As some of you know already, we've been recording the follow up to Time Enough At Last since February this year.

The process has been a fantastic one, with a lot of excitement, mixed with unexpected surprises and a few drawbacks....but now we see the end of the process and the album is almost finished - so I thought it made sense to write an update...

There is (probably) one more recording date left - with a mixing date to book and then the post-production bit....so not sure when it's going to be ready for listening/buying - but the recording will definitely be over by the end of 2009.

The new songs have developed over time - and since we've been playing some of them live, we have adapted them slightly and learned from those experiences on stage when recording them for the album.
There is still a couple of songs still to be aired live, but the track list will look like this when it's finished:

(in no particular order)

On A Roll
Where Will it Lead
Sisyphus
The Way To Go
Jigsaw Song
Run and Find Me
Afraid
Postcard
Not Enough To Know
The Lines



- I want to just add some personal highlights of the recording so far, that won't mean THAT much before you hear the album, but want to show my excitement publically - and this seems the best way....

- the pre-studio period of deciding what we wanted to concentrate on and prioritise (which eventually became the tracks on the album)
- hearing the multi-layered Gareth and Richie vocals on Run and Find Me in the 1st recordings of the song.
- Gav's drum pattern for The Lines - you can see it on the video from New Theatre Royal - understandably blew us away. - we already thought he was a genius.
- nailing Sisyphus first time round - so far the hardest one to record.
- hearing the 5 or 6 vocal layers we do on The Lines for the first time.
- recording Where will it lead for the second time with Jeff's awesome bass part in it.
- Jeff's bass solo in Not Enough To Know...
- hearing Richie singing The Way To Go in the studio...gonna be everyone's favourite track that one...
- getting to put "the works" on Jigsaw Song after all this time.
- sorting out a special intro for the song most likely to start the album....really pleased about that one....
- Clare's double bass in her songs....the hugeness of sound it creates and the soul that comes out of those deep notes....
- Pat's beautiful, lyrical dobro...that had Neil our producer smiling from ear to ear every time Pat touched it. Just stunning sound....
- Ian's magic on Jigsaw and Where Will it Lead. Very important he is there and his powerful, soulful voice shines on those tracks, as expected.
- the anticipation and good communication with the people still awaiting recording time - everyone has been fantastic with us and we owe them a big thanks.

There are many other highlights - some of them just "moments" that aren't things easy to communicate - like the buzz around the burger van that was noticed at the perfect time on a very successful recording day - or the exceitment that comes with the risk always present when I decide to "improvise" - some good stuff has occurred from risk taking....

So I hope that gives you a sneaky peek into the progress so far and some of the reasons why we're excited about this album.

We are proud of the songs, and the support we've had from people that have heard these songs live has been fantastic and massively appreciated. That spurs us on and makes us feel like we're doing something right. We always want to keep improving and building on what we have - we hope this album does that and gives you songs you want to keep playing over and over again.

: )

There is still some work to be done, and some guests still to put their contribution on the album - but we couldn't be happier with it.


Gareth de Bemis

I thought it made sense to explain why I withdrew from the Guide Awards, an award that this year I was put up by someone else as a nomination for solo artist.

After careful consideration - trying to judge whether it would look ungrateful or whether Bemis would benefit from the publicity - I decided to write to the News to withdraw from the competition - as we (me and Rich) feel it's detrimental to Bemis' progress to start celebrating the potential of one bit of Bemis....

You won't see the name Gareth Howells on any poster anyway - I have been gigging with Richie pretty much exclusively for years now - I did one solo gig this year that was a replacement for a no-show, and I deliberately played first so the later acts had the audience - and I was just testing some songs I hadn't played for a while....there was no declaration of independance going on.

Likewise, with the All about the Song competition, I entered as Gareth Howells as I wanted to include Brilliant Fire, Jigsaw Song and People Live On in my entry - all of which are written by myself - we performed them together (as the rules state you can) and performed together at the final showcase.

For some reason, someone decided to list me as a solo performer for the nominations.
This reflects badly on Richie's contribution to Bemis and belittles what we are as a unit.
I am sooooooo proud to be partnered with Richie - he is a phenomenal guitarist with a really beautiful voice and a great songwriter - most of the new album is written by the both of us together.

I don't perform under the name Gareth Howells...

- and in that sense, my name is Bemis.
(as would be the case with Richie)


So, my thanks to the people who enthusiastically voted for me as soon as the paper listed the nominees - but it makes sense to withdraw and keep consistent with the name Bemis.

I am sorry to be out of the race on this one, but feel very strongly that I am part of a team.....not a solo artist.

: )

Thanks guys for the support.

Gareth
xx

Loads.....LOADS of great things going on with Bemis at the moment.

Every week we seem to be either getting a new reason to smile or something else crops up for us to look forward to.

Recently we played together at the All About the Song competition that I entered. We really enjoyed it - got through to the final and had a great quote from the local newspaper....

"a compelling set of contemporary folk-rock" - a nice way to cut through the expectations you face from a duo...loved reading that.

Plus there were quotes from the celebrity panel where we were compared to the West Coast Sound presumably coming from Laurel Canyon - which is high praise....

The experience was great and we will enter again next year if it runs again, this time as a songwriting team, submitting different songs....

Congrats to Loz Bridge for winning - well deserved mate, love your stuff!  : )

....An important change has happened in Bemis - the entrance of Jeff Radford to the fold. A VERY close friend, it is natural that we would end up gigging together - but what is a lovely revelation is how committed to the music and how fired up by the whole experience he is - makes us very happy to have a guy like Jeff playing with us. Check out his playing on the youtube clip of "In Your Eyes" on our youtube account.....great stuff!  You will be seeing a lot more of Jeff at Bemis gigs - and he will be featuring on our new CD we are recording at the moment.

- on that note, we are also preparing a live CD and a DVD of live clips - this is partly in response to a number of people saying we were "a live band" - presumably suggesting that the full effect of what we do isn't enough unless on stage, live, at the time. That's a pretty cool compliment and something that we should honour by making available live audio and video, as well as the recorded songs.

So yeah, that's in the works - pleased with how that's going - by the end of the year there is a good chance that the new songs will be available - either live, or recorded, or both.  : )


Amongst the things we'd been doing lately was a very special night supporting Megson for the second time. We couldn't wait as we were so impressed by them last time. This gig was at the Cellars so both us and Megson could afford to really use the beautiful ambience the Cellars gives you to create dynamics in the set.

Our set was this:

Jigsaw Song
On a Roll
Atlantic City
Ghost
Ballad of Accounting
Slogan Song (with Jeff)
Machismo (with Jeff)
Brilliant Fire
Close Your Eyes
Afraid
People Live On.

- a set which features many new ones as well as a few of the oldies - plus a couple of covers we wanted to do because we love doing them so much - and they give a different feel to the other songs....

It's been great bringing Slogan Song and Machismo back into the set for the new gigs, really because of the 3 part harmony that we do with Jeff on these tracks. Playing at the Cellars also gave us a chance of playing "Afraid" "Close Your Eyes" and "Ghost" which we can't play at louder venues. As is customary though, we still did the loud stuff - including "Ballad of Accounting" which again we can't do a lot because of the intensity of the lyrics. Ewan Maccoll wrote a song that really grabs you by the throat and shakes you. Amazing. We had a great review in the paper again - and generally had fantastic feedback - thanks loads guys.

Megson came on after us and played 2 sets, full of their beautiful songs, performed perfectly - an immense amount of drama and sensitivity coming from 2 vocals and one stringed instrument mostly....stunning stuff. If you missed it, I massively advise you to look for them at other venues. They are simply amazing.


So what is coming up?

On the 26th we are doing an extremely important benefit gig for Bearded Theory Festival - in Guildford - at the City Club - featuring:

SUBGIANT, Neville Staple from The Specials,Zombie Met Girl, East Of Ealing, Thinker, True Deceivers, and Freedom (featuring Gail from Greenman Rising), and The Fork Handles.

So a classic night is on the cards - and Bemis will be me, Rich and Jeff again.

This will also be true of the next day when we play the I Love Albert Road day - which we did last year - can't wait for that too - that is a mental day. We'll be playing near Tescos early afternoon.


Then there'll be another load of gigs, some all nighters, until a really important finish to the year at the Cellars....

Another "Bemis and Friends" night!! - this time with a special guest in the form of Derren Nauendorff - amazing guitarist and singer...

The details of this night aren't sorted yet - but the last one we did was possibly the best gig we've ever done - certainly the best one we've organised ourselves. We need to make sure we top it - so there will be many special guests - and it should be a lovely night. That's December 13th.....

...by which time there will be more Bemis to take home.....



So....remember the 26th September for the big Guildford gig - tickets are now on sale for £15 from the following site:

http://www.iristickets.co...uk/portal/event/12137

Children are welcome. Under 16 by donation on the door. 16 and over full price....

All proceeds go to the Bearded Theory Festival to help ensure it can continue next year. As you may remember from the news, this year the festival was hit by a tornado - which massively cost the festival financially....so they need our support in making it even better next year. We are signed up for next year - so we are looking forward to seeing if it really can be better than this year...?

There are a few other things happening too in the Bemis camp - but I don't want to jinx it....but the future is very exciting....

Thanks for reading my ramblings guys.

THANKS SOOOOOOOO MUCH FOR THE SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!

- see ya at a gig.

xx

Bemis - as in me, Rich and Jeff - doing "In Your Eyes" written by Peter Gabriel.
 

Last night was very, very special.

We have had a wonderful year so far, with all sorts of things being put in the mental scrapbook for safekeeping, but last night was just soooo right in so many ways. I'll try and give a full impression in this blog....

We were given a headline spot at the nationally recognised Eastney Cellars - and were invited to organise the support acts ourselves.

We wanted to pick bands that would create their own atmosphere, benefit from the Cellars stage, write great songs and have been good to us (to say thanks) - those bits of criteria doesn't narrow it down as much as you'd think it would, as there are so many people out there we have made great connections to and are creating great music.

- but we decided to share the gig with Mojito and Tinderbox - one band that has already been making a name for themselves in the South with some great gigs they've already done, and another band who we feel are massively underrated in their home town.

As a bonus, we decided that our set would feature guest performers....
From the moment I got to the Cellars at 6.35, the evening went sooooo smoothly, with 6 of the other performers appearing only a few minutes after I got there - and the others arriving in such a way that there was loads of time for soundchecking and loads of time for all the performers to chat and have a laugh - and we did have a laugh - the atmosphere and comeradarie between the 11 people performing that night was actually pretty beautiful I reckon....

Tinderbox were first to soundcheck - as they were the most people, and the most complicated (as much as congas get complicated) - and once they were done, Mojito soundchecked - mostly because we were backstage sorting out the songs we were going to do with Peter, Paul and Naomi. Then we soundchecked - and had to speed up at this point as there were already quite a few people lined up outside at 8pm.

As an unbilled surprise, the evening was kicked off with a 3 songs set from our friends, Paul Simmonds and Naomi Bedford - they started with one of The Men's new songs, "Colwyn Bay", then a Woody Guthrie song (recently featured on the BBC4 documentary about him actually), called "I Ain't Got No Home" - one of his dust bowl ballads. Then they finished with another Paul Simmonds song, this time off Naomi's solo album, called "Call me  Darling". The crowd gave them a great response and they opened the night beautifully. They would be returning to the stage in our set.....

Then Mojito took to the stage - they had been working on material for this night for months, with some newly written songs and a new Talking Heads cover that I wasn't expecting! - they included Reach Out, which is my favourite song of theirs, and their last song was a brilliant song to finish with - one of the best songs I had ever heard them do. Great set guys.

Then Tinderbox followed these guys, after some setting up music. I mention the setting up music because it was specifically chosen by me - to make it more "Bemisy" lol - so you had, between the acts, Alice in Chains, Jonh Mellencamp, Barenaked Ladies, Del Shannon, Buena Vista Social Club, Morphine, Pink Floyd, XTC and Ben Harper. Very personalised and made me even more happy than I already was (which is a big statement!).

Tinderbox we have seen many times and shared the bill with them before, and every time we love seeing the commitment they give to the songs and the way they instruments interact with Monique's beautiful voice - a tight, but complex sound. As soon as they began "Fall Down", the first track on their CD, people's eyes were glued to the stage, captivated. "Travelling" had me and Pete Christie singing a harmony from the side (a harmony that probably Bob and Dan were already doing on the mic lol) and "State of Play" knocked me for six again. Just brilliant.

After a little gap of getting ourselves sorted, we began our set:
Freedom - where I broke a string (first time on stage in years - and Pete volunteered to put another one on while we carried on with the set- thanks mate!! :) )  

Sisyphus - one of the newest songs to our set.

Where will it lead - featuring Gavin on congas - another one off the new album, but that we've been playing for longer...

Close Your Eyes - Dedicated to Teresa, Richie's wife - I could hear people singing along on this one - that's pretty cool, as it's a song we hadn't played at the Cellars before.

Shirt of Blue - a Paul Simmonds song (Men They Couldn't Hang classic) with Paul singing lead and playing my newly strung guitar, Rich doing a backing guitar and singing harmony, and me singing harmony. Pretty magical moment.

Billy Austin - this was a duet between me and Paul, with Paul backing me on tenor mandolin. Dedicated to John Dilloway, smiling away at the back.

Brilliant Fire - dedicated to Ali - this song we hadn't actually done for a while and it was good to do it again.
Afraid - This is one of the new ones too, and a song we can't always play as it's so quiet.
Silver Dagger - with the beautiful voice of Naomi Bedford joining us....great stuff!

Jigsaw Song - dedicated to Naomi's elbows (ooh lovely elbows).

People Live On - a version of this where we surprised ourselves, jamming at the end, giving Rich a chance to put on a lovely slow, quiet solo towards the end.

Find the Cost of Freedom  - Christie and Bemis team up again, this time to tackle the CSNY classic, with us trading strings together for a while, then bursting into the 3 part harmony moment. One of those moments....

Woodstock - again with Pete Christie, this time in a different key so Pete doesn't have to put his knackers in a vice to get the notes. (although he probably went higher anyway LOL)

- then we were finished, a little over time...but as is customary, the Cellars were cool about it - the atmosphere was incredible in that building that night and it is probably why nobody seemed to mind the running over time thing.

Looking forward to seeing the photos emerge now - it was a night me and Rich will never forget - full of surprises and a warmth from a very full Cellars that made us feel we were definitely doing something right.

Thanks to Neil for being so brilliant all the time on the sound and for Steve for giving us the night and for being on the door all night. (and for running in for "Find the Cost of Freedom" lol).

Thanks to everyone that came - especially to Fran and Clive - who decided to celebrate their 17th wedding anniversary by going to see us.

See ya soon.....xxx
 

Well the night went as brilliantly as it looked on paper - classic songs, written by a hugely influential man, performed by fans, at a hell of a venue - in front of a very large audience.
Neil Young was a beautiful night - with so many great musical moments and an electric atmosphere.
Here was the line-up:
Hey, Hey, My, My - C.M.Arnold - the host - a fantastic start with Clym's emotive voice laying out Neil Young's musical philosophy, setting up the night.

The Needle and the Damage Done - Jennifer Ellen Frost - flanked by Chris Perrin and Richie Leo - sung delicately and perfectly for the vulnerable lyrics - played with the same sensitivity. 

Natural Beauty – Andy Foster - really suited Andy, had a "natural" feel to it. Warm, effective delivery of a beautiful song.

Cinnamon Girl – Andy Foster - that riff is still in my head - one of the best Young riffs, again performed lovely by Mr Foster.

The Way - Andy Foster - this was a nice surprise - a song from the last album, a waltz with an interesting set of lyrics - great choice Andy!
Sugar Mountain – Chris Perrin  - Chris began his blistering set with this gorgeous song from Decade, that started life as a B-side - sung with passion, played with great dynamics throughout.

Love to Burn – Chris Perrin - Chris plugs in, a bass player and drummer are added and we get the first taste of the "godfather of Grunge" side of Neil Young's work. A massive performance with some very Youngesque soloing at the end - brilliant.

Old Man – Tom Dangerous - Tom takes to the stage now and was totally on the Young vibe here - Old Man is one of my favourite Young songs, and he nailed it beautifully - with the power of the higher register chorus ringing through.

Heart of Gold – Tom Dangerous - the Boney M classic is given another strong performance from Tom here, I was happily singing a harmony from the audience - great to have his biggest selling single being played on the night...

After the Goldrush – Bemis - we take to the stage now and Rich starts with an acapella first verse, then we build it up from there - love the line "look at Mother Nature on the run in the 21st century" (adapted for the new decade)

Ohio – Bemis - this was a song I relished playing - got completely lost in it - straight away - and was overwhelmed by the hugeness of the song - not sure if i've ever sang that many adlibs in 4 minutes before LOL - loved doing it. Never done it before and really pleased we chose to do it - one of my favourite songs EVER.
Helpless - Bemis - here we were joined by Steve from Two Fingers of Firewater on accordion - and again got lost in the song - it's such a beautiful song....

Cortez the Killer – Two Fingers of Firewater - this had an amazing sound to it - pretty psychedelic - and it was clear the night was going to end with a raucous finish - like Young would have wished for....

Rockin' In The Free World – Two Fingers of Firewater - THAT song, that everyone loves, and everyone loves playing, thrown at the audience by a pumped up Fingers of Firewater - with John and Alex trading solos at the end - brilliant.

Yet again, another T.A.P. promotions night was a cracking night.
- looking forward to our next gig at the Cellars now - our headline night on 28th March.
See ya there!!!
 
Gareth
x