An old friend of ours and long time fan recently commended us for our improvements in the last year, noting that we'd become a well-oiled machine playing really good music, as opposed to the "passionately ramshackle" quintet that get things horribly wrong but have fun along the way. It seems that ever since our debut film, How NOT to be in a Band, was released we've turned a corner and almost distanced ourselves from a reputation that was starting to stick. It's true that ever since we changed the venue hours before the Cornish film premiere - the latest in a year of madcap decisions - we've run a far smoother course. Since then, gigs have been plentiful and we've played pretty well. We've been punctual and adaptable and almost professional. We toured in Europe, filling every venue and came home with a profit! We then ran a successful fundraising campaign to make our second album, again crucially coming in above budget. We then went and secured the services of one of the folk world's top producers and all this without a wrong turn, puncture, venue change or forgotten instrument! Long gone are the days of leaving chainsaws on the train and fashioning branches into mic stands. "You should be called The Good Folk" suggested our friend as he sipped a cup of of Labrador tea. Though a second name change in three years would definitely be a return to the old days and the old ways, losing fans and falling off the ladder and sliding back down the snakes.
There is still room for misadventure, we're not adversed to it, we won't temp fate by saying we've turned a corner indefinitely. Things can still go terribly wrong; Murphy's Law could yet strike! Belan Hall, where we are recording the album could be under 5 feet of snow, it being high in the mountains of mid-Wales after all. We could well lose a day getting snow chains on our tyres and finally pull into the old shooting lodge to discover the pipes have frozen and there's no water. Back down the mountain and we'll stock up on a hundred bottles of Volvic and finally we're ready for creative lockdown but progress is slow; the drummer has a sinking cold, the piano player's forgotten his piano and we're still unsure of the structures of these brand new songs we've written! After Day 3 we're starting to smell because washing with freezing cold mineral water isn't appealing and we're behind schedule because it takes us till midday to summon up the courage to get out of bed because temperatures have dropped to below zero and this old building doesn't have heating! By 2pm we've lit both fires and the place is finally warm enough to begin work but we're struggling with all these new songs, it's becoming apparent that by writing a brand new album we've lost our style and our stamp is yet to find it's way onto these shiny new tunes. We start arguing whether we should have stuck to the songs we knew, there being 10 that we play that aren't on The Sweet Release, surely it would have been easier doing them? But then they are very dated and we need new material! But the material is perhaps too new! We should have met in the middle! Jazz Louis, an old song of ours, and often our best performer and match winner at many gigs, and who was very unlucky not to make The Sweet Release, is now furious at being overlooked for this album too! He's getting violent and throwing his trumpet around the room, and threatening to walk out on the band!
Day 4 and the drummer's feeling better but I've lost my voice and the bass players not managed to get out of bed and it's almost dinner time! Not that it matters because the producer and the piano player have gone off in search of a piano anyway! Day 5; and after fresh snowfall we take some time out from recording and go tobogganing, but the guitar players gets stuck in a tree after being thrown from his sleigh and it's nightfall by the time we get him down! Day 6 and we've somehow managed to get most of the album down, all except the solos, and then Cat breezes in with her cello ready to record her parts but the smell of 6 unwashed men is enough to make her faint! Day 7, the last day, and we're running out of time for solos and there's pandaemonium as egos clash left, right and centre. As night draws in we're ready to have a listen back over the weeks work. We all pretend to like it, smile, pat ourselves on the back and slide back down the mountainside. "It sounds rubbish!" says Jazz Louis as we leave. A few weeks later the producer calls us and explains that he wants to take his name off the recordings in order to protect his reputation! We release the album to a half empty school hall, failing to sell a single copy. We split up. Each of us vowing to go solo!
After a year's absence, with not one solo show announced (apart from the guitar player strumming some flamenco at a friend's art exhibition in Clapton-in-Gordano) we do a comeback tour, this time remembering the piano but forgetting the player! We release a new film, How NOT to make an Album!, documenting our experiences up at Belan Hall and once again we're hailed as a quirky, slapdash quintet 'whose reputation for disorganisation precedes them!'
"Do you miss those days?" says my friend, still nursing his Labrador tea. "In a way I do" I reply. "But we needed to change, we needed a few right turns, we'd never have achieved what we did last year if we'd have carried on the route we were taking..." He smiled. "The Good Folk, think about it!"
The year began, like so many, at the end of the land; down by the stones and the sea, in our little world, our little corner of Britain. But unlike so many, I woke early, and sober, having for the first time in four years not played at New Year's Eve. It was a strange day, I had my son, hence the early rise, and walking down to the park in the crisp sunlight, I realised it was the first New Year's Day I can remember having. Or at least being outside in daylight!
My bandmates, all spread across the country, in various states of disrepair, were as far from me as then as the roots from the leaves. You could close your eyes and imagine a year without The Odd Folk. I could have walked away from the stresses and strains of music and become a wandering poet, a painter, a something else, an anything else. As the sun hit my face on that brand new year, with my son's small hand in mine as we walked along the stones of Newlyn beach, the optimism (which had been nullified by years of hangovers) was transcendent!
And then the phone rang.
"That London gig has confirmed for the 9th!" it was the guitar player in a gruff voice. He hung up. And that was that. The Odd Folk was back!
JANUARYwas therefore transformed from an empty month of fearful hibernation into a mad dash to the capital to play at The Underbelly, a classy music bar in Hoxton Square. I remember little about this. An old Geordie friend of mine showed up and a clutch of our loyal London followers but it was sparse and London was surprisingly quiet. Or maybe not surprisingly, it was a thursday night in the first week of the year! We fled quickly. Back to Bristol; to the desperate cold. We returned to type, or at least tried to, but hibernation didn't come easy, administration reared it ugly head, festival bookings trickled in and we couldn't keep afloat. It was unchartered territory. We were unprepared for the progress we'd made and without a diary we were double booking ourselves left, right and centre. As the waves subsided and the admin storm calmed we finally found some solace in log fires, yogi teas and early nights. Rock stars! But it didn't come easy and the early scramble to London had left us unhinged. "Why did we do that gig anyway?" I asked the guitar player as we sat knitting by the fire. "Cause that manager bloke was going to come!" he said. "Oh... and did he?" I'd forgotten all about this. "No." he smiled. Standard.
FEBRUARY started with a bang! We had a blinder at The Golden Lion, Bristol, and garnered the largest collection pot they'd ever had! The month then became everything January wasn't. We retreated into the land of Long-John's and watched frost-flakes on the windows. We set up an Odd Folk online calendar in a desperate attempt to minimise the endless round-robin emails trying to work out who is free for what and when. People quickly blocked out the the rest of the month and withdrew further into their wooly jumpers. We didn't see each other again until March. But behind the scenes the wheels kept rolling. Plans were afoot for two premieres of our debut film How NOT to be in a Band, and festival bookings kept trickling in. In other news the piano player shot to the top of the paintball seller list and the guitar player had an offer accepted on a house.
Early MARCHwas frantic. The upcoming premiere's were booked but the film was still going and back and forth through a succession of edits and the bass player was working overtime on an audio sound mix while organising the grading of the film and keeping his normal work hours, not to mention boxing practice! We finally walked the red carpet at The Cube in Bristol to a packed crowd of well wishers. It was a beautiful event and very
Poster by Mae Voogd
moving watching our stories unfold on the big scene. We took the film down to Cornwall a week later and in true Odd Folk style changed the venue the night before the premiere! We eventually opened at The Space Gallery to a very generous crowd and played on a ramshackle stage made of pallets and church pews. The month ended with a nice little Cornish Wedding at our second home The Gurnard's Head followed by a freezing photo-shoot with our photographer Samye Hatfield, high on the moors of Mulfra. At the time we were so chilled we couldn't see how there were any positives in this; he had us running through the white grasses in an icy wind, but the results were surprisingly effective!
APRIL, "The cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain" TS Eliot certainly didn't rate April, and neither did The Odd Folk. We pitted our wits against fellow Bristol stompers, Poor Old Dogs at their home turf, The Stag and Hounds, and then promptly retired from music for the remaining 25 days. It was a strategic abstinence, however, as May was shaping up to be as actioned packed as a band of our limitations can handle. With 9 gigs in 3 weeks, including 5 on one weekend, we sanctioned them with their very own title, The May Day Tour!, hoped for the best, expected the worst, and prepared to take what we were given!
We were given a real mixed bag! MAYbegan in Wales at The Oak in Welshpool, and let's just say, to summarise in football terms, it was a score draw. Next on the tour saw us pull into Brighton for a gig at the much hyped but terribly run, Latest Music Bar. We took a heavy defeat and fled the next morning to London. That night at The Gladstone we notched up an impressive victory in a welcome return to form. With confidence high we travelled to Prima Arts Centre and
recorded another triumph. Next up was the Cornish leg of out little tour, we drew a warm-up practice match at The Knut before storming Don't Wake The Fish at the Gurnards Head Spring Ale Festival. Over confident, we slipped up (quite literally) in a flooded Pirates World Record Attempt and were easily beaten. Sven's Wedding was another score draw and we ended the month pretty solidly at Dartington Hall, though the honours were even. JUNE was very quiet. After the busy months of March and May, we'd afforded ourselves fallow time in April and June. This happened quite by chance and isn't a result of careful planning, though it is a better system than accepting random gigs all over the place all the time, and one we will look to preserve. I turned 30 again, and after struggling with the extra year, I decided to abandon it and freeze my age! Where did that year go!? The guitar player was still trying to complete the deal to buy his house but kept running into problems, most notably a wall holding the house up was going to fall down and result in a landslide. He was still optimistic, however, that the deal could and would go through! As the month came to a head, a very special opportunity was presented to us and from the most unlikely source. It turns out The Big Stomp Off hadn't been quite as uneventful as we had thought. It just so happens that very night landed us a live slot on BBC1 in front of an estimated audience of 13 million. Gay and giddy we drove to a secret location for the grand final of The Great British Bake Off and tried to play our hearts out but the stop/start nature of TV made it incredibly staged and very difficult to play. Still, confident that we'd get at least a song on air we networked our way around the show, giving our CD to Mel and Sue, and swaggered back to Bristol blowing our own trumpets, or rather blowing them in private as we were sworn to secrecy until the show aired.
"Hot JULYbrings cooling showers, Apricots and Gillyflowers". Well it certainly was hot, especially towards the end of the month as we arrived at Port Eliot Festival under the fiercest sun I can remember in this green island of ours. Thousands of festival goers plunged into the river Tiddy to cool off before cramming in to watch us play a handsome little set with our bass dep, Lucas
the piano player poses with the £1000!
Drinkwater! The start of July saw us take our first £1000 gig, an eccentric American Wedding in Mevagissey where we were requested to play the Jungle book as the bride and groom walked out into the Cornish sunshine. The month's middle saw us at The Wild Tribe Festival in Plymouth which was anything but wild. Wildly unattended if anything! Even the drummer didn't attend. He broke down on the motorway. Still we ploughed on as a four-piece and even got a few kids dancing. We didn't stay around, as soon as we wrapped we got a wriggle on and hit the road. Like Jack.
AUGUST, although only seeing two gigs, felt as busy as May. Two festivals, on weekend's 2 and 4, near killed us. It was our first foray onto the mainstream UK circuit and boy you'd need stamina if you played at all 40 of the major ones! Boomtown Fair, a pop up city for the weird and wonderful, we played Uptown at the Floating Lotus stage and wrapped to a healthy crowd, even if we opened to a near empty Chai Tent. We stayed on for the weekend, listening to an array of folk greats; Bellowhead, Eliza Carthy and Johnny Flynn, and steering well clear of the twisted hedonistic Downtown part of the site where seasoned 'munters' roamed around the smog and grime and techno blasted from every tent. We returned home to HQ physically and mentally exhausted; a combination of mild revelry and the reality of an unknown folk band playing at a major festival; all the lugging of your heavy gear across numerous fields and storing it in the back of friend's trucks. And sometimes when the piano player has gone awol and the guitar player's arriving on a different day, you have to make multiple trips carrying bass amps and floor toms, with mandolins strapped around your neck and violins wedged under your arm! And it's 30 degrees without a breeze in sight and last night's mud has turned to glue. And all you're getting is £60 expenses and some warm Carlsberg. Oh the joys! Shambala was a different kettle of fish. Smaller, better run, cleaner. We drove in and set up camp. Our gear was taken in a buggy and stored at the Compass Stage and we were left to roam the spacious green fields.
SEPTEMBER was easier. We opened the month with a wedding at The Old Sawmills and closed the month in London at Merge Festival and very little else happened, apart from all the boring admin that eventually becomes all the fun stuff. It would be great if all we did was fun stuff but sometimes you've got to write a blog for all you people! ;-)
OCTOBER was the best month of my time in The Odd Folk, and considering this band has been rolling on for almost 4 years, that's 48 months it's bettered. Travelling around Holland and Belgium with my boys and playing our songs to such fantastic support has been the highlight of my time. Better than supporting Johnny Flynn at The Guildhall or holding a copy of the Sweet Release in my hands, The Cheese and Tulip Tour was top of the pile for me. Seeing and speaking to our lovely fans in the low countries and feeling so welcomed by all the venues we played at was a very humbling experience. And all captured in our new film, due out later this year! It was a blind leap that paid off. From our farewell at the The Greenbank to playing at the smart Swamp Studios. Our gorgeous gig in Amsterdam's Cafe Langeries and the biggest crowd Antwerp's Cafe Den Hopsack had ever had, and it was on a monday night! Back in a darkening England suffering from the shortest autumn I can remember, we played a final giggle down at Hope's Place in the windy wilds of the Lizzard Peninsula.
NOVEMBER was the biggest month we've ever had and we did nothing. No gigs. No rehearsals. We didn't even meet up. Hmmm...? How does that work you may ask? Well, what we did do was launch a campaign to raise funds for our second album to be recorded this February by prestigious folk producer, Andy Bell. And it worked! You guys, our friends and fans, pledged in excess of £5K! That was crucial to our survival and progress and we're immensely grateful :-)
DECEMBER was largely quiet with a huge peak of activity at the month's end. We returned to Penzance for our annual festive party, Merry Folking Christmas, which was another complete sell-out and which saw tickets selling on the black market to desperate fans who'd missed the boat. We had touts selling for more than retail value. In some cases double the price! What a way to end the year, a year that's seen us play 29 gigs in 4 different Countries. A year of firsts; Arts Centre's, Mainland Europe, the BBC, Major Festivals, Fundraising! And a year of the usual familiarity; mad-cap dashing across the country, good old Cornish knees up's, last minute venue changes, awol piano players. The long way round. But we get there in the end, just ask the guitar player who finally completed on his house after 11 months of haggling!
The campaign's at its halfway point and we're 40% funded which doesn't take a professor in mathematics to work out that we're slightly behind schedule. Statistics do indicate, however, that most projects accelerate towards the end, receiving the majority of their funding in the last week! So we're all still hopeful. So much so that the guitar player's decided this is a good time for a holiday in The Gambia! The bass player, still swanning around in Thailand, checks in occasionally, most notably to update us on random Thai shopkeepers who have pledged money towards the album! The drummer, so diligent at the start has been consumed by work commitments and vanished from social media. Thank god the piano player has rallied around and jumped on the blag-wagon, swapping paintball sales for album sales! Without him I'd have lost hope, withdrawn the pledges and jumped on a Tall Ship to the Dominican Republic to meet our most recent blog reader! That got me thinking, this medium could be our largest tool. The statistics on here are frightening. If I could somehow appeal to all of you, all 3657 of you, we'd be home and dry and cooking chestnuts by the fire! We only need you to pledge 54p and we'd be complete! That's loose change gathering dust in the Piggy Bank! Cheaper than a chocolate bar! Even if only half of you did, it would work out as £1.09, thats cheaper than a loaf of bread! Of course, you only qualify for rewards by donating more than a tenner so we'd have to think of some nice recompense! It is wonderful to dig into the data on this blog. As I mentioned above, we welcomed out first reader from the Dominican Republic the other week, and a scroll down the list sees entries from Morocco, Lithuania, India and The Philippines. It's heartening to see how far our adventures have been traveling. The other day I checked the leader board and saw a big serge by Turkey and thought how on earth are there 43 computers viewing any one blog entry? I only know 1 Turk! Back to the Blag! Back to busy days and nights spent wondering how best to get inside your pockets! It almost sounds wrong when put like that. We really do understand the current pinch and have been so overwhelmed by the support thus far. It's amazing to think we've garnered as much as we have. On blind faith. Being in this position makes you realise how far we've come in many ways. Formed a band, wrote a few songs, stomped our feet and told silly stories, crammed into tiny pubs, old barns, village halls, and any alcove that would have us. Self-funded our first album, increased the lineup, upgraded to stages and festivals, started touring and making films and writing about our adventures and here we are, convincing you all to give over your pocket money so we can continue... and the amazing thing is that you are!
And we need more! So keep digging. This is a call to arms! Tell your friends. We need those chocolate bars and loaves of bread! And we promise if we are successful we will put our heart, soul, boots and all in the new album. And we'll remember your kind names. They will be immortalised forever in The Odd Folklore!
Well we're well and truly on the blag now. Locked into a Kickstarter Campaign to raise money for our next album. If all goes according to plan we can raise the required thousands, pile into the old renault 4, drive into the mountains of mid-wales to the old shooting lodge at Belan Hall and with the help of Andy Bell capture the songs that will make a brand new record. So far, we're slightly behind schedule but still blissfully optimistic. Though I did realise today that starting such a crucial campaign when the bass player's in Thailand on holiday, the guitar player doesn't use social media and the piano player's forgetfulness takes pride of place, leaves me and the drummer as the sole pushers of this project. Plus the fact that Christmas is approaching and pockets are understandably tight at this time of year. I am also incredibly busy myself with work commitments. So perhaps, upon reflection, we're not so blissfully optimistic. We're secretly petrified. The campaign is after all, an 'all or nothing'. If you fail to raise the required sum, you must return everything you've garnered. Although this isn't a perfect time to launch this project, it is the best of a bad bunch. December is too near to Christmas and pockets are closed. January, not only are pockets closed but doors are closed too! February, well, they say February is a suitable month for dying, as all around is dead. So I imagine running a kickstarter campaign then is just as futile. And I am off again in March with work commitments. So here we are; one week in with nearly a thousand raised. 3 weeks left and a further 4 to raise. It is, as Alex Ferguson says, Squeaky bum time!
On paper it looks easy. We need 500 people to pledge £10, which will effectively buy them their album in advance. Now we have some 700 official fans on facebook, and many more who, like the guitar player, shy away from social media. We also have a large readership on this blog; 802 of which are in Holland alone. So we do have the numbers. Large numbers donating small sums and everybody is happy! We get funded and you don't loose money. We record a new album and you receive it in the post. We get to continue making music and you get to keep seeing us and reading about us. Surely this is a match made in heaven! I'm feeling more optimistic now. On paper at least. I'll phone the piano player and remind him what month it is and teach the guitar player how to use facebook. And together we'll all push. We're ready for a new baby; we've a wealth of new material and you all must be getting sick of The Sweet Release by now ;) Please help us... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1156213809/the-odd-folk-new-album Faithfully The Odd Folk
"We need a disaster!" we all shouted in unison walking down The Rokin towards an oncoming tram! Tempting fate, courting disaster, call it what you want, we found ourselves in the bizarre situation where we'd welcome a catastrophe! "Perhaps we'll have a puncture when we get back to the van?" said the piano player, "or better still, it will have rolled into the canal!" "Yeah that'd be cool!" said the bass player. The tram was getting nearer. "Don't bell the cat just yet boys, we've still got another whole day to get through" the guitar player reasoned. I thought about pushing the piano player in front of the tram but realised that murder was perhaps a little bit more than we were after. Sorry I killed the pianist but it made a great a film! So the tram sped past and the impending danger receded away and we were left dodging cyclists instead. It's true that everything that could go right had gone right. It was the complete opposite of the last film we made where we left the guitar at home, fashioned mic stands out of branches, slept in piano cases, took every wrong turn possible, played to sparse audiences and made a large financial loss. This time we forgot nothing, arrived on time (sometimes early!), had good healthy crowds, didn't lose anything, sold buckets of CD's and came home with a profit. This was a reverse of fortunes. If the last film was called How NOT to be in a Band;The Wrong way round,this should be called How to be in a Band; The Right way round! (( I've been in two minds about writing this blog as I thought it could spoil the film a little but I want to convey the gratitude we have towards the people that made it possible and those that supported us. Not that I think that the film will leave those details out, but sometimes you can express things better in writing than playacting. ))
It was 4.30am on saturday morning and the guitar player was knocking on the front door. Not surprisingly I didn't hear it. My flatmate eventually let him in, flashing the drummer on her the way down the stairs as she hastily rushed on a top. I woke. The bass player woke. The piano player woke then fell away again. The cameraman arrived, busying himself with a goPro on the van. We did some contents checks in the kitchen, even though we were on the ball and it was the piano player who needed it most. We woke the piano player again. We left just before 5am, striding Beatles-esque from the house to the van. It was to become our walk of the weekend. The drummer and guitar player, pilot and co-pilot, steered the wagon into the sunrise. I slept by the window. The boys played ukulele's in the back. We hit Folkestone on time, driving onto the Eurostar train which resembled a silver cigar case. It creaked a lot. "I doesn't look very safe" I said. "I hope it can withstand the water!". I took the wheel in Calais; we guessed all the capitals in Europe, then the world, then all the American States.
We arrived in Raamsdonk at The Swamp Studios and were greeted by Jo van Strien and Stephen van Haestregt, the owner and programmer of this smart recording studio/music venue. Inside was a decent stage, well-lit; a bar in the corner well-stocked, and upstairs were 6 little beds well-made. We spent a while sound checking, plugging into the tidy sound system, our ears purring at the quality. We were so welcomed. Made to feel like stars. Downstairs was free beers. Upstairs was bowls of soup. 'Vegetable soup' that was full of meat! People started arriving. A lot of the drummer's friends from previous tours in past bands. But a gathering of my friends too. Friends I'd made growing up on Judi's campsite and kept as they returned year after year. We opened with Franz Kafka, which was controversial, The Sailing Song shunted from his first position to somewhere in the middle of the set. He didn't take it well and was the worst performer. But opening with Franz Kafka was an inspired selection, the parting mantra of "yes it's over, now it's over, oh yes it's over now..." allowed us to pretend that it really was the last song. "And it's over folks! Thank you very much and goodnight" we said as the song finished, much to the amusement of the crowd. A lovely little ice breaker. We ploughed through our set, wrapping to lengthy applause, sold 9 CD's and networked our way around the studio under the influence of a conveyor belt of half pints of Grolsh. Stephen's wife, Veroniek, who had made the soup, ordered us 3 late night pizzas, even though we only asked for 1. We ate them all and most of us climbed the spiral staircase to bed. All except the drummer who it seems was the man in charge of the conveyor belt of Grolsh and sat sipping long into the night. As we pulled out of Raamsdonk the following morning we all felt a sense of real purpose. We were primed. We were eager. We couldn't wait to begin again. Perhaps it was the reception of the fans or the quality of the sound, or more likely the constructive criticism by Stephen over breakfast. With a CV as long as your leg, the well-honed ear of a sound-man and the brave patience of a recording engineer, he really was a man to be reckoned with. And his overall prognosis was glowing. A couple of key points per person that we all took on the stubble of our chins. Food for thought and it had certainly got us thinking.
We pulled into Amsterdam on time into a parking space directly opposite the venue. We made contact with the helpful barman, unloaded our gear with ease and bounded out into the not-quite sunshine. Things were all a little too easy. Surely there'd be a disaster around the corner, something to make some drama for the film! But no; we booked into a clean hostel, ate some cheap pasta and made our way back to the Cafe Langereis with time to spare; stopping off to showcase our new Beatles-esque walk across the zebra crossing. We found ourselves overcome by the cliches; filming tulips, clogs, cheese, coffee shops and red lights. All we needed was a windmill!
The gig was better than we expected. The cafe was small but packed full of appreciation. We toned down some of our faster numbers and I'd go as far as saying it was the tightest gig we've done. With the piano player on a real piano, we played just above the acoustic level which brings out the best of us. Too much amplification and we loose our
delicacy, we believe ourselves to be a rock band and we force things. But sitting pretty on a subtle sound and we were 'cooking'. We wrapped to loud applause. Another 9 CD sales, many of them signed, and the purr of the audience left us giddy. Many friends from Judi's campsite came and spread their enthusiasm. Many of them I didn't know, but they knew me and their words were warm. Many new fans too, random people who'd ducked in to see what all the fuss was about and had stayed and smiled and drank with us outside by the candlelit tables. We rolled home, by the light of the silvery moon. I say home, I mean a cheap and slightly brash hostel where we slept like schoolboys in bunk beds. But increasingly this tour was feeling more and more like home. Like we'd found our calling. Sod off England with your too trodden roads, with your fever of folk bands and your parsimonious patrons, we'd found warmth in Holland, from the tall people in the low country...
We left Amsterdam in the spitting rain. Still disaster-less. Still on budget and most annoyingly still on time. Staging a shot of us all leaving a 24 hour sex show was as controversial as we got! We drove all day, getting lost en route to a lunch date; that received a huge cheer! We still had it. The magic. Getting lost with a satnav! We got lost in Antwerp that evening too, driving round and round the old town until we ditched the satnav and found the venue with our eyes. Cafe Den Hopsack was a old building and a simple enough venue but full of character. The back of the long room was a raised stage with a piano in the corner. A bar ran along one side of the room and was stocked with what looked like all the beers in the world but was in fact only a fraction of those in Belgium! The landlady was very welcoming and poured us half pints of Ename Tripple and then cooked us baked chicory wrapped in ham and drenched in cheese sauce. Jan Van Den Bossche breezed in full of smiles and good humour. He had organised the Belgian leg of the tour and was our self declared European agent. "Next year it'll be 40,000 people at a
festival!". The gig itself once again surpassed all expectations. The cafe was packed to capacity and beyond, which is crazy considering it was a monday night! The rapturous response was somewhat overwhelming and we were all made to feel 5 times our worth. Having played to so many different audiences and many larger than the 150 people packed into Den Hopsack, I can't think of a crowd more appreciative of us and our music. We were really humbled as we sold our 9 CD's after the show and socialised with them all. Outside the heavens had opened and we slid back to Jan's house in the driving rain. Lieve, his wife, made us French (Belgian) fries and we raised a few glasses, cutting loose for the first time because it was the last night. It was short lived. We were beyond tired. I sat with the cameraman dipping fries into Joppi sauce and we spoke of what was next. An interview or two. A little peek down memory lane to Judi's campsite. Her friends that leave each year all with our CD forced upon them. They are the ones that made this tour possible. 70% of them Dutch. They became our fans. Became the readers of this blog. Them and their friends and their friends of friends and their brothers and uncles and colleagues and teammates. They became the 802 people in the Netherlands that read this medium. We researched the readership, thought 'Christ there's hundreds of the buggers in Holland, lets go there!' and the rest is history. There are also almost a 100 in Russia which is slightly worrying. Not because we don't like Russians, but because I doubt we'd come home with a profit on that one! Yes, we came home with a profit. Can you believe it!? Another unnatural aspect of this tour. The Right Way Round it was! Everything went right. We played to packed cafes. We played our socks off. Spread our music. Wrote new material. We didn't break down, didn't fall out, didn't lose anything. Instead we gained things; new fans, broadened horizons, band solidarity. And all three venues invited us back too. And even some neighbouring bars tried to poach us! Yet even after all of this, still there was a sense of failure, like we'd somehow failed our image. We are The Odd Folk, we get things hopelessly wrong but we're a likeable bunch and we cobble together and play good music. But this was almost a little too smooth. It was one disaster short of being perfect! I scooped another handful of fries and Joppi sauce. "It's great that people see you moving on and making progress." said the cameraman, "Compare this to a year ago! It's really powerful. And like you said in the last film, 'there are certain things we can't continue to do' well your not doing them anymore and look where it's taking you!" and he was right. He packed up the camera and placed it into its flight case. "And that's a wrap!" he said and winked.
Well it's been a little while since our last chapter. 'Big tings a gwan!' They haven't gwan anywhere just yet. But they're about to gwan! The next 10 days are going to be enormous for us. And could go some way to shaping the future of this little band! Or which direction we take next... (~) Our film, How NOT to be in a Band, is going live as soon as we can work out how to upload it!? (~) We are embarking on our first foreign foray; crossing the channel into France and Belgium and Holland. (~) And we're about to air on the television to an estimated audience of 13 million people!!!! All in the next 10 days! So hang on to your hats fellows! -------> WHOOSH!
But first let's fill you in on the last few weeks... Shambala was our final festival of a busy summer. It was a beautiful gathering and we were well received on the compass stage on sunday night. The whole festival was wonderful, maybe because it was small and had stayed small, resisting the temptation to increase its capacity and buy the neighbouring fields off Farmer Thornycraft! Shambala has a lovely little site and a population that works. 'If it ain't broke don't fix it!' like Secret Garden Party, its greedy cousin 50 miles up the road, that got too big and lost the magic it once had! A few weeks later we played at a wedding down at The Old Sawmills on the banks of the Fowey river. "Up Cannabis Creek!" as it was fondly called. Back in the 60's it used to be a kind of bohemian commune for CND and LSD! And it was owned by my grandfather, the Cornish author Denys Val Baker. So it was quite special to see where mother grew up in those hazy blazy days! Most recently we've been to London playing at Merge Festival on the banks of the Thames in a Airstream converted into a stage. We were certain we'd sell a few CD's on this busiest of thoroughfares, so much so that when we forgot them we sent the drummer 50 miles back to collect them! We didn't flog a single one. Sod's law. Though the audience were responsive and it was a gorgeous setting...
But mostly these days have been taken up with the planning for our mini tour. Our virgin voyage onto the continent. One band travelling 1002 miles for no reason! But there is a reason, and it's mostly because of this very blog that your reading now! It was while researching the readership that we discovered there were a lot of you Dutch people reading our posts. Indeed the Netherlands came in second place with a whopping 802 of you! For the record there are 70 Russians out there following us and I don't know a single one!? We'd love to hear from you! The tour is about coming over to the 'low countries' and playing for the 'tall people'. To thank you for supporting us and following us. The Cheese and Tulip Tour we've named it because we were tired and the cliche was overpowering! We begin in Bristol on October 3rd @ THE GREENBANK / / / ----- RaamsdonksveerSWAMP STUDIOS <-------------- \ (Oct 4th) \ \ \ --------------------> CAFE LANGEREIS Amsterdam ----- (Oct 5th) / / / ------ / / / / ---> DEN HOPSACK Antwerp (Oct 6th)
Back in real life, in case a lot of you have been following the guitar player's on/off, will he/won't he buy a house scenario that's been dragging on for months now; well let's just say this situation is thankfully nearing it's conclusion and without tempting fate, there are just some formalities left before he moves in! And, as I've mentioned him, i'll only get an earful from the rest of them if I don't disclose information on them too! The bass player has bought a ticket to Thailand, the drummer is thinking of moving to Cornwall and the piano player is stuck in Glasgow! Well there you have it; it's about to get pretty exciting in OddLand, it's the quiet before the storm, a good name for a title but I think we've used that one before, hmmm....? Hang on your hats! That'll do ;-)
It's only been a couple of weeks since our last post but a lot has happened, both in band-life and real-life. 'Big tings a gwan' as they say. Not that we've upped sticks to Jamaica or anything. Although we do have a pretty nifty little reggae song on the cards these days! I digress.
Now where were we...?
We left you hanging I seem to remember! Port Eliot Festival was about to start and we had a deputy bass player who knew the songs better than we did. The piano player had gone to the wrong festival and the drummer car's kept breaking down. What could possibly go right? As it turns out a lot. The piano player finally arrived, albeit with no tent or sleeping bag, the drummer's car drove smoothly on to site, we set up and began playing to 20 revellers and ended up with some 200 'stompers' clambering for more! The deputy bass player, Mr. Drinkwater, slotted in perfectly, remembering all the songs and even going one better by learning one an hour before the gig!
The buzz was electric as we stood signing albums at the end; our first major festival and it went as smooth as a beaver's hat! We partook in some mild revelling, a few drinkypooh's and some bum wiggling and then rolled back to camp by the light of the silvery moon.
The next morning the piano player returned to the wrong festival, the drummer whisked his French muse away in his broken car and I returned south to continue rehearsals for the play I was doing, leaving the guitar player to mooch around the festival and ponder his continued failure to buy his house!
"This buying a house malarky is pretty easy!" He had certainly been eating those words for months now and still no completion day in sight!
Yes, real-life had swung back into play; the piano player went back to paintball selling duties determined to climb the selling charts and fend off competition from younger versions of himself. The drummer returned to his windmill and prepared the grain for milling. Rehearsals continued apace and then my play opened in a blaze of pomp and publicity and I forgot I was in a band altogether until the guitar player burst the bubble and brought me back down with a bump, and on to Boomtown! BANG!
'Let's go and watch The Odd Folk man!'
This was to be our biggest gig to date. Now a major player in world festivals, Boomtown was kind of a big deal! We had a decent stage and a decent time slot and our beloved bass player back on side! What could possibly go wrong? As it turns out a lot! The stage shrunk from it's imposing pre-festival pictures and more resembled a large yurt spiced by the continued cooking of Chai Tea. Oh, and the time slot changed, we'd been shunted back a few hours, a little too early for stomping! "This place is full of mega hippies with massive bongos!" remarked the guitar player with a wry smile. Slighted but not defeated we ploughed on regardless, sticking to our pre-made setlist and not letting the Chai get to us. As with Port Eliot, we opened to 20 and closed to 200, it could have been more, for beyond the crusty white walls of the yurt scores of people sat in the shifting sunlight, listening to us or to the chime players across the way? It's debatable, but we'll take em!
We didn't sign any CD's this time, but the buzz was just as electric, and it continued long into the shoulder of the night. And indeed throughout the weekend random people would seek us out and compliment us on our music, warm words were well received...
We're back in real-life again now, all eagerly awaiting our next instalment, a rousing sunday night performance at Shambala Festival. 'Big tings a gwan' as they say! We are gathering new fans, CD sales are up; just this morning we received an order of 5 albums from Florence in Italy! Our long-awaited film, How NOT to be in a Band, is due for release onto the worldwideweb in September, and soon after that we'll air on BBC 1 in front of an estimated audience of 13 million! 'Big tings a gwan'
