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So, here’s a wee update on my musical stuffs. At last we’re gearing up for the release of my “Fighter” single. It’s one of the tracks we recorded with Rocky at Start Together in February. Penny Distribution is releasing it as a split 7” in the very near future. It’ll be a double A side with Escape Act’s “God Says” on the flipside. We’ve been working on a joint tour of Ireland for the summer to promote the release. It’s a work in progress but you can see the dates confirmed so far over at my myspace. It’s all quite exciting. At this very moment the vinyl is being pressed at a plant somewhere in the Czech Republic. The artwork for my side was designed by the extremely talented Beth Van Sistine. Some of you will have seen her work adorning the covers of the Oppenheimer albums and singles and various associated promotional paraphernalia. She also did the cover for Pixie Saytar’s “The White Book” album. It’s always great to collaborate with talented and creative people and Beth is the most recent of many inspiring artistic people I’ve had the extreme good fortune to work with over the past few years. I guess it would be nice to mention some by name: Amberlea Trainer, Richard Dale, Brian Philip Davis, Anna Fitzsimons and Richard Davis to name but a few. I’ve been trying to get things organised and get stuff together ahead of the tour. I have a show coming up on Friday and I was due to begin rehearsals last week. However, a combination of factors, both good and bad prevented us from getting started. The most mundane of these is the difficulty of getting rehearsal space in Belfast these days. There is no shortage of facilities but the sheer number of bands in Belfast means getting a free slot can be difficult. My pal James Heaney form the band Saint Dude's has sorted us out with some time for this week. So, while I was enjoying the May bank holiday Monday in the glorious sunshine at Castlewellan Forest Park, mostly playing rounders with my two year old nephew’s elder brothers and playing fetch with my sisters dogs, I got a call from David Jardine from NVTV's Kick Out the Jams show. NVTV had several shows last week as part of the 9th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and the first was scheduled for Tuesday evening. Three bands, And So I Watch You From Afar, Three Tales and Pixie Saytar were due to perform in front of a studio audience and the show would be filmed for future broadcast. However, two of the acts had pulled out at the last minute and David wanted to know if I could stand in. I called my pal Nick and asked him if he’d be interested in joining me on drums to do a similar performance to the two-piece shows we did in the states. He said he could do the show but wasn’t available to rehearse. So we decided to wing it. On Tuesday, I called by Rich’s house to go over some stuff and he volunteered to join us on bass too. So there we were on Tuesday night; three guys, one television studio audience and zero rehearsal. Not really the best way to approach something like that. But I think we acquitted ourselves admirably in the circumstances. Rich and Nick played well as always. I was told to bring a CD of about five songs by artists who influenced me to play between the acts. Of course, I totally forgot about that, so between soundcheck and our stage time, while Rich and I headed to get some dinner, Nick nipped home and burned some appropriate songs from his itunes. What I hadn’t been told was that the event was being organised in association with AU Magazine and that after our performance AU Editor in Chief, Jonny Tiernan would be interviewing each act on the topic of their selection! Thankfully Nick knows my taste well enough to come up with a decent list. Though it did feel a little like one of those school days when you’d sit down at your desk and the person next to you says something like, “Did you do much revision for this test?” and as you feel your heart rate speed up and your palms go sweaty you cry “What test?” It was good fun though. We learned that Three Tales had broken up the previous weekend and consequently were no longer available for that, or any gigs. I really recommend any readers of this page to check out their myspace and if you like what you hear (which I bet you will) send them a wee message of support telling them to wise up and get back to work. Three Tales album #2 isn’t going to write and record itself. Three Tales are the second of my favourite bands form Ireland to break up this year. In February, The Chalets called it a day too. That was also a real shame. Come back, The Chalets, we still love you. As it turned out Pixie Saytar was unable to play due to reasons of ill health. Hope you’re doing better, Pixie; get well soon!
On the plus side though, the other band who filled in on the night, The Benjamins have long been a favourite band of mine, at least in cyberspace. It was great to see them live at long last. They really didn't disappoint. On Saturday I headed to the Feile FM studios at the Conway Mill on the Falls Rd in Belfast to do a live radio session and an interview for the LiveWire show. It was great fun. Andy, Chris and Brenda are a lovely team and made me feel very relaxed and welcome. Andy, the presenter, asked some pretty tricky questions too. It’s a great show; their entire play list consists of local music and they do a live session every week. It’s really encouraging to see more and more stuff like this happening in Belfast. I love it. Anyway, they played two of my new recordings, “Fighter” and “Promise Me”, and I performed a three song session, two new tracks, “The End of the Summer” and “Ghost Story” as well as “The Fall of Burning Leaves” from Departures. You can hear the two new songs from the session over at their myspace. That’s all for now, I’ll write again soon… er, maybe... Tom
Current Location: |
Belfast |
Current Mood: |
busy |
Current Music: |
Sparklehorse Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot | |
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tommcshane's journal