MATTHEW NORTH MUSIC

Is this is the start of normality? I reckon so. A couple days ago I found out that the Human League were playing a food festival in Cornwall. This show was only announced at the end of last month and like a lot of things down here has relatively little to no promotion.  Being a new event I wouldn’t expect it to be a big thing, Anyhow I went on to the web site and got a ticket. Day ticket was £44 with fees, to see the League at a new event lass than an hour’s drive form home, yeah good for me. When I got there found a well organised car park, got parked up walked to the event. Ticket and wristband exchange was quick and I had to provide my Covid vaccination code.  Walked into the arena, saw a few stalls there, a big wheel and couple other amusements. Even though it was a very new and small festival it did feel very corporate. It was a Food based festival with some famous chef’s putting there name to it, but I couldn’t tell you who they were. But, there was only about 3 or 4 foo...

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,...

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...

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.

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...