Duke Of Uke

I bought myself a cheapo yellow Ukulele last year and I've been playing it a bit so thought I'd treat myself to a proper one.

I'd been to The Duke Of Uke near to Brick Lane in East London before as I'd recorded in Soup studios which is downstairs and in fact we used to have early Fanfarlo band practices there. I had a look at a few and was only really intending to have a think about which one to get, but there was one that was just right and kept winking at me, even though it was £100 more than the maximum I wanted to spend ;-)

I tried to pretend I wasn't going to buy it but then gave up and handed over the cash. Now I'm home and get to open the case and smell the new wood smells... mmmm! Now I just need to put the effort in to get good at playing it! It's a soprano with a spruce top, walnut back and sides, 17 frets and a shadow piezo pickup. The best thing of course is that you can actually tune it, as opposed to the yellow one I had before!

The Duke Of Uke is a great little shop by the way, really friendly guys who know everything about Ukuleles. They do stuff like in-store gigs too and Uke lessons, everything a music shop should be these days to survive against the big Internet shops.

Loop pedals are ace

It's my next solo gig on Monday and it's acoustic, so I've go to work out how to play my songs without the drums machines and so on... but I can't resist just a few pedals...

Spending money on new things

It's all about physical possessions... well, it's all about trying to own every type of instrument that exists anyway... recently I bought myself a Xylophone (I think it came from a school as it had 'Xylophone' written on the side on a laminated label!) and for Christmas I got a new mellodica, a stylophone and an e-bow (which I've always had my eye on since I started playing guitar all those years ago) and then yesterday my new microphone arrived an SE2200A. Very nice. It even comes with it's own special silver carry case, mmmmmm....

This will of course make everything I record an extra 50% better. At the moment it's just demos being recorded, so we can learn the new songs with my new band (which is going well by the way), but I'll get down to some proper recording soon so you can hear the new material in all it's folky glory.

Good gig

My Notting Hill Arts Club gig went well. Kelman and The Tamborines were great guys too. Thanks if you came down. I played three new songs as well as two older ones and a cover of bravecaptain's 'Good Life'. One new song included my debut concertina performance onstage, which almost went wrong when something got caught on the side of it meaning it almost wouldn't play. (photos: Ellie Atkins and Underexposed):

R.I.P. The London Astoria

I always hate it when places that I love close down, but the Astoria being demolished is particularly sad. It was the venue I went to my first proper gig at - I went to see Manic Street Preachers there on their Holy Bible tour, the gig that turned out to be Richie Edwards' last before he vanished.

Since then it was always one of my lifetime ambitions to play there one day, and in 2007 I achieved it, even if it was just playing one song with Candie Payne rather than playing with one of my own bands. As I walked on stage there that night and picked up my guitar I remember trying to take it all in and enjoy it and remember it - but as with anything like that of course, it all seems like a blur afterwards - I wish I'd videoed it or something. I'm just glad I got to play there.

New video for Fanfarlo's 'Harold T Wilkins'

The video that we made back in the summer for 'Harold T Wilkins' at MTV Studios in Camden is now online - watch me transplant my head into a TV and turn into a small flashing blob... and enjoy this new version of the song, taken from the forthcoming album we recorded!

2009

It's 2009 and I have a lot planned for this year, it's going to be a lot of work but I'm excited and ready for it. Step one is to form a new band, already underway... Step two will be to put together a great set of songs... also well underway!