Transmission Belper!

Always lovely to get comments like this, thank you to one Lizzy Sherlock at #BelperGoesGreenFest :) pic.twitter.com/F23o1awxQq

— Jonathan Tarplee (@JonnieGitAhhr) June 2, 2018

After a shattering couple of days with not much sleep (for reasons I won't delve into here), as well as being a natural night-owl, perhaps at my perceptive and physical peak between around 10pm and 3am (I hate going to bed at night as much as I hate leaving it in the morning), I find traveling to daytime gigs particularly exhausting.

However, as soon as I got to the sight at Belper Goes Green Festival, my spirit and energy levels were lifted (as well as the coffee kicking in!).
What a fantastically chilled-out, relaxed, friendly feeling festival this is. My first time here, I also got a nice 45  minute solo set, enough time to really get into it. The PA system I was going through was really unusual (and really loud!), run by a guy who makes wind-turbines, I really should have asked him more about it.
I also had time to enjoy some of the other great music at the event including the outstanding songwriter Lucy Milford... do check her stuff out, beautiful). I'd love to come back here with The Blue Yellows one year, great stuff.

Incidentally, this being a green festival is a good opportunity to mention that, as someone who travels to so many gigs and rehearsals by train, feeling as if I practically live on trains in fact, it's heartening to see so many other musicians, and even entire bands plus all their gear, traveling this way these days.

1st stop in Belper; double espresso.

Jonathan Tarplee solo album, Attachment Theories - OUT NOW!

"..this observational journey, sometimes reflective, sometimes questioning and sometimes well, sometimes capable of taking you another place for a second or two..an appealing and engaging record."  - FATEA RECORDS MAGAZINE.

"Full of melody & honesty"  NIGEL STONIER.

Click on the image of the album above to download the album for as little as £4 or get the CD posted to you (plus the download) for £5.

The album also features the musical brilliance of Daniel J. Logan, Tim Lee, Hayley Strangleove, Paul Senior, Dayve Dean & The Blue Yellows.

Some new kit for band gigs!

Recently, my thoughts have turned to equipment, especially since last week when I played solo at Alexander's Chester,  my nylon acoustic's battery ran out. Doh! Luckily the sound-man had his wits about him and came to the rescue with a mic.

Since that experience, I couldn't then couldn't help myself when I came across some bargains in the local music shops;

I've been using a wah in BYs gigs & wanting a volume pedal,
this, from Snakey Jake's does both in one (without taking up extra space on my rather full little pedal-board).

A (probably) early 80s Japanese Gibson junior copy from R&B Music. I call her "River"

Band rehearsal or band practice or what?

To me a rehearsal is where you have your songs and music ready, and you have a run-through of each song or perhaps even a whole or partial set to prepare yourself/the band for an upcoming gig or tour. Practice is what you do, usually on your own, to get your fingers used to going to new places (in the case of guitar), trying new things out, sometimes by concentrating and sometimes by de-concentrating,  letting your mind wander and freeing yourself to noodle randomly around the fret-board in new ways, and always to keep moving yourself forward as a musician. Sometimes such noodling leads to new songs, sometimes it doesn't. 

Some rehearsals are not really rehearsals so much as everyone working out parts to new material, which is what the next few weeks with The Blue Yellows will entail before we start to rehearse again before setting out to perform some new live shows. 
Songwriting is another story, perhaps for another post one day.
Anyhow, my last "rehearsal" with the band was not really a rehearsal as much of the time was spent listening to some rough mixes of stuff we had recorded at T.J Lee's home studio last week, listening over several times while we discussed how we would like a final mix to sound so we could send the man himself some comments, then we just played a few songs just for the fun of it! We also has a special guest in the form of Casper, Em's baby. Casper seems really fascinated by music and always seems keen to join Emma on the piano, as well as having had a bash on her ukulele in our "No Tobacco" video. Similarly, on this occasion he fixated on my guitar for a while and got some thrills from making some noises with it. That thrill  never goes away! I'll be surprised if Casper doesn't turn out to be an accomplished muso like his mum and granddad!