It's the news roundup at 11...

Toured England in September (was meant to be a UK tour, Wales and Scotland i'm not avoiding you) and sold first copies of THORNS, BRAMBLES, WHITE WATER AND BLACK OAK, the new release from Brighton's Willkommen Records. Highlights of tour included lovely Oxford, lovely churches, lovely witches stuffed into lovely flasks from Hove. Bookshops, stately houses, nighttime screams, leaves, noise, loops, people. Thanks to everyone warmly and accepting your great generosi...
Continue reading ...

well, it's been a blast; literally tens of people have read this travelblog, and now it will be retired and turn quietly into, probably, news about stuff.

but, til then, here's this one!

i have travelled in a big irregular circle to end up back in paris. met up with alice in berlin and we decided to hitch back to paris together. which was going particularly fantastically until we realised the problem with repeatedly taking lifts with very nice dutch people is that you eventually end up in holla...

Continue reading ...

a while ago, i was going to write a blog about sicily and naples, and it was going to be called catnaps, or something. that has now disappeared into the past and i wonder at the continued wisdom of writing blogs. i have reached the final destination before the slow haul back to england, and writing about this seemed to be unnecessary. but, maybe as a kind of pre emptive summing up, here's some things that happened, in a list

- singing in catania on chairs but not tables because they were too w...
Continue reading ...

still up at 5:30am a saturday morning (/friday night) listening to italian prog readings of dante's inferno, discussing ezra pound's continued influence in italy. apparently no one is allowed (supposed) to talk about him because of his alignment with mussolini's fascism. my host was told about him by an old friend of his, a far right italian terrorist maoist nazi - if there is one thing to be said for such a group, it is that they do a great book club.

mornings in catania come equipped with th...
Continue reading ...

i have been coping, or not coping, by either lying inside, dousing myself in water, or by not going out until much later. but it's still hot then.

after leaving the mountains went to venice for a couple of days, found it very expensive but as beautiful as it is always meant to be. then took a train to mirandola to play a show at a place called estivo,  but as it turned out i was to play at a pizzeria. i was unexpectedly joined in this by the 'by and by string band' of new orleans, who had also...
Continue reading ...

Last night played a wonderful concert under the shadow of a mountain, with river noise, in the middle of nowhere (*nr Maniago, Italy), by the Mushroom Studio, a largeish farmhouse now a music recording and sleeping space, with a mixing desk once used by iron maiden.

I spent a good portion of saturday thinking something along the lines of "wow, mountains" from the bus and from the town and from the car and from the garden and from the balcony- really i am quite unused to them and they never fai...
Continue reading ...

I am beginning to get bogged down with unwritten blog entries.... weblogged down, backblogs, etc etc. So I will try and give as much of the sense of my week or so in Spain with as little keystroke expenditure as possible, and hopeflly no more completely terrible puns.

Spain was really to be a double-edged friendly sword, with half the time spent in te hills of Catalunia at the very secretive Kuiperfest, and half the time spent with friends in the very much more easily accessible comfy suburb o...
Continue reading ...

The guitar I am travelling with cost 17 pounds from a brighton flea market. Here in a video recorded by Seb, the lovely organiser of the Lyon gig,is evidence of my new shorter hair, my current barbe, and an attempt to explain about the guitar in french, without using ´merde´as an adjective (as you will see, kids in attendance):

songs are that old devil called love, originally sung by billie holiday, and then a song of mine currently untitled in english

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6ACAlwWI...
Continue reading ...

this is what happened on sunday night.
But first:

I arrived in Lyon on Friday to stay with Olivier and Maxime and was warmly accomodated by them and also by the town. Was taken to Lyonnaise gay pride where I tried to engage locals and voyagers in poorly worded conversation, and then recreate Jonathan Richman's 'I was dancing in the lesbian bar' in the queue for a lesbian bar. 

On Sunday I was beginning to struggle with some run-downedness that had accompanied the weather changing and becoming ve...
Continue reading ...

Today incorporated two of my favourite things: lizards and ruins. The lizards moved a little bit like stop motion animation, while the ruins stayed mostly still.
see also: singing billie holiday for french hen parties, pealing cathedral bells, hillsides, gold leaf
Continue reading ...

I decided not to walk to Newhaven from Brighton, having been advised by everyone that a day of travelling and trudging would not be best prefaced by a morning of trudging. I got lost on the way, got off at the wrong station, qnd had to be driven by ferry staff to the correct check-in.
Still, managed to make the ferry in fairly easy time and passed the journey with Simon, an organist who had worked at Perth Cathedral for 13 years. He advised me of the benefits of laying newspaper on the bed of ...
Continue reading ...

This being the first blog on here, I should say first that: I write in a state of fairly decent tiredness, I will likely write most of these entries in a similar state of tiredness, and that you can therefore not expect to get any consistent grammar or ideas from these postings. You may be able to get consistently abrasive grammar, and confused phrasing, so, enjoy.

---------
I am beginning a 2+ month 'tour' of Europe and will be writing about it here, from time to time. If i take the travels fr...
Continue reading ...