Recent live acoustic shows Well this week I played a couple last minute acoustic shows. The first was on Thursday at the Picture house in Exeter, this was due to the one we had booked on the 18th was cancelled as there is a comedy gig happening there that night. There was some good acts on, most notably my mate Chris Woods whom I’ve mentioned before. Myself and Niall performed 5 Tracks, Fortunes Light, Jessica, To Behold, Home Too Soon and Tomorrow. I was very happy with how we played, I think in some ways it’s the best acoustic show thus far, not perfect by any means by getting there, this was also pointed out boy a few of the regulars that came to my Exeter gigs. Then last night, I played a few songs on my own at an acoustic night in a pub called the Tamar Inn in a place called Calstock, now to get there the satellite navigation took us all over the place, down tiny little lanes up hills, and eventually we found the place, though there was hardly anywhere to park! I did just 3 songs,...
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Oxjam Exeter 25th October 2009 So I was asked to perform at the Oxjam Oxfam benefit gig in Exeter, this is where 6 venues are open for live music with a roving ticket for just a fiver with all monies going to Oxfam. I was playing at Cooling’s wine bar on the same bill as the legendary Frank Turner. The set I performed was similar to what I have been doing acoustically recently however I was asked to do an encore and I just repeated Fortunes Light again. The set Fortunes Light Each And Every Way New song untitled Jessica The Widow’s Blame Friends Forever Stranger To None Home Too Soon Fortunes Light The Venue was nice and the PA good, though not having any form of monitor made it very hard. Thanks to Sue for taking the photo.
Pedal Power to London Well at the weekend I decided to get a couple new pedals, I’m finding that a compressor is more and more a vital part of my rig, for years Ive had an Arion pedal which is OK but nothing special, its also a bit on the noisy side. So I decided to upgrade my right with a couple pedals made by Electro Harmonix. Niall has a ‘Soul Preacher’ compressor that sounds amazing, so I thought about getting one, but then I saw the ‘White Finger’ and though yes! In the spirit of the thing I also purchased a ‘Poly Chorus’ these are 2 of the best pedals that I have ever owned and my board looks like this. I got them both from my local guitar shop ‘Hartnolls Guitars’ they have excellent stock and good service and have just opened a shop in Torquay where Sound Pad was. On Sunday we had a rehearsal in London at Terminal Studios, Niall was unable to attend so was just Nev, Steve and myself. This is the fist time the other guys have played together since Gotham, we did each song in the ...
So tonight, I had another first. Thursday 27th August 2009 In 17 years as a professional musician, the one thing that I have never done is walked into a venue on my own with a guitar, got up on stage performed songs then got off stage. Tonight I did it. The Junction is a reasonable sized pub on the end of Mutely Plane in Plymouth. They have it decked out with various album covers, most of which are LPs that I own, the nerves thing is what I’m doing these sort of gigs for because I don’t want to start performing with the band and start crapping myself on stage. Anyhow I felt reasonably confident on stage tonight, there wasn’t a soul in there who knew me or knew who All Living Fear were, in a way that was a good thing. I did Each and Every Way, The Widow’s Blame and Jessica, I didn’t have my loop pedal so there was no looping to do solos, to be honest I was glad. I also did the gig standing up and to be honest I prefer that and it was good to have a mic rather than totally acoustic thoug...
Waterman's show 24th August 2009 + Session 26th August 2009 On Monday evening I performed 2 songs at the Waterman’s Pub Folk Club in Richmond Surrey. Both were new songs that I’m still working on, the second of which is one of the ones that I have recorded with Roger doing a Moog solo, stripped down it sounds pretty good too, some of the other musicians in the pub were joining in giving it a different dimension and texture. Last night band practice turned into a bit of a recording session, I dug out a drum beat and keyboard riff that I had on the machine and stretched it out to about 14 minutes, I then plugged in Niall and myself to separate channels, one of the beauties of an 8 in 8 out sound port is being able to assign things, so we weren’t hearing ourselves feeding back. Anyhow, we recorded 3 passes of us jamming, and from it I got the ideas for the whole song. Its all there needs extracting and re recording properly, but will end up a decent tune. In other news, here is a peda...
Recording and Announcements. Saturday was a good day, Me and Lee-Anne went to visit Roger while we were there I managed to get him to lay down a Moog solo for one of my new songs, there is something really organic and warm about the sound of a monophonic synthesizer and the Moog Voyager is probably the best in the world right now. This is a great little film about to the Minimoog Anyhow the band has made an official announcement about Andy leaving All Living Fear. You can read it at http://www.alllivingfear.co.uk/news.htm I am also trying to book 2 shows for the end of November, as with all things this is rather tricky as everything seams booked up.
All Living Fear Exeter Picturehouse 13th August 2009 Ok last night, well this was a really strange chain of events. We get there nice and early, they moved the stage area around at the picturehouse and now its in a much better position. Didn’t take long to set up, there were 4 acts, and as always the line up order bare no resemblance to what was on the poster. While we were setting up my pal Roger O’Donnell turned up I played half a bar of a Cure song to see his reaction haha! The sound check was fine, I had also found out that Les Paul had passed away, so thought about playing a bit of The World is waiting for The Sunrise. Anyhow, out of the blue my other half turned up this was the surprise of the evening as she wasn’t due to be coming down, then Simon Hinkler from the Mission rolled in if you had said to me in 1992 when I started the band that I would be having members of the Cure and The Mission turning up at a gig Id never have believed you in a million years. So as for the gig it...
Tonight’s The Night Well last night we had our final rehearsal before we play our first show tonight, for those that haven’t caught on, Andrew left All Living Fear a couple of months ago, making Gotham his final gig, which to be fair was a damn fine show to go out on. Nevla and Steve are in the band for tours and gigs, though because they are both so far away they obviously won’t be performing tonight. I have been working with Niall for the last 2 months and been discussing thing’s through a lot longer, we decided on 6 numbers to get ready for this show tonight and stuck with them, we did work on a cover, Badge by Cream but it never really worked, though who is to say that it wont some time later on. Anyway last night went pretty well every time that we have practiced its getting tighter and tighter, since I had my last bit of tuition I can see my vocals have been getting better still a lot more work to do on that score but I’m not in any rush. My guitar sounded better last night too a...