Middlewich '25

 This year's Middlewich Folk and Boat Festival had moved slightly to the fields just outside of the town to mark bigger & better ambitions for this well established event.

It had been, to be honest, a stressful run up to this event with next to no communication about stage set up, let alone a stage manager or sound engineer to liaise over our tech-spec options. As a result, we got our producer-guy and good friend José Manu Arteaga to step into the breech as sound engineer to make good of what we had, I gigged for the 1st time through my "new" Marshal combo, actually rescued, almost unbelievably, from the big skips I live near to - and all was well that ended well, with a lovely warm crowd and enormous help with all the staging and equipment issues from our fellow musicians who all rallied round to help each other. 

Thanks to everyone who came along and gave us a good time (thanks too, to the mayfly - see last photo). 

Top merch team! 

Pre-Gig interview behind 
the folk stage for
Salt Town Radio 
Photo: Manu Arteaga 

The bridge in our song After the Morrow Moon
uses the analogy - "we dance for just one day the free mayfly". Well, this mayfly joined us
 on stage for the duration of our show. 

Barnside

 June 7th 2025

Updated 09/06/2025 

Tonight, me and Dave had the absolute pleasure of joining German duo Barn54 again on the Conwy stop of their European Tour at Y Gloch Las. 

Simon & Sina are such special people who make beautiful music & share their sounds & stories from their camper van as they tour almost incessantly all over Europe. 

It was a delight for both of us Yella fellas  to join them as some bandee extras for the night.

The biggest challenge for me was that I've only ever played one song with them, on or off stage, before! So - I did a bit of homework but there was certainly a bit of a seat-of-the-pants element on my part, but I hopefully got away with it. 

Beautiful stuff and a lot of fun with our new friends.

Simon & Sina of Barn 54

The listening Stool

 Today was another special studio day, this time in just sitting and listening to the (almost) finalised mixes for the Fox Barn Studios part of the coming EP. 

One track stood out as a potential, though perhaps unusual lead single. 

Afterwards I missed my train by 6 minutes so Dan & I were forced, unwittingly - to the pub! 

Updated 18/05/2025

The band-gang have approved the mixes so the next stage is mastering. 

Outboard spring reverb deployed! 

Automated reverb on lead
vocals - now that's perfectionism! 

Off the tracks

 03/04/2025

Back with project-José , recording vocals & lead guitar for a co-written track. This is for a project that will take some months to complete, so stick around if you want to know more (eventually). 

Perhaps it's because he's a close friend (or am I looking for excuses?), but I did no vocal warm-ups or guitar warm ups before this session AND IT SHOWED! 

We got some great takes in the end though...

 

Spring Shades

 25th April 2025U

Updated 28/04/2025

An absolutely incredible night - I joined Maddison Kent from Somerset, Michael Wack from Germany and the inimitable Simon and Sina - ie Barn 54 at the award winning venue, Percy's Cafe Bar for not just a gig, but Barn54's live album recording. 

A stunning night - you had to be there!

Jonathan White wrote an article about the event here

Photo by TMR Photography

Photo by TMR Photography

Photo by TMR Photography

Photo by TMR Photography

Pre-show - Photo by TMR Photography

Pre-show jam with Barn54 and Michael Wack
Photo by TMR Photography

Photo by TMR Photography

The Cuckoo Set

 20th April 2025

We've been so busy working with just a few songs and their arrangements for recording that we arrived at Tom's Tap and Brew feeling pretty under-rehearsed.

The occasion was to support Tim Lee and his special night launching his beautiful new album - The Cuckoo Set.

Various "Yellas" joined him on stage for different songs including our Em who played - both live on the night and on the album itself, on the sad and stunningly beautiful title track.

The guitar pit

Fox Barn Day 2

 

Another utterly fantastic day for us at Fox Barn Studios under the direction of the mighty sound-brain of Daniel J. Logan. Recording in such a quick, creative way is a big part of what we're all about even if we rarely get a chance to do it quite like this, and - there's a bar!

Paradise.

One of the songs in particular actually transformed in today's session, from sounding more breezy straight-rock to gaining a much more punky approach than we were originally looking at, and we're loving it.  We're loving it all.

Foxes & Emus

Updated 27-03-25

Fox Barn Studios - Recording Day 1

A truly wonderful & significant day for us as we headed to Fox Barn Studios to work with producer Dan Logan for the 1st time in our band production seat since our debut EP All These Things Right Now.

On a fabulous spring day we recorded some tracks and met the local Emus! 

We recorded 3 tracks live -the four of us playing all the main or rhythm parts on our instruments. Without vocals and lead guitar licks (to avoid leaking onto through the drum mics as we were all in the same room, playing together), it proved tricky for us all to keep track of where we were in the songs without these cues, but we got three nice vibey tracks in the end. Overdubs of vocals, backing vox, lead guitar and any additional percussion are to be added next week.

Top Day!

 

Anthemic Morrow Moon

 Nice to get these comments from festival organisers. 

Project José

 My good friend & talented producer has an exciting new album project & I'm thrilled to be roped in. We have recently been co-writing a song - it's the most excited I've been about a co-written song with him since Travelling Light which I love so much.

After the Morrow Moon

 After the Morrow Moon just came out. It's available on Spotify & everywhere else, we'd really appreciate any playlist adds.

The song is a reminder (to myself, but it applies to all) not to put off the little, oh-so-easily taken for granted things that really make life worth living. I, indeed we - hope you like it, ❤️

It was never about a song

 Today I had the delight of being a part of the book launch for "it was never about the Kingfisher", a poety book by my good friend & multiple award-winning poet Helen Kay, published by Dithering Chaps.

Helen had asked me to collaborate by writing and recording music for, by her own account, darkest poem in the collection "O Morpheus". 

I was keen not to turn the poem into a song, but to keep the structure of this poem as it is, and instead use music to emotionally annotate, illustrate & illuminate this beautiful but disturbing poem. 

Single (& video) coming soon

Pre-save After the Morrow Moon at https://emubands.ffm.to/afterthemorrowmoon