Dec 8 2008

Tales From The Undertaker; On Tour With Duke Special, Part II


I’m writing to you today from the Cork Opera House. We had a day off yesterday in Cork. The only hotel we’ve got on the whole tour. It was so good to sleep in a bed that stays still, although I swear I felt it go around a few corners during the night…

ON the 25th November we played the Dublin Olympia. This is by far my favourite venue to play in Dublin. I’ve played there a few times with The Divine Comedy before, and once with Eddy when we supported The Beautiful South.
I’ve always loved playing in Dublin. It’s such a great city. We wound up not having a great deal of time to walk around town so I headed straight for the parts I knew best surrounding the venue. I found a few new (to me, anyway) second-hand record stores and a couple of great little vintage clothes shops in Temple Bar. I finally managed to get my hands on a top hat that actually fits my big head (joy of joys!); it looks very classy with the tailcoat.
I returned to the Olympia after a slap-up binge at Eddie Rockets next door. It was great having the run of the Olympia’s massive stage having mostly been playing much smaller venues until then. We were able to spread out more and get a great sound onstage which helped no end during the performance. We had a huge crowd in and they were really receptive to the music.
Our lighting designer Dom really went to town for Dublin, creating a really dark and moody setting for the show. The new album is pretty dark compared to Songs From The Deep Forest. The only trouble was that as a result the stage was so dark you daren’t put anything down that you wanted to find again later on in the show. My little corner of the stage has become pitch black apart from occasional bursts of green and red haze for the majority of the show. In fact, I haven’t seen my set list for the last two shows! I resorted using the florescent ‘W’ on the front of my Warwick amp to find out what songs are coming up..
Incidentally, for those of you so inclined, this is the set list we’ve pretty much settled on for the show now..
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (Duke & Ben)
Sweet Sweet Kisses
Those Proverbs We Made In The Winter
Brixton Leaves
Diggin’ An Early Grave
I Never Thought This Day Would Come
Portrait
No Cover Up
Flesh & Blood Dance
If I Don’t Feel It Anymore
Salvation Tambourine
Nothing Comes Easy
Why Does Anybody Love?
Let Me Go (Please Please Please)
Our Love Goes Deeper Than This
Freewheel (Pete solo/Duet with Swinging Dave Rowland)
Ghost Town (The Specials)
Last Night I Nearly Died
Neil came to watch the show at the Olympia. It was great to catch up with him at the aftershow over a Guinness. He didn’t get up to sing this time as he and Peter had just performed their ‘dueling pianos’ show at Vicar Street in October. I think he really enjoyed the set.
I should, in true British tradition, take a brief moment to mention the weather. It has rather suddenly become bitingly cold here in Ireland. Whilst this has no effect on the shows, it has made some of the loading pretty bloody unpleasant. Pretty much the last thing you want to do when stood outside in the freezing cold is to grab hold of a bunch of increasingly heavy, awkward and, most significantly,  cold metal flightcases and start schlepping them about. Having said that we’ve been pretty lucky since the Loadout From Hell in Dundalk where we not only had to deal with the cold, but the pissing rain too. We all got utterly soaked through…
We went to Limerick the following day to play Dolans’s. I’d only played there once before when we did the trio tour with Neil and Squeezy. It really is a fantastic venue and the guys that run the place are brilliant, they really know how to look after musicians there. And as for the food.. wow! I’d been looking forward to that show for a while. We had a great vibey show and a really fun night. The Dolan’s crowd are always amongst the best in Ireland.

Yesterday we had a well-deserved day off in Cork. Great place. I spent the afternoon wandering the town centre before meeting up with Ben and Phil for some food and a trip to the cinema. We went to see My Best Friend’s Girl, an American Pie type film starring Kate Hudson and Jason Biggs. It was one of those films that you vaguely enjoy whilst watching it, but come away with nothing. Still, it helped pass the time! We went to see Quarantine before the second show in Waterford. I absolutely loved it, but it did put us in a funny mood for the show…
WE play the Opera House tonight. We’ve had a few issues getting into the venue and onto the stage. It seems panto season is upon us… O well, we’re in now. I’ve got to get my gear set up so I’d better leave you now. I’ll let you know how it all goes. Only five shows to go now. I’m really looking forward to the Belfast show in St George’s Market. We’ve got a whole host of special guests and support acts lined up, it sounds like it’s going to be a great night.
Until then…

Duke Special’s fantastic new album I Never Thought This Day Would Come was released in Ireland last month. It’s available over here for download at the iTunes store, or you can buy the CD direct from the Duke Special Store.

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Sep 28 2008

Down and Out in Paris and Denmark (Part I)


Well it’s been a rollercoaster of a week folks and I thought it was about time I filled you all in on what’s been happening.
One of those classic situations arose where three of my main acts decided to go out on the road at the same time. Some early intervention and juggling meant I was able to play with two of them out in Europe, but was sadly unable to make Clare Teal’s week at Ronnie Scotts. This was the first time she played a long run at the club, and I hear it was a resounding success. I’m sure she’ll be appearing there again soon, so fingers crossed I’ll be there with her next time.
I started out rehearsing with The Divine Comedy in town last Friday. We had an awful lot of new material to get through. Neil had decided to perform about fifty percent of the show in French, singing French pop songs by various artists ranging from Serge Gainsbourg to Vanessa Paradis.
For those of you who really want to know (and don’t know already!), this was the setlist;

1. Amsterdam (Jaques Brel)
2. Europop
3. Poupee` De Cire, Poupee` De Son (France Gall)
4. Generation Sex
5. The Songs That We Sing (Charlotte Gainsbourg)
6. Becoming More Like Alfie
7. Les Playboys (Jaques Dutronc)
8. When The Lights Go Out All over Europe
9. Anita Pettersen (Vincent Delerm)
10. Songs Of Love
11.  Home (Jane Birkin)
12. Our Mutual Friend
13. Les Copains D’abord (Georges Brassens)
14. A Lady Of A Certain Age
15. Sexy BB (Neil’s medley of Serge Gainsbourg’s Initials BB and Air’s Sexy Boy)
16. If..
17. L’amour Est Bleu (Vicky Leandros)
18. The Summerhouse
19. Je Changerais D’avis (Francoise Hardy)
20. Tonight We Fly
21. Joe Le Taxi (Vanessa Paradis)
22. National Express
It became apparent fairly early on in the rehearsal process that this was going to be too much material to learn properly in the short time we had available, so I decided that I would read the bulk of the new material on the gig rather than trying to bluff my way through. The shows were also being recorded which added bit a pressure to the proceedings. I usually hate reading in these situations but the last thing I wanted was to have all my little cockups from the gigs perfectly preserved for all to marvel at in the future.
We left for Paris on the tourbus late on Saturday night, arriving early the next morning ready for another day’s rehearsal at the venue. Cite De La Musique is a fantastic venue in Northeast Paris. Don’t ask me exactly where it is because frankly, I don’t know that particular corner of Paris and I didn’t feel much like exploring further than the street it was on while I was there. Lazy I know. But it was going to be a busy week and I thought I’d use my spare time wisely and do what the Parisians do.. essentially sitting around outside cafes reading, drinking too much coffee and chain-smoking to pass the time.
We met our two guests at the Paris rehearsal. The first was Vincent Delerm. We were playing a cover of his song Anita Pettersen from his 2004 album Kensington Square (check it out if you haven’t heard that album). He was singing Neil’s Songs of Love with us. It ended up being a great version of the song, although changing the key did put our backing vocals up into the stratosphere! Luckily I’d recently invested in a couple of pairs of (very) skinny jeans. I remember thinking, if I was to do an impersonation of a Frenchman singing that song, it really wouldn’t have sounded dissimilar to Vincent’s interpretation! Priceless and perfect.
The second guest was the lovely Daphné. Sometimes referred to as the French Björk (according to her Last.fm biography), she has a fantastically delicate voice. She sang on two songs; Sexy BB and If; which she performed as a duet with Neil….


…wearing a rather fetching outfit I’m sure you’ll agree. Made me feel a little underdressed.

She gave us all a copy of her album Carmin, which I’m listening to right now. Go forth and purchase, people! It’s a great record. Some fantastic songs and lovely production. Tinges of Fiona Apple too… Sounds a bit like Extraordinary Machine in French. Which to me, is a good thing.
The Divine Comedy performed two shows at the Cite De La Musique on the 22nd and 23rd September. Neil had even worked out some hefty inter-song banter in French to wow the crowd (I use the term ‘wow’ in it’s loosest possible sense; for one thing, most of the audience were probably British anyway and would’ve had no clue as to what he was saying. And I shouldn’t think the locals had a much better idea either). In fact, his French teacher from Dublin came to the second show and gave him a glowing report afterwards. He did very well.
Paris is such a great town. You can get fantastic food and great coffee pretty much anywhere and the Parisians are such a great audience to play to. They really got into the music and the response we got at the end of the shows was really encouraging. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we make another appearance…
Everything was going swimmingly for me until after the second show, where it soon became apparent that I was in store for another Journey From Hell (and as any of my regular readers will know, I am no stranger to the Journey From Hell). I had four shows with Maggie Reilly starting the following night in Denmark and all my various cunning plans to get to Beauvais airport in an elegant and cost-effective fashion gradually came unstuck during the last day in Paris. I had no hotel booked for after the show (computer/TDC said ‘No’), and quite frankly I wasn’t up for blowing the entire gig fee on hotels and taxis. Now, I was under the impression that Beauvais was just outside Paris. I was very wrong. It is in fact bloody miles away. Probably further than Stansted is from central London. I eventually found out that a cab to Beauvais would be around 170 Euros, around the same time that I was told I wouldn’t be getting a lift on the tourbus with the rest of the band who were heading to Calais. Nice.
The bus left the venue just after 11 pm. I managed to hook up with a select bunch of TDC fans for a few post-gig drinks (in my case, coffees!) and a late night binge in the 24-hour McDonalds (Oh, the glamour!). By 2 am I was left wandering the streets of Paris alone in the wind and rain, lugging my bass around in it’s less-than-lightweight flightcase.
I decided that with no hotel room to stay in, I’d start ambling towards Port Maillot, where the 13 Euro shuttle buses to Beauvais leave from. I was expecting some kind of bus depot, not unlike the Victoria Coach Station. Sadly, I was met with a glorified bus stop with a little kiosk (shut) when my cab pulled up at outside. By this stage, there really would have been no point in booking into a hotel as by the time I’d have fallen asleep I would’ve had to leave again for the airport.
I found myself sat on my bass case, parched and starving in the cold and wet for about three and a half hours in that bloody bus stop. I was accompanied by two drunken Polish chaps who spent the entire night arguing with each other at the top of their voices, and a couple of sleeping backpackers. Visions of Jaco Pastorius sleeping rough on a Floridian basketball court clutching his bass sprung to mind. After about an hour and a half I really did feel like some sort of vagrant. 
Interestingly,  at around the 4 am mark, a series of rather lovely girls started arriving one by one at the bus station. Which at least made the general scenario rather more pleasing. It also calmed down the Polish guys. I managed to get on the first bus at 5 am and arrived at Beauvais at around 6.30. Coffee and croissants helped ease the pain and the knowledge that I still had 2 flights ahead of me, followed by a 90 minute drive to Maggie’s first show. It seems there were no convenient flights from Beauvais to Billund that day, so I had to fly via Dublin (yes, Dublin!). Deep joy, I’m sure you’ll agree!
So anyway, that’s the end of the first installment of the road diary. I shall follow up with Maggie’s shows in part II sometime over the next few days. For those of you following my Podcast, expect a deluge of new tracks in the near future. I accidentally bought my dream bass (a Warwick Thumb VI NT, from now on to be known simply as ‘The Beast’!) at GAK in Brighton when I was at the Komedia with Clare a couple of weeks ago. Martin Peterson is currently working his special magic on it at The Gallery this week, so we’ll be back in action next week. Can’t wait!

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Aug 25 2008

Duke Special, Dublin, Dorchester and the Downfall of Aunty Lil…


Well it’s been a busy few days here in the Little bass world….

On Friday night I performed with one of my all-time favourite artists, the sublime Duke Special at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. I’ve been looking forward to this show for quite some time now. Myself and Tim Weller were drafted in from The Divine Comedy to play with Duke Special’s band and the RTE Concert Orchestra, under the baton of conductor David Brophy.
Tim and I met up with Peter on Wednesday afternoon to have a quick run-through of all the material. I was recording a charity song with Clare in the morning at Air Studios (watch this space) and had to rush across town to make the session. The next rehearsal was to be in Dublin at the RTE building. Our flight was, surprise surprise, so early in the morning from Gatwick that I had to stay up all night again in order not to miss it (I left my house at 3.15 in the morning!).
The rehearsal with the orchestra went pretty well, although the room wasn’t ideal acoustically for our setup. It was a big hall and we were set up facing a big wall so everything the band played at the back of the orchestra bounced back a fraction of a second later than everything else. And we couldn’t hear Peter or his piano.  So we came away having no idea what this was going to sound like, but did manage to ascertain that the various parts worked (Luckily I’d spent all day Tuesday working out parts for myself).
We spent the rest of the day strolling around Dublin. I really do love Dublin and it was great to have the time to take a look around again. It’s not often in a gig/touring situation that you have any spare time to actually see anything of the town you’re in. Having said that, our hotel was up in Rathmines and it was a bit of a schlepp to get right into town, but luckily we had quite a long time. We ended up in Whelan’s twice (!) and got some food on the way into town. Incidentally, we came across a fantastic Chapman Stick player in Temple Bar. No idea who he was but he was great to watch. Hopefully our paths will cross again sometime so we can have a chat.
We soundchecked and ran through the set again on the day. The show was sold out (I think the venue holds about 1200, but I can’t say for certain). 
It can be quite a tricky situation when a band goes out to do a show with what is essentially a pickup orchestra (in other words, one which does not tour with the band and hasn’t necessarily seen or indeed even heard the material before). I’ve done a number of these kinds of shows with The Divine Comedy and to be frank, they were a mixed bag. The whole show really does depend on the attitude and motivation of the orchestra and the conductor (if there is one). TDC have had a few issues in the past with some rather stuffy orchestras and orchestral managers. We were so lucky with the RTE folks and David Brophy. They were so enthusiastic and energetic. It makes such a huge difference when the orchestra really get into the music and they did a great job, both in rehearsal and at the performance.
The show consisted mainly of tunes from the Duke’s debut album Songs From The Deep Forest 
with five brand new songs from his forthcoming album. Let me tell you, the new album is going to be amazing.  It’s due for release in Ireland in October. At the moment, since Universal bought up V2, Duke Special only has a record deal in Ireland. This is a bloody travesty folks. Peter is one of the best singer-songwriters to have emerged in the last decade and deserves much better than this. Still, we’ll all just have to buy the album from Ireland; that’s what I’ll be doing the moment it comes out!
The show was a resounding success and one of the best gigs I’ve done in a while. The new songs were incredibly well received and the audience were fantastic. Really hoping to do more shows with Pete some time soon.
I had to fly back the following day and peg it down to Dorchester for a little function giglet. When the bandleader called me up for the gig during the week, the call went something like this….
“Yeah man, it’s gonna be great. It’s in this swanky manor house, loads of food and free drinks all night. We’ve all got hotel rooms for the night and there’s a big swimming pool so bring your swimming gear. It’s gonna be great fun”.
Hmm…(!)
Well, the wedding was indeed held in a manor house, which was indeed swanky. Sadly, at some point in the 50’s or 60’s, the estate was bought by the police who turned it into a training college and threw up (literally) a selection of hideous yellowy utility buildings (including the aforementioned swimming pool) all around the back of it. Let me tell you, if the planning consent had been applied for by anyone other than the police it never would have been approved. Absolutely putrid and horrifying. And guess where we were staying? Yep. I’ve stayed in swankier Travel Lodges.
As usual in these wedding gig situations, everything was running rather late. About an hour late. We were just about to go on when the father of the bride (a rather portly Scottish gent in a kilt) came up to us and asked for the mic. He wanted to make an announcement…
Apparently Auntie Lil (a lady in her late seventies) had slipped down the stone steps on her way out and had been quite badly hurt having bashed her head. The ambulance was on it’s way and could we please have ten minutes of quiet time? O my god. Needless to say, that killed the mood at the wedding in an instant. And we were about to go on. Couldn’t believe he’d just announced this to the whole party over the mic. Neither it seemed could the bride and groom by the looks on their faces. Neither indeed could Aunty Lil who I discovered earlier had insisted that nobody tell the bride as she didn’t want to spoil her big day.
Well as you can imagine, the gig was a bit of a challenge after that. We did somehow manage to drag the mood back up again and by about halfway through the first set everyone was having a good time once more. 
Anyway, enough of that!
I will be performing with Duke Special again this Friday with the London Gay Symphony Orchestra at The Roundhouse in Camden. Let me know if you’re coming along and I’ll come say hello afterwards. Really looking forward to it.
And just before I go….
I’ve mentioned to several people over the years about the funny signs at Dublin Airport. The ones about unfamiliarity with escalators or lifts. Nobody has believed me thus far, so here is the proof…. (you might have to zoom in a bit!)
How anyone who was unfamiliar with either escalators or lifts would be perfectly happy jumping on a plane is utterly beyond me.

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