learnt something new.

At one point on our drive, Phil turned to me and said, ‘Ken, I wouldn’t mind living round here’; I knew exactly where he was coming from.
 
Phil is onstage as I’m writing this; before he relieved me of my duties, I began our second set with two instrumentals and one song - the instrumentals - A.K. and R.B. from Initial Variations, and the song - On Holiday in Stornoway (13 Reasons album).
I’d say they went down well, but to tell you the truth it’s been hard to gauge the level of audience enthusiasm, due to the lack of audience. I’m not saying we haven’t got one, but I’ll say we’re not far off not having one. I think we have an audience of between 20 and 30 tonight.

Nicol & Cool .
Sunday 31st May. The Corn Exchange, Exeter.  
Similar size audience to last night, but in a much larger venue. I enjoyed the evening though, and I think the same went for Phil.  
The stage monitors were particularly good.
Stage monitoring is not so crucial when there are only two of you, but the quality of what comes through them often can significantly influence the way you feel about what you’re doing at the time. 
For any artist, if your monitor sound is bad, and believe me a lot of the time it is bad, and worse than bad; even though the reasoning part of your brain tells you that it’s only you, and not the audience that’s hearing it, whilst you’re in the process of performing, that reasoning part of the brain has very little influence in the matter.

 I’ve pondered many times on the subjective experience(s) of all those present at a gig - audience and artist alike. There are so many forces at play, collectively and individually, that make an evening what it turns out to be; but I tend to think that generally we downplay the individual, and we over-egg the collective - and as long we’re just OK with that, then it doesn’t really matter.
But am I wrong in assuming that the great majority of us believe our own individual experience automatically applies to everyone else at that time?

As an artist this is often very apparent in the way people will comment on what they’ve just watched and listened to you play; sometimes you have to ask yourself if they were all at the same show.
‘You were really going for it tonight’, ‘you seemed a bit held back’, ‘the sound was fantastic’, ‘couldn’t hear much other than drums’, ‘it was too loud’, ‘it could’ve come up a bit in level’, ‘it looked like you were really enjoying yourself’, ‘what was wrong?’.

And so it is from the performers position also; the monitor sound is dreadful, so you think, or rather - you feel that the audience shared your auditory experience with you.
Likewise, the monitors might sound brilliant, and after the show you’re told, ‘I’ve heard you sound better’.

Of course, there are the occasions, when the collective has a greater apparent common denominator than at other times; when the expressed views of all those involved appear to line up as if some planetary harmonic convergence has taken place. How much gravity one gives to this is, again, subjective; but I guess that in the end, all I personally can ever do, in the (somewhat) words of Reinhold Niebuhr is: accept the things I cannot change; have the courage to change the things I can; and hopefully to even find the wisdom to know the difference. 

Nicol & Cool .
Thursday 11th June. The Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool. 
I wouldn’t have thought this possible, but tonight’s show was performed in front an audience that came close to the lowest attendance I’ve ever performed to.
It was in single figures; this is a test of character - not just for the performer, but for those in the audience too.  I can’t say whether it’s down to the venue’s, or a result of our promotional skills. I hear so many reasons presented for this, but people constantly talk about how hard it is to get audiences into theatres these days, well, that is unless the artist’s popularity is a result of television exposure; TV is still to this day the most effective PR medium known to mankind - and tonight it is painfully apparent that we are not ‘on the telly’.

This is a wonderful, modern complex, and in its considerable size comes a width and intention that is seemingly designed to accommodate the length and breadth of all that might qualify as ‘art’.  
I have heard it suggested that when such an institution’s sustenance is so strongly based on Arts Council funding, there is compromised motivation there to promote and push events in a manner that exists through necessity out there in the real world. Now whether this has a part to play–in regards to our attendance figure(s)–I wouldn’t want to speculate about too much. But it does seem inconceivable that here in the great city of Liverpool there would potentially not be at least a reasonable sized audience available to us.  

Nicol & Cool.
 Friday 12th June. The Rock @ Maltby, Rotherham.  
This was the BBC Radio Two Folk Awards ‘Folk Club of the Year’ a year or two back; run by Rob Shaw; I think this must be my third visit, the previous two being solo gigs.
 I’ve just remembered I played here with Julie Matthews before that; I might’ve done an Albion Band gig here too, perhaps a couple. Maybe it’s more like my 23rd visit! However, all of these past appearances were at the club’s previous venue: the Rockingham Arms in Wentworth.  

It’s one of those extremely well run clubs; I’m not so sure how the organisers of those ‘upper echelon’ of folk venues do it, but it couldn’t be done without more than a good few years of dedication and plenty of sacrifice. And there’s always a built-in audience, a hard core group of people that have their Wednesdays, Thursdays, or whichever part of the week the club night falls on, etched into the script of their day to day lives. And after some of our recent shows, that sounds exactly like something we need.

Actually it’s somewhat unusual for a folk club to run with regularity through the summer months; a great many of them ‘shut up shop’ in July, and reopen in September - a time when - as the days start to get shorter, and as the nights begin to draw in a little, so the general public start to instinctively venture out to such places.

Schools - with Ashley Hutchings. 
Wednesday 17th & Thursday 18th June. Meir Heath Primary school / Fulford Primary school, Staffordshire. 
Managed nine holes of golf yesterday before getting packed and leaving for Stoke-on-Trent. 
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Bill, the headmaster of Forsbrook Primary School, and the man who organises our school tours, is also the man that accommodates Ashley and myself while we’re down there in Staffordshire.  I arrived at Bill’s at 9 p.m. to be told there was a surprise in store; tomorrow there was to be a school concert at his school; OK, so what! And I was billed as the star turn - that’s what!
As it happened it turned out to be fairly painless. In fact it was interesting to see various pupils of various abilities demonstrate there singing and musical skills. And anyway, it only lasted an hour - just long enough.
My own spot at the end consisted of just two numbers; I plugged the new Fylde (guitar) into the school’s public address system, and away I went. 

My reward for playing came in the form of an ‘all-you-can-eat’ Indian buffet in nearby Blyth Bridge; I’m almost tempted to say that I’d accept such payment for all my concerts in this way.

 Nicol & Cool .
Saturday 20th June. Alcester Folk festival. 
If I was to tell you that this was a long day - a ‘very’ long day, I would be understating the day’s length.  
Alcester, the quaint and historic town that it is, lies precisely 129.37 miles from Preston - according to the RAC Route Planner; we knew that if we were to have our sound-check we’d need to arrive definitely no later than 12 noon. The afternoon concert began in the main hall at 1 p.m. and we were the headline act which meant that once we had everything set-up and sounding OK there’d be a wait of four hours before taking to the stage - and this was only our first spot.

The second spot was at 11 p.m. - that’s right - eleven o’clock at night!  In my books that’s just too late; I feel that in the fullness of a festival day there comes a point when people are just too tired, and many too drunk for there to be any real focused attention.
On reflection, maybe the organisers felt that the comedy element would work at this late hour, and to some extent I'd say it made the best of a job, not necessarily a ‘bad’ job, but one that would have had a livelier dynamic to it had we taken to the stage an hour earlier, lets say.

Going onstage as the last act might have something going for it symbolically, but I can vouch from a number of personal experiences that when it’s late at night the audience can be lost - as in ‘you have lost your audience’ before you even step onto the stage.

The last time this happened to me was at a charity event, one of these ‘Swarb aid’ concerts (to raise money for Dave Swarbrick) that took place at The Swan in Leek - one of my favourite folk clubs run by one of my favourite club organisers - Dave Rhead.  
The format was simple, all of the artists–and there were a good number of them–had no more than ten minutes available to them. Yes, simple, simple that is until all of those extra minutes or two, and the I’ll just do one more short song to finish with scenario, pushes that final spot schedule further and further towards, and eventually into, the twilight zone - a time when everyone's middle-aged body-clock is pleading earnestly with its owner to ‘go to bed for Christ’s sake’!  
And once on that stage there’s nothing you can do; it’s not just you that’s trying your best, the audience is also. You cut your set short. 
A good few members of the audience have left by now, along with most of the night’s artists - leaving you with the remnants of what once looked like a promising evening. Afterwards you shrug your shoulders, set out on your early morning journey home, and you say to yourself, ‘what the hell, it was for charity anyway!’.

WARNING by H.M. Government, REHEARSING CAN DAMAGE YOUR GIG.

2009-06-15T09:16:00.001+01:00

Nicol & Cool.
Friday 22nd May.
The Acoustic Festival of Great Britain, Catton Hall, Derbyshire.

12:45 and it was Jim (Minall) that arrived at the house first, I’d only just picked the guitar up, walked into the living room and started to reacquaint myself with more than one or two pieces of music I’ll need for tonight.
I’m constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the process of rehearsing; depending on how and when it’s carried out it can be - essential, it can often be quite helpful, and it can be completely counter-productive, and even destructive. Practising has the potential to both give, or to take away the energy and confidence you need to perform well. And it can either release or create tension.  
I’ll mention a little more about all this later, but generally I’m feeling a bit under-rehearsed, so on hearing Jim’s words, “sorry, Ken, I’m a little early”, the pragmatist within told me to just stay positive, and I decided to take its advice.

The three of us, Jim, Phil and I, set off at somewhere between 1:30 and 1:45 p.m. It had been tricky getting the appropriate information for my SatNav; mine is not equipped with the function to take postal codes alone, it needs at least the road name or number to accompany it, and so many times, the ‘how to find us’ info I find or have sent to me omits these details.   This was a Bank Holiday Friday, and as expected, the traffic on the M6 was particularly bad (if you’ve travelled the M6 you’ll know that it does not have to be a Bank Holiday for the traffic to be bad); our performance wasn’t scheduled until 6:30, nevertheless, it was a good thing we gave ourselves plenty of leeway.

On arrival they pointed us towards the stage; marquee number one; it was deserted, and it was a very large marquee.
They had a rotational thing going on where an act would play in one marquee, and when they finished, the focus then shifted to another stage in another big tent.  We introduced ourselves to the sound-man and the monitor-man, and then started to get the bits and pieces of equipment, the guitars, banjo and uke, out of their cases.
They asked us if we’d start slightly earlier than scheduled for some reason, and also to finish a little later - for the same reason I guess; we obliged.

Now going back to the subject of rehearsing; the show felt surprisingly comfortable - easy, in fact. I’d go as far as to say it was as smooth as silk.

And to tell you the truth I couldn’t work out why, I mean, it shouldn't have been. Maybe it’s actually a good thing being under-rehearsed? I’ll have to try it more often.
So to sum things up, this was a good day, and one on which we were well taken care of.

Apparently, the ticket sales were significantly down on previous years (an obvious sign of these recessionary times), but all in all it was, I would say, a very well managed festival.

Nicol & Cool. 
Sunday 24th May. The Guildhall (in the Foyer), Preston.
 A rare event these days - a concert in my home town. There was a time when I would play no place other than my home town: I wrote a little about this in Post 6 (Friday 6th March. The Arts Centre, Southport).

On my drive to the Guildhall I passed The Unicorn pub on North Road, and I was aware of how close I came to what was once ‘the’ Preston live music venue - The Lamb. These were venues I played repeatedly once-upon-a-time. When I returned in 88 from my American adventure these gigs were my first means of making any income whatsoever. They were smoke-filled, noisy and hard work, but what carried me through this spell of relocation was the strong sense of purpose within me; the feeling that I was heading somewhere.

Today I’m heading somewhere else - figuratively and literally, and as I do, the contrast of ‘then’ and ‘now’ pulls my attention lucidly to each of those two poles.
It’s a sense, not of nostalgia, necessarily, and not even of warm reflection - although I’d have to admit to there being a little of that in there. This is more a curious suspension, a halting of movement, the simultaneous pressing of two pause buttons - that allows an observance to happen at my own pace, my own leisure - as the space between these two places dissolves into the background, taking all of its dormant flags of time with it - that await the recognition that will bring them back to life once again.

More than anything I remember the victories; the nights when I packed the places out, especially in the early days of the band that I’d put together. We did a lot of rehearsing, and it showed; I had come back home armed with a catalogue of very strong material which had been written, chiefly, for Versailles - the trio I’d left behind in Los Angeles. Pretty much all of these songs had been collaborations with Neil Dixon, the bass guitarist. Neil was originally from Humberside, although I met him in LA.

 Those nights at The Lamb back in 1989/90 were special. They were also a health hazard; I used to wonder what would happen if fire broke out; there were so many people in such a small space. Another thing that sticks in the mind is the thick, thick layer of smoke that hung at an ever increasing depth as the evening wore on, going lower, and closer to the heads and the mouths of all those who expelled it; as though the room had its own slow moving, swirling weather front of nicotine and tar. And the day after when I would open up my car to unload, what emanated from the wood and fabric of the speakers and amplifiers was a clear reminder of the night before, suggesting that the only thing missing was a health warning from the surgeon general stamped on the side of each cabinet.

The Unicorn, on North Road was more my venue, my patch. It was managed by Dave and Maria; they had somehow turned it into a establishment that not only the Preston drinking fraternity wanted to visit, but also the students, the musos, and the Guardian reading ‘street’ intellectuals. I ran an open mic night there for some time, as well as staging my own shows. Then there were the barmaids, and one or two of other female Unicorn goers. Now please, don’t misconstrue the last sentence; of course, I use the word as in - someone who would ‘go’ to the Unicorn.  
This was, like other times I’ve stated, a pretty unsettled spell as I remember, and a spell I remember so much about - because it seemed important. I value those times; I value the people I shared that time with.

Where was I? Oh yes, at the Guildhall. It was good; I can’t find any other way to describe it, and a good few of those from the Unicorn, and Lamb days turned up. I even popped into to the Moorbrook pub, next door to the Unicorn, on the way back home for a swift drink with Hugh O’Donnell; he ran, and still runs the Preston Folk Club, and he was the very first to offer me a booking when I came back from LA.
Read the review of the night here: Lancashire Evening Post - N&C review.  

Steeleye Span. 
Tuesday 26th May. Rehearsals. Parlour Studios, Kettering. 
Three days of rehearsals begin here. The purpose of this is to develop the material the band began working on at the end of last year when we all journeyed north to Carlisle; Roweltown to be precise, and spent a few days ay Maddy’s place.

I was the first to arrive - not something that happens very often - but there I was having to make phone calls to the various numbers on my schedule print-out (provided by the office at Park Records) in an attempt to get whatever information might be needed to enter this deserted and fortified building - otherwise known as Parlour Studios - by legitimate means.
I managed eventually to procure the code needed to open the main door, and I learned that the band would be rehearsing in studio C, one of three downstairs rooms in what is a converted farm building, and an example of what many farmers throughout the land have had to consider - the move towards diversification.

Liam was the next to appear. When I’d unloaded and set-up my equipment, seeing that there were only the two of us there I decided to drive the two or three miles to the hotel, and check in. I won’t mention the name of the hotel, but it’s situated in a very pretty market town called Rothwell; it was what I might describe as - a little rough around the edges; it wasn’t dreadful or anything, it’s just one of those buildings that when you walk into it you start thinking ‘hmm, what I could do with this place!’. Still, there was a decent looking bar, and even a large TV screen, so we’ll be OK for the big Man United v Barcelona match tomorrow night.

Anyway, back to why we’re here, and this is all about the new album, the one that will mark Steeleye Span’s 40th anniversary. The approach, the policy to the direction the album will take has been arrived at through a process that’s not the easiest to define. But anyway, the decision has been taken to largely avoid personal compositions (songs written by individual members), and to collectively develop traditional material as a band.  From my position - as someone who finds the whole process of writing (any kind of writing) to be a source of inspiration, and the key to staying sane, I have to admit to a degree of disappointment.
However, I’m quite certain the material we have, and the way it’s developing will result in a notable end product.

The rehearsal room itself, as I’ve mentioned, is one of three in a converted barn, and is particularly good from the perspective of acoustics. One of the big problems with bands playing in confined spaces is that of increasing volume levels and lack of definition; what happens is that when you have electric instruments and drum kits in a confined area, everyone starts to feel, at some point as though they can’t hear themselves very well, and so they turn up a little, playing progressively louder and louder, and then the PA has to go up accordingly; then the singer’s microphone starts feeding back. The result is a deafening wash of sound, and a singer that’s losing their voice. This room is quite different, everything seems audible. I guess it must’ve just been very well designed.
We start recording the new album in July.

Nicol & Cool .
Friday 29th May. The Flavel, Dartmouth.
 The weather’s warming up nicely, it must be summer, almost.
This morning might well fall into a ‘comedy of errors’ category.  I’m meeting Phil in Ilminster, Somerset at 2 p.m. at friends Nigel’s house; this will be our base camp for the next three days, with three consecutive shows ahead of us in Dartmouth, Poole and Exeter.  I knew the official journey time to Nigel’s was three hours - my SatNav told me this, so to arrive at the agreed time my plan was to add a good forty five minutes to an hour of travelling time onto my journey.

Here’s what happened: I began carrying the various pieces of equipment I’d been storing in my room down to my car. On Tuesday I’d had to travel south from Preston with not just the appropriate gear for the band rehearsals (electric guitars, pedals, etc.), but also what I needed for the shows I’m playing with Phil - all the acoustic instruments - guitars, banjo, ukulele, and related accessories.
I chose to store the gear I wasn’t using for the Steeleye rehearsals in my room rather than have it on display in the car, particularly from the point of view that the hotel car park was inaccessible much of the time, so I had no choice other than to park just by the side of the square here in Rothwell village centre.

Once I’d got this initial transfer of equipment out of the way, the next thing was to pay the bill; this was just a case of covering my extra charges - or so I thought. They had no record of the pre-payment, the one that had actually been pre-paid. After phone calls to Park Records, this was eventually, and I do mean ‘eventually’ sorted out, and I was just left with the extras, the drinks to cover. It was twenty pounds; I got out my credit cards. “Sorry sir, our card machine isn’t working at the moment”, the man said. This now meant that before I went anywhere, I had to find a cash machine; I found a cash machine, returned and gave him the cash, then I was on my way - on my way to the rehearsal studio to collect the other bits and pieces I’d left there.

At the studio, as I was loading my car for the second time I noticed something was missing; a guitar, my new guitar, and all I could think was that I’d left it back at the hotel, in my room. But how could that be? I mean, I normally check a million times (at least) before finally leaving a hotel.

So now I was heading back from whence I came; driving back; driving and praying (a little). And there it was, sitting just underneath the window.
 I have the ability to do a good number of things, and one of them is the ability to look directly at something (like a guitar, for example) and to not actually see it. I exercised this skill to great effect this morning.

As you might imagine, I was quite relieved to have not lost it; so and now this was it, I was on the road to Ilminster. All the extra time I’d given myself had been swallowed up before I’d even got started; now I just had to fight my way through the traffic - it was slow; it’s a Friday!

Arrived eventually; a little late maybe, but it just meant we had slightly less time to relax before our drive to the venue.

From Nigel’s, Phil and I headed for Dartmouth. By the time we arrived it had been a very long day, and we hadn’t even really started yet.  As we drove into the town, what occurred to me - on this beautiful sunny late afternoon, was just how striking a resort the town of Dartmouth is; and the theatre, the Flavel, with it’s friendly, helpful staff is totally ‘in keeping’ with the surroundings.
The evening was incredibly enjoyable; we arrived back at Nigel’s at around 1 a.m.

Deux Points, And The Cross Eyed Bear

2009-05-16T14:33:00.000+01:00

Night 22. Saturday May 9th. The Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent.  
The penultimate gig. We’re almost there.
 I spend a lot of time here in Stoke so it’s beginning to feel a bit like a second home.  Stoke is certainly not one of the prettiest places, but it does have character and quite an incredible history - not an insignificant chunk of which is soccer related.

It is on more than just a few occasions that I’ve driven in and out of this place, and likewise driven around it with a degree of regularity, but for a ‘one-name’ city that is in reality a collection of merged areas - the five principal towns being: Hanley, Burslem, Tunstall, Longton and Stoke, I am not one little bit nearer being able to tell you where one of these towns might start and another one ends.  
Most of my visits here have been because of the school work with Ashley, something I wrote about earlier back in post 3 (9th Feb. The Gatehouse Theatre, Stafford). And it won’t be too long before we’re back again, June to be exact; back to the hamlet of Endon, from where each morning we set out, making our way through the rush-hour traffic to one learning establishment or another. And temporarily at least, we pretend to be like all those around us, and play the part of two people with normal work schedules.

Speaking of ‘hamlets’, I should relay something that took place in one of the schools, something I thought was not just very amusing, but also a sign of someone that has a slightly different take on things.  A lot of what we teach is based on the book Lark Rise To Candleford, and a passage in the book that Ashley gets one of the children reading out loud goes like this:

The hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn.

Ashley usually follows this up by asking the children, “does anyone know what a ‘hamlet’ is?”. Of course, we get all kinds of answers, and I’ve lost count of how many times ‘a cigar’ had been suggested. But on this one occasion, a small boy raised his hand; Ashley looked over and said, “yes?”. The boy responded in all seriousness, “is it a small pig?”.

No more hotels for me now on this tour; After tonight’s concert Carol drove me the seventy miles or so back to Preston. Tomorrow it’s literally a half hour run up the M6 to Lancaster.

 Night 23. Sunday May 10th. The Grand Theatre, Lancaster.
 We’ve just come off stage after the first set. This is another one of those very compact, ornate kind of theatres - probably more used to theatrical productions than folk-rock bands.  I did say compact didn’t I - Jackie has had to put the merchandise display out in front of the stage instead of in one of the usual places - the foyer or the bar; there’s just no room back there.
This is a good way to be finishing the tour, playing so close to home.

How has the last four weeks been? I’d say it’s been successful - with the usual, predictable roller-coaster feel that the job brings with it. I’m feeling tired, it’s a certain kind of tiredness though, it’s the kind I have to be on the road for a while to remind myself of what it was like last time. And, of course, there’s been the usual increase in body mass; the weight gain that yet again I’ll be trying to repair with trips to the gym, and a ‘get behind me Satan’ approach to processed carbohydrates over these next few months.

Weather permitting, I’m going to play some golf.

Before my tour-writing comes to a close, for now at least, I should write a little about Pete Zorn. It was quite extraordinary really, working with Pete again after all these years; for those who are unaware of it, as I’m sure most are, my first encounter with him was back in 1974. I was fifty percent of a duo called Nicol & Marsh; Pete Marsh was my Brother-in-law at that time (being married to my Sister, Gloria) and we were living on Shooters Hill road, Blackheath.
We occupied the basement of the house, while upstairs lived singer Sandie Shaw and fashion designer Jeff Banks. It was at this time Paul Phillips, an A&R man at CBS records came round to the house to take a listen to us, and it wasn’t all that long afterwards that we were offered our first recording deal.

Paul, it just so happened, also had a Brother-in-law, who went by the name of Pete Zorn; he’d not long been over from his native USA, and had married Shan - Paul’s Sister.  Pete played a major role in the recording of our first album: Nicol and Marsh on the Epic label, and also on our 1976 Polydor album: Easy Street.

Easy Street became the name of the band formed around Pete Marsh and myself, and it featured a fourth member - drummer Richard Burgess.

In 1975, as Easy Street, we appeared together on the TV show New Faces, winning the show; this was despite only being awarded two points by Lonnie Donegan in the ‘Appearance’ category because of the jeans we were wearing; he said, and I quote, that we looked like ‘builders labourers apprentices’. This was somewhat ironic really; we’d spent a considerable amount of money on these jeans, having bought them in Bond Street, London.

I recall the theme music ‘You’re A Star’ playing as the four of us walked forward towards the audience, just as all the acts had been briefed to do in the event of winning; I recall the opening of champagne bottles; I recall looking up in the direction of my parents, and seeing my Mother in the audience with tears streaming down her face; I recall the celebratory and somewhat euphoric Chinese meal that followed; and finally, I recall walking back to the van, to find that all of our equipment had been stolen.

The theft aroused much interest, and resulted in us getting plenty of publicity in Birmingham where the show had been recorded, and much of the publicity involved attempts of both radio stations and newspapers to find out exactly who won the show - the program wasn’t to be shown until six weeks later.

Within a week of the theft an informer had contacted the police, and at a cost of £50 we had pretty much all of the gear back in our possession. I thought I’d never see my treasured 1960 Gibson J45 acoustic guitar again, as things turn out it’s presently hanging up on the wall of my studio.
So onto the winners show, and we figured that in response to Lonnie’s criticism we’d make a point by wearing top hats and tails, and if I’m being honest I felt pretty ridiculous dressed like that. And it was to no effect; Easy Street was beaten, beaten by none other than Roger De Courcey and Nookie Bear.

1976, and part way through the first of the three albums that Pete Marsh and I made for Polydor, Pete Zorn left the band. We missed him badly after he left; his ability to organise and arrange the vocal harmonies in particular, as well as his general musical input had constituted such a large part of the sound that made Easy Street identifiable, and I’m sure he was largely responsible for the success, albeit modest, that we achieved in the USA (the song I’ve Been Loving You crept into the 60s in the Billboard chart).

Easy Street did continue though, making a second Polydor album called Under The Glass - quite frankly an awful piece of work, written and recorded (at The Manor, Bucks) whilst the three of us - Pete M, Richard and I were struggling to find our individual and collective identities.

 The label gave us one last chance after that, one ‘big’ last chance, and it was just the two of us again - Nicol & Marsh.  It was now 1978, and the two of us were flown out to Los Angeles. We’d been asked who we wanted to have play on the album; I couldn’t quite believe it, I mean it was ‘whoever’ we wanted.  When asked who I wanted to have play bass on two of my own songs ‘Back Out Of Love Again’ and ‘For What Seems Crazy Now’, I said, somewhat hopefully, somewhat in jest, ‘Leland Sklar’; I was a big fan of his bass playing on the James Taylor and Jackson Brown albums.

I could not believe it when producers Randy Bishop and Spencer Proffer said ‘OK, that’s no problem’.  The same was the case with legends Bill Payne (keyboard), Victor Feldman (percussion) and Craig Doerge (piano). We’d even planned to get Lowell George in to play some slide - until I passed the test and played it myself.

 The LP turned out to be a well crafted, well produced, and a very high quality product that was subsequently lost and ignored completely amid a new, revolutionary wave of music sweeping across the land at that time. I'd say it wasn't so much a style of music - more of an approach, an attitude, and it wasn't taking any prisoners. We were now entering the Punk era.
Nicol & Marsh were consigned to the file called 'history'; we became a statistic, and just one of a great many 'soft-rock' casualties.

 I do intend to re-release the album on CD soon; I’m certain there are some out there that will enjoy it.  Not long after the record’s completion, it’s release in the UK, and a half hearted attempt to promote it, Peter Marsh and I went our separate ways. He stayed with Polydor - being the more obvious proposition for the record label with his strong singing voice, and his natural leaning towards the direction popular music was taking in the UK at that time. He later went on to work with Vangelis. He now lives in France, and recently we’ve been back in touch with each other.

After Easy Street, Richard Burgess took his own band ‘Landscape’ into the charts with Einstein A Go-Go and then Norman Bates. Amongst other notable projects he also produced Spandau Ballet’s first two albums. He now works as the Director of Marketing and Sales at Smithsonion Folkways in the USA.

Pete Zorn had enjoyed plenty of session work through the seventies, and this consequently led to lengthy stints with major artist such as Gerry Rafferty, Barbara Dickson, and Richard Thompson; the latter two whom he still works with.   

In 1979 I vanished to California - but that’s another story.

So you see, when I stand on stage, when I turn to the left, and when I see Pete Z once again playing bass guitar along side me, it’s as though I’m watching a thirty five year story passing before my eyes.

Stand By Your Amp

2009-05-09T16:18:00.000+01:00

Monday 4th May. Day Off.
Caught the train from Newark to London, and then up to Oxford. John Dagnell picked me up at Oxford station, and we drove back to the office where I got a little piece of my life back - my car. From Oxford I drove up to Preston - having to make a few stops along the way due to overwhelming tiredness. I arrived home at 6:30 p.m. It was just great to be home after almost four weeks away.

Night 18. Tuesday 5th May. The Victoria Theatre, Halifax..
Called over at Steve's (Carter) house this morning, as arranged, to get this troublesome volume control sorted. He replaced it, and figuring it was such a straightforward job I didn't bother to test it.
Left Preston in my own car at 3:30 p.m. Arrived at the theatre at 5 p.m. On arrival I strung the guitar up, plugged it in, and . . . God! It was worse than before; how stupid not to test it. There was no way I could use it tonight.

Phoned Steve, and arranged to take it back the next morning. In the meantime I used my other guitar, the Giordano, for everything, so that meant I had to retune my guitar to DADGAD for Scullion King as I introduced the song. It all went quite smoothly I suppose. But with an electronic tuner at one's foot it can't really go that wrong - that is, unless your eyesight's a bit dodgy.

Amid all kinds of controversy, Manchester United tonight beat Arsenal to go through to the European Champions League final.

Night 19. Wednesday 6th May. The Floral Hall, Southport.
Less than fourteen miles from home, and just a half hour drive to the venue.
Steve, this morning, located the source of the guitar problem - a loose wire that should've been attached to the five-way switch. Tested the guitar this time.

Went to see Vicky, my manicurist, at 12:30 p.m. OK, how weird does that sound? But she is my manicurist - and I see her about every five weeks to get the nails of my first, second and third fingers of my right hand coated with acrylic. This is, of course, for the purpose of guitar playing - finger-picking to be more precise.
I've never played the Floral Hall before, but it holds some great memories for me. The most significant memory is from 1967 when I saw the then newly formed Fleetwood Mac perform there. The band consisted of Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green.

Cassette recorders had just become 'the thing'; I took one with me and placed it on the stage, recording every note the band played that night. There was no problem with doing this kind of thing in those days. I even went backstage after the show, and played the entire show back to the band. Peter Green was particularly attentive; he listened and scrutinised every single note. That evening was an inspiration for me; I still think that Peter Green was one of the all time greatest guitar players. For me, it was all about how he wasn't, like so many other blues players, a 'riff' merchant; his playing was inventive, melodic and inspired. And I know that it wasn't just down to my age at that time (16) - I know that, because I still have the tape.

Night 20. Thursday May 7th. The City Hall, Hull.

A grand and majestic building; another one of these municipal halls from the Victorian age. It's very easy to just walk in and out of these places without paying much attention, but every now and then when the mind is turned from all it's inner pre-occupations toward the places, the history, the people, and some of that which exists in the outside world, places like this can be striking to say the least. They began building the City Hall in 1900, and opened it in 1903; the more I looked at it's domes, balconies, stairs, arches and skylights, the more it looked as though absolutely no expense had been spared.

If you're interested in knowing more about it's history, here's a link: Hull City Hall.

And to top it all, they had the good sense to put a Cafe Nero just over the road.

Night 21. Friday May 8th. The Corn Exchange, Kings Lynn.
17:30 hours, and near disaster just before sound check. I was in the green room, and some one informed me that there was a problem with my amplifier. 'The amp was placed on it's stand, it fell backwards and a valve might be damaged', I was told. I knew exactly what had happened; the amplifier has an open back, leaving one or two parts - including the tubes / valves, quite exposed.

There is a horizontal bar approximately two feet long that the rear of the amp rests on; this area, basically a narrow board or strip at it's base is only about 6 - 8 inches high, and there is always the potential problem that the amplifier will lean back at too great an angle to a point where the bar slips over the top of this strip, which will, and in this case did, result in the amp's open back falling onto the support.

Here in today's little disaster scenario the first thing to hit the support was one of the two large tubes, and it was pushed out of it's socket at an angle twisting and bending it's pins in the process. Mercifully, the glass was completely unbroken.

So far it was me who carefully set the angles of the stand and placed the amp on it each night, always mindful of these laws of physics. Tonight someone else decided to do it; I won't mention who it was, and I won't mention what I wanted to do to him.
I walked onto the stage to find soundman Patch kneeling, valve in hand, over a face-down amplifier. The pins were completely bent, and the next thing was - could they be straightened out without any one of them snapping, could the tube be put back in place, and would it still work? I was fairly convinced the prognosis was worse than bleak, so I walked back to the green room, and left the paramedics and medical staff to it.

'Just as well I brought my Mesa Boogie with me in case of an emergency like this', I thought to myself. Then came the hopeful news - an operation had been performed, and the prospect of a full recovery looked good. Sure enough, I plugged in the guitar and . . . and, you know, it might've even sounded better than before!

First leg of the championship playoffs tonight: PNE v Sheffield United. I managed to catch a full five minutes of commentary between our first and second sets. Sounds as though Preston were pinned back for much of the game - the word 'pin' is definitely the word of the moment. Tonight's result was 1-1. The second leg is at Bramell Lane on Monday night, and for once I'll be able to watch a full match, albeit on television, but unhindered by work commitments.

I remember the Corn Exchange here in Kings Lynn very well from my first Steeleye tour in December 2002 (the Reunion Tour). I had just enrolled on a Contemporary Music degree course at UCLAN (University of Central Lancashire) when I was asked to play with the band. My course leader did everything possible to accommodate my touring schedule, and I managed to slot in a presentation after one of my days off. I recall as though it was yesterday a very nervy presentation followed by a hasty trip to the train station. That night I was onstage in Kings Lynn.

I Don't Like Sundays

2009-05-09T14:48:00.000+01:00

Night 14. Thursday 30th April. The Winding Wheel, Chesterfield.

I was disappointed not to see Ashley (Hutchings) tonight. He lives just outside Chesterfield, and had contacted me about three days ago asking for a guest pass; yesterday he sent a text explaining that because of a personal matter he was going to be stuck in London for a few days.
I’ve always enjoyed playing here, but I do wish they had better dressing room facilities. All four of us (the band excluding Maddy) had but one very confined room to share, it was impossible really. I chose to utilise the green room where the food (the rider) was. Of course, people come in and out with regularity, so the trick was to get changed into and out of my stage clothes as quickly as possible.

Took a rest this afternoon. It’s very unusual for me to sleep at this time of the day for anything longer than around twenty or thirty minutes; after closing my eyes at about 3 p.m. I re-surfaced thinking I had plenty of time to spare, but figured I might as well take a look at my watch anyway - it was 4:50; the sound check was at 5 p.m. I had to start moving at a speed that was completely contrary to that which my body was prepared for.
When I’d left the hotel, walked across the bridge over the dual carriageway, and reached the vicinity of the venue there was only one thing to do - find some coffee.
In Chesterfield there is a complete lack of the kind of coffee houses found in just about any other town in the UK, I don’t know why this is the case. So I figured my best bet was to head for Marks and Spencers - it did the job.

Bass and guitar virtuoso Fred Baker turned up at the gig, a guest of Liam’s I think. They’ve worked together in Soft Machine. We ended up in the hotel bar later. My head was slightly heavy Friday morning.

Night 15. Friday 1st May. Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury.
This is a seriously impressive theatre. I believe it was opened just this February 2009, and cost a grand total of forty million pounds to build. Everything about the place is incredible; the dressing rooms, the amount of space, the acoustics - on and off stage; even the rider that they provided was nothing less than excellent.
Having said that, I wish I could say the same for my playing on the night; it was about as scratchy as the volume pot on my Strat.
I should qualify that; the guitar I play is the amalgamated result of taking a little bit of one guitar and attaching it to a bit of another one. I think of it as a Charvel, because that’s the way it started out, but now there’s only the birds-eye maple neck of the original instrument that remains. I bought the original Charvel back in the eighties when I lived in Los Angeles; I remember it cost me $225.

Before the tour I made sure all my equipment was in order; I replaced batteries, bought new cables, and sprayed the various volume and tone controls with switch cleaner … clearly a big mistake. Now when I turn the volume control on the Charvel it’s quite noisy, and I’m hoping it isn’t going to get much worse.

After tonight’s show I decided I’d be better off going to my room and taking it easy. All was well until around 2 a.m. when I was woken by the person in the room above. First it was footsteps, and then the TV. The music from the television was loud enough to stop me from falling back to sleep. I was not happy.
I got out of my bed, picked up one of my slippers and flung it at the ceiling, certain either that I hadn’t thrown it strongly enough or that I should have used a heavier object. The sound, however, took an almost instant drop in volume. ‘Great’, I thought, I can now get some sleep.

The following morning I was telling Deborah (Pete’s partner) about this person above me, and she said, “that’s funny, at breakfast this morning Liam was saying that he heard an almighty ‘bang’ at 2 a.m. - It was so loud he didn’t know whether it was coming from the floor or the ceiling”.

I talked to Liam about this later, he said he almost had a heart attack.

Night 16. Saturday 2nd May. Theatr Hafren, Newtown, Wales.
I’m very fond of this part of the world; we’re not all that far from Machynlleth, a town that Carol and I used to visit with regularity. We would stay in an old railway building (possibly once a signal box) which sat by the side of the river Dulas at Evans Bridge just four miles from Machynlleth. The house was made of the characteristic grey slate found in abundance in that region. The river, in fact, appeared not just to run along it’s side, but also partially underneath the house; consequently there was an ever present, perpetual, and somewhat hypnotic sound of rushing water. Much of the time, with one’s attention focused elsewhere, it became virtually subliminal; a background music of nature’s making. The building, set below the road, and sheltered by steep riverbank and trees, saw limited sunlight - mostly whatever came from directly above, and even then, the windows - quite small and situated only on it’s river side never allowed quite enough daylight to pass through so as to completely lift the darkness within. And yet, quite contrary to how one might suppose, this bleak and somewhat damp atmosphere was pleasant, comfortable, reassuring. I guess that’s why we kept going back.

The Dulas is a tributary of the river Dovey, a renowned water for sea trout fishing; I had a few shots at it myself, without much luck though.
Fishing was the usual aim of our Welsh excursions, and when conditions were not conducive for sea trout (which, the majority of the time was the case) our fishing took place on Talyllyn Lake close by - a lake landscaped in the most beautiful surroundings. Here, although the lake is not ‘landlocked’ and has migratory fish passing through at certain times of the year, it is inhabited mainly by stocked brown trout. And although the fish are farmed, stocked fish, they are for the most, not that easily tempted by an artificial fly.

It was a very vocal audience tonight in Newtown - probably the loudest yet on All Around My Hat. The theatre, or ‘theatr’ to be exact looked quite new. Maybe not quite as recent as last night’s though.
I desperately need to have this volume pot fixed. It’s beginning to cut out completely at times.

Night 17. Sunday 3rd May, The Palace Theatre, Newark.
The fact that it’s not only a Sunday, but a Bank Holiday Sunday, made for a quiet, deserted atmosphere out on the streets of Newark. That’s certainly the way I perceived it when Maddy and I travelled in by cab from the hotel; actually, I’d go even further in describing it as ‘dead’. Sundays such as these are both peaceful and disturbing. As a child, the seventh day of the week was possibly a bigger dread day than Monday was; everything I did on that day always took place amid the anticipation of what was about to follow the day after - school. So now, particularly when it’s sunny, I literally cannot look at a quiet setting, with shops closed and the streets half empty, and not recall a little of that sickening anxiety that always went with it.

Earlier today I experienced a different kind of anxiety - one of the most excruciatingly difficult football matches to sit through; the outcome, though - fantastic.
Preston North End were playing Queens Park Rangers. PNE needed to win in order to sand any chance at all of making the playoffs for the Premiership. We also needed either Burnley or Cardiff City to lose. Burnley won. Cardiff lost 0-1. Preston won 2-1 with a goal-line clearance as the last kick of the match to prevent a QPR equaliser.
PNE ended the season with the same number of points, and the same goal difference as Cardiff but moved above them on the strength of having scored one more goal all season. It’s slightly uncanny that we beat Cardiff 6-0 just three weeks ago.

The playoffs begin on Friday 8th May when PNE play Sheffield United at Deepdale.

A Matter Of Choice?

2009-05-04T13:04:00.000+01:00

How far back has something got to be before you ‘hark’ to it? If it can be merely one day, then that’s what I’m doing now - harking back to that television program about the large people who ‘chose’ to take part in the circus we class as light entertainment. Actually, my intention here is not to be critical of the media mainstream, or indeed it’s willing consumers; my intention is to look at the concept of ‘choice’.

It’s not the first time I’ve pondered the subject, but what got me started yesterday as I watched the program was the idea of how it related to, in this case, the way we eat - what type of food; the quantity, the regularity, the time of day, the way we use it, and the way, quite possibly, it uses us.

My interest is on two levels; first, the kind of daily choices that are made by all of us, or indeed by everything. These are choices based on the coherence level of whoever or whatever is doing the choosing.

The second level is the question of freewill and destiny.

There really is never a moment when one isn’t making a choice. Many of these choices, you might add, are made by default; in some way an area where a decision can be taken with an element of ‘disconnection’ from the process.

Even the most obese regulate their eating habits to some extent. Whatever decision making process takes place, it will involve a whole host of considerations and factors - much of which is born of long established patterns and habitual behaviours.

Of course, the question of what pulls and pushes us in one direction or another, be it food related or not, applies to all of us, and we will find whatever justification is needed to suit our agenda. Much of our decision making is shaped not as we’d like to imagine - from rationale, but from what feels comfortable, convenient and familiar at the time.

On the basis of ‘familiarity’ it could be argued quite reasonably I suppose that the more one gravitates towards the familiar, the less ‘choice’ is a part of the decision making process, if any at all. But by that it would be assumed that at some point one’s awareness suddenly (or not so suddenly?) can cross a threshold that reveals a whole new set of considerations that fall outside of this familiarity box.

If there is no such definable line, then perhaps it’s more a case of anyone or anything - animal or plant - negotiating their way through life using whatever learning capacity and resultant data is available to him, her, or it.
I do, however, think there are markedly different levels of coherence, and I take this view as a result of one or two of my own experiences - experiences that possibly indicate we have more power than one imagines to chose the outcome of events in life.

On the last Steeleye Span Spring Tour (2008) I began a written work, I called it ‘Choosing Hope’; it starts out by explaining something about these above experiences.

Here are some of my thoughts in the first chapter: Waking Up To Your Choices:

At the age of fifteen I was travelling back from school, on the usual bus, and at the same time as I travelled most days. My school: Penwortham County Secondary, represented more of a prison camp to me; I had literally been counting down the days, the weeks and the months since September 2nd 1962 - my first day there - with an obsession on reaching the age of fifteen - this being the age at which one had the legal right to leave school in the UK at that time. To me, it felt very much as though there were two main realities in life; one was the repressive Victorian-like reality of my school that, as far as I could see, afforded no favourable recognition of the person I was; the other reality was the complete freedom that adulthood appeared to promise.
What occurred on that day, on the upper deck of that bus, stayed with me for the rest of my life. It wasn’t anything that had any great drama to it - like a disaster, accident or something of that nature, it was just a sudden change of consciousness. Life changed right before my eyes. I was there, looking out of this upper-deck window, viewing the people below, the men and women walking the street, then all of a sudden I realised something; I realised that I was there. Of course, I’d been there the moment before, and the moment before that, but at ‘that very specific moment’ I kind of woke up, and for the first time - I knew it.
It was as though everything that led up to that moment had been in some way ‘automatic’ or ‘mechanical’; as though I was, and all those I watched from the bus window were, just doing this and that, going here and there in this narrow stream of existence, operating pretty much totally by default; all of their, and my options being selected quite automatically.
This sudden moment of self-awareness, I believe now, was in some way a glimpse into a world of potential intention, where the realisation of ones existence, in turn, brings about not just the introduction to another level of consciousness, but also to a place of greater clarity, a heightened state in the process of decision making.
I’ve not had the same experience repeat itself very often between that time and the present, but the one thing I liken it to, and the example I use to illustrate this is the experience of waking up in a dream. I’ve heard people talk of lucid dreaming - something that some claim to be able to achieve on a regular basis.
Very occasionally when I’m sleeping I have this similar experience; I suddenly realise I’m dreaming, and that I’m as much there as I am here now typing these words. I can think to myself, ‘here I am, fully conscious - yet asleep, fully coherent in this dream’. The dream will have been going on for some time, but then all of a sudden I know it, I’m standing there, or walking somewhere; I look at my hands in detail; I feel my hands; I take a good look at the faces of others, and think ‘who are these people?’; I look at shop fronts, and say to myself, ‘I will remember these names’. And then the most profound point is in the moment when I recognise that I can make anything happen just by willing it - I am the creator and the director of my dream; I have been directing this dream all along, but now my decision making process has just taken a new turn, a quantum leap in fact - because I now fully know that I’m there.
Of course, the irony more often than not though is in how short lived this freedom can last; the more one tries to hang on to, or anticipates and fears losing this freedom, the more it is apt to slip from your grasp.

The Great Escape.

2009-05-01T10:14:00.000+01:00

Tuesday 28th April. Day Off.
It took four hours to reach the hotel in Redditch. No one in the band seems to know the town, and the general expectation of the place is not all that positive - I'm not altogether sure why though. It could be of it's close proximity to Birmingham perhaps. The closest I've got to Redditch before is when, a good few years ago, I would play at a very large pub and popular music venue - The Breedon Bar in Kings Norton. I always recall the exit off the M42 leading me on to a road that went either north to King Norton, or south to Redditch. That was probably eighteen years ago, or more.

They staged a British songwriters weekend there, I remember; it was one of the first occasions I ran into the late Isaac Guillary. He was quite an inspiration to me at that time; very slick, great guitar technique, tremendous guitar sound, and considerable stage presence. He was, of course, like just about all of us, a mixture of things - some perhaps not quite so glowing - and once again like the rest of us, largely born of insecurities. My own uncertainties prevented me from appreciating much about Isaac's character, especially his generosity. I could say exactly the same about Al Stewart who I worked with back in the seventies and early eighties. Apart from his evident talent as a writer, I don't believe I ever afforded him the kind of credit he warranted for the ingenuous person he was.

I was so busy surviving back then, there were many things I failed to appreciate.

I had one of the best Indian food experiences tonight. If, like me, you're an Indian food lover, and are ever in the Redditch area, visit the Montville Indian Fusion restaurant; it's not only the food, but everything about the place, the attitude, the decor, etc.

David (road crew) was with Patch (other half of the road crew) and Jackie (tour manager) last night in Patch's room. David went into the toilet, and the locking mechanism on the door froze. Despite his best efforts he couldn't get out. Patch and Jackie tried pushing from the other side, to no avail; he was well and truly stuck. They got the hotel manager up; he couldn't open it either. Thirty minutes later and the manager went to phone the Fire Brigade; at this point Patch made one desperate final effort to free the hostage in the loo, by throwing himslf at the door. Success. The door split in two. And the lock? - It stayed firmly in place.
David is now a free man.

I've decided it's never a good idea to visit the toilet without a mobile phone and a tool kit.

Night 13. Wednesday 29th April. The Palace Theatre, Redditch.
Officially over the halfway mark with just eleven dates left. I'm sitting up in bed in a hotel that is not at all to my liking (you know, almost every time I type the word 'bed' I spell it 'bad'. Is this just an ever-repeating, coincidental, familiar mistake, or is there something going on that's, well . . . Freudian?).

On the television there's a program about fat people; it's a competition to see who can lose the most weight. These reality-style show is about real people in real situations, and with real problems are as predictable as my bed . . . I mean bad spelling.

This fat losers show is no exception. I imagine they lose most of the weight through the amount of crying that takes place.
These programs go like this: create a scenario where people are going to appear to struggle. Make sure you have the correct mixture of personality types so as to get a balance between quitters, achievers, dominants, submissives, etc. Get an ever-so assertive workout instructor. Punctuate the program mercilessly with brief close-ups of the various participants talking about how they feel, then crying. Group shots. Instructor shouts at them. More crying. Tantrums. Reflection. Achievement. Laughing. Instructor show his or her human side - they're human after all. Intersperse with a 'voice over' - a slightly patronising commentary to make sure you know exactly what's going on, and then mix in short bursts of the most banal incidental music.
And there you have it.

It's strange, they just showed one of the contestants throwing-up; you see, this is the effect these programs have on people - and not just the participants.

Took a leisurely stroll around the town centre. There seems not to be much of a town centre - apart from a good number of pubs, a church and a small bus station. And then you discover 'it' - the shopping mall - it's bloody enormous. Once 'it' was discovered I grabbed a copy of The Independent, sat down to the customary Cappuccino Medio, and then bought, amongst other things, some Portuguese sardines in olive oil at M&S.
Enjoyed the show tonight in what is probably the smallest venue on the tour. It strengthens my view that the shallower and higher the theatre, the warmer the audience.