Back in the van

We had a great fundraiser gig last night in Edinburgh at Douglas’s House. Made some money for Soundhouse and played a slightly ramshackle, error strewn and energetic Lau show. The band is always changing and feels different again. It’ll be interesting to see what the set list is by the end of this run of shows. 

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​Here we see the boys warming up. Lovely to have new dad Tim back on board. 

Martin has built a new contraption with strings on and has done away with the Wurli in favour of a dainty but very lovely sounding Yamaha electric piano. I’m down to two guitars (Atkin acoustic and Godin electric) and one pedal board and mic position. Having expanded endlessly in terms of channel list for the best part of a decade it feels good to finally get a little bit more minimal. 

We’re on our way now to Aberdeen in the van. Tomorrow night we play a show with the Danish group Dreamers Circus and we’ll spend our day with them working out some collaborative stuff for the show. Very much looking forward to seeing them play. 

The view on the road north.

Guitar post

This is me playing a wee bit of guitar. If some folks are interested in this sort of thing then i could post more. It’s just on the mic and video on the laptop so the quality won’t be lovely but good enough to learn if you so wish.

It’s the air of a song called The Valley Of Knockanure. It sits easily on the guitar in standard tuning. I may have thrown in a sneaky F chord but if you wanted to learn it then that harmony certainly wouldn’t be necessary.

It’s been a while.

It’s been almost a year since i last blogged here. Lots has happened since then. Much of it has been musical in nature, i’ve released a couple of albums, Lau’s Race The Loser and Storymap with Eamonn Coyne, i’ve moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow(gasp)and been on the road fairly extensively for most of that time. I’ve been to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Milton Keynes and everywhere(not quite)in between. So that covers that. On with a futile and vague round up of recent (non)events.

 

The sun is massive in Shetland. It’s still cold though, but completely beautiful.

I’m hanging out in Shetland a bit at the moment. It’s great, writing and playing, all good bits of being a musician. Trying to put together new solo material and occasionally heading south to write for a string quartet with the Lau boys. That’s due to be premiered at celtic Connections this coming January so it’ll probably appear more here.

Half of my solo rig or one third of my Lau rig.

I’ve just finished a Duo tour round England with Eamonn which was very enjoyable and successful. The guitar and amp above came along for the ride. I reckon it’ll have to come oot again.

Here’s a crappy poster i made for one of the gigs we just did last week.

I was bored.

France, Cambridge and recording.

 

Recently i was in France playing with the Lau boys

Martin learns the french bagpipe

then i went to cambridge festival which resulted in this debacle

Like Madonna i feel the need to constantly reinvent myself.

After that i came home and did some recording with my good friend Eamonn Coyne. We’re making a new album which will be out in February, it’s got some great people on it. Look, here some of them are

Young Eamonn Nugent playing some Bodhran for us. He made the whole session look disappointingly easy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nico Bruce was also in laying down the low for us. Everything is better with bass

Bonggggggg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Megan Henderson played harmonium and fiddle and was tremendously good at both. Her sister later saw this photo and called her a hippy. Good point well made.

Duuuuude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mattie put up mics and made stuff sound good and giggled like a schoolgirl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and Simon Bradley wore his shades throughout his session

Machiavellian beshaded fiddle genius.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are still more performers to come but that brings us pretty much up to date. Unless sitting in my pants watching the Olympics counts as news…….

 

This weekends band

This is my band for the weekend, the eminently quotable Dr E Coyne, last night he said(to TV whilst it shows a weather report)”look at you with yer polka dots(tie)telling us it’s gonna be shit!”. Genius.

And Jeana Leslie on learning that there used to be a reed organ manufactury near the gig, leads with the line(to the audience) “so we thought we’d bring you some organ love”…..

I’m so proud.

Also, we got to drive our car into last nights venue. Check it!

Bye for now.

Here It’s

The Beginning.

• This is an experiment to see if i am capable of making my own website.
• Here we go…..