Bat for lashes - Siren Song

What is there to say about such a beautiful song?

"In the morning I'll make you breakfast,
In the evening I'll warm the bed,
I'll always be happy to kiss you,
I promise I'll never get sad"

Fallen

Recording is coming along, slowly but surely. I'm getting all the guitar & vocal work done a bit at a time, it's rough but the essence of the tracks is being captured. The latest we've worked on is 'Fallen', the longest track on the record at seven & a half minutes. It's a song I wrote way back in 1997 so it's been kicking around for close to 15 years, I always heard the song with a string section lifting it during the choruses but as we recorded I couldn't figure out how the hell I was going to get a string section down into the studio & how would I write it anyway??? So then a couple of weeks back I was chatting with my flatmate about the new music program he'd just installed on his PC. A light bulb went off.. "Can you duplicate any instrument?", "Yep", "a string section?", "Yep". Boom... So within an hour or two we had added a string section to the track. I can't even begin to describe the feeling of hearing something I had heard in my head for 15 years being played back to me, it was truly an emotional moment! Anyway, here it is in all it's string section glory. There's a false start at the beginning & there's still a lot to do but you'll get the gist..

Fallen by Martin Andrews

Bon Iver - Skinny Love

A truly stunning song played at a house party. Nice. My favourite is the guy that comes into view @ 1.57. That's what you call feeling it! : ) Enjoy.

Bon Iver - Skinny Love - Une Soiree de Poche from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

R.I.P Kenny

A sad end to a sad saga. I just read on stuff of the passing of Kenny the busker. He was a friendly bloke that would busk in front of what is now Nando's Chicken on Courtenay Place, or just down the road in front of the Courtenay Place carparks, which is now Courtenay Central. For years he was a busking stalwart who came to be nick named 'Kenny' after Kenny Rogers, which I think he embraced with his beard & cowboy hat. Unfortunately with more & more people moving into the city centre his busking act was eventually complained about and his gear confiscated by the Wellington City Council. I always thought this was unfair for two reasons, 1. he was there well before the apartments on Courtenay Place & if you're going to move to the centre of the city then you should have to deal with whatever fucking noise is in there. If you don't like it then fuck off to the suburbs. & 2 Full bands set up on Courtenay with drum kits & electric guitars but they're allowed to continue while one of the original buskers is left protesting with just a placard & handing out protest pamphlets. A few years back I stopped & chatted with Kenny & let him know what I thought of the whole situation, he was grateful for my support & I took one of his pamphlets, which was a simple protest to the WCC to please return his gear & allow him to play. It was obvious even then that he was fairly broken & it was no real surprise to see the headline this morning but it still doesn't make the whole situation any less disappointing. I often thought that if I were a film maker it'd make an interesting documentary to find out a little bit more about Kenny's back story and to follow him as he tried to get his licence back. Alas, I guess it'll never happen now. R.IP Kenny, I hope wherever you are you have a guitar & amp and no motherfucker telling you what to do.

Southern Cross - Kroon for your Kai

Intro
Do it right
Poison Tree
I hear the train a comin'
Let me count the ways (I love you)
Portrait
Jimmy Jones
I told you brother
The old man and the sea

Played the Southern Cross's "Kroon for your Kai" last night. It's never a pleasant experience trying to battle through crowd noise at a bar, where people are there to socialise and not for the performer. As I started to play my second song a group of seven or eight people took the table directly in front of me, like within a metre of where I was sitting, and just completely ignored me and started talking and laughing like they where outside in a garden bar. It's no biggie but it illustrates the quandry of doing these types of gigs. If you compare it to the Mojo shows where it's all about the performer, there's just no comparison. I raced through the set, I just decided to ignore the crowd basically & play as loud as I could. I'm not sure if I impressed people or pissed them off! The latter I'm guessing but I didn't really care. I give the show a 5/10.

Just getting off the negative tip for a second, the venue itself is great, it's a fantastic bar with a great garden bar & the mc/organiser for the night, Mara, was a lovely host & completely welcoming to a new performer such as myself. the Kai was pretty good too:



Also got see to this young guy perform again. I first saw him at Molly's a while back when we both entered the battle of the bands. He actually placed that night & went through to the final, (I didn't!) I'm not sure how he fared but he was certainly memorable, if only for his adorable naivety (& I mean that in a good way) you could tell that he truly believed in his playing and his music, as you should. He reminds me of a young Nick Drake.

He didn't fare much better than me last night but it didn't seem to faze him, he just carried on with his delicate songs & plugging his free ep/album from his website. Check it out & have a listen, he's definately got something & I hope he follows through, I'll be keeping an eye out to see what he does from here. & I'm more than a little jealous that he's organised enough to have a website & album able to be downloaded! Good kid.

PS If anyone knows how to stop Blogger from adding spaces to your sentences when you add a photo I'd be grateful to know how, cause it does my head in.

Without You

So here it is, my first completed ep, "Without you". Yay me!

& this is my local cat checking out my fish bowl while he helped me move into my new pad. Pretty soon after this he figured out he can stand up & get into the top of the bowl. Bad kitty!

Mojo Cafe - 08 April 2011

Played Mojo Cafe a couple of Friday's ago, my first full set of material written specifically for a solo show. Set:

Do it right

Poison Tree

(Let me) Count the ways I love you

Trouble

I'll wait for you

Lullaby

I told you brother

Together, Forever

It was a good show and the venue was packed. It only holds about 50 people but having them all crowding in to the point of being standing room only was a great start to the evening. I kept looking up and seeing familiar faces which is always nice. I'd be half way through a tune & look up to see a mate watching with a smile on his or her face. Sweet.

My friend Matt sat in on a couple of tunes, he made a shaker for me the night before so I got him to sit in on the first track 'do it right' and add a bit of percussion. I thought it worked well and I was happy the way this tune worked. It's the first time I've played it live so was glad that it kicked things of nicely. 'Poison tree' was good, I've played it better but over all it seemed to go down well. I've grown to really like the tune & it's hard to remember why I avoided playing it for so long. The low point of the set was def 'trouble', I couldn't hold the off beat in time so completely abandoned it for the second half of the tune. Funnily enough a friend told me afterwards that he particularly enjoyed the accapella track. Go figure.

I got Matt back up to play guitar on 'I'll wait for you', which he did with much aplomb. During rehearsal he practiced just staying calm and enjoying himself, not getting too caught up or stressed about performing. He was great and I got the impression the song went down nicely, it was pretty cool to be bale to give him the experience of his first performance, I think he'll remember it.
Another issue was not being able to hold the ukelele steady while I played it. I actually stopped playing during 'count the ways' to try to get it to sit better, which is never a good look, but managed to muddle my way through the track. It's a great little break in the set to bust out the uke so I'll need to figure that one out. I'm sure it'll come with more experience.
Overall I give the show an 8/10. It was a fun enjoyable evening and really confirmed in my mind that I can perform a full well rounded gig as a solo performer.