Launch Gig at the 100 Club

Thursday...I woke early and twitchingly, got up and let Whizzy out..packed a bag with things to take...words (printed LARGE) and a music stand (blimmin' heavy) walked Whizzy, arranged for her to be fed and walked later and headed off to the station to catch the train to London. The train was cancelled due to something else happening somewhere else, but I caught the next one, arrived at Marylebone to find the Bakerloo line was closed for three days while it was being mended or something...walked to Baker st, caught three different trains and finally arrived at Tottenham Court Rd to meet Jon the M and Rachel Hall the violinist...

Now then that's all very ordinary and boring unless you know that I have emphysema/COPD due to years of smoking (DON'T DO IT) and that while I am usually ok, stairs and escalators and long walks leave me unable to breathe and fairly blue in the face. So with all this extra walking I arrived in a kind of gasping stressed state, unable to even say hello for a good five minutes... By the time I had returned to normal and had a cup of coffee, it was time to make our way to the Blue Posts and say hello to Dan the manager and his partner. They looked after us beautifully, and I spent the next hour signing the 500 postcards that were going to be given away with the vinyl issue of Talking With Strangers.. So one worn out aching wrist later, it was time to move on to the 100 Club..

I know it's historic and zillions of bands have played there and it's an icon of a place and I am honoured and all that, but it really did remind me why I hate singing live. Nothing to do with the people running it or anything like that, it was just umm not a very comfortable place... the dressing room was really a corridor and was full of stacked up tables and chairs, the walls were covered in signatures of all the bands that played there...and it was all very splendid, but nowhere to sit and have a quiet moment before playing..

Laurie the Sax player arrived as did Mark the bass and Alistair, Tim, and all of Tim's friends who were going to do a set of No-man songs in the evening.. I left them all setting themselves up and getting organised and returned to the pub where Simon Nicol was sitting, we nattered for a while and discussed bits of this and that and on our return to the Club, found Phil Dudderidge and Big Little Stephanie (too complicated, one day I'll tell you.)

Phil had been one of Fairport's roadies when I was in the band and had later gone on to be Led Zeppelin's sound man and then to be the founder of Soundcraft and later Focusrite both giant companies in the world of mixing desks and sound design, and what's more he was going to be our soundman for the day.. lovely man that he is! And he did make the sound fantastic along with Ray the house soundman.

So we sang four songs for the press part of the day, and in the early evening, Sand Snowman, David Hughes and Tim and his friends, all played short sets before the bit where I had to sing almost the whole of the album, (except for the main part of Harpsong). I have no idea what it sounded like,everyone played brilliantly and the audience all seemed to enjoy it , then it was natter natter, rush to get everything say goodbye, and grab a taxi to the station (with a couple of friends from the village) get on a train and go home at about 1am. And that....was that!

Well heavens...

Sorry this is a bit late...a lot of things have been happening so I shall just tell you some of them...

The week of the release was good fun if a bit talkative. I did 7 or 8 local radio interviews mostly be telephone and I wittered and waffled to the best of my ability about the album and my odd life..Seemed to go down very well, which was good. The weekend was Fairport's Cropredy Convention Festival which I started off by being interviewed at Radio Oxford, then dashed off to the festival with Jon the M who hadn't been to Cropredy before.

The weather was fantastic, the artists were all brilliant, Steve Winwood and Yusuf Islam in particular.. I wasn't singing but I was signing Cds at one stage and nattering to as many friends as I could find. back home every evening as I live fairly nearby and not a wellie was needed, or indeed any coats.

Friday evening I listened to old friend BP Fallon on Breakthru radio in New York who made me artist of the week and was just lovely about the album

Took Whizzy on the Saturday to see how she got on, but as she got a bit stressed by so many people,and the heat and the walking, I took her home again where friend Nancy looked after her. She soon went back to sleep on the couch... again..

Sunday morning was exciting, we'd had a message that the Mail on Sunday wanted pictures sent, but we weren't quite sure why and we were delighted to find that we had been given a really nice review in the paper.. Grin grin... and I did another radio interview via Skype with Vince and Daisy Font of the Prog'opolis radio programme that will be aired sometime soon.

The next week... more interviews and then suddenly the weekend arrived and along with it Alistair and Mark Fletcher (who played bass on the album and whom I'd not met before) we began to run through the songs from the album in order to prepare for the launch gig at the 100 Club, the following week. That went very well and we all went to the pub for supper, about 11pm Tim appeared, having been driven up from London where the newest No-Man DVD- Mixtaped- had been launched that evening. So Tim had been nattering and chatting to No-man fans and was quite tired, but we still stayed up nattering till around 2 am.. Then Sunday the three of us started rehearsing and in the early afternoon, Simon Nicol joined us, to run through everything that he was playing on.. All went well and everyone had gone home by about 6pm.

Whizzy had managed to damage a claw on the Friday night so was limping about in a big blue bandage looking pathetic all weekend, but the bandage was removed on the Monday and she forgot all about limping...

More interviews.. a trip to the hospital for my bi-monthly infusion of fearsome drugs to keep the rheumatoid arthritis beaten into submission and then....it was Thursday..... more tomorrow. :-)