Songs '..of grace and wit', The Musician. 'A voice and sentiment to lift you from slumber', Fatea Records. 'This will get in your head', BBC Introducing.
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!
Working out some bass lines for these
songs back in Summer (see insta post below)
At the time of writing, two songs on which I play bass, yes bass! ..are due out tomorrow, or if you are reading this on or after Valentine's Day 2020, you can enjoy them right now (see videos below!). Tim Lee is a wonderfully talented songwriter of moving, heartfelt music who I've had the pleasure of sharing stages and recording studios with many times. He knew that I was really getting into bass playing and was kind enough to offer me the chance to perform bass guitar on his to-be-released album 'Tulpa'. Back in mid-summer; myself, fellow bassist (and another close collaborator) Rob who is also playing on the album (and, I understand, made the video for 'Love is Easy', below) joined Tim and producer Glyn from Collossus Productions who are releasing the whole thing, for a recording session which I blogged about here.
In a sense, these songs represent my bass debut, so it's an exciting moment for me, though in reality , I have also recorded a solo album of songs in which bass features very heavily some two summers ago (though this is now on the releaseback burner for a number of reasons, not least because of the new recording project with The Blue Yellows which is now underway). In fact, so excited have I been about my new favourite toy, the bass guitar, that many of the songs which will be on my next solo album have been written on bass, and are very bass-orientated in terms of groove and rhythm. On the experimental ‘Raflessia Dreams’ I ‘played bass’ on the lower strings of a standard guitar, or did a vocal bass thing, and then EQed it. It seems almost impossible to pick the bass up without coming up without coming up with new grooves. Maybe I'll even get to play bass live some day, who knows? Anyway, enjoy these two great tracks!
25th March 2019 Music for Team Neve Fundraising Night Bar B at The Market Tavern, Sandbach To many in music, Neve is the name of a classic mixing desk/console, and The Blue Yellows were certainly mixing it up with some very diverse acts for a special fundraising night for Neve, a young child with a number of very serious neurological conditions (please see the link at the bottom of the text) for which money is needed for support from specialist American medical institutions on top of the quality health care she is receiving through the NHS.
Typically, a musical evening might be of cover acts to provide easily accessible entertainment or original acts for a more discerning music-loving crowd with an ear for new sounds. However the mix seemed to work really well, with the audience lapping up the new music along with the classics. As well as my gang, acts included host for the evening as well as sound-engineer, stage manager and singer-songwriter Dayve Dean, Tim Lee, Luke Stephenson, Bitter and Twisted, and Footsteps who also kindly lent their cajon, thanks guys!
Although Monday-night gigging provides an incredibly tiring prospect, having not yet recovered from the weekend, and having to get back into my routine of working hours through the day and night through the week as well, I'm expecting to look back on this with fondness when (if) I recover. Please see the Team Neve crowdfunding page at: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/teamneve
Fabulous turn-out of charitable music-goers for a Monday Night!
March 1st 2019 - The Blue Yellows 'Kitchen Sessions' release Show. If you're an unhealthy combination of worrier and control freak, then the many months of build up to meeting all the deadlines on the way to the successfully release of an album on time are a prolonged struggle comprising of garnering various people, software programmes, organisations, materials, third parties and so on... all against the relentless progress of time, any one thing threatening to cause a postponement of release-day and therefore scuppering months of promotional drip-feeds, press packs sent to music press, photography, conventional press releases and so on. Such a delay would then either end up being one of many months so that it can promoted properly again, or resulting in a bit of a non-event. So it's a real sense of contented release I find myself in now, knowing The Blue Yellows can go back to being a gigging band again. Easy! 😉 What a lovely night you lot gave us at Tom's Tap and Brewhouse though, much of the talk afterwards while signing albums and so on, was how the young duo The Bugs owned that stage and played so well, these comments coming from a very knowledgable 'music-crowd' that really know their stuff. Pretty amazing for youngsters Owain and Dylan still at primary school! Tim Lee, the brilliant singer-songwriter, friend and producer of the new tracks on this album, provided a similarly pitch-perfect tone for the night with his honest, emotionally and texturally rich songs. The audience was full of familiar faces from near and far, many coming from Manchester as it worked out, and from further afield, some really good friends too, the only problem at an event like this is really having hardly any free moments to speak much. To those of you there, thanks for giving us such a great night and sharing the happiness, contentment, new tunes and sense of... release. This is a set-list pic from Tim's own blog-post on this event which you can read, in full HERE.
Joined for the finale by Tim and The Buggs, photo by Rob Collins.
You can now get to the new album on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer or whichever is your favourite streaming or download site, or order the limited edition CD, before they go, below!
Just prepping for our live Q&A live session on Facebook, to promote our forthcoming album "Kitchen Sessions"... 7.30 tonight if you fancy joining us! pic.twitter.com/xTP0ILgCfX
Anyroadup, although there weren't too many about for my set at Big Day Out Cheshire I felt the surrealness and the pure luck of being born in the right place to have an experience like this, of playing my little set, then walking a few steps to a see a band whose music I have grown up with as part of the background soundscape to my life/our lives on the radio at home, on the coach or wherever. What a thing!
I also greatly enjoyed a superb set by Tim Lee, especially a new song which I think was called 'Performance', the always brilliant Photo Booth Smile and the inimitable brilliance of Baxter!
Thanks to all involved, especially that very busy Lizzy and the whole team surrounding Redshift Radio who seem to have a lot to do with it all.
Very close followers of this blog may know that my band The Blue Yellows have been intermittently recording over quite a few months, three days in all. If you are in need a of a quick catch-up (and WHY wouldn't you be, huh?!), you can do, via these links;
OK, fast-forward to the freezing but sunny February day that was yesterday (at the time of writing), with the burgeoning 'Best From the East' tapping on the garage door, the garage being that converted into a rehearsal studio by the amazing Sheena Bratt for her fab band Venus Rising. Many thanks for Sheena and family for letting us invade the place for the day! Once again, we were in the capable hands of Tim Lee who was actually doing all the hard work of concentrating and focusing all day, while the rest of us could mainly wait around for our turn, although in my case, I needed to learn the lyrics of the newest song going in too. Today was the most rock of the days, style-wise and Tim shot some snippets of the day for youtube;
Of the three days all together, very spread-out through they've been, I think this has been the most smoothly productive, with some of the best ideas brought into the project from my fellow bandees in the BYs and especially from Tim, with the ideas he came up with during the day. It has been especially satisfying for us to get a brand new song in, that we barely know yet ourselves, and which I was still making a few lyrical adjustments to on the day!
(Updated 22/09/2017) Rafflesia Dreams is OUT TODAY on ALL digital outlets and services!
Many people of you will have your own preferred favourite for streaming &/or downloading service. If you are not sure which one to use however, please help support my music by using bandcamp as they send much more of the money you pay directly to the artist (me!).. AND they're cheaper too so, well it's here: https://jonathantarplee.bandcamp.com/album/rafflesia-dreams
It was awesome to get this comment from sunny California within hours of release all those interweb outlets!
To celebrate the album and preempt it's release on all well known digital outlets, the night before I was delighted to appear on Tim Lee's burgeoning radio show on Redshift, The Doorstep Mixtape. I was the 'B-Side Artist' in the second hour, but the whole show is a great listen!
Aug 6th, 2017 Another August and another lovely invite to Martin and Elaine's friendly hospitality and mini-festival no less, in their gorgeous back garden. Playing with The Blue Yellows of course, or at least 3/4s of us while Em is away on holiday.
I feel I let the Yella Fella's down somewhat with a voice totally under-powered and under-tuneful almost from the off, however... something I realised later might be partly down to being generally dehydrated from having run out of drinking water at home (I live on a narrowboat, keep up!) and not having had time to replace it, or, therefore, drink very much at all that morning, my own stupidity at not realising this getting in the way then, really. Nevertheless, it was a truly lovely, gentle day again in the most gorgeous garden, yummy food and very good company.
One of the most memorable performances came from songwriter Tim Lee, in fact I had that experience of completely forgetting where I was and totally existing inside the music as he played his song, 'A Curious Cure'. This is a common experience I have regularly when I play music (in fact I think musicians should aim for this state) and quite often when listening to great music alone, but rarely when feeling more nervous and conscientious when I'm with people. Anyroadup, Tim also made a really comprehensive write up of the whole day, and some very special performances, right HERE if you want to read more.
Many thanks to all involved and especially Martin and Elaine... Special!
The creative Crewe people at, well creativecrewe.co.uk put on a fab festival, The Big Event Festival, in the huge hanger-like former railway 'shed' that is now Crewe Heritage Center. It was lovely that so many old friends turned up, not that I had much time to spend with them in my pre-gig tension or post-gig emotional exhaustion. I did get to enjoy some fabulous artists before our set however including the jangly rockers with Beatlesque vocal harmonies The Continental Phase. Good friends and brilliant songwriters Tim Lee and Dayve Dean both performed lots of as-yet unreleased material and it was great to hear their fine vocals in a place with such a huge, natural reverb. You can also read Tim's experience of the occasion HERE (a blog-post within a blog-post I tell you, it's all here). Raven's Way had a kind of post-folky retro thing going on and did an incredibly moving version of 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes', a wonderful Sandy Denny song. They were minus a (poorly) fiddle player but all sounded great, especially my fellow finger-picker guitarist Pete but then, I am biased. A typical thing happened with me during our Blue Yellows set, and I should know better by now. A couple of songs in and I had lost so much of my vocal ability that I felt as if I was singing through a narrow straw, so wasn't able to go for the songs in the way that I wanted to, yet a few songs later and I had recovered... proof of lack of vocal warm-ups (again!). MUST DO. The gang did me proud, as always though, I'm very lucky to have you, thanks guys (and girl).
The Continental Phase opened the day.
Dayve Dean arrived in time to play a great set.
Me with drummist Dave, who'd had the
Purple Yellows treatment.
A very appreciative crowd, thanks all, and to all the friends I hardly got to speak to at all. The Blitz team did a superlative job on the sound as we have come to expect and the Offbeat Beers were very nice indeed, I look forward to more of them when I have a few more pennies.
Tim Lee with great new songs.
(Sorry about my rubbish photo, Tim).
A gig at Crewe's proper rock n' roll beautifully 'distressed', graffiti-bejeweled much loved venue, The Box. A fantastic team in operation here from Glyn, the captain of the good ship Colossus Productions at the helm to Tess, Harry, Stevie P who was recording it all (and interviewing us) for The Cat Radio and not least Adrian on the sound.
This was significantly the best sound we have ever had at this venue on stage, and presumably out front 'in the room', given how good the other acts sounded. If you're in a band, you will know that sometimes you have to deal with terrible sound-scenarios on stage. Imagine singing but not being able to hear your own voice other than perhaps a faint, heavily echoed, fractured effect off the back wall of the venue which is now out of time with the 'live' instruments around you. Imagine hearing only one instrument where you are, harshly drowning everything else out. imagine not being able to hear another instrument that provides vital cues to where you are going next, musically. It shouldn't happen but it still does.
If, like at this event, you have a great sound on stage, it means you can really dig into the sound, really enjoy it, and it gives you the confidence to perform really well. So often, a good performance is so much to do with having a good sound on stage. If it sounds crap on stage, no matter what 'form' you are on as a musician, or how well you might be communicating as a band, you're probably screwed, but the public probably won't why, and will think it's you. I think I've made my point, thanks team - thanks Adrian!
Also in support role was the brilliant James Johnston, sporting a Bob Dylan T shirt, a powerful, gritty vocal and superb songs. Inspiring stuff. Do yourself a favour, go to the bottom of this post and listen to his new EP, Before I Lose My Mind.
We had a go at covering a couple of Tim's songs; You Saved Me (as requested) and Crazies, and although we are not a cover-oriented band, it also felt fitting that the last song we played in 2016 was a tribute to the late, great David Bowie.
My 2nd gig at the 2016 Words and Music Festival, and a chance to do my Joolz Holland, not on the keys, but rather in not only playing some tunes for the assembled pizza/coffee/music lovers, but also to introduce my wildly talented guests, Soulful songsmith Tim Lee, award winning poet Calum Dwyer and the wonderful virtuoso guitar playing and songwriting of Jo Bywater. Do click on their names, above so you don't miss out when they play a gig near you or have a product to listen to/read. Many thanks to festival photographer, Chris Driver, for these photos!
Thanks too, to the lovely, attentive music-loving audience and Enzo themselves, providers of gorgeous coffees and Pizzas, for hosting! Lots of very talented people around at this festival, and in the audiences. I got another lovely tweet from a very talented artist, this time, Hannah White! Thanks for letting me know about this, Hannah, and err, I'm sorry!
@JonnieGitAhhr my children are singing your song "watch out I'll stick you in my poem" 💜💜💜
Em had been absent from the 1st recording session with the band for the current record we (The Blue Yellows) are working on, as she was really quite busy with her newborn baby, Heidi! Now, she was ready though, and her keyboard sounds were the main thing yet to be recorded on the tracks we're laying down with our production maestro, Tim Lee. It all took place in very domestic, relaxed surroundings and went really smoothly.
Em worked quickly, not needing to go over anything too much on keys, pretty impressive really, given how much time she has been out of the band lately. I was there to do some backing vocals with her; she used to work really well together with Hayley when Hayley was in the band and I thought it might help if we were both there to help sort backing vocal harmonies out, in the end, for technical reasons we recorded one at a time on vocals and it wasn't a problem. A really quick, productive session, and two tracks are now sounding really promising. Exciting stuff, we can't than Mr Lee enough for all his hard work!
There wasn't as much waiting around as usual in recording, but I just had time to see some niceness outside.
June 8th 2016 A year on from the Lyceum and I was gigging again at that bonanza of international dance and music that was Lailat Al Raqs 2016, this time at Nantwich Civic Hall. Delighted to be a part of it, many thanks to Majenta for organising the whole thing, and sound-man James.
Pre-show photography with one of the dance troops.
26th June 2016 Our friend, top-songwriter guy Tim Lee kindly offered to do some recording for The Blue Yellows. A large and windswept haunted hall near the Cheshire/Shropshire border was the setting.
An inspirational message had been left for us on the door.
The only downside of the whole thing was that Dave, our poor drummer was really suffering with terrible back issues, lugging equipment about and drumming itself, doesn't help. Get well soon! Em wasn't available yet at this stage, having recently given birth to little Heidi but will add her keyboard parts and any backing vocals sooner or later. :)
Tim Lee in Red, mixing for us, Simon prepares on the bass
while Dave runs through a track up on stage.
The night before, Tim had been preparing the
guide tracks I had made.
