Great to see so many people at our first band shows last week. The 12 bar show especially was a very special night. There's some footage from it that i'll put up here soon. It's a different way of doing things when i'm playing as part of a band instsead of playing just me. It's a bit like living by yourself for a while and geting used to doing whatever feels right at the time - a kind of "anywhere the eind blows" way of doing things which suits me comfortably....and when you're in the company of others, that might not always work; you know, table manners and what have you. better that way though, there should be - i would hope at least - one road map or other to follow. There'll be lots of other band shows in the new year, and some tours which should allow us to grease the wheels & finely tune our machine. A trip over the pond is also imminent, although i'm not looking forward to the bone crunching freezing cold of february in new york city, i am looking forward to just being there. For now though, i'm spending the holidays writing some new tunes which , presuming they're any good i'll share with you very soon.
December 6th
gigs. Couple more days to go till the first goodtimes goodtimes band shows. "excited" would be an understated - being 5 in a free candy shop shouting gimme gimme gimme would be more of an appropirate description. I've never played in a band like this, with just a cello and a drummer. it's a suprisingly big sound for the dynamic it is. With my friends Simon Riley on the drums and Alex Beamont playing cello; two hugely talented musicians. the privelege is indeed mine! and these band gigs couldnt have come at a better time, i'm a little "out of steam" for the solo shows, i've just done loads this year and to wrap things up for the year with two band shows and then have a bit of time off to record some new stuff puts a big smile on my face. hope to see you there next week; tuesday 11th, 9pm 12 bar club & wednesday 12th windmills, 9pm.
November 28th.
itunes. as of this week , the album is available on itunes. it seems it took forever to get it on there but its up now. if you've already got a copy of the record,..or imagine it to be something already..you can write your own review and it will get published on the itunes page. here's the link,
or just search "goodtimes goodtimes". If you get a chance, click "email to a friend" as well and let some of your friends know about it
November 20th.
It's been a week of interesting gigs ending in a great one last night opening up for Wallis Bird at the soho revue bar. the venue looked like something out of goodfellas, i think it used to be a strip bar or something. I accidentally walked into another soho revue bar before soundcheck. It was quite different to where i played although it works in entertainment as well. these things happen.
I set off last sunday to play a show in worcester, no i didn't know where it was either, what i DO know though is that i'm never taking buses to gigs ever again. those days are gone. happy days! but apart from the 6 hour bus ordeal to get there, the gig was great and lots of people wanted cds. hooray!
The strangest gig of the week, and probably the strangest i've ever played was the "battle of the one man bands" at bardens boudoir, there were guys on the bill that had kick drums and hi hats and hammond pedals they played with their feet and guitar and keyboards and harps with the upper limbs, it was actually a bit surreal, but fun nonetheless. i scraped together the loudest noisiest set i could which i thoroughly enjoyed....when in doubt, put it through a 4x12. hallelujah!! the next one is thursday in london.
NOVEMBER 22nd The White Hart, Whitechapel, London 9pm1 Mile End Road Whitechapel, E1 4TPfree download up on my page. impress your friends, buy my record.be good! fx
November 16th
free stuff? this is how it is... artists/fans/bands/songwriters/suits/whoever put up full length high quality mp3 on their relevant sites for FREE for you, the music listener/fan/heckler/rinser to press play and give it a listen, see what you think. you might like the song enough to go and check out what else that band has done.., videos, photos, interviews whatever, and you might also like it enough to go buy the album...in a perfect world, you'd like it so much that you'd go see the band live and above all, you'd even tell all your friends about it. a game of pass the parcel, of sorts, and music lives. which bring us to the chocolate bit...
There are 4 tracks from GLUE now up on the FREE MP3s page. Give them a spin, if you like them..email it to all your friends and ask them to do the same! you get free TUNES! be good.fxx
November 6th
Why do I play live? Some things happen for a reason, others don't. Some things present themselves to you; like a song and you just think, man, this makes me feel good, like I never felt before. In short, that's the answer to the "why do you play music live" question. I really cant remember when I 'decided' I was going to be a musician, I have vague memories of my older brother giving me a tape of highway 61 revisited on the bus to school to listen to on my walkman, more than anything I think it was just a way for me to zip it and sit quietly on the way to school. There's no way I could know how to write about what drew me in completely. But it did, and that's all that matters to me. I've spent pretty much every day of my life since then looking for something that would make me feel that way again and the closest thing I found is putting my thoughts and questions to music and sharing that with people; with anyone that wants to listen, and maybe some that don't! Playing live for me is about two things; communication and reaction. I try as best I can to communicate to people what goes on in my head. I put picures to lyrics and melody and perform them, with everything I have to generate a reaction from the people there that night. And it'll be different people, different songs, different nights, and different reactions. That to me is as exciting as pressing play for the first time.
I find it difficult to explain what my songs are about it words, so I don't. If I like a song from any artist, it's because I can draw from it and I can relate it to whatever is going on in my life at that point. So for a songwriter to give a literal explanation of a song is about as close as you can get to killing that song for me. It then means absolutely nothing to me. Hooks or no hooks! The live experience for me is everything I desire from music. Recording is great, but I get cabin fever so quickly playing the same parts over again. Why do musicians lay down the same parts over and over again in the studio? Becausie when you're recordng all you're trying to do is capture the same intensity and spontaneity that happens at a gig. At a great gig. When I was making my record this summer, all I was really thinking about was taking it out on the road. The record is just a means to an end and that end is being in a room full of people and there's your chance..there's your 30 or 40-minute oppurtunity to let rip. Dig your heals in, sing like your life depends on it. If you're music is genuine, chances are that is does. But that's all easy enough to understand if we're talking about mega rock star person that plays in front of thousands of people a night..but what if you're starting out and doing long..long tours up and down the country to sometimes even 3 people in the room; the bored sound guy, someine woriking at the bar and two people in the "audience". Or maybe a room full of people not there for the band and not really paying much attention. What does that feel like? For a start, if you've travelled 5 hours on a bus to get to the gig..or half way round the world, it can be, well, not the best. But the gig is still ON. There's the mic, the speakers are on, go and dance and tell your stories, play to that one person in the room that's listening and really gives a shit. If they're there, then the least you owe them is the performance of your life.
Being a touring musician is like what Levon Helme said in The Last Waltz about New York City, you go in for the first time, you get your ass kicked and then you go home. You let it heal up and when you're ready you go in for a second serving, and after a while you fall right in love with it. Any other kind of life would justmake no sense to me whatsoever.
November 8th
We have a band. That was quick! The gtgt band is formed..(entourage to follow). The group is me on a gibson v, two other electric guitars – probably both double necks, two drummers a keys player that plays with his hands and feet and everything will get put through Lesley speakers at gigs. No, don't be silly. It is however, yours truly, a drummer and a cello player and (for now) a moonlighting guitarist as well. It sounds pretty special and I'm rather excited about it all. The first band shows will be in December, on the 11th at the 12 bar club and the 12th, to be confirmed, at the Windmill in Brixton. Tell all your friends.
October 31st.
Musicians wanted. So the time has well & truly come for me & the voices to have a little company on the road. Well, it's not so much wanting company it's more the need to make a racket. I love doing shows by myself, me , acoustic & harp & the occasional tambourine on the floor..i know it's a bit of a difficult listening experience for people listening to the songs for the first time that way but there's an edge to these shows that keeps, me at least, on my toes for the duration of the gig. i'll always keep on playing these solo shows not least 'cause to do a tour that way it doesnt really cost much and i'm free to play where ever & whenever i want without having to rely on anyone else. that's a good feeling. in an ideal world , my band would have a drummer that's loves levon helme and is happy to play different styles; from big sounding whole kit parts to just brushed on the snare. a piano player that's dusted off his wurly and a pedal steel player that's listened to as many neil young & gram parsons records as i have!! but that's in an "ideal" world and we arefar from that, so i guess what i just looking for is musicians that above all like tunes and would enjoy playing them live. and if there record collection is very different to mine, well i think that's all the better for when there's new songs to toy with.
October 12th
GLUE. It's all done and ready for your ears to tear it apart , the first goodtimes goodtimes record, "glue". So I thought i'd tell you a little bit about & i hope you'll be up for giving it a little spin! there's ten songs on it; there's lots of songs I've written and I picked a group of them that work as a whole LP. There's a thread that runs along it not that it's all one big song or anything but different colours and stories that tie it all together. I started recording the songs a couple of months ago – just here in my bedroom with a track recorder that I've had for ages , it's not anything famcy but it has a big red button for record and a volume fader so I can work it easily enough! I'd never sat down and recorded stuff completely by myself so at the risk of making the worst prog rock ever made I ask my good friend joel de'ath to help me produce it. It isnt always easy working closely with a friend on something you care about this much; when there's a sound in your head I think it takes great skill to be able to voice it and explain in such a way that others might input theirs and make something better than youÍd imagined. I think it's just lazy, to just be like oh, I wrote it so itÍs gonna be like this. But opinions and directions can go all over the place and throw in a stella and things can go pear shaped pretty quickly. But we had a blast and got all the songs to where they needed to be – man, to be honest, if I had done this completely by myself have the songs wouldÍve been a million minutes long with moog strings over pretty much all of it and guitar solos galore! Wait , that doesn't sound bad at all actually. next time ;)
I played most of the instruments myself, I wasn't planning to , but that's just how it worked out –I would've liked to have done it all in a big room with a band playing together but I love how it all came out so it doesn't really matter. Some other musicians played on it as well; my friend Keith Witty was over from NY playing a few shows with nom de plume and was staying over at mine, luckily on the same week that I was laying down the album opener and closer ; "summer" & "every song" ; he rented out this beautiful double bass that was like 200 years old and just sounding incredible – in an evening , without really knowing the songs too well he layed down these parts that I loved straight away – the thought was to get him to record a bunch of stuff and then I'd cut it at some point. There wasnt really any cutting needed, it was all there; simple, to the point and it just worked. Then my friend Ivor Sims played some electric guitar on a couple of songs; heÍs on the record under a different name ..not sure I know exactly why but something to do with his band lucky soul and his label. Anyway, the name is a blast – nice one ilario! Him too though, talented little so and so, just waltzs in one evening what are the chords ..yeah, you like what IÍm doing? Yep, good, nice , done. There not too much on electric so I THOROUGHLY enjoyed having an old fender amp recorded nice & loud; the neighbours werenÍt too happy, but hey what are you gonna do right?? Oli McKeirnan who I played in bands with for a few years played bass on desire and did all those little keyboard sounds; that was the first song I recorded "properly" at home – fair to say it works ;) . Ah, last but by no means least – one of my best mates Phil Baer played drums on that song and on a bunch of others too. Him and I played in bands on and off since I did this little seven inch called baby youÍre a rich girl. it all truly started with the last waltz; most good things do.
So after all the parts were finished, John Mitchell at outhouse stuios mixed the whole album – he usually works with bands that are well, how do you say, ROCK! So all my tunes ended up getting this like kick up the bum and they've come out sounding like grown ups; all busy with their own stories and all their own feel. After that me and joel went to Neak's studio in Wales to get it mastered – to be honest, I haven't quite figured out what mastering is but I think in "modern records" terms, you make the fucker as loud as it'll go! (enter sound of engineers and studio people gasping in disgust!) . It wasn't quite were I wanted it to be though, maybe I was just a bit reluctant to accept the record as done and wait for peoples' opinions to roll in. so I again, off I went on the train..this time to devon where George Shilling mastered it agan and gave it a little gloss. I'm really happy with it and really look forward to hearing you thoughts.
I should tell you a little bit about the songs and what they're about / where they're from blah blah blah. that would bore me to tears as i expect it would to you too! So I'll pass for the time being and hope you enjoy the songs for what, if anything, they mean to you.
I'll no doubt let you know when the record will be available in it's entirety. Here's the tracklist..
Summer,Kids,Sea shanty,Temporary Freeze,Desire,Sunshine Sunshine,Shake!,The Red Sky & The Spanish Coast,You Know Why,Every Song
October 1st
New site. Hello t'internet. So welcome to the gtgt site, I was starting to lose track of all the different networking sites around & most of my friends cant access any of myspace or facebook or whatever so here's the site you'll all hopefully be able to access and keep up with all things goodtimes goodtimes. The debut record has recently been finished and is available to purchase from this site. It'll be available from itunes and other outlets in a couple of weeks, I'll let you know when. Tours are being booked so check the gig page regularly for updates and hope to see you at a show soon. There's a new band too. We'll be doing shows towards the end of the year, till then it'll be the regular acoustic & harp shindig. stay well. Hope to see you soon.
Fxx
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