It's......October..

...and I haven't written a thing for ages..

So what have I been up to? Well I got on a train and went to London one fine September day, I met up with the lovely Stuart E at Marylebone and we set off through the tunnels of the underground to Old St where I was to meet and do a short interview with Robert Elms, for British Airways. To go on the in-flight audio whatsit that gets played to all the passengers (if they're not watching the film, that is). There would be a review of Talking With Strangers interspersed with nattering from me.. I knew I should have made sure beforehand that everyone knew that Dyble rhymes with libel and not scribble, so I had to interrupt Mr Elms and say 'errrr sorry that's a bit wrong'. Hated doing that but there you go.... He seemed happy about it and we nattered about this that and the other, and then back on the tube and the train and home... Hope it was ok but I haven't heard anything more about it so no news is good news..

An old friend from my primary school days contacted me and came up to visit with her husband and have meal at the pub with me. It was lovely to be nattering after (good grief!) 50 odd years, but lovely too, our lives have some interesting coincidences.
Then another radio interview, this time with Roger 'Twiggy' Day at Radio Kent. He was very nice and it was only later that I realised just how far back in my radio-listening he had been a part of, Radio Luxembourg and the Pirate Radio Caroline and the early days of Radio One (I think) as well...

Through facebook I have been virtually introduced to Jackie Morris whose wonderful status updates just flow like magical streams of consciousness, but with the added piquancy of her wit and practicality. I swapped a signed CD for a copy of her latest book 'Tell Me a Dragon' and I think I got the best of the bargain because it is a totally glorious book. I think it is aimed at very young children, but I suspect it would become a favourite and would be a treasured book forever. When Freya gets bigger, I shall read it to her, but I might have to buy her her own copy because I love this one so much. And anyway Jackie has drawn me a singing dragon of my very own on the title page..
I hope to be collaborating with her in the near future. How lovely will that be?

I am also looking out songs and ideas for the next album, which feels odd because Talking With Strangers is only just out into the world, but that's how it has to be. The vinyl version has just been released as well and is now available from Tonefloat. There is a signed postcard in each copy and there are only 500 copies for sale of this beautiful thing..

The CD will be released in the USA and in Australia in January and talks are going on for Japan and France . And Scandinavia. Well well. Who'd have thought?

Oh yes.. I have done a bit of singing on a new single release from Kings Cross, called 'Every Sentimental Moment' That's released in November.. and somewhere along the line, Grey October Day will be released as a single. Should be in October shouldn't it? Well we'll see.....

Onwards and upwards... Whizzy sends a toothless snore to you all... :-)

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. :-)

Tomorrow is a brilliant day

Tomorrow is the 10th August 2009 and it is the day that my album, 'Talking With Strangers' is finally released. What shall I do to celebrate it?

I know! I will get up early,feed and walk the Whiz and probably drive to the Park and Ride in Oxford, go to Radio Oxford in Summertown and be interviewed there for about half an hour. Then I will take the bus further into Oxford (hooray for bus passes) and go to look in HMV and see if my CD is really and truly there.. And if it is I shall hug myself and want to tell someone, so I will go and have a cup of coffee with friend Chris and tell him all about it. Then I shall get back on the bus and return to Radio Oxford at 1pm to do another interview with Radio Suffolk to go out that evening. Then back to the park and Ride and drive home and back to the reality of walking the Whiz again

Look here! 4 wonderful reviews....
BBC Music Reviews written by the lovely Sid at DGM who have a copy of the album to give away here

The Progfiles. (I'm doing an interview with them at the moment)

Record Collector

and Netrhthyms

It's all going swimmingly !!

then it was Saturday

So. Awake, panic, have a shower, panic, clean teeth, get toothpaste everywhere. Now why was that? The ensuite bathroom to my room was incredibly elegant with a washbasin encased in a beautiful granite surround, But.... it was very high and the basin was set very deep in the granite. So I had to stand on tiptoe and I still couldn't quite reach the basin to wash my face..I had to kind of aim at my face and throw water at it..managed it in the end though. but hence the toothpaste everywhere as well.. Where was I? Ah yes clean teeth, panic, get dressed, panic,down to breakfast, panic...etc. I was a bit twitchy as you may guess.

Anyway Jon and I went out for a walk and found errr nothing much but concrete! Being the City of London it was mainly closed on Saturday..so more concrete walking and back to the hotel, where we had a cup of coffee and nattered to Iain Matthews while we waited for the transport to take us to the Barbican, where soundchecks were going on and lunch was waiting..

I was not hungry, so I ate a handful of liquorice all sorts and nattered to whoever was passing. Practiced my harping and my recordering and panicked some more..

Finally at 6 pm it was time for my soundcheck. By this time I was really twitching and everyone else was really tired, but the sound was set up for me and my harp and my voice as I would be on first..

So I changed into my stage outfit, and tried to look as if I knew what I was doing with eye makeup and the like.. and suddenly it was time. Ashley Richard and Simon went on stage and took their places followed by me. I was going to start off the whole thing by talking a bit about where I had met them and where we had played and then began play my autoharp and to sing 'Satisfied Mind'.

I haven't really played my harp properly on stage since the Trader Horne days and the swollen joints of rheumatoid arthritis had led me to believe that I wouldn't ever be able to play again. Luckily the fearsome drug that I am infused with every two months had suppressed the disease enough for me to play the harp once more. My wrists ached and I had bruises on my arm from where the tuning pegs were pushing into my forearm but....I did it.
And I remembered all the words!. Then off with the harp and straight into 'Time will Show The Wiser', then 'One Sure Thing' with a bit of recorder playing, and finally 'Jack O'Diamonds' with a sort of odd recorder solo.

Then I was done.. Off stage and then back stage.. to watch and listen to everyone else. Till it was time for the encores. I didn't go on stage for 'Si Tu Dois Partir', because I can never remember the words, but Chris While and I joined the rest of the band and singers for 'Meet On the Ledge'.

And that was that...what a fantastic night!

Lots of natterings and chortlings, the recorder was signed by Iain, Ashley, Richard, Simon and me and I have just auctioned it on ebay in aid of the Greyhound Charity from whence Whizzy and Flower came. It raised £210 so that will be on it's way to them very soon..
Then back to the hotel and fall asleep and it was all over..

Well. That was quite extraordinary.

I was going to write about this before I went but things kind of got away from me. You know. Nerves. Terror. Emails. Phone calls - that sort of thing. I'd decided to put my harp in a wheely suitcase to take to London. Came the day and the suitcase was 2 inches too short, and the only one I could borrow was huge so it got stuffed into a bag instead along with a few other bits and pieces. Jon arrived on Thursday and kept me from running away.

Friday morning..goodbye Whizzy, be good, Nancy will look after you see you Sunday. Ed and Angie drove Jon and myself and a million bags to the station(well five anyway) where we caught a train to London.

Arriving at Marylebone, I was surprised to find a heap of Cropredyites,filming a bit of The Dodge Brothers who are playing at Fairport's Cropredy Convention this summer. So we said 'hello' and 'how are you' and went to find the car that would take us to the hotel to leave our bags, before another car came to take us to the rehearsal studios where the rest of my Fairport were waiting for me to appear.. I was only a bit late..

After the usual 'haven't seen you for ages' and 'what you been up to thens' we had a quick run through of the 4 songs I was going to do with them. One song, Satisfied Mind, was one that we may not even have done together, but it was the kind of thing we had played before we were even called Fairport and it showed off the autoharp rather nicely, and as I was singing it as well it wasn't too much of a problem.. then out with the recorder and a quick blast of Time Will Show the Wiser, One Sure Thing and Jack O'Diamonds and that was my rehearsal over and done. Jon and I then went to have a cup of coffee and something to eat, until we were sure I wouldn't be needed again, then we were taken back to the hotel.
Nothing much was happening so we set off on a tube to Hertfordshire to meet Big Little Stephanie for a meal, then back to her houseboat and then back to the hotel. Old Street in the City of London is quite a scary place at night and as neither of us could work out where we were, internal compasses definitely not working, we got a taxi to take us back to the hotel. There is such a lot of concrete in that area.. and not much greenery. Then back to the rooms to fall asleep.

Right. More later

Not Long....

...before the Barbican show.
Should be most entertaining I reckon. Autoharp is tuned ready in case it's needed. Finger and thumbpicks are gleaming in the sunlight. Old plastic school recorders have been located and decisions have been made about which one to use..white?...brown?... should I find a wooden one? More importantly will my fingers play it and have I got the puff to blow.. I expect so, anyway it will be just like the olden days...

I won't worry about that till next week. Jon the M can do any panicking necessary..
Last week I was interviewed for one of the local papers..lovely lady Gill Oliver came for a cup of tea and a natter. I'd spent some of the day in the boilingness that is Oxford seeing my beautiful Freya, who is two months old, smiling and, as far as I can work out, trying to dance, judging by the waving arms and dancing legs.., so by the time I got home I was hot and bothered, but I think I answered all the questions properly. Or possibly improperly. I'll have to wait and see what I said..

Yesterday I had lunch with Richie Unterberger an American author and journalist. Lovely interesting man to natter with.. he is in England to promote his latest book on the Velvet Underground, a fascinating subject, that I should know more about than I do!!

What else? Ah yes, I recorded some harmonies and backing vocals for the probable next Kings Cross single, Every Sentimental Moment/Never Say Never , there are snippets on there, but from before I did anything.. They may of course not like what I've done, but that's fine

And we've been sorting out the artwork for the vinyl limited edition of Talking With Strangers, which will be released by Tonefloat records in September..

And we're sorting out the album launch gig thing which will be in London in mid August. .

So it's all been a bit busy and hectic.
Writing songs? What's that? I'll have to get round to a bit of that soon as well. I suppose..but for now I will feed the Whizz and make a sandwich. Oh no...not cheese again :-)

(strange spellchecker on here..it thought enrtetraining was a proper word...???)