borntohang

When my old man was a student he used to do the folk circuit with an accordion duo plus percussion playing English trad. Now, Morris and other associated English musical forms have a long and glorious history that tends to get overshadowed somewhat by the fact the Celts wrote all the tunes you can get whizzed and roar along to, but there's a lot of landlords who see it all as the same diddly-dee nonsense so book whoever. This evening in question they were playing in a particularly low-rent Irish bar in Northern England and going down fine (by which I mean everyone was too whizzed or uncultured to notice the difference) and were looking forward to winding the set up and getting to the drinking part of the evening (my dad used to describe them as a drinking club with a musical problem) until the end of the set when the landlord comes over: "About to close up now lads, can you play the anthem for time?" This wasn't in the plan but was a regular request back then so they decide on a key and off they go into God Save Brenda. Three bars in there's an almighty clatter as all the pints go down on the tables and as one the entire room is stood up glaring daggers. Landlord comes storming back up to the stage: "Not that shite, the bloody Anthem!" Cue muttered and frantic discussion on how to busk Amhran na bhFiann arr. for two accordions and sphincter whistle; in the end they meekly admitted defeat and made a sharp exit stage left. He wasn't sure how much of it was genuine and how much of it was just a setup to get a full night of free music with extra entertainment at the expense of the daft folkie students, but he wasn't about to test out any working theories...

They have a ridiculously good setup - I've been dying to know so will get on this when I get home. Always seem to maintain incredible separation and clarity while making sure it still has some power at the micro-volumes they must be playing at.

With the other team I usually play with it's art galleries, second-hand bookshops, vegan cafes, and early nights. With these guys I suspect it will be endless motorway miles, sushi, early morning radio interviews, and trying to cultivate inner peace because there certainly won't be any outer. Different strokes! We've got a week away in February that will be the main stress test run but we've already done a few mini tours and a bunch of festivals so I'm not expecting any nasty surprises. I'm just going to pick up a cheap laptop and a kindle so I can try and catch up on a bunch of reading.

We'll be covering approx 6000 road miles in just over four weeks and there will be a huge amount of downtime apart from the twenty minutes a day we're onstage so I was planning to take a laptop and do some writing anyway, but I'll keep a gig diary of sorts on here if anyone would be interested in the more performance-related aspects of that kind of show.

Up until March last year 200 was a decent turnout for me. As I mentioned, it's all got extremely busy extremely quickly...

No mate, not me on any of the proper video releases. The newer live stuff I'm either on guitar and keys or bass, depending on the lineup. It's not the sort of genre I would generally be playing either but I've known them a long time and they're a pretty great live act, even if I do say so myself. We played to about 10k at Isle of Wight and 14k at a christmas show for Capital FM, but I'm looking forward to doing some properly big shows!

I'll save you the trouble! I'm just playing session for them at the moment so only my band in a technical sense, but if it means I get to play Wembley then I'm not complaining about not being in a video or two. https://youtu.be/3SAAgrOXf-E

To my utter amazement it's not metaphorically, no. We're doing 18 EU and UK dates as baby support for Pink this summer; UK dates are two nights in Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool, and two nights at Wembley. I'm as baffled as everyone else to be honest but pretty sure our agent is getting a pay-rise this year.

Being as I'm a long-time office spod in a yard full of tradies I'm already well acquainted with the dangers of publicly sticking your creative head above the parapet. It's all suddenly got a bit busy on the musical front recently though, so it's nice to be able to finally meet the sneers of "when's yer band playing Wembley then mate?" with "July, actually. Twice." More of a personal victory than a definitive one as they're generally the sort of blokes who like to get the maximum amount of use out of a joke once they've invested time into coming up with it, but it does keep the more irritating banter down to a minimum!

Same as anything in the industry - know somebody who knows somebody on the team and can persuade them you're worth the shot. They must get ten thousand unsolicited submissions a year that they won't have time to listen to, so the bookers will have a list of promoters and agents that they can approach for new acts and then will choose from a list of those based on a changing table of what they like, how good their team is, how likely they are to be catching onto an act right before they take off, and how long since your agent and their agent did dinner. The more push you have from your agent and/or label than the better the chances but it's not just biggest wallet wins. We actually played with Record Company in London a few weeks before they filmed their bit and we were vaguely aware there were Jools agents floating around, but didn't exactly get chance to sit down and discuss the process with them...

Yeah, they're original Rick hardware from looks of it so are to fit Schaller. The knurled edge are the vintage style ones and are the closest to a standard strap button they do.

Been working with Eastwood this last summer and they're nice guys - enjoyed the instruments I've got chance to play so far. I've been bending their ear about a hardtail Map Bass with "32 scale finished in the nifty metallic green colour they're doing the Airline 59's in, but they're not biting just yet... I think your major limitation is going to be agreeing on a spec without even a broad design proposal. Pretty sure you'd get more people if you brought forward a general design from the start and then ran a poll to work out the little details?

The St Moritz restaurant is great for the lactose tolerant though. Eat yourself into a fondue coma! I have fond (not really) memories of the Attic at bloody Accrington (who they etc). Third story venue with no lift - the load in was fine because you could come up the nice wide staircase, but after they opened the doors to punters you had to load out down the awful rickety fire escape covered with ice and god knows what else.

The VM PJ has a jazz neck. The CV has a P. If you're definitely wanting blocks then Sire perhaps.

No smoke needed mate, if you hadn't put us onto Keith I would never have starting picking up sessions and there's no way I'd have done half of what I'm doing now. If we're ever down in the area I'll give you shout.

Jay is the man and I can't recommend him enough. I've played with him up here in Yorkshire, and apart from an inexplicable enjoyment of being up to his derrière in mud, diesel, and firewood he's a great guy and a great player. I've played some fantastic music with him, had a lot of good times, and he's been directly responsible for the trajectory of my musical career on more than one occasion over the last ten years. We're all sad to lose him to the South, but you guys need him more than us! Best of luck in the brave new world, big guy. x

Off top of my head we've played with at least three: Noasis, Oasish, and Definitely Oasis. My favourite part of doing tribute festivals is checking out band names tbh: laziest was a tie between The Killerz and Antarctic Monkeys and my favourite was probably Illegal Eagles.

Is that just the regular Jubilee Gold? I've been desperate for a gold jazz and liked the look of the BC Jive, but wasn't sure about how good the gold would look. That's beaut though!

I was playing in the first floor room there a few weeks back for the Stag and Dagger festival. Good venue and great team dealing with us. Massive shame about the Art School - I was hoping to get a look at it but we were soundchecking all afternoon and I couldn't be bothered with the trek up the hill in the heat.

Major labels are just another level of flipery. I'm currently doing a spot of playing with a band signed to a massive American label. There are three of them in the band, all capable players and songwriters with a good live act in their own right, with an excellent producer/bass player who has been playing live with them for about a year since they booted their original guy (who was decidedly unexcellent). The bass player produced most of the demos, but can't tour regularly or get a visa; I play bass for the touring shows he can't do, and for big gigs double on keyboard and guitar instead; neither of us are in the band. There is also a second member of the production team who does various backing track, songwriting, and live production duties but doesn't tour regularly and isn't in the band. Keeping up? Earlier in the year the three band-members went to America to meet with the label and meet a bunch of songwriters (because this is what major labels insist on doing after they've signed you on the strength of your songs...). They wrote about 5 songs out there with different producers, some of which will make the album and some of which will not. Due to time constraints of shuttling between NY and LA they only had about a day of studio time with each producer, so most of those songs were electric kits or drum machines and whoever was in the room played whatever was needed. This means a lot of the demos are either synthesised or not played by the respective instrumentalist, which now puts them in the unenviable position of having to come back home and learn a live arrangement of their own tunes. Fun times!

Love my little Jag. Wanted something light and cheerful I could throw around and went with the black because matching headstocks are the way and the light. It's got a couple of stickers on it now and a few scars from where I've kicked it round the stage, but it's still going. I've upgraded the weak bridge pickup but left the neck in situ, put a cheapo hi-mass on because I could and the thin baseplate was lifting off the body a bit, and then replaced the G tuner because it got snapped off. I've had five different wiring schemes in it so far and will probably change this one when I get bored with it, but currently it's Neck Volume + Master Tone + Bridge On/Off Switch because I didn't use the bridge anywhere between 0-100. I've had it tuned from Eb standard up to piccolo - my favourite unusual one was ADGC for pseudo baritone sounds through a guitar amp. Going up to D'addario 110s helped increase the tension a fair amount because I felt like the bottom E was a bit undefined. It's still a bit floopy down there but it's not the end of the world - I like a bit of thump and I've been thinking about putting flats on it recently. The wood is a bit soft because I kept pulling the strap buttons out, so then I put strap locks on it with big bolts and pulled those out too... Finally I just filled and drilled with decent quality hardwood dowel from the shop down the road and plugged it with the biggest bolts I had that fit a strap button round them. It's been fine since! Here's me taking out my £200 quid worth of basswood and duct tape in front of 1,500 punters at Manchester Cathedral last month:

We're playing the TF stage on Sunday I believe, but it doesn't look like even the stage is confirmed yet so I'll wait till they drop it in my diary. I'd love to vote for you guys but I recognise a few names on there and loyalty beckons... If you get on I'll come watch though! Good luck with it - great lineup to get on.

That's interesting - I haven't really played around with the blend much but recently I've been running it lower. The woofiness/woollyness you get at boosted gain levels irritates the hell out of me and I've spent ages trying to dial it out, but never occured to me to cut the mids that much. I'm actually going for a fairly smooth, classic sound rather than grind but that makes sense. Going to have a play around with it again at next practice.

Counterpoint: Mini Kiss

I do. It's weird, incredibly hot, and a lot of fun. We don't make much money - it's mostly just a laugh and a chance to play some nice venues for other fans who appreciate the music too. Got quite good at changing costumes in less than thirty seconds too.