The BIG Day Out, just across the road.

Memphis, Chicago, California, Birmingham, Andalusia, the North West of England.

Sometimes we need reminding that if you are a music fan, and you live in the North West of England you are in an incredibly lucky minority of the World's population to live in one of the globe's capitals of popular music.
Even though here in Nantwich, I'm in a relatively countryfied, indeed gentrified backwater, if I stand on my narrowboat roof, I can actually see Manchester, and Liverpool is just as near (or even nearer if train fares are anything to go by). Both iconic cities on this planet's musical map. Birmingham, the birth place of all things metal, is less than half a day's bike ride away (if you're serious about bike-riding anyway). Some of the world's biggest music names on this little planet of ours will play within an hour or two travelling time of here every time they tour the world and we should NEVER EVER take that for granted.
I remember an interview with one of my musical heroes Flea (he of The Red Hot Chili Peppers fame) recently, saying that it's pretty tough playing in Manchester, England and even in their home town of Los Angeles, as such cities are so blessed with mega-heroes of music playing in these places week in and week out, there can be a tendency to for audiences to feel quite blasé about it, whereas if they play in Mexico, or a country in South America, the crowds are absolutely wild with excitement; dancing, crying and singing every word at the top of their voices and in a two hour joyous state of pure ecstasy in their one and only chance, in their one and only city in which they can ever see their heroes.

DON'T. TAKE. IT. FOR. GRANTED.

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.

Tim Lee in great acoustic form,

The ever-awesome Baxter!

The expanded line-up and even bigger sounding Photo Booth Smile.

I played a lot more than is on my surliest here!

Many Thanks to Tim for this photo!

Into 'The Groove' at The Boat That Rocks.

May 23rd, 2015; The Boat That Rocks Festival.

Much as me and my fellow Blue Yellows were sad, though not surprised to see Hayley go (she will always be part of the band-family and will be welcome to join us on backing vocals and a cow-bell or tambourine any time), we have been rehearsing with our new drummer Dave 'The Groove' Coomer. I hope he doesn't mind me calling him this!

Dave is a very spontanious and experimental musician with a broad background in drumming from brass bands, heavy rock and everything in between, and who in his own words, is 'not afraid to hit the drums'!  Dave, just as importantly to the rest of us, is a super-nice guy and a bit of a big kid so he fits in very well!

Rehearsals are one thing but this was the real thing and Dave was on superlative form and I feel now that as we've done the BYs thing with him in public, he is a fully fledged bandee! In fact, what Dave brings to the band is more than just backing us, he has brought a new energy and sounds with him, and we are finding distinct ways of playing with these novel sonic forces that are now in the ether. It's a great feeling, a new band in a sense - exciting.

The gig in question was 'The Boat That Rocks' Festival organised by the lovely chaps at Middlewich Music. While traveling to the town, the organisers were contacting me to see if we could go on at a different time due to some last-minute changes to the running order, but this looked really unlikely as we had arranged a tight schedule for everything to be in place to be ready for our set time already, as well as expecting people from afar afield as Wigan who also had plenty of other things to fit in over the bank holiday weekend. Such is the way of festival-type events, I hope they didn't take too much umbrage at my responses here. Another understandably typical issue of these kind of occasions is lack of time and space to set up, though I think it was helped by Mr Coomer's choice to use the plug-in-and-play electronic drum kit which he has been using at band rehearsals so much. I also should have brought an extension lead for my mini pedal board, the lack of which meant I had to stick with one-guitar-sound-per-song which was a major compromise for me, but I'll remember for next time!

This all turned out to be minor details anyway as the main thing is it was an event with a great atmosphere,we played well, seemed to entertain all the lovely friendly folk who turned up and we had a ball. We shortened the set by two or three songs in recognition that things were running late by now, but managed to catch a great set by Photo Booth Smile and the talented Chris Tavener (see video) who performed while we set-up behind him! 

Big thanks to Middlewich Music who did a sterling job in the very considerable organising that such things require, at times on-the-hoof, and who not only held it all together but made for a great event and atmosphere throughout. Most importantly, thanks to all those who turned up, sang along and jigged about! 



We played Farmer John ( Harris, Don F. / Terry Jr, Dewey cover), Big Low Copper Moon, Killing Me, Love is the Answer, The Owl in the Willow, Where the Sky Meets the Sea, These Boots are made for Walking (Lee Hazlewood cover), No Tobacco, No Jesus.