While I carry on editing the tour video (it’s now down to under an hour!), here’s a clip of me playing ‘Bar On A‘ by Greg Holden at The Yorkshire House in Lancaster.
I totally fucking love this song and played it every night of the tour. This isn’t the best version though and I managed to get the words wrong a bit and fumble my way through, but never mind.
If you like it and don’t already know Greg Holden, head straight to his website dammit, because he’s awesome! I also just found out that he’s playing in England in April:
21.04 London – The Slaughtered Lamb w/ Jay Nash (SOLD OUT!)
22.04 Kelvedon – The Institute w/ Jay Nash
23.04 London – The Old Queens Head
25.04 Liverpool – The Shipping Forecast w/ Jay Nash
26.04 Preston – The Mad Ferret w/ Jay Nash
27.04 Leeds – Royal Park Cellars w/ Jay Nash
Another review I forgot to post… This time courtesy of ‘Tracks Monkeys With Lasers’ who joined Oxygen Thief and Ben Marwood for a few dates on their tour, which were also the first two shows of tour for myself and Adam Bennett.
So firstly, Addistock in Birmingham:
Next up, it was Mr Adam Boucher who’s now back as a solo act after the Dead Set disbanded (who have also played one of my shows). This was the first time I’d seen him solo and I enjoyed the set and the difference in sound that the solo has from the full band set. With plenty of songs under his belt, there was a good variety of his own tracks, and the odd cover, with A Farewell To Harrington (and the heart wrenching back story to the song) being the backstory.
and then the Wilimgton Arms gig:
Next up, it was time for Adam Boucher whose set was similar to the night before. His somewhat abrasive banter with the crowd may not have gone down brilliantly with a quiet, Sunday night crowd but he seemingly won some of them over as he got them to keep clapping after breaking a string and changing his guitar before carrying on. It was a slightly strange set though as he actually said nice things about Adam Bennett between tracks, perhaps only to lure him into a false sense of security before abusing him for the rest of their tour again.
Read the full blog post by clicking the link below:
I forgot to post this gig review from the 13th Note gig of the tour. So here it is. Thanks to Lis for the great review…
Tonight’s other Adam is Bournemouth’s Adam Boucher, who sounds a bit like Billy Bragg singing songs about girls and playing to empty rooms. He does this gorgeous cover of gorgeous Jenny Owen Youngs’ gorgeous “Fuck Was I” and it works just as well, whoever the bitter one is.
So, I’m sat on my lunch break at work on my second day back after an amazing tour of Scotland/England. I am thoroughly miserable right now. Ho hum…
In the past I’ve blogged about the tours in detail, but since that’s time consuming and I should be using my free time to do stuff like writing new songs and gigging, I’ll just offer up this short post instead. Also, there’ll be a tour video along soon that will chronicle the best bits of life on the road with the delightful company of Adam Bennett and Dave Hughes.
The tour was amazing and every show was great, with only one exception (a last minute London show on Friday) and even that wasn’t the most terrible experience ever. A straight run of 7 shows in 9 days (with two last minute cancellations, one of which we couldn’t replace) or 9 shows in total over 14 days with three days stuck at work in between.
I made a load of new friends and discovered some awesome bands. Tour highlights included: playing again with ONSIND, discovering the awesomeness of Caves on an unscheduled day off in Leeds, exposing Adam Bennett to some horrific sites on the interwebs, watching Dave and his band totally own the stage at Lexapalooza (easily the best band of the day), trying to avoid the seemingly endless potholes on the roads in Scotland and listening to Dave play the same fingerpicked chord progression for what seemed like three full days in Paisley… No wait, those last two weren’t so much fun!
I think in the past all three of us have been a bit slack at promoting ourselves, but on this tour we made a point of setting up a merch table each night and keeping a proper log of money. Dave should be doing a blog about this in more detail soon. We certainly can’t quit our day jobs yet but we managed to break even. Result!
So, in all a really successful tour with almost entirely great shows and lots of fun.
Huge thanks to everyone who put us on, gave us a place to crash, fed us, came out to see us, bought a cd, signed the mailing list, shared the stage with us etc etc. In short, we were treated really well by some amazing people and had a blast.
