Talc and Turnip!

The Folk (featuring The Gadgee)
King Bear
The Break-Ups

Saturday 21st July at The Ark, Waterloo Place, Edinburgh for £4.

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Tigerfest gig way back whenever.

We've been a bit light recently but not without reason (congratulations to Liam). The next gig is with the excellent King Bear (featuring the legendary Kilgour brothers for those that were part of the late 80's/early 90's "remember the Green Tree?" indie-scene) whom I saw play an excellent gig last month at Octopus Diamond.....and The Break-Ups whom, rumour has it, consists of two famous-musician-sons. I didn't realise Bobby Gillespie dated Gerry Rafferty in 1976/7 but the resulting twins have decided to set up camp in our own capital city. I believe the caliber of session musicians was a clincher.

This week I have mostly been watching Vic Reeves Big Night Out on dvd, reading Rip It Up And Start Again post punk 1978-1984, watching Wilko Johnson in amazement on youTube and listening to Messthetic #101 D.I.Y 1978-81 London and Roy Orbison making me cry.

UK Tour!

We are The Folk. We play banjo, bass, drums and singing and we play guitar bass, drums and singing. Noboby sounds like us. We get together to play music together and sometimes we let other people hear it....

Saturday 5th May, 8:30pm at The Loft (next to Three Sisters in the Grassmarket) Edinburgh. Price £5. Contact me here on the blog or at Folkspace for tickets if you like.

The Folk (featuring The Gadgee) with the amazing Love Love Love and a Nuclear Sail acoustic performance!

Monica Queen

The Stantons

We're going to play an acoustic set with a couple of new songs and reworkings of older ones that, er, weren't on the banjo. Our tradesman's ethics have gone a bit cowboy of late, but we've all been busy with other stuff. The acoustic set could become a permanent feature; if two gigs in half a year constitute that last phrase.

Come along and catch the unique Love Love Love and a Nuclear Sail acoustic performance!

Spent ages typing up a blog and it all deleted!!!!

I cannot be a*sed trying again. I'm running on half-empty batteries as it is this season.

A penguin and carnation, a lemon and dalmation

The alignment of the planets must be particularly bad at the moment. I couldn't make this gig in Kirkcaldy last week but will mention the work that pal Shug is doing with Sonic Youth Movement, and trying to get a regular music night in the town. I hope it went well, and previous blogs are testament to the enthusiasm of the young KDY crowd!

Played last night at Damon's Hollow Heart Parlour with all it's fingerpickery finesse. I have to say that I thought James Cumming was excellent. I'm a big fan of watching someone who is entertaining which may be come as a surprise to those that have seen me on stage! I've learned nothing from Jonathan Richman. My tour manager got the sack last night 'cause he had me booked to play Thursday, not Wednesday, so a phone call from the promoter, three forks of pasta, a bus trip, a walk in the rain, four Staropramen in quick succession, and an unrehearsed set commenced. I went into an uncharacteristic rant between songs too about god knows what! I'd like to apologise to Damon as he's putting a lot of work in and Hollow Heart Parlour deserves to be a success.

Did play Nuclear Sail for the first time but I'm beginning to think it's time to clear out the wardrobe and modernise everything. Less doomy baggage, more simple pop music is entering my head at the moment. I'd rather people left happy, although I did have my Glen Appin of Scotland tweed pipe-smokers hat on last night which might have edged it.

I'll leave you with Gruff Rhys, whom I saw as support act at the dreadfull burger-vanned SECC last week. An acoustic guitar, casio keyboard drum programs and a red cagoule/smock. I love it.

Son of Tom

The first son of Tom will be performing at Son of Thom's acoustic night Hollow Heart Parlour. The band have been quiet of late. All three of us have had various distractions of late but are looking to finalise the basic tracks for the album by Christmas. I know, I know! Same old story, and a boring one at that!!

Please visit jojo blog for some live Jonathan Richman stuff including the gig I was at in Glasgow. He was a bit frail, throat infection or something, but still commanded the crowd (of middle-aged-ling-time-jo-jo-obsessed men).

We've started to rehearse at Liam's mansion rather than have to book a month in advance at rehearsal rooms because it's term-time and the angulars are in full force at the moment. It's nice to play quiet and hear everything so I've got a notion to start filming some of it. It took us a while to pick up on bemyfriends so it's about time we got onto lookyou'reatube.

The old harmonicas may come out to play for the solo set which I'm starting to panic about now. Hopefully see some people on the 15th. Bye for now!

That Summer Feeling (it's gonna haunt you the rest of your life)

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Pop Theory night. We had a great time playing with Lucky Luke and the crowd were excellent except the psycho who insisted on singing his songs and rapping his raps to me outside afterward and looking like he was going to stab me the second I didn't pay him my full attention.

There was a solo set too...at a friend's engagement party. A celebration of love and devotion by a gadgee with a banjo singing songs about saying "no" to old catholic girl-friends(Patron Saint of Saints), getting bored with the huge infux of American culture and looking to more localised influences (The Holy Ghost), masochistic artists (Francis Bacon Would Approve) with a couple of actual love songs thrown in (The Gadgee's Dream and Tradesman's Lovesong). I got paid in dark rum all night!

We're trying out a violin player soon and hope to keep keyboard-genius Verity in the fray too. Off to see Jonathan Richman next week, listening to a couple of Stiff Records compilations after seeing the documentary on BBC4, and trying to learn to play the banjo "properly". Sorry, but it had to happen.

There's possibly a solo gig in November, but really we're looking to get a few gigs in between recording with an expanded line-up. See you later.

A choir of Castrates to celebrate our love

Hope you can make it to this one. I know a couple of you can finally! We had hoped to get some friends to help out live at this gig but we might have to wait until the next one, details to follow. We are playing with the excellent Lucky Luke, whom I've seen go from a boil-in-the-bag Baby Tiger gig at the Swamp Bar, to supporing Teenage Fanclub at Glasgow Academy.

We put down some keyboards for Tradesmans' Lovesong and it's sounding excellent already. Verity gave it a real 60's pop feel. In this song I'm playing a tradesman based on a number men I worked with when I was a skinny, poofy, non-tax-paying stoodent. I used to work with a lot of really sound guys on summer jobs years ago both in a glue factory (sniff), and on building sites (fart). That didn't stop them relentlessly taking the p*ss out of me but that's ok. It was a great laugh most of the time and apart from my glue factory boss Billy and his sidekick "Ricardo Milano" I liked them all. The song attempts to broach middle-class attitudes to men who get their hands dirty at work and at home, and working-class attitudes to what constitutes domestic happiness. In the end it's just a song about cinemas and wide-screen TVs with a couple of slightly smutty jokes thrown in. If you come along on Saturday 9th September to the Cafe Royal you can hear it!