2021

 In spite of it all, we’ve managed to come out of 2021 having made some significant progress.

Thanks to every one of you who have supported us in any way and all the best for a wonderful 2022 X

Boxing Day Tracking

 Pleased to be doing more tracking for José.

Railtown Rock

Me & my gang are delighted to feature (*along with many more) in the new book Railtown Rock by Andy Pennance.

It’s been something of a labour of love for Andy and it covers the music scene in the Crewe and Nantwich area from the early Skiffle groups who gigged there in the 1950s through to the current scene of bands, venues and musicians.

It’s printed by Mpire Press at a cost of £15 +P&P

*Including The Beatles, Dario G, Dr Phibes and the House of the Wax Equations, Tower Struck Down, The Scorpions, Train Set, Snakey Jake & the Dead Skunk Band, Gary B. Goode and The Hot Rots.

Buddhist Funerals for Robot Dogs

 

Out now! (..or then)

Just realised that I’ve been so busy over this Autumn that I’d somehow forgotten to promote the solo album now it’s actually released!!!

Cover design by Ryan Kay-Derricutt 

The Bandcamp download-only version includes additional hidden demo tracks.

On Bandcamp at: https://happyjuicerecords.bandcamp.com/album/buddhist-funerals-for-robot-dogs

On Spotify at: https://open.spotify.com/album/47ibJda4JTMt8UKoZStH6Y?dl_branch=1&si=Qu97kMdjTWKPLp6a-i1Log

Back in & trackin’

 Back in Jose’s studio to put some finishing touches on the lyric co-write and track lead vocals for this next project. José had increased the tempo of the track by just 2bpm and it’s remarkable to think such a subtle change then felt so much more ‘right’ for this track.

Then we went out for a beer of course.

The Songwriter Sessions

October 11th, 2021 

Photo by Becky Evans.

As part of the opening night of the week-long festival of world class musical, poetry and spoken word; The Words and Music Festival, I performed along with a select few other singer songwriters from the North West, namely the brilliant Sam Lyon, Dayve Dean and Tiki Black who was also joined by top producer and tunesmith, Nigel Stonier.

A couple of the artists mentioned what a wonderful, listening audience we had (as I'm pleased to say is typical of this festival).

 

Not a bad start.

 

Phone video from The Words & Music Festival team.

Sam Lyon

Tiki Black accompanied by Nigel Stonier

Dayve Dean

 

Covid Strikes - but the show goes on.

The Blue Yellows live at The King’s Lock, Middlewich. 09/11/21

It was always inevitable - on arriving at the venue, with a stage set up at the end of a large marquee and Dave having set up his largest set-up to date (including his very loud Gretsch kit and double-cajon “cocktail” acoustic kit) across the back of the stage, only to find the sound engineer (and one with particularly ‘good ears’ and extensive, quality equipment) had just returned a positive Covid test, so he was, at short notice, unavailable along with much of his equipment.

With best wishes being sent in his direction, luckily Middlewich isn’t far from Sandbach where our keys/accordion/backing vocalist Emma lives so we were able to get a workable PA set up with a combination of our equipment and that at the venue and Tim, who opened for us allowed me to go through his amp (rather than through a cab simulator, then direct into the PA which was the plan), this freed up an extra channel on our mixing desk for Dave to run an acoustic mic through and all was well.

Many thanks to those that turned out for us and it was good to see some great friends again. Thanks also to Tim Lee for his wonderful songs and joining us on percussion and backing vocals during “No Tobacco” after joining him during his set for a duet version of “I’m Just Gonna be me”.

Band photos by Tim Lee. 

The Brilliant Tim Lee opened for us.

Small is beautiful!

At last night’s rehearsal I explained to Em & Simon (Dave was stuck on the M6 somewhere) that I had just seen one of my comedy heroes Rich Hall getting off the rural one-carriage train I had just got off (it turned out he had a gig in Whitchurch that night). Then the conversation went something like; 

Me - You had any comedy encounters lately Simon?

Simon- I was stuck behind Dale Winton in a supermarket once.

Me - ha! In an actual supermarket!?!

Em - When I was working in a shop Robert Plant came in and bought 3 cans of Stella and a tin of dog food.

Me - and I know you used to work with The League Against Tedium…

Em - Yes I’ve got a pair of Y-fronts with his face on somewhere.

…on to today’s gig, our smallest ever venue but a cutesy of a vinyl paradise that is Applestump Records!

Travelling Light

 Very proud to have helped to co-write this beautiful song and performed it live with Manu Arteaga for this recording. His video, over a year in the making, is out today.

We’re Back!

I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be and after pondering on the fact that, thanks to the pandemic, we hadn’t performed in public since Christmas 2019 I started getting nervous about the fact that I wasn’t feeling nervous enough!

Anyway, it all went swimmingly at Alsager Music Festival and we dedicated the set to the wonderful and much missed Stath who has been such an important part of the festival since it’s inception.

Many thanks to Stephanie Burgess for the band photos.

After the Morrow Moon

 

Buddhist Funerals for Robot Dogs

*Updated 11th August to reveal this cover artwork by Ryan Kay-Derricutt.

 

Another home made video

 Yesterday I had the whole day free and was promising myself a day out, perhaps a hill walk or day out to the beach.

On a whim though, I decided to make a fun video for the  new album I’ve got coming out soon, which is ironic as constantly putting off fun things to get more “chores” done (like completing all the music stuff I have to do) is kind of what the song this video is for.. is about! 

*TAKE TWO (updated August 2nd 2021)

Well this video, all made with iMovie on my phone, managed to get mangled and deleted in the editing process, and not saved on my (full) cloud space either - so I had to do the whole thing again today, using most of the same originally spontaneous ideas. I’ve saved a private copy to YouTube this time, just in case!

Release Booked!

 Seeing as my local library has much faster internet than I can dream of at home (!), I went there today to sort out the distribution of my next solo album.

More soon!

Further Journeys in Sound

Last night I was back in José’s studio to start on a brand new project. Some weeks ago José had sent me a couple of tunes and lyric ideas to work with and, in spite of managing to mix up which lyrics went with which tune (!) we met to bash out some ideas, and lay down a guide track with some draft lyrics rather than what will end up being the final version.

We also jammed out some ideas from a number of other draft tunes.

Onwards!

 

Toys for the Boys

 

As we take tentative steps towards an as certain-as-it-can-be-in-the-circumstances live show and maybe (really - just “maybe”) further shows, as well as changing up the songs (including adding a couple of newly written tunes), there’s also a bit of a change of some of the equipment as seen at last night’s rehearsal.

I brought along a new Mooer Trescab Cabinet Simulator, ready attached to pedalboard rig, and Dave was very excited about his also brand-new ‘cocktail drum set’ - a double cajon (one’s a bass cajon) for some interesting percussionisation.

In addition, Simon’s been using his extra-light but just as heavy sounding strings at the recent rehearsals and Em is famously sticking with the equipment she’s had since the dawn of time itself, but why not? It works.

LIVE... !

 Alsager Music Festival - Sunday at The Lodge

*Free Entry 

*Outdoors with cover

Video time - again!

I guess it’s now the nature of modern, independent musicians that unless you’re backed by enormous corporate industry powers you have to play your hand at lots of different crafts even if your main one is music, just to get your stuff “out there”.

This time, thankfully, I was in the skilful video production hands of José for the video for a song we co-wrote and is, to both of us I believe, a really special one.

A Minute with the Moon

 A few nights ago I noticed the huge-looking, low moon rise straight up the middle of the canal as seen from the bow of my narrowboat home. Now we weren’t intending to do a video for “A Minute in the Sun” from our EP of the same name, in a way because it’s such a simple, relatively unstructured track. But having seen this plaintive but dramatic event I tried to capture it the following night with my phone on a “time-lapse” setting. 

Although this time the moon appeared a bit further over to the right of the shot, I like the way it sort of appears suddenly and then tracks off out of sight and how this could fit nicely with the drama of Dave’s drums & shimmer of his symbol work.

So - an extra EP video! Hope you like it.

BACK!

I was expecting to be writing something positive about tonight on the obligatory blog-post, and not to say I would ever normally write about something as mundane as a standard rehearsal - but this was nothing mundane.

My band of best friends, comrades, who’ve been on adventures together; through  great gigs and shit ones, through packed festivals to torrential wash-outs - we’re back!

Yes, Em’s infamous kitchen of  the “Kitchen Sessions” recordings for an acoustic rehearsal - the 1st time we’ve even seen each other all together since before the pandemic began, we’ve even started work on new material too.

And it was brilliant.

Behind the video: Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

 Find a bit more about the video here:

For links to the original video & the EP “A Minute in the Sun” at: https://linktr.ee/TheBlueYellows

Time to Wig Out!

 This review of A Minute in the Sun in from The Musician Magazine.

Behind the songs.

 Behind the songs of the new Blue Yellows EP:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfrymolKV_nei4KLoEhPn7H-BiJGfX0zD

Logically Blonde

 A few days ago,  I had what was really just a friendly chat withTess from Redshift for her Logically Blonde Podcast as part of the online tour for A Minute in the Sun.

You can listen again here: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/9e139e44-abf8-4671-8891-8bbd252ca03e

Sign My Release.

The sacred day has arrived, release day!

A Minute in the Sun is available on ALL digital platforms; just search “The Blue Yellows, A Minute in the Sun” on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music or whatever your favourite one is. We hope you love it as much as we do. ❤️

I also did a Facebook livestream on the subject of the EP. It went something like this;

Radio Goo Goo

 On the eve of Blue Yellows EP release day, it was radio time again, this time a local one, though I was Covid-remote in any case, to talk about the EP, with many thanks to Megan & Gary on The Breakfast Show at The Cat Radio

Tunes and Chat

 I was delighted to appear on my good friend and talented songsmith Tim Lee’s Tunes and Chat” Podcast to chat about the upcoming EP from The Blue Yellows, “A Minute in the Sun”.

We also chatted about some of the challenges of being in a band during lockdown on top of a lot of thoughts surrounding the writing of some of these tracks.

Tim also played two of the songs from the EP, which has also been getting a fair bit of airplay on radio stations both here, and even on the other side of the world!

Listen to this podcast episode on Apple Podcasts here: Tunes and Chat, EP 3.

If Apple doesn’t work for you, search “TimLeeSongs Tunes and Chat Podcast” and it’s Episode 3.

Here too is a show with Bob Os from River Gibbs FM which played 2 tracks from the EP: Bob Osbourne’s Aural Delights

Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

 The video, home-made on the mobile phones of band members, our producer and families due to lockdown conditions, is out now!

..and from today, you can download the track and pre-order the whole EP on Bandcamp;

A Minute in the Sun.

Through months of waiting for gaps in the Covid restrictions restrictions lenient enough to allow Covid-secure one-by-one recording  (see 2020 posts!), the EP is now not only finished, but it’s been prepared for the promotional onslaught.

Actually ‘onslaught’ is a bit of a strong word for it in this case but a journalist friend Jonathan White took enough of an interest to write an article for The Cat Radio which also included the exclusive information that we’re releasing the video-single ‘Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm’ on February 5th, two weeks ahead of the whole EP release on Feb 19th, 2021. 

Read the full article on the forthcoming EP HERE