Overblown, over-written, over here.

 I wrote a Bio for Bandcamp without reading the character limit, so that’s all good. This is the unedited version.

I did my first gig in 1980 - that’s the year before Dare, Moving Pictures, Tattoo You and East Side Story were released. Not that that’s got any real relevance here but I read a lot of biographies that start this way.

In between then and now, I’ve been the guitarist in a blues rock power trio, and baggy-shirted visionary playing The Big Music, a foil in a heavy-big-pop four piece jagged soul band, an acoustic troubadour, an electric wanderer, a founder member of the East Angliacana movement, festival stage manager, three-time author, the quiet one in a Beatles specialist act, and someone who was once part of a band who convinced a theatre audience in our home town that we were a travelling family of Appalachian musicians named the Guitarres. Good times.

All of which brings us to the here and now. To list every person who I need to thank (or blame) for bringing us together at this point would be so exhaustive as to demand appendices way beyond the capabilities of your average Wikipedia page and, similarly, the number of musical influences - and some of those are the same people - well, let’s just say if you think you can hear it, it’s probably there.

I was supposed to have sung my final hurrah in Y2K with the release of an album called ‘This Much Talent’ which bade farewell to both my so-called career and the CD format and yet, here we both are. My thanks to all of the wonderful musicians who took time out to collaborate with me this time around.

This Much Talent.

I did my first gig in 1980 - that’s the year before Dare, Moving Pictures, Tattoo You and East Side Story were released. Not that that’s got any real relevance here but I read a lot of biographies that start this way.

In between then and now, I’ve been the guitarist in a blues rock power trio, and baggy-shirted visionary playing The Big Music, a foil in a heavy-big-pop four piece jagged soul band, an acoustic troubadour, an electric wanderer, a founder member of the East Angliacana movement, festival stage manager, three-time author, the quiet one in a Beatles specialist act, and someone who was once part of a band who convinced a theatre audience in our home town that we were a travelling family of Appalachian musicians named the Guitarres. Good times.

I was supposed to have sung my final hurrah in Y2K with the release of an album called ‘This Much Talent’ which bade farewell to both my so-called career and the CD format and yet, here we all are. Now I’m recording again. I’m looking at a three track EP on Bandcamp with a limited CD run.

News as we have it.

Pickerelilli.

Once more unto the Gipping Delta, where Picturehouse are to inform, delight and entertain the good people of Stowmarket, as many as five of whom have turned up on the special VIP meet n’ greet package to watch us sound check. I begin with the riff Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ (nearly…) The Other Guitarist does ‘Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)’, The Singer knocks off the intro to ‘A Thing Called Love’, The Bass Player masters the theme from ‘The Rockford Files’, and The Drummer hits things, seemingly at random, until we ask him to stop.

We reconvene in the car park to exchange pop trivia, holiday tales, retirement plans, four day working, weight loss plans and golf trips and wait until we are at least outnumbered by the audience before performing. It wasn’t always like this, you know. Whilst en vacances only last week I was regaling the family with a story about the time The Drummer tried to secrete a fan in the van on the way back from a gig in Lincolnshire. In a shock twist my father-in-law tells me a very similar story involving the West Ham reserve team and a trip to King’s Lynn. Seems there’s nothing new under the sun.

As per, once the music begins, folk are lured in by our Siren-like* tones and are soon frugging away en masse. We seem to have a different crowd every time, from the Young Farmers’ night out to the Halloween dress-up gang, and this evening’s throng appear to be some gals who have probably organised the night on their WhatsApp group, along with some gently nodding types in beards, bandanas and leather jackets and - inexplicably - someone who appears to have channelled his Breakfast Club Judd Nelson to an impressive, if unsettling, degree.

Being the party soundtrack people we are, the packed area front of stage** grooves to the lilting tones of 5ive’s ‘Keep on Moving’ as we segue effortlessly into Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ - a dance floor filler if ever I’ve heard one, and a song which does at least offer me the opportunity to make sure that at one point all the little red lights on all of my effects pedals are all on all at the same time. There’s even time for a (genuine) encore, at which point the slightly damp and wheezy drummer*** is as delighted as you might imagine to learn that he is expected to sing ‘I Fought the Law’, which, triumphant and climactically, he does with dignity and aplomb.

In an aside worthy of the great Douglas Adams he concludes the set. “I wish I’d brought my towel”.

*The mythological temptresses, not the fire warning.

**Carpet.

***Incidentally, as I turn out of the car park afterwards and head for the A14, the first song on random play in the car is Camel’s ‘Breathless’.

The Passenger

 

I have, after many years and quite unexpectedly, joined a new union - that of the behatted bass players (official chapter). In lieu of a scheduled Helstock this year - times are tough for all of us, and the expense and inconvenience of assembling any number of bands to celebrate the official annual passing around the sun of La Mulley is tantalisingly beyond all of our reaches this year - I have been invited to step in to do the low notes for the Tony Winn Big Band in support of the estimable Marty O’Reilly at The Kelvedon Institute, and a mini-cheese fest has been laid out backstage in a nod to our traditional Helstock repast. Not in metaphorical terms - there’s actual cheese.

Marty himself is being filmed for what promises to be an - if you will - Rockumentary and is gamely discussing the journey so far through a fug of fatigue and Lemsip fumes. Tony, Helen and I are running through the set, which involves a selection of his back catalogue, and old song of hers, and me gamely thumping through the tunes channelling my finest Billy Peterson on a Westone Thunder bass which is - in common with de facto promoter, sound engineer and road mangler James - a veteran of the punk wars. Gamine co-support Lily Talmers enquires of these punk wars of which we speak. “He was listening to Neil Young” remarks James. “And we won” I respond.

Compere with the good hair Tony steps up on stage to set the scene and I remark that it would be amusing if he got his own name wrong during the introductions. Later he will throw his arms in the air despairing that he had got Lily’s name wrong during hers, but this is yet to pass. After a flawless rehearsal I inevitably fluff a couple of notes but, employing the tried and tested method of bass players through history in repeating them in verses two, three and four I present to the audience that when the progression resolves itself during the last chorus, it’s almost as if it was a deliberate attempt to build the tension throughout. 

Nevertheless, the post-show reaction is positive - in Kelvedon it is rarely anything but - both from front of house and from the Old Soul Orchestra sequestered behind the velvet curtain and stage door which separates our backstage lounge from the packed auditorium. It’s very kind of Jeff - another paid up member of the (BBP/O) union - to not point out my unique, jazz-inflected approach to doling out the low notes as he, unlike myself, does not play the bass like a guitarist who has been handed an octopus. Lily is magnificent. Marty and the boys even more so. They play an hour and a half of intense semi-improvised wild country-blues-jazz folk before they finish with a call-and-response gospel singalong, unamplified on the floor. It is wonderful.

Tony thanks me once again. “Any time” I say out loud. Internally I’m thinking “And I hope I passed the audition”.

Dancing to Architecture.

So, new year, new project. I am moved to do some recording under the nom de guerre of This Much Talent - an all-encompassing auspice which first made its appearance on a fundraising compilation in 1989, the purpose of which was to raise awareness on behalf of the Venue for Ipswich Campaign. Veterans of the VIC wars still talk fondly of the infamous Caribbean dressing room wrecking exploits of (probably) Noel Gallagher, and in hushed tones of the Carter USM expedition with which certain members of the support band still, to this day, bore their partners rigid whenever ‘Sheriff Fatman’ crops up on re-runs of Top of the Pops. Well, a certain member. 

In fact, one of the songs I’m (re)doing is on that very compilation, albeit with a bum chord which I’m finally going to eliminate, and which dates from so much earlier in my so-called career in that I distinctly remember being inspired by a Bob Dylan quote that someone had pinned up on the wall of our sixth form common room, which dates its writing to about forty years ago. As is the way of these things, I should point out that forty years before that, people were coming up things like Al Martino’s ‘Here in My Heart’, but it remains to be seen how far we’ve come in the meantime. It has certainly been an education in revisiting the thoughts and prayers of a fledging songwriter* with the benefit of four decades of cynicism and disappointment and without barely having to change a word - maybe a tense or two.

We’ve already put down some preliminary demos** and I have attempted to secure some of the finest musicians in their price range to flesh out the bones of my work including, I am overly pleased to report, some people who were on that compilation with me, albeit in various and at the time competitive guises - not least my de-facto co-producer and recording mastermind, who probably rarely has thoughts of re-recording the seminal oeuvre of his band at the time, Edible Vomit. Few who purchased the bargain £3.50 twenty-six track cassette look back from a distance with anything but fondness, I’m sure, on the haunting refrain of ‘Chunder Violently’.

News as we have it. 

*Me, not Dylan.

**Fun fact - ‘Sketch’ from Linx’s real name is ‘Preliminary Demo’

Back in the Garage.

 

I am to commence recording again next week - honestly, the absence of pressure one feels when embarking on an enterprise that absolutely no-one has any interest at all in hearing is extraordinarily liberating - and I though that now might be the right time to revisit an old, old song of mine which came on in the car the other day and of which I was reminded that the demo we did around - I’d guess - thirty years ago had a couple of distinctly bum chords in it that we never got around to correcting, replacing or redoing - pushed, as we were, for time at the, um, time (it was a Sunday morning if I recall correctly). We probably couldn’t be bothered to demagnetise the heads again or something, and we’d already used up precious minutes forwarding the tape and then turning it over and doing it again so that it was properly stretched prior to recording.

Turns out I didn’t write down the words I now needed in my big book of things I made up out of my own head and so have spent no little time on a Saturday afternoon sitting in the car scrolling through many, many bits and bytes on a memory stick looking for something called ‘Unknown Album’, tracking down the song I need which I’m sure was somewhere in the middle of it, and then play and pausing whilst typing, then cut and pasting the fragments of lyric I *could* remember onto an iPad. This never used to happen when you had a cassette you’d mailed to yourself and a biro to wind things on with. Honestly, it would have been quicker to write a new one.

Libraries Gave Us Power…

There is a theory, admittedly discussed principally over three hour lunches and mostly with my good friend and occasional musical employer, award-winning songwriter Tony James Shevlin, that prophets rarely prosper in their own land. He posits the example of being denied access to the open mics, speakeasys and songwriters’ showcases of Chicago, until a well-placed expression of disappointment in this country’s finest Hugh Grant diction magically gains him entry. If Richard Curtis had been directing this would probably be the bit where Andie McDowell breathlessly intones “Is it still windy? I hadn’t noticed…”. The third wheel at one particular recent lunch attests to the power of the foreign accent* - “Meanwhile, I’m stuck out on the door like a dick”. Our colonial interlocutor is one Scott Stilwell, who much like a minor character in Love, Actually, Tony has met in a bar in America and who has followed him home.

I’m exaggerating for comic effect, of course - a trait, once again, I share with the esteemed writer/director of The Boat that Raped - however the very presence of Scott attests to the beguiling power of the non-indigenous performer. He is here to take part in a short tour of England**, at least in American terms, and on the penultimate night of the jaunt a healthy following has assembled to see the pair of them trade songs, stories, and occasionally accents in the convivial surroundings of a local library. The show is sold out and whilst I am impressed. I am also slightly jealous, as a recent planned expedition to a theatre in Colchester by my musical paramours had to be pulled as advance ticket sales meant that the audience would only just have outnumbered the band, and even for a seven-piece, that’s a sobering statistic.

Tony relates some well-worn and road hardened anecdotes while Scott, an owlish character in full moon glasses, a John Deere cap and double denim, is more of the moment - a fact I only glean because he uses something I said to him in The Green Room*** during one of his introductions. Although individual songwriters in their own right, these two have collaborated, and as they alternate between playing and listening raptly (as are the rest of us) there are subtle additions to the others’ performance, mostly in the form of keening harmonies which bring to mind the best work of (say) Boo Hewerdine working in tandem with Darden Smith. I can see how the most in demand product on the tour so far has been the album that they’re both on which, in an ironic twist, doesn’t exist. At an earlier show they have been upbraided for performing songs that haven’t been recorded, which seems harsh, even for Stowmarket.

Although struggling with a head cold, Scott gamely goes for the notes anyway and his suffering gives him an attractively husky tone which in the interval**** I mention brings to mind the best work of John Prine. In a further twist, he performs a song called Dear John Prine in the second set before giving way for one number to another of Tony’s songwriting collaborators and performers. Me. It’s terribly generous of Scott to make way - this is, after all the reason he’s here in the first place - and it’s very kind of Tony to invite me up. It’s also slightly nerve wracking as if this is the one song they don’t like, it’s going to be pretty obvious what the uncommon denominator is. Fortunately, we make it through to the end, harmonies intact, and pausing only to savour the generous applause I return to my seat.

The boys finish off the rest of the set, the lights go up, there is the sound of chairs being pushed away across the floor, creaking limbs being unfolded, the rain outside has abated, and the vapers are already in the car park. As we make our way toward the cloakroom, I feel a tap on my shoulder. 

“Nice song”.

*It’s exaggerated for effect. Tony’s actually from Burton-on-Trent, but you know what they say, just because you’re from Burton, that doesn’t make you a pint of Bass.

**It is revealed during the show that Scott once took a three hour drive from his home to see Tony play in Kansas City. On a slightly deflatory note, Scott confirms that he would also have driven that far for a barbecue.

***The dressing room - not the high end coffee shop down the road from where we had lunch. I’ve never seen so many electrical sockets in one room. Again, at the library, not the coffee shop.

****There’s a raffle, of course there’s a raffle.