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Added on: Sunday 25th July



Q: What do Tony Benn, The Wurzels, The Unthanks and Sham 69 all have in common? A: They've all been followed onto the stage by The Bad Shepherds this month...

Added on: Friday 23rd July

Tolpuddle Martys Festival

We followed Tony Benn on stage at The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival and felt a bit like The Wombles following The Pope onto that little balcony in St Peters Square. The festival had a great vibe though, and also had a great T-shirt stall. I don't usually by T-shirts with stuff written on, but I found one that says 'I Still Hate Thatcher' and just had to get it, and Andy got this one. www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/index.php?page=2010-festival

Added on: Friday 23rd July

Larmer Tree Festival

We played the Garden stage which is just surreal. The structure was apparently imported from Italy for the Great Exhibition in 1851 then moved to The Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset where it was re-erected and called 'The Singing Theatre'. It was a magical thing. We sat on it before our gig to watch The Unthanks playing on the main stage - we love those Unthanks. www.larmertreefestival.co.uk/festival-map.html

Added on: Saturday 17th July

Banned!

We were in Stornoway this week doing the HebCelt Festival which was a lot of fun despite the ferocious wind, the relentless rain and the freezing temperatures. Troy and I were dressed for summer. Mistake. At least the miserable weather kept the midges at bay. We were asked to go on the local gaelic radio station to play a small set. They'd made a temporary studio in the community centre where a small audience of locals had gathered (to get out of the rain, most likely). I think it was the first time they'd ever had music by Wreckless Eric and The Stranglers, which was bad enough, but when I introduced 'Anarchy in the UK' by The Sex Pistols there was an audible presbyterian intake of breath from the crowd. We ploughed on. One man removed his small children from the room, the elderly fixed their worried gazes on the floor, and when we got back into the bus our driver said that they cut us off halfway through and went to the news! www.hebceltfest.com/festival/reviews/thur.php

Added on: Sunday 11th July

Glastonbury

We did Glastonbury the other day. The Avalon stage. To be honest it wasn't a gig I was looking forward to. I'd never been to 'Glasto' before - it was one of those events that passed me by until it became so popular it looked like a huge communal bio hazard. We were on on Sunday afternoon and had gigs elsewhere on Friday and Saturday, so the plan was to get in, do the gig, and get out again before we got trapped on Sunday night with 150,000 hippies trying to get home. Entering the site at 11.00am on Sunday the overwhelming ambience was one of human excrement. I'm sure the people there aren't aware of it, because we didn't notice it as much after half an hour, but the stench of shit and shit-eating chemicals is very strong. The only time you can't smell human shit is when you pass the cow sheds where Worthy Farm's usual inhabitants are sadly holed up during the festival, and the smell of hot cow dung there is so strong it's almost a natural high. We had an hour to kill before our slot and wandered about the 'craft' and 'healing' fields... there's some serious time wasting going on there - people that I suspect have first class degrees from Oxbridge in tents pretending to make a living out of selling chrystals. Oh dear. BUT the GIG was EXTRAORDINARY. Unlike any gig we've every done. The Avalon tent was packed. I don't know who they were, but they'd definitely come to that stage to see us. (One of the crowd is pictured above). It was only our 4th gig as the new three-piece outfit but it was the quickest 50 mins of my life. We had far too many songs on the set list and had to keep chopping away whilst we were on. It forced us to cut down to our favourite songs. And the reaction was quite frankly overwhelming. When we normally finish a gig we raise our glasses to the crowd and shambolically edge our way off stage. But this was different. It seemed like everyone there was cheering and clapping. Lots of newly tanned bare arms clapping above heads in unison. Like a really mellow Nazi rally. The more we edged towards the exit the louder the reaction from the crowd. We got kind of trapped. We felt we couldn't really leave, and just stood there in a daze. It was a beautiful moment, one I've never experienced before, and it made us feel strangely tearful. It affected me deeply. The crowd obviously noticed the effect they were having and the noise increased. It was without doubt the best experience I've ever had as a live performer. Was it transcendental? (Maybe I should get a tent in the 'healing' field next year). Thank you everone that was there that made it happen. I'll never forget it. www.glastonburypeople.co.uk/groups/glastonburyfestival/Adrian-Edmondson-Bad-Shepherds-shear-genius/story-5358551-detail/story.html

Added on: Saturday 5th June

Old Punks

We've had a couple of nice comments from two of the people who's songs we cover: JC Carroll (The Members) says of our version of Sound of the Suburbs "You have made an old man very happy, that's a beautiful version, I've done it myself acoustically, but not as good as that." And Eric (Wreckless Eric) says of Whole Wide World "I'm really honoured - by doing it in your own way you've breathed new life into the song. For years bands did desperate cover versions of it which were pretty well just imitations of me and completely devoid of any meaning. But your version recaptures the spirit of the song. I never thought I'd hear it done like that!" Last year David Fenton from The Vapors came along to see us as well, and while we don't do any Vapors songs at present, it transpired that when Troy was a teenager the first proper guitar he bought was a second hand Gibson Marauder, which had previously been owned by... David Fenton, who very much regretted parting with it by the sound of it.

Added on: Monday 31st May

Where ever I lay my head...

When doing smaller venues, like we are on this tour, economics dictate that we're at the budget end of the hotel range. Nothing wrong with that; personally I've stayed in 5 star hotels where the level of over-attentive, arse-licking, tip-seeking subservience made them more uncomfortable than a Travelodge. Basically we're looking for clean sheets, a flat mattress, a shower that really works, a workspace for the laptop, a telly and a private blammer. Most of the budget chains do this pretty well. Generally, the lower down the food chain you go the less drawers and cupboards you get, which can actually be an advantage: when you move hotels every night it's useful not to have to open every drawer and cupboard when doing the 'idiot check' on leaving. The other useful thing about these chain hotels is that they are staffed by eastern europeans, so when you mistake the door to the room for the door to the toilet and find yourself naked and locked out in the middle of the night (as happened to me last year) the staff haven't a clue who you are and the security camera footage doesn't end up on Youtube. The problem comes when the choice of hotel is left up to the private promoter. This is when you get into the 'idiosyncratic' hotel. Some of these can be all right, but 'individuality' can get a bit boring when all you want is the list above. We recently stayed in a hotel where the taps were so complicated (something to do with getting the single lever right in the middle of a four-way axis to turn them off) that, on returning from the gig slightly the worse for wear, I didn't have sufficient motor skills left to do this and had to sleep with the tap running all night. Others have obviously been the design project of a private owner with misguided ambitions in interior design - cue wallpaper that could drive you insane if you stare at it too long, chairs that don't function as chairs, switches in the wrong place and a 'cleverly hidden' (ie 'miniscule') ensuite with a shower that has all the power of salt cellar. But the winner so far is a guest house in Hastings: a room so small I could almost touch all four walls from one spot, a lumpy single bed, and a telly on a bracket mounted so high on the wall that I couldn't see the screen. It was on the sea front, but the only way I could see the sea was if a programme about the sea came on the telly and I stood on the bed to watch it.

Added on: Sunday 9th May

Eating On The Road

One of the great problems of touring is finding somewhere or something to eat. We generally get off stage at around 10.30 - 11.00, and rarely get out of the venue before 11.30, eating options at that time of night are mostly limited to Indian restaurants. Personally, I like a curry about twice a year, but on the road we end up eating one about three times a week. There are some good curry houses - the Sayonara in Leicester is particularly brilliant - but most indian restarants serve up complete rubbish: overcooked, sloppy, greasy, covered in food dye, and disastrous for your bowels. If you were blindfolded I would challenge anyone to distinguish one dish from another. All that, and after 11 o'clock you're basically sharing the dining room with a bunch of aggressive drunks. At the start of this tour we had it in mind to start writing a tour guide of the places we'd eaten at. The Himchuli Nepalese restaurant in Camberley was the first we visited. Tim, our double bass player was the most enthusiastic about the 'authentic' Nepalese dishes (Momos dumplings), but he then spent a good deal of the night throwing them up again. It was such a bad experience we thought we'd only review the ones that were any good... nothing to report so far. Breakfast isn't much better. We generally get to bed around one in the morning and therefore don't get up in time for hotel breakfasts. And on Sunday mornings it's really hard to find anything to eat. After the gig in Birkenhead the other Saturday Troy had to break his fast with Monster Munch, whilst Andy's first drink of the day was warm Coca-Cola. Lunch can also be a trial. We're generally travelling at lunchtime and we're reliant on motorway services and petrol stations. We dream of Marks & Spencers and 'tree-ripened mango'. And Tim's a convert to the new menu at the Little Chef (designed by Heston Blumenthal) - he particularly recommends the kedgeree....

Added on: Tuesday 9th February

Prunk?

We've finished recording and started mixing. We're all very pleased with how 'Anarchy in the UK' has turned out. It's very dark. We're also patting ourselves on the back about The Ramones Medley, which veers from 'Now I wanna Sniff Some Glue', through 'Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment', into a reel 'Trip To Athlone', then a jig 'Spike Island Lasses', into 'Blitzkrieg Bop' and back to 'Glue'... all in the space of 4.5 minutes. It's kind of prog folk punk - prunk?

Added on: Saturday 6th February

Recording

We're in the wilds of North Lincolnshire recording the new album. It's a converted chapel, which seems rather fitting as we are all vigorous atheists. Just had Tim Harries in playing double bass for us for a couple of days - splendid stuff. By the end of last night he was in experimental mode, and sort of hitting his bass - making a noise like a medieval knight in the distance banging a bass drum outside the castle doors, and sounding determined in his single-minded fury to continue banging until the whole castle slowly disintegrated (luckily this was just what we were looking for!) www.chapelstudios.com/?page=home

Added on: Wednesday 3rd February

Folk Awards

Went to the Folk Awards last night. We were nominated for Best Live Act, but didn't win. It was good of them to nominate us though. They asked us to perform a song as well. We did 'I Fought The Law'. I don't really know how it went down because I had a droopy mic stand. Almost as soon as we started the song the mic started to dip very slowly. All my concentration was then channelled into thinking of when I could lift it back up and secure it. (I was playing the mandolin and singing - so didn't have a spare hand.) I knew there was a brief pause for me at the end of the first verse. I grabbed it, lifted it, and screwed it up tight, just in time to start playing again... and the bloody thing started drooping again. A faulty stand. A faulty, ancient, BBC stand, with the most badly designed clamp I've ever seen. This time it started to droop a lot faster. There's only so far you can follow it down before you end up on your knees, so I kind of nudged it back up with my chin while I was singing. Partial success, but gravity was working against me. At the end of the second verse I still have to keep playing the mando, but I get a break from singing. I used this break to try and alert the stage crew to the problem. A took a couple of steps back and signalled to them with my head. No reaction. I nodded to them. I nodded to the mic. I nodded to them again. One of them waved back. Cheerful fucker. Still strumming, I tried lifting the bloody thing with my head. The mic swivelled round in its clip... things were getting worse. I looked desperately towards the stage crew again (the final choruses was looming), this time someone got it. They ran on, grabbed it, lifted it, screwed it up tight, and ran off again. And the bloody thing started to droop again. I followed it down through the final choruses and finished the song almost on my knees. And as it came to an end it occured to me that I might have looked a bit cooler if I'd just followed the thing down in the first place and sung most of the song lying down... [The photo shows one of the rare moments...] www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/events/folk-awards-2010/nominees/

Added on: Thursday 5th November

THE TOURING IS OVER FOR 2009!

SOME AWARDS: BEST SAYING: 'It's not normal and it's not real.' Said by our promoter Geoff in Stratford as he chucked out a pyscho who had forced her way into the dressing room. BEST 2009 GIG: Cambridge Folk Festival. It was rammed, the crowd was up for it and so were we. Great sound system too. BEST OCTOBER TOUR GIG: The Brook, Southampton. It's just the perfect venue - standing downstairs, more a sort of seated affair in the 'circle'. Fairly large venue but still cosy. Everyone's close and it makes for a great atmosphere. Got the loudest roars of the year off the crowd. There's also something special about entering through that little door straight onto centre stage, and the surreal little swimming pool steps down into the crowd. BEST PUB: The Shakespeare, Durham. Fantastic old fashioned boozer - no piped music, no machines, no food except a Cheese and Onion sandwich. We tucked ourselves into the private little booth behind the bar, indulged in a little lunchtime session, and talked merry bollocks for several hours. BEST HOTEL: Royal Lion Hotel, Lyme Regis. Balcony overlooking the town and the Jurassic Coast beyond. The late October sunshine helped. WORST HOTEL: Parisienne Hotel, Blackpool. Trevor, our sound engineer, got crabs off the sheets. Dubious stains all over the paper thin walls. There was an five-piece punk band sharing the room next to mine. Don't you just hate it when you turn up to a hotel and there's a band staying there?(?) BEST FESTIVAL: Cambridge was a belter, and we had a day off whilst we were there which was glorious. But Solfest has to get a mention - never seen a wilder backstage crew, it was like a town in a cowboy film after they've just found gold. And Folkwoods in Eindhoven was something special too - really innocent and magical, like the dreamy bit in a Fellini film before something dark happens. BEST ACT SEEN AT A FESTIVAL: Without doubt 'Mumford & Son'. Just brilliant. Songs you can remember and a banjo player that looks like a howler monkey when he sings. SPECIAL MENTIONS: 1) The Shepmobile. Which has done 16,000 miles of touring over the summer. Nearly every warning light is now on (which looks quite pretty) and there's a small, well, sort of fire, underneath somewhere, when you first turn it over in the morning. 2) Ella and her pie shop! 3) Ella again for driving us back to the hotel every night when the rest of us were a bit worse for wear.

Added on: Thursday 5th November

Andy's Pizza Obsession

Andy manages to get a Dominos delivered in the heart of the Devon countryside. Wherever Andy goes he leaves a trail of pineapple chunks...

Added on: Thursday 5th November

Clockwork Orange

We played in the courtyard of Stanley Kubrick's old house. The clocktower is the one you see in the film.

Added on: Thursday 5th November

Where's the Load In door?

This is the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe. We found ourselves parked up between the two towers and rang to ask where the load in door was. They told us we were on the roof.

Added on: Thursday 5th November

Roundabout madness

Derby has the worst one way sytem in Britain. But Swindon deserves a mention for the record number of roundabouts - here's a roundabout with five mini-roundabouts in it. We just took a deep collective breath and drove at it at speed.

Added on: Thursday 5th November

Troy £12

Ella was running the merch stall - this was such a bad sign (spelled wrongly for a start) we decided to keep it.

Added on: Thursday 5th November

Pigs

Trouble with the constabulary at Leicester Big Session

Added on: Saturday 31st October

Bilston Photos

Interesting set of photos here from The Robin in Bilston. Not often you get decent photos, but I quite like these. Very sweaty gig - you can see my jeans are sticking to me. My shirt was like a wet rag by the end of the evening. Only 2 gigs to go on this tour! It's been brilliant, but my bag is now mostly dirty laundry, and I'm looking forward to my own bed and the chance to cook my own tea. Derek 'Ding Dong' Bell of The Chieftains was once asked what his abiding memories were of being a professional musician for 40+ years and he said 'There could have been better food...' I quite agree, when you come out of a gig at around midnight there's nothing left but Indian takeaways or sandwiches you've bought from a motorway service station. I'd really like some freshly cooked pasta. Or just bread and cheese. By the way, interesting trivia note - Derek Bell once released a solo album called 'Derek Bell Plays With Himself'. www.flickr.com/photos/magpie967/sets/72157622576746633/

Added on: Monday 12th October

The Music Tree

We have a new stand which holds the mandolin, the octave mandolin and the bouzouki. YES - it's a 'Hercules GS432B Auto Grab Tri guitar stand'!!! It is a thing of such god-like beauty that Troy and I regularly pray to it. See the devotion and fear it inspires. And in the background the stairway to heaven has appeared.... www.herculesstands.co.uk

Added on: Friday 9th October

Tarts.

On the way between Nottingham and Barnsley we wandered off the M1 to find a bit of lunch in the Peak District. We stopped in Bakewell. We were half way through our fish and chips when Ella said she'd seen a shop that sold 'The Original Recipe Bakewell Tart'. I stopped eating immediately to leave enough room for this celebrated delicacy. Out in the streets it turned out there were two shops that claimed to have the original recipe. We went into the cuter of the two and bought the said tart... It was dry and horrible. Not enough almond. More like a sponge cake with the thinnest layer of jam. Humungously disappointing - I shall stick to Mr Kipling from now on. Something has to be truly horrible for me not to eat it, as a kid I was known in our house as 'the dustbin' because I'd finish off everything.

Added on: Sunday 4th October

Band On The Wall

We're four dates into the October tour now. We started in Manchester at The Band On The Wall which felt slightly weird because it's where Rik Mayall and I started our careers. Back in 1976 the Band On The Wall was a beautiful pub with stained glass windows that put on jazz in the evenings. Equity (the actors' Union) was a closed shop back then and there was a rumour going round that if you played the Band On The Wall at lunchtimes you could get the right kind of paperwork to get into Equity. Five of us got together and decided to do what was then called 'Pub Theatre': we basically thought out the bare bones of a plot beforehand and then improvised our way through it. It was probably very tedious to watch but we thought we were hilarious. There was no changing room and no backstage area so we used to wait in the toilets. Rik was a particularly nervous performer and used to throw up before every performance, which didn't really add to the ambience. We used to pass the hat round after the performance to get a little beer money and I remember approaching a couple of women who looked like they'd come in to the wrong pub. One of them reached for her purse but the other one stopped her and said 'No dear, they're only strolling players'. I remember thinking 'Yes! I've made it! It's official - I'm a strolling player!'. This was during the days when pubs closed between three and five in the afternoon. I remember the business of chucking as much booze as you could down your neck before being kicked out at three, then we'd leave the cocoon of muted, stained-glass and hit the bright, blinding daylight of the street - it was a delicious 'I've been naughty' feeling. We played the Band On The Wall for nearly two years every thursday, friday and saturday lunchtime. We never got our Equity cards, and although the place has been done up now to be a state of the art music venue I think I caught a hint of vomit as I passed where the toilets used to be. www.bandonthewall.org

Added on: Saturday 29th August

Man playing a sheep!

We played a festival in a forest near Eindhoven the other day. It was a magical setting. It's the only festival I've ever been to where they serve the beer in real glasses, which kind of shows you how civilised it was. We arrived on the edge of the clearing, got out of the van and heard this superb piping - we stumbled through to the main stage to find... it was a man playing a sheep! If you follow the link you can see a bit of our set. www.cineversity.tv/c-tv/EN/tv/netherlands/Folkwoods_2009

Added on: Wednesday 5th August

Wellies

Photographic evidence of Troy and I in our wellies has arrived. As you can see there was a difference of opinion on how to wear them. Troy went for the 'I'm a bit of a twat Lord of the Manor' style, whereas I went for the 'Hello Sailor' look. Needless to say the fashion debate raged all day...

Added on: Tuesday 4th August

Mad 5 Days

It's been a mad five days. I've driven 1,300 miles. I just put all the route points into google maps - from Devon to London to Yorkshire to Harlech to Cambridge to Suffolk to Gosport and back up to London - and it looks like a small child has scribbled all over the map. Did four very different gigs. Played Harlech Castle where people arrived with their own fold up chairs and - without being told - placed them in neat rows (they even made an aisle in the middle!). The trouble with people sitting neatly in rows is that it all gets a bit polite. Cambridge Festival was an absolute stormer. We loved it. The place was totally rammed and they were really up for it. It was without doubt our best gig to date. A gig only really happens in the space between the performers and the audience - there has to be a spark, they have to work off each other - and Cambridge was brilliant. The next day we played Hachfest. There was almost a fight backstage with some young long-haired drunk bloke who was either attacking me or trying to snog me - I couldn't really tell which - either way it wasn't what I really wanted. There was a bit of shoving and shouting and people waving there arms about. All the fun of the fair, really. Andy was playing with my daughter, Ella, back at Cambridge the next day, so Troy and I went along to wobble about, watch bands and drink ourselves into a ferment of holiday-like pleasure. The weather forecast was not good so we invested in two pairs of cheap wellingtons, but the day turned out to be a scorcher, and by mid afternoon our hot rubber boots were very sweaty indeed. We considered drilling holes in them to let the heat and moisture out, but luckily we could not find a suitable spike - we were already several pints in and had we found one I think we might have done our feet serious damage. Ella did a brilliant, brilliant set. She played the Club Tent and it was packed to the gills. She's got such a natural stage presence that I'm really quite jealous of. The other band I really liked were Mumford & Sons - compelling lyrics, fantastic voice, exciting banjo player - they had a real presence and a power. Sort of Nick Cave/Neil Young/Gram Parsons cross. Luckily by the end of the day it completely pissed down and Troy and I danced gaily about in the mud and puddles, showing off our wellies. It's fair to say we were completely pissed... and completely muddy by the end. No-one can remember getting back to the hotel, but in the morning I could see where I'd been by the trail of muddy footprints. Next day we were at Stokes Bay Festival. It was a shit journey from Cambridge to Gosport - useless fucking roadworks, and average speed cameras, and inconsiderate bastards having accidents and clogging up the M3, the M27 and the A32 with their mangled vehicles and broken bodies. So we arrived hot and cross and bored and hungover, and it didn't look like it was going to be much cop, but as we played the audience got into it and it ended up being a really warm and friendly gig. Drove back home and slept like a dead monkey. www.myspace.com/mumfordandsons

Added on: Monday 20th July

McFly Toilets

We played Rochester Castle the other day as part of a 4 day series of gigs. McFly were on a couple of days after us but had forwarded strict instructions to lock the block of toilets nearest the dressing rooms and keep them for their use only - even when they weren't there... dickheads.

Added on: Sunday 19th July

Life on the edge

We played 'Festival At The Edge' on Friday. I thought the name was just a marketing ploy to make it sound like they were really groovy and at the cutting edge of culture etc., but no, it actually takes place on Wenlock Edge - a steep escarpment just outside Much Wenlock. It was a bastard of a drive to get from Rochester Castle where we'd played the day before to the wilds of Shropshire. Schools had just broken up and it was pissing down with rain. This made the roads complete and utter misery. We averaged 39mph! The nearer we got to it the more it rained. Troy was getting pretty despondent by this time 'It's going to be called off. It'll be rained off. It's going to be horrible.' The subtext was 'Let's fuck off home.' Maart, who drove up seperately and had already got there, rang to say it was a quagmire... We were passing through Stourbridge at the time. We wound down the window and asked the most sensible looking person where we could buy some wellies. 'Oh you won't find any of them in Stourbridge,' he said, 'you'll be lucky to find a pair of shoes.' I don't know exactly what this says about Stourbridge, but it's not good. More gloom. We weren't due on until 10.45pm... everyone was pretty grim faced. We got to the site at about 9.45pm. The van slid about in the mud. We managed to negotiate our way to the marquee but we all thought we had little chance of getting the van back out. And still it rained. There was a green room in a barn somewhere apparently, but without the footwear to cope with the mud we just sat in the van waiting for the sound check, with steamed up windows. It was like being on holiday with your mum and dad. The soundcheck didn't go well. Dodgy cables. Couldn't get the monitor sound I wanted. It was freezing cold. They opened the tent flaps and let the crowd in. It filled up pretty quickly - we imagined they were just keen to get out of the rain - like tramps in a library. On we went, and... IT WAS POSSIBLY THE BEST GIG WE'VE DONE ALL SUMMER! I don't know what it was. Our lack of expectation being turned around? But they were definetely up for it from the first number. We'd just added a solo lament on the pipes from Troy to the front of I Fought The Law and I think it just turned the whole situation. It seemed to sum up exactly where we were and how everyone felt, and once we'd punctured it with the full on power of I Fought The Law the gig just caught fire. It was electric. Really good buzz. And afterwards, taking a good run at the worst of the mud we gunned the van and got out no trouble. Bloody marvellous.

Added on: Thursday 2nd July

Crawley/Dent

It was Glastonbury weekend... so we played Crawley Folk Festival, and then beatled up 250+ miles to do Dent Festival the following day. Crawley was good fun. Full of nutters. Well, I say nutters - I mean Morris Dancers. That is insane. The weirdest thing about it is they still seem to be attracting young people into the game. Some people must live in even remoter places than I do. Dent Folk Festival isn't in Dent, it's in Sedbergh. Apparently it used to be held in Dent, but they had trouble with their previous site and moved it a few miles down the road. The local locals in Dent (think Royston Vasey) have taken umbrage however, and decided to hold their own festival in Dent on the same day. So now there are two festivals about 5 miles apart held on the same day. The one not in Dent is called the Dent Folk Festival. People get stupidly bitter don't they? We followed Black Umfolosi on stage at Dent, they were stupendous. Close accapella harmonies and a kind on mysterious lazy dancing that had everyone spellbound. Go find them. We had a blisteringly good time thanks to Black Sheep Ale and a really receptive crowd. The picture shows how we felt after just coming off stage. http://www.african-caribbean-ents.com/blackumfo2.html

Added on: Thursday 14th May

11 gigs in...

Well, we're 11 gigs in to our summer of touring tour with 28 to go and what have we learnt? 1. It's a long way from Devon to Cumbria. 2. Derby has the worst one way system in the world. 3. You can spend all day at the Wychwood Festival drinking Hooky Bitter (3.6% Hook Norton Brewery), and get splendidly squiffy but you don�t get a hangover! Remarkable. Must be something akin to German brewery purity laws. We have an excellent rider on our contract that requests 'a fine selection of interesting local ales'. Some promoters don't try very hard, but some have fun with it. The winner so far is Hannah who runs 'Seven' in Nottingham: (I should be able to insert a picture here but something's gone wrong - I'll get it sorted next week.) Not only was the beer excellent, but it was perhaps the most enjoyable gig so far (maybe the two are linked?) When we got to Nottingham we checked into The Commodore Hotel: (Another amusing photo here - think unprepossessing shit hole) This put us all in a fairly grim mood. And when we walked into 'Seven' we thought 'Oh Christ, this looks crap too'. The venue looked like it could hold about 50 people, on stage we were almost banging our heads on the ceiling, and the dressing room looked like it had been brought over from Beirut. But they rammed about 250 incredibly enthusiastic people into the gig and the atmosphere was electric. Brilliant sound too. One girl at the front had made her own T-shirt 'The Bad Shepherds: They'd Folk Anything' (We might have to nick that) Not that we've had a duff gig yet. Exeter Phoenix was really good fun, St. Albans too, and The Carnegie in Workington had a wired kind of madness to it (they're a long way from civilization up there). Sheffield was a bit undersubscribed but most of them have been packed out. Even the big top tent at Wychwood was full by the time we finished - those poor people in their petrol station fold out chairs with the little drinks holders had to stand up to let 'em all in! www.hooknortonbrewery.co.uk

Added on: Sunday 12th April

I've been away...

Vyvyan from the Young Ones and Krystal Carrington from Dynasty go head to head in a cooking competition... no, it must have been a dream. I've been away...

Added on: Monday 30th March

. Album rant

I don't know how it's taken so long to put this album together. It basically took two days to record. We recorded it 'as live' in the weekend between playing Mansfield and Stratford in December. Maart and I went back in late January to knock some of the rough edges of and do some edits... then nothing seemed to happen for bloody ages. Eventually I got hold of the material and took it to my mate Simon Brint. We spent a week (well a week's worth, but spread over two weeks) to mix it. Then I had to wait to master it, with Simon Heyworth (one of the producers on Tubular Bells, you know!), he's a top masterer (a dark art) and only lives about a mile from me... but it still took ages to get the finished discs. Then the art work had to be done, and all the PRS and PPL business which completely does your head in, then getting the proofs from the manufacturers, and then waiting for them to start work (why does that always take 10 days - isn't there a fucking recession on?). But anyway, here we are, it's all sitting in some factory waiting for someone to press a button, and then it will be here.

Added on: Monday 30th March

Mark Woolley

We've parted company, very amicably, with Mark Woolley. He's a top bloke, Mark, and I love him, but we didn't really want percussion. When this project started we decided we didn't want to go the bodhran route, 'Just say no to drums', was our motto. But when we got back from Shit Island (St Lucia) and parted with our first fiddle player, we got in a bit of a panic with a gig looming and decided we needed to 'fill out' the sound, and we got in an emergency bodhran player (Keith Angel), as well as an emergency fiddler (Carol Dawson). The bodhran became a habit (just say no to drums), and when Andy came on board as our fiddler we thought we needed a new bodhran player too, and enlisted Mark. Mark's an excellent player, and a fine drinker, and he's there on the album, but Andy is an excellent fiddle player (and drinker) too, and the sound we're looking for is a tight four-piece: once you've got mandolin, 12 string, cittern and fiddle going there's 34 strings being played, and clearing a space for them all to be heard is our aim. So that's what's happened. We thought it best to nip it in the bud before we got into hard drums. The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot that Mark has been erased from the photos in some kind of Stalinesque re-writing of history. All this actually implies is that we haven't had time to get any new photos done. If you get a chance to watch Mark playing with Dansaul - watch him, he is brilliant.

Added on: Wednesday 7th January

Nights on the pavement.

Had fun on the Radcliffe & Maconie show on Monday. It was Maart's birthday so it was liberally accompanied by Speckled Hens and Bombardiers. Mark and Stuart do their show from Manchester, so we went out into Rusholme afterwards ('Curry Mile') for a bite to eat. We've all eaten there before, and we thought we knew the score - the restaurants don't serve booze, but let you take your own in. But things have changed. The one we went to - the one Maart insisted we go to (him being an Indian food gourmet, and it was his birthday) - wouldn't even let us take booze in! So we had to keep going outside for a drink. Standing on the pavement with the smokers, drinking bottles of Bombardier. It was freezing. And it was ridiculous. What next - certain kinds of food you can't eat indoors either. Will we have to spend the whole bloody evening on the pavement? What's the point of a restaurant that doesn't want to give you a good time? Oh please bring back the 19th Century coaching Inn - with it's roaring fire, clay pipes full of shag, quarts of porter and the smell of horse dung and humanity.

Added on: Tuesday 23rd December

Lost Sheep Tour

The 'Lost Sheep Tour' ended last night at Cox's Yard in Stratford. Fantastic gig. It has a capacity of 240 but there seemed to be about 500 in there. It was rammed. A great, good-humoured crowd who were really up for it. We'd just spent three days in the studios recording and (not to blow our own trumpets) we were pretty fucking good! It was hot and sweaty and the crowd was right in our faces. I loved it. The set of tunes went down especially well. We've decided to call them 'The Ghost of Donockley's Coat' after a story Troy told us at the weekend: in his youth he had one of those RAF greatcoats, and he was walking along in it one day when he suddenly slipped on an enormous pile of dog shit. He landed right in it and got it all over the back of his coat (and during his drunken examination of what had happened, all over his hands and hair...). He took the coat to the cleaners, and they got rid of the actual shit, but the smell still lingered, so he threw it away. But while we were sitting in a pub in Banbury the other day he got a whiff of dog shit, and wondered whether he was being followed by the ghost of his own coat... That's the end of touring for the moment. We've got a live session on the Radcliffe & Maconie show on 5th January, but after that Troy's away with Maddy Prior, and then the Finnish death metal outfit Nightwish, so our next true gig isn't until mid-May. But we hope to be touring pretty solidly from then on right through the summer and autumn.

Added on: Tuesday 16th December

First Blog

Well, we've done five gigs with the new line up now and things just get better every night. It just gets tighter and tighter. We're getting a lot of good feedback from people afterwards, and things seem to be heading towards a fruitful summer full of festivals. Which is good. Because that's what we want to do. Bit of hitch in Harlech on Saturday: the sound check started at 5.00, but by 7.45 it still wasn't sorted. The regular soundman had broken his leg and his stand in didn't know what he was doing. He spent an hour trying to get my mandolin into my monitor, but could only get it into the ones on each end. When he eventually got it into my monitor he came down and said 'I'm sorry, I just can't get it into your monitor'! Twat. Doors were about to open and he obviously didn't have a clue so we decided to do it 'acoustic'. Theatr Harlech has pretty good acoustics so it worked out OK. Oddly enough there was a bit of argy bargy between two drunk girls on the back row and a small scuffle broke out. Seemed kind of incongruous when they started throwing people out of an acoustic gig!