Sometimes it's a Battle!

Today at the Battle of Nantwich reenactment event,  I had the pleasure of accompanying a brilliant young singer/guitarist Kevin Harrop on the Redshift Radio community stage. 

I've been helping Kevin with his progress on guitar for a good couple of years now and he's doing amazingly well. As if that's not enough, he's also got a really nice voice with good control of both his vocal pitching and guitar playing. The makings of a future star!

The super-efficient sound engineer wasn't expecting an act like this unfortunately(!) so a few minutes of re-arranging the mic set-up (so that Kevin and I shared a vocal mic, plus an additional mic for his guitar). Kevin basically sang and played while I accompanied on a DI'ed guitar plus backing vocals while kneeling down to reach the shared vocal mic! All part of the fun with these sort of events and sound-guy did a great job in turning things around for us. The crowd, though earlyish and a bit chilli, enjoyed the songs, some joining in while children danced, and many made a point of saying afterwards what a talent Kevin is, especially for one so young. Look out for him in the future!

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Some great shots from Saturday's performance at the Battle of Nantwich with young star of the future @kev_2008_ Many thanks to photographer @jonotennis, the #BattleofNantwich group on Facebook and the #nantwicheventsphotography team. #youngmusician #guitarist #singerguitarist #guitarplayer #newmusic #youngtalent #musictuition #guitarteacher #guitarstudent #Nantwich

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Jan 27, 2019 at 12:18pm PST

Ahead of the Set.

Friday, 11th January, 2019

Well, this was a most unusual one from my point of view, really taking the role of a sort of 'play out' artist following an inspiring talk by the North West MEP, Julie Ward. A really interesting talk and Q and A in these incredibly tumultuous political times. 

Technically, there was a somewhat unexpected problem of wearing a Madonna-style headset mic (though not the cone-bra to go with it). I had checked out the venue PA system in a technical meeting earlier in the week and knew that a headset mic was the way we were going with this, however, it wasn't until the actual performance and having to deal with the dynamics in the vocal performance (ie the 'louder and quieter' bits where I would normally move further away from the mic where singing really loudly and so on) where I suddenly had to improvise singing some really high notes that I normally belt out loudly to get them out there, only having to do them relatively quietly.. not easy!

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A bit of an unusual one from my point of view, playing out a special talk from the wonderful #LabourParty #MEP for the North West, @julie4nw. An incredibly inspiring talk and person. Please don't miss the video (pic 4) for some of her ad libbed speech. Reminding us what we could be losing, and why we must fight to #remain in the #EU oh and yes, I was wearing the Madonna headset mic! #brexit #SingerSongwriter #guitarist #guitarplayer #acousticguitar #peavey #peaveyamp #peaveyvypyr #headsetmic #madonna

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Jan 11, 2019 at 3:36pm PST

Julie Ward, MEP



Earlier in the week...

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A #techspec meeting with the nice folk at #wistastonmemorialhall for Friday's gig following the talk/Q&A with #LabourParty MEP @julie4nw, who has worked so hard within the EU for women and other repressed groups around the world... after which, I'm playing a few tunes. A bit different for a gig, & should be a really interesting night. It's a @rockforeurope event. #stage #remain #livemusic #bettertogether #nobrexit #singersongwriter #guitarist #tunes #songs #folkrock #altfolk #newsongs #stopbrexit

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Jan 7, 2019 at 11:43am PST

Paradise Sting

As a result of my new access to GarageBand, I've ended up playing with the new features and have come up with a brand new album of instrumental, ambient, sci-fi loops and sounds based on an imagined adventure. I'm releasing it under the artist name Kitten Jynx as it's so different from everything else I do, so as to reduce confusion rather than cause it.
It's out today and you can listen or download it here: (Track 1 requires good speakers or headphones).

Organising a €{$$ up in a brewery!

December 7th, 2018

*What could possibly go wrong, as they say!!? Well..

*The previous venue owner mistakenly deleted the event (which she was still tagged into- my fault d'oh) meaning that 50 or so folk who said were going or interested were informed the event was cancelled...
*At the end of one song, the 'dramatic ending' involved me falling into the guitar rack and symbols behind me!



Other than that it was a lovely night playing for Rickety Wireless, Sean and Jacqui at Tom's Tap and Brewhouse were great hosts who were friendly and really looked after us.

Thanks to all who survived the cancellation notice and came along!

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Played a really fun gig tonight at @tomstapandbrew with #RicketyWireless. Thank you to everyone who came along! 😘 #gig #musician #band #brewery #Crewe #trio #poprock #concert #craftbeer #Craftale #craftbrewery #cider #gin #funtimes #funtimefriday

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Dec 7, 2018 at 4:34pm PST

Because of the working environment of a brewery,
 and the stage being immediately in front of the big, brewing casks, a
lot of the general, malty crud from the floor had trasfered onto
my effects pedals, warrenting a good clean the next day.

We name this ship...

It's getting closer (March 1st, to be precise), the new album I'm making with The Blue Yellows has been recorded, was mastered this very week (see insta' post below), CD distributors and printers have been contacted with issues discussed, as as I write, artwork is being tweaked to fit the necessary criteria. The plan is to get a batch of CDs ready by January to send to out reviewers, magazines, bloggers and so on as the serious players are mostly focused on reviewing material 6 weeks or so before release. The pressure's on.

We are also planning on doing a facebook-live broadcast in the near future, answering any of your questions on the album, or anything surrounding it. So feel free to let me know ANY of your questions on this, don't worry about it being too daft or not knowing enough about recording or music, anything at all - fire away here or on social media! 

Questions so far include; "Will The Lorax be on it?" and "Is the album a girl or a boy?"...

What's your Question?

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Tonight, I picked up the final version of all the tracks for the forthcoming album with my gang #TheBlueYellows mastered by production maestro at #ColossusProductions, #GlynSutton! 4 tracks on here are produced by @timleesongs and this marks the final process on the musical side of things other than uploading/sending to the CD people and our music distributers for online and streaming services. Tweaking of artwork is now well underway. Pic 2 is lil', tiny portion of the front cover art! All excitement here at BYs Towers! 😉 #newalbum #newmusic #production #mastering #mastertracks #CD #CDMaster #streaming #downloads #musicdistribution #band #musicians #newrelease #coverart #albumcover #musicart #difficult2ndalbum

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Nov 22, 2018 at 11:08am PST

Some different moments in the recording of this album..