Too Many Things and Six Strings

It's been ages since I've written and I apologise for that. I blame an equal mix of being busy and being lazy. Terrible excuses. The things we don't get round to doing define us as much as the things we do... So what have I been up to?! Well, a whole load of this and that! I've been re-recording songs properly for my new solo album. It's a little laborious when you work on these things just by yourself. The ears get tired, the will gets lazy. Instead of finding that sweet spot for the guitar sound through the proper setup, you fudge one out using the built in amps, but let's face it, that will never sound as good as the real thing. For now my beautiful girls are with me so there's no time for recording, it takes a back seat till later in September, but it's very nearly ready. Of course the next question will be which songs make it on there. There are four of which only two are needed and depending on the day I choose a different two. I'll get the

So, I have guitar lessons when I can make it, so not too often, and I only started this year. It's fairly easy for me because he plays something, I play it back. Most the time my fingers do what I want and go where I want and it's rarely too difficult to learn the new patterns, although theory does manage to befuddle me still... It's only when I teach Katie bass I realise quite how much seasoned guitarists take for granted. The fingers pressure, the vibrato, bending, string skipping is all fairly second nature. Alternate picking a doddle. How could this ever have been difficult?! So, I decided to learn to play left handed. Only I can't be bothered to restring anything so I'm learning upside down left handed. There is a logic to this of sorts. I am actually left handed myself but in my yoof never realised left handed guitars existed. They didn't in the shops back then, and t'interweb didn't exist to tell me anything either. In short, I'm learning u

After a long day of work with 3 Bophins the studio is finished! Although decorating your downstairs toilet with two guitar amps might seem very cool, it's not the most practical! My long suffering girlfriend Katie put up with "studio in every corner of the house" very well, but enough was enough, it had to get done and so yesterday we worked all day and boom! Done! There's still bits of studio in the house but Katie no longer needs to choose alternative routes to get anywhere! Two initial projects for the studio: first The Bophins will be doing a new recording of our first album, this time called "X-Ray Reaction" just for fun, and I will complete my second solo album which is oh so nearly there, just a hop skip and as jump away. One of the hardest things when you're doing a solo album is knowing when to say "that's it" because obviously the next song you write will be the best song you've ever written, but the fact is I now have eno

Not the band unfortunately, but literal this time. Today we said our farewells to our old friend JP. To avoid confusion I should point out which JP because it seems I know a few, this was Jonathan Prior bruv (as he always called everyone). By their very nature funerals are always sad and it was nice to see a lot of people who remembered JP fondly. My old friend and oddball drummer Duncan was there as well, he was the person who introduced me to JP in the first place anyway. I have to be honest, I'm not sure what I'm really writing about here, but what struck me and always strikes me with these things was that at 39 JP believed as we mostly do that he had a long life ahead of him yet to live. Even when my father died last year after a brief battle with cancer being much older he had a list of regrets. JP didn't get the chance to list regrets because his was sudden, but as with all of us there would have been many things he planned to do but never got round to. I know

So yesterday was the Daventry music festival. It was a great day really well organised and a credit to Daventry and its music scene which still feels in its infancy. People like Adam from AW Promotions putting on regular nights and this festival are really starting to get people interested in music from Daventry and the local area. That can only be a good thing. It was a blisteringly hot day and our first set was on the stage outdoors in the middle of town. I've played hot gigs before obviously but this was the first time I felt like my feet were going to melt, the stage being black and in direct sunlight just turned into a foot oven!! When I was in LA I had the chance to talk to the Line 6 developers and when they told me that the Helix screen was specially designed to be readable in direct sunlight I told them it wasn't. I'd used it for an open air summer gig and I couldn't read anything on it at all. Yesterday was the same, nothing visible at all but luckily I kno

Well, I have been very quiet. Part of this is because of my other job which has given me very little spare time, part of this is because for my other job I'm having to test and iPhone which doesn't have the Blogger app and basically makes writing it more difficult, and part of it is because my physio told me not to play guitar for a few weeks to let me shoulder recover! Due to all of the above I've not really been giving much thought as to what I can write. Oh, and the election is over in the UK... sort of... so I'm pretty sure I can now stay away from politics on here!! I'll do a proper post soon, but just a little update really. The studio is coming on, the old floor is out, the old wall down, some of the new wall is in, and the house is packed full of studio kit. As is always the case though, I really want to be recording songs now that I can't!!! I've been listening to the work for my new solo album and I'm pretty happy with it now, but the song