Oxjam, Nantwich.

Sound-checking in the square.
Photo by Andrew Roach
Please see http://www.roachphotography.co.uk/ for more of his work.

Photo by Jonathan White

The paving of Nantwich town square formed the stage for The Blue Yellows. This was an Oxjam event in association with The Words and Music Festival. 

Radio Two favourites, The Reads also played and  a bucket of cash was raised for Oxfam.
A couple of great photos from the event here, by Jonathan white and the extraordinary fish-eye like photo of us sound-checking in the square by Andrew Roach, you can check out more about his photography HERE.

Emma - photo by Jonathan White

Simon - photo by Jonathan White

Dave - photo by Jonathan White

Oxjam by Tram.

Oct 3rd, 2015

My first ever ride on a Manchester tram and I couldn't fault this wonderful service, one arrived as soon as I got to the tram station a couple of minutes after leaving the train at Piccadilly, same on the return, are they always that regular!? Clean, quiet, plenty of seats and cheap. Every town and city should have this.

There was a gorgeous, misty backdrop to the canals and buildings of Manchester from the often high vantage-point of the tram window, quite beautiful really, you could almost forget that the evil ones were arriving in town.

My stop was Chorlton, for the Oxjam Manchester Takeover. A great event and all for a good cause, my gig taking place in a cool and characterful bar, Strange Brew, were I enjoyed a gorgeous pre-gig black coffee (espreso-esque in it's tastiness) and one of the fabulous ales to keep the vocal cords lubricated, during.

I also got to see Richard Lomax perform, brilliant lyrics and tunes and not at all an Ed Sheeran sound-alike, unlike almost every other 'original' songwriter these days!

Talking of Oxjam, it's a good excuse to mention my next gig with The Blue Yellows and another one for the charity, in association with the fantastic Words and Music Festival, Nantwich. Radio Two favourites The Reads will also be performing.

Boxjam V

And so we returned to the scene of the band's very first gig (at the first BJ 4 years ago), and what will probably be my last festival-type gig of the year, Boxjam. All for charity of course, suburb acts including for the first time, the wonderful poet Paul Howard Ellson. We managed to stick around and between us (the whole band) caught Human Condition and Interception, both sounding as superb if not even better than ever, We Are Nomad and Then Alien. All fantastic by all accounts.

Hats off (Fez's off?) to Simon & Tina of Simon J. Newbury Photography fame for doing all the sterling work that must mean many sleepless nights before an event of this size. Another great success and most impotantly, lots of dosh raised for Oxfam and Chrisite's.


Thanks to Liz Wells for the video of a more mellow segment of our set :)

Alternatively, here's a video shot by The Late Selector team, thanks chaps;

Boxjam Phoar! (the show must go on and all that...)

The old show-biz adage "the show must go on" was very much to the fore of my mind as we prepared for this years' Boxjam IV, or perhaps "Boxjam Phoarr!" given the immensely talented bands and soloists playing, literally too many to mention without forgetting to leave out some of the best artists I've seen (ok heard) so, sorry in advance.... I'd pretty much been in bed since the Levenshulme festival (see previous post) with a fever and was still very much within it's grip.

Human Condition were on stage as we loaded in and sounding even better than before, I think Abbie's vocal confidence had grown allowing her to take flight over Mat's mega-keyboard sounds. Then we had the chance to really enjoy Benjamin Bloom, a real musical showman and talented pianist (throwing in plenty of classical references into this pop-oriented set) before our set, and Chimps On Death Row in full-on rockster mode after us. Hayley Strangelove introduced us on stage, herself a "must see" musical phenomenon. Our set was so short by our usual standards that it flu by (get it?) and I managed to enjoy a misery-free half hour just running on adrenaline!

Post-Chimps, I ambled  over to the Acoustic stage to see the wonderful George Borowski (allegedly "Guitar George" of "Sultans Of Swing" fame, which was a piss-take of the band seen by writer Mark Knopfler was it not???... but that's another story). Anyroadup... I'd "seen" George on youtube. It doesn't do him any justice at all. The man is a troubadour, a story-teller and something of a home-spun shaman. Go See!

Mahoosive thanks to Simon and Tina newbury of Simon J. Newbury Photography for organising, raising all the dosh for Oxfam and taking the black and white shots here. Hats off to you! x 




Thanks to Abbie from Human Condition (& "A band, A Badger & a Blog") for this pic.

Em giving it some keys. Photo Tina Newbury.

Hayley giving it some stick. Photo Tina Newbury

Me nearly giving it some puke. Photo Tina Newbury.



Simon Zenning the bass. Photo Tina Newbury.