Happy Bloody Holidays.
welcomb back
Happy Holidays and welcome back to the Village Green. Mine was great! I went back to England and came back without any brawling in the street with the relatives/inlaws.
During the holidays we usually reflect on our loved ones: How we cherish them, miss them, need to spend quality time with them: We might have acted on those feelings . . .
My Most Mental Gigs
a funny thing happened on the way to the merch tent.....
This week i'm going to talk you through some of my more err, bizarre engagements over the years.
After a year or two playing in a Goth band in Leeds called Flowers For Agatha, and sneaking off to 'dep' with the odd working mens club artist: I decided it was time to 'go pro'. Or at least attempt to. My dad . . .
In The Meantime
Like it or not there's one thing that people come back to time and time again, no matter how hard i try to crawl from under its shadow: 'In The Meantime' was a song my friend and bandmate Royston wrote, probably in his bedroom in Headingley before he had even met me in New York City a year or so later. The song is brilliantly . . .
The Return Of the Mix Tape
The Golden Age Of Digital
Whether you love or loathe U2, you've got to hand it to Bono: Just as the dust settles on their contraversial 'giving away' of "Songs Of Innocence" on i-Tunes. He then goes on record in support of streaming technologies, namely Spotify. A true politician, keeping the bands long running relationship with Apple intact . . .
Moving West.
Two Coasts, seperated by a common language.
From Leeds To Seattle.
Consider England as the foundry of passive aggressivism, and within that, Leeds might well be the cradle of shit talkin'.
So without me actually enjoying the experience, there was a level of familiarity to the mindset i encountered on arriving in Seattle this year.
I was fortunate to be . . .
Moonlighting
Don't give up your day job
Most musicians have had to do a bit of side work in their time. And by that i mean fields related and unrelated to playing an instrument and writing songs. As well as a bit of good old fashioned moonlighting.
Lets start with related fields shall we? Adapt or die they say, well, any artist worth their salt has done their time in the jail . . .
Why the village green?
an essay about community
Growing up in Horsforth, my friend Chris Madden and i would fantasise about many things as teenagers:
Being music fans we would routinely stage imaginary concerts, playing air guitar in the bandstand at nearby Hall Park. As we started to duck into bars and pubs to see local or smaller national bands our imaginations stretched to how . . .