Simon Little

I must say though that this is not due to laziness (this time), as recently I really have not had a spare minute to sit down and write to you all. As those of you who follow my deluge of updates on Twitter will know I have spent the last month firmly ensconced in the depths of the National Theatre rehearsing and previewing their production of Mother Courage & Her Children with the marvelous Duke Special and his band. Peter has written some beautiful music to accompany the songs in Tony Kushner translation. In fact, we will be recording these songs fairly soon. The Duke newsletter is estimating a release date of around November 20th so keep your eyes peeled.

I have managed to shoehorn in a few other little excursions into the real world during this period. The Duckworth Lewis Method played it’s last show at Electric Picnic on 4th September. I am (not so) secretly hoping that the band will at some point in the future be resurrected for a little tour, but at the moment the official line is that it won’t. I will of course let you know the instant that this changes.. Electric Picnic is a fantastic boutique festival about two hours out from Dublin and they had such a great lineup including The Flaming Lips, Bat For Lashes, Brian Wilson, Zero 7 and Madness. As is often the case with these festival scenarios, I didn’t get to catch any of them (apart from a bit of Zero 7 and Villagers). We played the Crawdaddy stage and the tent was rammed by the time we went on. We had a great show and it was great to see Neil, Thomas and Tosh again. Hopefully we’ll do something together again soon.

In the meantime, you’ll be pleased to know that Neil has gone back to work on the new Divine Comedy album and Thomas’ band Pugwash are releasing a UK compilation of their first three album (previously only available in Ireland I believe) TOMORROW!! It’s called Giddy- A Ride Inside The Wonderful World of Pugwash and is out on Ape Records. I really can’t recommend Pugwash highly enough folks. I have all their albums and Jollity and Eleven Modern Antiquities are always on heavy rotation here at Little Towers. Go forth people.

On another note, I noticed that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis are also releasing an album tomorrow. It’s called White Lunar and is a compilation of their collaborative music written for films and documentaries. I mention this because it looks like it features some of the music I played on for the documentary film The English Surgeon a few years ago. I really hope so anyway, that would be incredibly cool and certainly wouldn’t look bad on the discography. My fingers are, as you can imagine, very much crossed right now. Also, I’m reading Nick Cave’s new book The Death of Bunny Monroe at the moment (as is Mr Special it seems!) and keep looking longingly at the audiobook version read by the Cave himself (with music by Cave & Ellis). Might have to splash out a second time…

Aside from the rigors of rehearsing Mother Courage, the Duke Special band had a mad weekend of four shows at the end of August. We played the Liverpool Academy on the 28th, then it was Dukebox in Belfast on the Saturday. We then came back over the water to play the marvelous Greenbelt festival followed by a show at London’s ULU on the 31st. A hectic weekend indeed, and a real feat for Peter to put on four shows and curate Dukebox at Belsonic amidst all the work involved in the Mother Courage production.

We reunited the seven piece band for the four dates. The highlight for me was definitely Dukebox (There’s a nice write-up on the BBC’s ATL blog here). The show was brilliant and it’s always such a joy to play with Peter in front of his home crowd. It was also a rare opportunity to watch some of the other artists performing during the day. I loved seeing The Magic Numbers and Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards again. Also really enjoyed seeing David Kitt for the first time.

We had a really good experience at Greenbelt too. It turned out to be quite a welcome rest (!) as we were there all day and staying overnight so no rushing off to contend with. We all had a few friends to catch up with at the festival too so it turned out to be a really lovely day. I’ve never played Greenbelt before but I know Peter has been playing there for years. It’s on the same site on the Cheltenham racecourse as the Wychwood festival. We were headlining the Sunday night and got a great response. I’m really hoping to play there again next year.

Regular readers will remember my mentioning the gig with the lovely Kate Eden in my last post. I did mean to post again to remind you all, but have obviously failed to do so as the gig was on Friday. Big thanks to all of you who made it down the the Bull’s Head in Barnes. We had a really packed crowd and a great time was had by all. We’re already looking at putting on another show there sometime in the next couple of months so do watch this space for news. Also, Kate’s MySpace page is finally up and running so you can all scoot over there and befriend her. You can hear some tracks from the EP we recorded earlier this year and see some great photos from the Jersey shows we played in June.