Four months into 2019 and the best if yet to come, but first the balance. My first workshop of the year was in a primary school in East London, teaching, or attempting to, 5 and 7 year olds a country song called Put the woman in charge. A Beth Neilson Chapman song. 95% Muslim children […]
I have had a lot of writing rooms and desks in my time, from a notebook on my single bed at Combe Avenue to this wonderful cabin here in my new house in Sussex. Where ever I write I like to have me around, my school books diaries and note pads from down the years. […]
Way back before ‘Cool for Cats’ but some time after ‘Take Me I’m Yours’ I was in my flat with my good friend Barny, we were having fun and being silly. Somehow we ended up wrestling on the floor and tipping the room upside down, i think we may have been drunk. At one point […]
As i look through the many photographs on my computer i can see that there is so much to say about the journey, the band, the songs. It’s completely nuts to think that ‘Cool for Cats’ came out almost 40 years ago and here i still am. Singing those lines, like i must work harder […]
It’s here the big New Year, time to let nature sleep, so far it’s been a calm couple of weeks, this always leads to optimistic thoughts. A good thing. To find out what its like to write again i have come down to a house in Cornwall, looking out to sea there is calm. In […]
To be in tour is to be oneself. It was a massive task for my agent to dodge around the country and find shows for me with Boo during November and December, and then the miles pilled on. More and more road miles but then its worth it. Each show seemed to get better and […]
It’s been awhile. I was on a train travelling up to play a show with Francis Dunnery in Cumbria a few weeks ago. It’s a journey. He recorded my first solo album in a time when I thought I didn’t have it in me, and since then I have discovered there is more, always more. […]
When the Combine appears at your window you know that Summer is wrapping up its might, the heat has relaxed and the soft winds of September are on their way. It seems that if i sit still long enough i start to blister from the aperture of doing little. I should be relaxing, and in […]
Today I received a box of books here at the Edinburgh festival, where Boo Hewerdine and myself are playing songs and telling some jokes. The paperback of my book is now released with its extra chapter now wraps up the story thus far. I have really enjoyed the process of being with a book, its […]
Summer has scorched the earth and the soul with its wonderful oven like heat. I’m not one for hot but the sun was soaked up like olive oil on Focaccia. Squeeze played a few festivals, with its fair share of hot tin roof, all game and correct. The World Cup seemed to stick people together, […]