Just a very small blog post tonight. The band and I played a fun show last night at Nice’n'Sleazys in Glasgow for our backing singer Rachael’s graduation. There were a few other bands playing as mentioned in the previous blog to this one, and a good time was had by all as far as I can gather.

I plugged my MP3 player in to the soundboard and recorded the set, so below are some live tracks. The band is pretty rough and ready, but that’s how I like it. “My mother’s house” is a brand new song, more or less practiced with the band at soundcheck.

• The Sinner and the saints
• My Mothers House
• Dancing Two-Step
• No surrender (Bruce Springsteen cover)
• I Want Something (Evan Greer cover)

Enjoy, and if you were at the show, i’d love to know what you thought.

Edit: thought I should mention that the renegade folk punk band on these recordings was:

• Judith Harron - Backing vocals
• Rachael Leitch - Backing vocals
• Dan Irving - Bass
• Dave Burns (Marshal Chipped) - Mandolin
• Kenny Leckie (Carnivores) - Drums, doing a Jay Weinberg and standing in for Puggs!

Now, there’s a title to get the blog spammers ejaculating in to their keyboards! I’ve just spent the last weekend on the megabus to and from London where I played my second Lexapalooza festival. It was a marvelous day, and all for Breast Cancer Campaign. I’ve heard that the total raised at the moment is over £1000, which is amazing. I opened the acoustic stage, after the wonderful Chris T-T played a rocky set with his band.

Afterwards I listened to the rest of the bands that the day had to give, with key highlights being Oxygen Theif, Ben Marwood, Popes of Chillitown and Justice Force 5. The latter being the first superhero rock band I have ever witnessed, and I feel my life has changed all the better for it!

This week brings two gigs with the band in Glasgow. The first being in just a couple hours at Macsorleys on Jamaica St. Its free entry and starts at 8pm, also playing is El Bastardos who does an ace cover of my track Paradise. The other gig is Thursday, 7.30pm at Nice’n'Sleazys on Sauchiehall St, playing with El bastardos again, also with Mr Fog, and Cycle of Zen. This one is £3, and I have very, emphasis very, limited tickets.

Finally, I’m not a huge fan of online music competitions and the like, but if I were to back any unsigned band that I truly and utterly believe in on an appreciation for their musical and songwriting ability, it would be Carnivores from Glasgow. See what i did there?

Last night I played my first full band show and it was brilliant. It was at the 13th Note in Glasgow supporting the awesome Mischief Brew. As I was also helping to run the show, I had the usual reservations about if people would turn up, would we lose money etc. Luckily all these were to be put to bed when the doors opened and there was a queue! That’s right, a fucking queue to get in to the venue of the 13th Note at a gig with ‘Dave Hughes’ on the bill!

I, however, am not taking the full credit for that, The Murderburgers played very well, and Mischief Brew blew me away. We had around 50-60 people through the door by the end of the night, and god knows what the temperature reached!

The set we played was probably a bit too long for a support slot, but with a few false starts here and there it was to be expected. Puggs was on fine form on drums, Jud and Rachael’s voices worked brilliantly together, even more so when adding Dave’s on Sinner and the saints. We had Sye joining us on violin for that song too which was a nice tough. Rounding out the sound was Dan providing an amazin bedrock of bass.

Setlist:

1. No Surrender (Bruce Springsteen
2. On Our Own
3. Paradise (This City)
4. Never took the time
5. The sinner and the saints
6. I want something (Evan Greer)
7. Dancing two-step
8. Daddy fought the law
9. Once we were punks

Tonight the male component of the band are playing in Irvine at the Harbour Arts Centre. Kicks off at half seven. If you can’t make that, we’ll be playing Nice’n’sleazys in Glasgow on the 25th of June. My next solo show is a week on saturday at Lexapalooza in London with Chris T-T and lot’s more. If you haven’t got tickets for Lexapalooza just yet, I’m afraid it’s sold out.

It’s twenty to one on a Monday morning and I should really be in bed, but to be honest I’m to riled up to sleep. Yesterday, just before midnight, the BNP won a seat in the European parliament. This means that the UK’s leading fascist, racist, right-wing, and thuggish party can now send a fascist, racist, and right-wing thug to represent the UK in Europe.

It is beyond belief that the current scandal involving expenses and cabinet shuffles with the Labour government could cause this embarrassment alone. I believe it is coupled with the voter apathy, and also the ‘bogus’ (in the extreme use of the word) information sent out by this repugnant excuse for a political party.

I was watching the trending topics in Twitter after this result came through and came across this piece of genius that I feel just sums up the problem:

“I’m in Yorkshire and I didn‘t vote for them #notmyfaultbutstillsad“

Repeat: “Not my fault but still sad”. The voter turn out in Yorkshire was around 33% (1.2m voted out of 3.8m people), out of which the BNP had less than 10% of the votes. Now consider all the lefter-thinking people who could have spent 5 minutes out of their lifes to head to the ballot and vote (or spoil their ballot). Perhaps you can see how much voter apathy can affect an election.

If anything can come out of this tragedy, then perhaps it can serve as an all mighty kick up the arse of the apathetic electorate before the imminent general election.

I’m going to finish this by a tweet from Charlie Brooker which sums up another aspect of this disgrace:

“@charltonbrooker BNP voters ruin the 65th anniversary of D-Day by metaphorically pissing on the graves of all who died fighting the Nazis“

I’ve just spent this morning creating ZIP archives of a lot of the EPs and all the LPs I’ve released. You can go and download them on the music page. There’s the Roscoe Vacant split, Connections and the Once we were punks album, plus some other stuff.

No other news to report really, I’m still excited about the Mischief Brew gig on the 11th of June at teh 13th Note in Glasgow, and tonight I’m going to see Defiance, Ohio! play. The other week I saw the Classic of Love and Mike Park play, that was awesome. Had a chat with Jesse Michaels about folk music and where punk fits in to it, it was interesting. On Friday I had a meeting with the nephew of Christy Moore about some shows, that was also interesting. And, in August, I’m supporting the World Inferno/Friendship Society in glasgow, the day after I play Rebellion festival.

I’ve spent my bank holiday weekend recording some demo’s of tracks I’ve had lying around. One of them, Call off the coast-guards, has came out quite nicely and therefore I’ve put it up online. The other is a song I’ve been playing for a few gigs now and it always seems to be getting a good response, it’s now called “Learn, Live, Fall, Rise” and I’ll possibly upload it at somepoint.

Call off the coast-guards

In other news, I played a fun gig at The Scotia bar on Wednesday night, and my gig that was meant to be at the Arts Centre in Paisley on Friday was cancelled. My next Glasgow gig is the 11th of June with Mischief Brew, which I am utterly ecstatic about! I’ve even assembled a bunch of players to be my backing band for this gig, with practices starting next week. I’ll have tickets for it soon and I would really love if folk can make the effort to come along to it.

It’s my last gig I’ve got booked in Glasgow for the moment, and with the impending end of my Phd and new job on the horizon, I don’t know if after October I’ll be around to play Glasgow as often (or at all). There is one band I’ve been chatting with about putting on a gig in Glasgow at the end of summer, but I’m still waiting on them to give it the go ahead so it’s all very tentative.

Last night, after three months of stress, it was all over. The show I had been arranging for Jonah Matranga came and went without hitch, but with a capacity audience, good music and smiles all around. It was a drastic change from all the other gigs I’ve put on where the acts normally only need some petrol money and a place to stay. Last night I had to deal with dinners, guest-lists (I let the If you’re not playing, your paying rule drop), and bottled water!
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The tour with Roscoe Vacant last week was good fun, played a whole bunch of great shows and met great people. I was going to write up a whole blog about it with the usual thanks etc, but I feel I’ve left it too long now. I’m sure those who I feel very grateful towards for helping making the tour a sucess know that I am.

Two charity items now. First and foremost is my single “The Sinner and The Saints” which is to be released on Tuesday for the Prostate Cancer Charity. You an buy it from iTunes, HMV, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody and www.onbeatrecords.com from Tuesday for 99p. For this immense ammount of cash you get three tracks (The A-side plus two b-sides) and a feeling of warmth that you are helping those in the fight against a cancer that kills the same proportion of men that breast cancer kills women.

The other bit of news regards another cancer charity (see what I did there), and thats The Breast Cancer Campaign. Last year I played at Lexapalooza festival and it was an awesome day filled with great acts playing (Frank Turner, Chris T-T, Beans on Toast etc). This year I deliberately didn’t ask to play it since I was on last year. However, last night I received a lovely email from Evan who runs the shows asking if I wanted to open the acoustic stage. Of course I said yes!

So thats, 20th of June at The Gaff on Holloway Road in London. Acts that have been confirmed include Chris T-T & The Hoodrats, Armed Response Unit, Ben Marwood, Oxygen Theif,  The Xcerts and Jim Lockey. It’s gonna be a great day and the tickets are on sale from here.

A rather grand title, I know, but to be honest I’m not really sure what it is. Two things happened to me this weekend that caught me off guard on how to act. I went to the 13th Note club on Friday to see a gig by local acts El bastardos, Eddie and the T-bolts, Dennis Law Jr. and Senzifine. I knew that El Bastardos covered one of my songs (Paradise), but when it kicked in at the show (in a full band arrangement) I didn’t really know what to do.

Was I allowed to smile and acknowledge that I wrote this awesome song thats pouring out of the speakers? Or should I just have my eyes to the floor and enjoy it on the inside? (more…)

Take this as the official announcement. On Beat Records are releasing my first official single which is “The sinner and the saints”. It will available from all the usual outlets (Amazon, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody etc) from 17th of March. It’s being released as a bundle of three tracks, meaning two B-sides for you!

The B-sides that have been chosen are two new recordings of Walk you home and Daddy fought the law. However, for some reason, both of these have been marked as explicit! I can understand with DFTL since it does have the Fuck word in it. However, Walk you Home has stumped me! Perhaps it’s the imagery of “crimson stains the tissues on your floor”?

Anyways, it’s up on Amazon now, where you can preview the tracks and I guess will be able to pre-order it too.

Oh, and I urge you to buy a copy (or two). Not for my own personal gain, but since March 2009 is Prostate Cancer Awareness week I am going to be donating my profits from the sale of the track to The Prostate Cancer Charity. It would be nice to raise a nice wedge of cash for a very worthwhile charity.

The single is also chart eligible, but I’m not going to have any ideas about cracking the top 40 (although top 200 would be nice although I don’t know the numerics of single placings.).

So yeah, my first official record label released single! Hurrah!