Kickstarter target achieved, world exhales involuntary sigh of relief.

With no little fanfare (and more than an element of regret regarding the Epiphone Sheraton I threw in at the last minute, just in case) it would appear that we have reached our target and that the Songs from The Blue House live album will be going ahead as planned.

I can’t remember which one, but it was definitely a significant birthday. Our Glorious Leader had organised a party during which he would perform with as many musicians from his recent past as possible, in reverse order, and as such my band gods kitchen (no capitals, no apostrophe) were on first. Stepping up to the microphone before our first number I did my pre-intro spiel. “When I invited James to join the group” I began “I remember he said to me ‘gods kitchen? That’s the last band I want to play with!’”

At the time it got a big laugh as JP had effectively (as I once spoonerisedly exclaimed over a Chinese meal and a few Tiger beers) ‘…bit the quizness’, although as it turned out this announcement would prove to be dramatically premature. A short time after his (and singer Helen and bass player Gibbon’s) performance we found ourselves perched on stools in his spare bedroom trying to write something together. The first song completed then, as with the forthcoming live CD, was entitled Bike. I’ve still got a copy of the recorded demo, labelled ‘Our Thing’ in marker pen at the time, and it sounds remarkably similar to the version on what will be our fifth album together, which is either an example of our instinctive feel for the right arrangement straight off the bat or a practical demonstration of a worrying lack of improvement in terms of our musical prowess over the ensuing decade.

In between times we have gathered and dispersed any number of combinations of friends, acquaintances and (on the odd occasion) hired help in order to move enough air to make these noises happen both in recording studios and in front of audiences. Prominent amongst these are the good folk at The High Barn who actually released our third album on their own label, meaning it had a barcode and you could buy it in shops and shit. Frequently we have been in the company of accommodating barmen and women and, more recently, increasingly in the company of our children. To all of those people, I extend my warmest thanks for a decade well-lived - the guy who demanded we perform Needles and Pins at that beer festival that one time notwithstanding.

If you’d asked me in 2003, when we started putting our bits and pieces together to make up songs out of our own heads, where I thought this was going I’d have said “Songs from The Blue House?

That’s the last band I want to play with.”