Renegade Folk Punk Wedding Band

Realised I should post something here about a few things that have happened recently. Over the weekend that has just passed, the band and I had a massive amount of fun. Saturday brought my mother's Wedding where we acted as Band, which went stressful but very well.

I used to have a thing against playing covers solely so that people would recognise the song you're playing and dance etc. However, after doing this (and the Legends gig we did a few weeks ago), I understand it a bit more. In the evening we then ran over to the Classic Grand for another gig with Miles Hunt and Erica Knockalls (of The Wonder Stuff). As usual, that was amazingly good fun.

So, what's next for us? Well, on Thursday I'm heading through to Edinburgh to play a gig with Beans on Toast, Billy Liar and Roscoe Vacant at Opium Nightclub. Then a month later it's time for the Headline Show (TM) at the 13th Note in Glasgow. And that's about it. Maybe some thing will come up, but that's all I've got booked at the moment until Rebellion in August.

In recorded music news, I've heard that there's been a problem with buying the album through Amazon UK. This is due to, and I feel completely mystified by being included in such problems, a falling out between our distributor and Amazon over unpaid royalties. Hopefully it will be sorted soon as Amazon was one of the cheapest places to get the album. Until then, though, you can still get the album through Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes, eMusic and in our own shop.

I'm also digging through my collection of songs that I've recorded but not released over the last few years to chose a track for an acoustic punk compilation that's coming out in May. Other acts that will be on it include TV Smith, Billy Liar, Emma Hallows and many more.


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Headline Show, Headline Show, Headline Show

Ok, so I've been mentioning this over the last week and now I can give you full details. I'll be doing a headline show at the 13th Note in Glasgow on Thursday 3rd of May, with support from Emma Hallows (Manchester) and Algernon Doll (Glasgow). You can buy tickets, priced at a fiver over through WeGotTickets. There's also a Buddy Ticket thing that I'm trying in that you can buy an £8 ticket and that gets you and a friend in to the gig (meaning each of your tickets are cheaper). And if there's still tickets left, they wil be £6 on the night.

Obligatory Facebook event to share with your pals: https://www.facebook.com/events/222585127840884/

So, reasons you should come to this gig. Well, I haven't played in Glasgow since the start of December, and my last solo Glasgow gig (at MacSorelys) was even longer ago (and it was a bloody good night). There's Emma Hallows (who I was on tour with at the start of February) and Algernon Doll (who is utterly brilliant) on the bill. It's the 13th Note, which is still one of the best DIY venues in Glasgow and it's a Thursday straight after pay-day. And finally, recently I've been writing quite a lot and I've got a whole bunch of new and fresh songs to play.

I'd really appreciate it if people could commit and buy tickets in advance for this as it helps me, the other acts and the venue know what to expect on the night. Plus, with Emma Hallows and Algernon Doll on the bill, I'm sure we're going to make this very busy and I don't want folk to miss out.

The reasons for this being a solo show are many, but most prominently is Woody disappearing off with Uriah Heap again. I never really thought that I'd ever have to fit my music in around a prog-rock bohemeth such as Uriah Heap, but those are the (dem?) breaks. Before he disappears though, the full RFPB and myself will be opening for Miles Hunt and Erica Knockalls (Wonder Stuff) at The Classic Grand in Glasgow on the 24th of March.

Bloggess-Style round up of other stuff that's happened:

• A couple people who came to my London tour date made a "hilarious" documentary on me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McYnJwzDrh4
• American music blog The Ruckus had nice things to say about that time Chris T-T joined us on stage: http://www.whatstheruckus.com/2012/03/30-days-of-covers-ghost-of-tom-joad/
• I chose a few tracks for the Slide in to my  hand podcast: http://www.slideintomyhand.com/?p=151
• I posted a brand new song as a video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POG-pv-qco4

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Home truths.

Just finished a run of five gigs with Emma Hallows which were all lots of fun, with particular mention to London and Manchester for being ace. Emma is a fantastic person to play shows with, and gets better each night. Please check her out and give her support.

Woody and I are working on putting all the snippets of footage together in to some kind of tour video, so we'll post that when it's done. In the mean time, there's a video of Malaga Airport from Dundee at the bottom of this post.

In other news, due to a number of issues and home truths coming home to roost (is that a phrase?), I have decided to take a little break from music. As a result, the band and I won't be playing in Glasgow on Friday night with Louis Barabbas. I apologise if you were looking forward to hear us play, but at the moment I'm not in the right place to play it. The gig is still going ahead, and will be a good night.

See you later.

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No time to talk, we leave in two weeks.

First things first. I found out via Reddit, that not everyone shares my love of Spotify. And so, to make things better for whoever shares that view, I have uploaded Despite the Blackout to bandcamp. It seems to be doing strangely well there, I'm guessing people were holding off on getting a copy?

Time has really flew by, and it is now two weeks before the second Despite the Blackout tour kicks off in York. So much to do and so little time. I've been trying to do some promo in the town's were hitting, but so far have been hit with a great wall of silence which isn't great. Fingers crossed that the promoters are having more luck getting the word out about the shows than I am. I'm always a bit anxious before leaving for a tour like this as there's a lot of 'putting yourself in other peoples hands' for gigs that doesn't happen at local shows. Most of the time it pays off though, which is nice.

The full dates are:

• Monday 13th - Stereo in York
• Tuesday 14th - The Garratt in Manchester
• Wednesday 15th - Royal Park Cellars in Leeds
• Thursday 16th - The Greyhound in Beeston (nr Nottingham)
• Friday 17th - London (stil waiting on Venue name, but am assured its going ahead)
• Saturday 18th  - Doghouse in Dundee (just me at this one)

If you are coming to the York show, please consider buying tickets in advance from here, helps make us look good to the promoter and puts his mind at rest too! I've also got some advance (cheap) tickets for the Dundee show for similar reasons.

Now, to think about a set-list (plural, different each night for multiple gig attendees).


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Rebellion Festival Songs

I've had a fantastic weekend. Three gigs, and a wee recording session with the band (which I might add sounds absolutely fantastic). Our Greenock folk-session gigs went pretty damn well, enough that we have been asked to return to the pub in two weeks time. We're just working out the details and then we'll fill you in.

Anyways, the main news for today is that I have been booked to return to the UK's largest punk rock festival Rebellion. I last played it about three years ago and had an amazing time. There's a whole bunch of ace people playing including Mark McCabe, Emma Hallows, and some band called Rancid.

This has been a good last few days.


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And we're back

What do you mean you didn't know that we were away? Well, yesterday was a day of Internet action to protest the U.S Congress bill known as SOPA and PIPA. While I'm not American, the SOPA and PIPA bills are a threat to freedom of speech and the internet as a whole. Therefore, to show my disapproval I had a blackout on the website yesterday. The dangerous part of the bills is the heavy handedness with  which they could be enforced, which, when it comes to copyright could be very harmful for folk, and public domain, music as a whole.

Back on track, the band and I are playing our first gigs of 2012 this weekend. We're hitting Dundee once and Greenock twice:

• Friday - Dundee Doghouse, with Mark McCabe and otherr
• Saturday - Legends, Greenock,
• Sunday - Legends, Greenock

Both the Greenock gigs are going to be slightly different in that we're going to be playing two long'ish sets each night. With out a doubt we'll be able to play every single one of our band-catalogue songs, and have a few sing-along covers planned too. All gigs this weekend are free entry.

And yes, I like the new Springsteen single. That's Kool-aid for you.

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Just a little folksinger from Glasgow. (2011 in Pictures)

I can't really be arsed writing screeds and screeds about how 2011 panned out. Instead, by the wonders of my previous gig list and Facebook pictures, this will be like a slide show. 2011 was a very good year for the band and I, and for once there are some photos from the interesting parts.

2011 started with my most northerly gig ever, up in Thurso with Carnivores and No Exit Wound. Many thanks to Kenny from Carnivores for asking me to come along for that ride. There was an awesome wall to be seen and night out to be had.

Things really got started in February though, with an 8 date tour with Adam Boucher and Adam Bennett. You can watch the documentary we filmed of it here, and read an indepth interview I did with Last Years Girl on the run up to it here. 

Writing our setlist in Greenock

On stage at The Horatia in Holloway when I could have been playing in Brighton.

The tour finale for me was at Lexapalooza at the Old Queens Head alongside some pretty awesome acts. My favourite part was having Chris T-T on stage with us to play The Ghost of Tom Joad. We also managed to score an ace review of our set.

Lexapalooza with Frank Turner

Lexapalooza with Chris T-T

This year I went out on tour more often than previous years. Shortly after the Boucher-Bennett tour, I did three dates with Beans on Toast, followed by two dates with Jim Lockey & The Solumn Sun.

Photographic proof I played this show even though other folk may have forgotten.

Final date of the Jim Lockey & Solumn Sun tour at PJ Molloys. I didn't get to play, but since this isn't an end of year Top 10 of disorganised, useless, crap promoters, I won't get in to that.

Before we knew it we were in to May, and the band played an ace support slot with Miles Hunt and Erica Knockalls at the Classic Grand in Glasgow. Woody got to meet his hero and we all had a great night out.

On stage at Classic Grand supporting Miles Hunt

June started with a couple dates with Anna Madeleine. Tour dates I mean. The first also had The Indelicates on the bill, who were promoting their David Koresh Superstar album. Perhaps one of my favourite gigs of the year, you can read a brilliant review of it here.

In to July and the band and I played our biggest show ever, in front of 600 people at The Tall Ships Festival in Greenock. This was a home show for our drummer Woody, and I got really bad sun burn. Proper good fun though.

Greenock tall ships, July 2011

Holy shit.

And, in a strange turn of events that we hope to be repeated, we ended up driving through the night to Cheltenham to play the absolutely fantastic 2000 Trees Festival. 

Myself and our wonderful driver, guitar-tech, roadie, all round good bloke Gareth and a sign. We may have had a couple to drink by and during then.

Greenhouse Stage, 2000 Trees festival

Late night set after Scroobius Pip had finished playing. My drummer was floating around the field somewhere high on life, and my bassist was comatose in a tent by this point.

The week after 2000 Trees, I released my first album through the Corporate Records label. Despite The Blackout was its name, and some people seemed to like it.

 In the first week it sold more copies than most of my others in the same time frame. Later on in the year it was given a proper release through iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, and received what might be the best album review in the history of album reviews (for albums that I released). My brother also wrote a thing about it, which is also perhaps the closest anyones got to writing my manifesto.

I then headed out for two weeks with Mr Ciaran Lenehan from Ireland. We played all around Great Britain, from Edinburgh to London via Cardiff and Tipton (and other places). Ended with a show at The Flowerpot where someone asked my bassist, during my set, "is he someone famous", and when the reply of "No" came, she walked off. Camden, innit.

Our Town (by Iris Dement, later Kate Rusby), in Beeston at The Greyhound.

Nice wee house show in Birmingham, I love this photo.

After getting home from that tour, the band and I played Roscoe Vacant's record release show in Glasgow at Nice'n'Sleazys. This would be the last time that Judith Harron would play with the band, and to give her a send off, we plugged in and played an electric punk rock set.

Thanks Jud.

The face I normally pull during gigs.

I didn't really do a release show for my own album, so instead, I booked to play MacSorleys in Glasgow as a wee solo show. The solo nature of the show came about since Woody had taken on a job with Uriah Heep as drum tech, but as fate would have it, he had a day off from travelling around Siberia and Veneuzula and came along anyways.

Without a doubt my favourite solo gig in Glasgow for a long, long time.

Then, in October, we played our biggest Glasgow support slot ever. We supporting The Fucking Wonder Stuff at Apollo 23. Unfortunately, Woody was away in Russia, so I drafted my brother in on Mandolin to make up for it. This was a magical show, we had a backstage room to ourselves with two showers, beer, wine, sandwiches and a bowl of fruit. 

Dan writing a setlist back stage

Tuning up and asking myself how the hell we ended up being able to do this.

With Woody being away, we didn't do much as a band for the next few months. I played a couple shows here and there, including a couple shows with Franz Nicolay and Chris T-T. There should be a documentary film coming soon about the Glasgow show (hosted by Last Years Girl) we did, but until then, I've only got a couple photographs. 

Last year's Girl singing with Last Year's Band.

Dancing Two-step from Dundee's Book Yer Ane Fest.

We finished the year with a full band show at MacSorleys which was a fitting end to a great year. Hopefully 2012 will be even better, but it has got a lot of work to do.

Have a great Hogmanay, and I really hope I'll see some of you next year. Perhaps February when I'm out on UK tour with Emma Hallows?

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