I was born in Stockport, I live in London and I'm in love with York. I spent my summer holidays in a caravan in Anglesey listening to the rain on the tin roof. (We used to throw bread on other people's roofs late at night so the sea gulls would wake them up first thing in the morning. Wild times.)
I moved to London to get a deal a few years back. Did the whole showcase thing, nearly got signed various times, didn't get signed various times. Met loads of good people, some in a haunted house in the country I was invited to by Chris Difford... we ate a lot of good food in the process.
In December 2005 I gave some demos to private entrepreneur James Davies, which he liked... and so we started a label together (50:50 Recordings). Around that time I ended up writing a few songs with Matt Deighton, and so 3/4 through making my album, Matt and I wrote one and we recorded it up in the 50:50 studio in Chocolate Factory 2, North London. In effect, I put my second album out before my first (Around The House in 80 Days by The Bench Connection) - somewhat unconventional - but hey - everyone's killing themselves making records to then have to give them away for free so lets not talk logic...
So having put out that album, I've now finished some new (and old) solo ones for this album and we're back on that, ready to go. This is thanks largely to the patience of Dave Anderson, the steady sticks of Tim Weller, the large sausage fingers of Chris Farrell, and the Nicky Hopkins-esque ivory tickling brilliance of Mikey Rowe who I wrote Papermache Man with. Flash harry plays the Bass on most of it too. He's like a Swiss Army Musician.
Along the way we've recorded in Whitfield St, which then went bust... and in our own place, in which I was robbed by masked marauders and pinned to the wall by youth with 'finger gun' in pocket (though the cops said it was probably real, so let's assume it was). This is another story altogether involving my flawed theory it was a wind up, and an Alan Partridge impression 'Oooh don't shoot me!' which I think confused them so much they left. (With lots of our gear, and having kicked the hard drive losing 2 months of recording).
So have a listen, hope you like the songs... it's a bloody miracle it ever got finished! And now trying to get it out there, I see what Dave meant by 'the recording is the easy bit!'. It's not out yet so you can't nick it from limewire... but no doubt we'll be giving it all away at some point in return for your email address so we can bombard you with spam you'll block out. (That's a joke, we'll be selling it, believe it or not...)
Hope to see you at a gig soon!
Respect and gratitude to those music loving legends Mitch and James at Sonic Distributions for the SE mics... Good hippies in a sea of yuppies.
I'm very proud to have been able to borrow some of Howard Barlow's pics to try out artwork ideas. Hopefully using some for the album sleeve. He has the most amazing collection going, a lifetime of amazing pictures that paint the wrinkles and smiles on the face of Manchester and beyond from the early 70's to now.
Visit Howard Barlow at
http://www.howardbarlow.com
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