A Nastee Night

A rare (these days) solo performance from me to play The Songwriter Sessions for the Opening Night of The Words & Music Festival

I had the pleasure of playing and also introducing special guests, top producer/Songwriter Nigel Stonier and barnstorming new folksters Nastee Chapel. 

Photos by Chris Davies

My 1st Record Shop Gig (about time!)

A modern, if not even hipsteresque trend I am absolutely in favour of is that for record shop gigs. No hipsters here though; just friendly, down-to-earth people and seriously good songwriters, what more could you want?

An unexpectedly seriously hot day (when you take into account lots of walking and lugging equipment around), but a lovely event at 81 Renshaw Street in the might Liverpool; A record store which also has a bar, cafe, and seriously decent live music venue in the basement, and what's more this was an event organised by the fab folks at Liverpool Acoustic.
Just lovely to be a small part of this today.

Played a really lovely little gig at this fantastic #recordshop #81renshawstreet in mighty Liverpool organised by the wonderful people at #LiverpoolAcoustic I, of course, forgot to bring my CDs. This place is a record shop, cafe, bar and venue. I've had so many fun times and great gigs in this incredible city! #recordstore #recordstoregigs #recordshopgig #Liverpool #SingerSongwriter #Guitarist #musician #musicians #cafe #bar #livemusic #newmusic #originalsongs #records #CDs

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Sep 1, 2018 at 11:53am PDT

An evening of Songwriters at Ethical Artisans.

Introducing the last song of the evenng, I invited all up for a jammed rendition of No Tobacco.
L-R Martin Rivers, Dayve Dean, yours truly, Jaqui Kidd and Louise Mather who we persuaded onto the stage!
Many thanks to Deborah Edgeley for the photo.

May 31st, 2016

In the past couple of years, I've played several coffee shops, a book shop, private house parties and of course the infamous bike shop of the shop-sessions fame. Some of them have been among the best solo gigs I've played, and such was case with Ethical Artisans, a mini community arts hub and artisan shop outlet in Alsager.

As in the aforementioned cases, this venue involved an invested, listening audience, an intimate 'you could hear a pin drop' type of atmosphere and caring organisers who looked after the artists and public alike, in other words the perfect setting really for the singer songwriter.

I decided it must surely be more interesting to bring some talented songwriting friends along rather than hog the whole few hours for myself, so I had my special guests Rivers and Kidd and Dayve Dean. Martin Rivers confirmed he has completed his 'Different Skies' album to be released in July and Dayve is currently working on songs for a space-themed album, so both very much fitted the bill in terms of contemporary and songwriters, and Kidd, namely Jaqi Kidd, provided wonderfully ethereal backing vocals to Martin's tunes.

A lovely night, thanks so much to Alistair and Jo for organising things and to the lovely folk who turned up and made it special!

A cryptic instruction I noticed on one of Martin's song-sheets.