News... - Friday, 9 February 2007
Crikey. Who'd have thought I'd be so lax as to leave it 6 months between news updates on this site! Well... so much has happened, and there's plenty more exciting things being worked on as well.
Firstly, at long last Lorna and I have moved into our new house. Whoever decided that getting married and moving house in the same two month period was very foolish. Oh, that'll have been me then! We are both happy to be living outside the hustle and bustle of the M25, in our own idyllic Dickensian style. The move also gave me a good opportunity to rebuild my webserver onto a new base, retiring after 5 years of good service the old Pentium II box it was on before. Now it should run much quicker, and my email server has also (at long last) got a spam filter on it. In a week it has caught over 8000 messages! Amazing. Now that we are mostly settled I'm looking forward to hunting out and discovering the music scene around here - the whole feel is very different to Twickenham! The first thing I've noticed is that the music scene is very polarised, it's either acoustic folky type stuff, or very heavy rock. This will be fun!
Funkydory is going well, although I must confess with the house move and imminent wedding plans I have not been working on promoting the band perhaps as hard as I should. There is no time like the present though, and also we have a second album due that really needs finishing up! Meanwhile the John O'Leary Band has benefited enormously from the contributions of new semi-permanent members Jools Grudgings. Yes, it is confusing having two Jules/Jools for John to call solos to on stage, but we're getting there. He is an excellent player and having the Hammond in the mix really fills things up. Gravy indeed! We did record a live album at Mr Kyps down in Poole last year, for which I believe John is working on a distribution deal of some kind. There is some killer stuff on it and I'm firmly of the opinion that it's too good not to be heard.
Alongside the two bands, there are a few other things that have been occupying the last few months. French Marc and I have been doing an acoustic duo type thing in Teddington every now again just for fun. It's been a good opportunity to try songs out although now that we've moved it's hardly a local gig to do every Wednesday! I'm also very much looking forward to a gig planned for next Wednesday at the Half Moon in Bishop's Stortford. It's a sort of Valentine's Day special really - the lineup is Lorna on vox, I'm on guitar, Joachim Greve is on drums, and big man Barry Pethers (from Trafficker) is on bass. It should be an absolute hoot! As well as that gig, I'm planning to do some recording over the coming weeks with Joachim and Roger Inniss too (now that he's moved to Northampton which is only 10 miles up the road!). There's no real aim for it, we just want to get together to see what happens, and also as Joachim says - "it's better than not doing it!"
Alongside this, the recording side of things has been going very well. My favourite job in recent months has to have been the Uncle Junior demo we recorded before Christmas. Have a listen to their myspace site - the results speak for themselves! If you or anyone you know happens to play in a band and want a demo recording, get in touch, I'm always into that side of things.
As I look back on 2006, I have to say it was a superb year. Apart from the obvious joy of our engagement, musically it's been good too. Funkydory had a great time, with some superb gigs and a lot of hard work to "spread the word", so to speak. Particular highlights have to be our trips to Ireland and also the Maryport Festival. Both a lot of fun! The year also marked my transition to being a "professional musician" - a thoroughly worthwhile exercise on a mental health level, although these little niches of the music "industry" in which we gig are a very tough place to continue one's career. Contrasting with Belgium and France, there are no incentives or tax reliefs offered by the British Government to encourage or support artistry or creativity on any level. Still, we do our best and given that I'm here in a beautiful house having just eaten a delicious sandwich means I can't exactly grumble. That said, 2007 will have to see a change in approach of some kind if I am to continue ekeing out a living through my guitar.
In the meantime, gigs are still there - keep an eye on the giglist and come out to support live music (we need you!). With that, I'll be off to go and throw some snowballs around. Bring it on!