Breaking News - photos wanted!:

By the way, we're currently collecting photographs depicting the number 5 for a collage we're putting together in advance of the release of our new live album 'No. 5'. Any submissions gratefully accepted - please send to info@hobopop.com. We can't offer anything except the excitement of having your five included on the 'wall of 5's' we're creating...but if your photo is so outstanding that it gets us really excited we'll probably send you a download code for our current CD or a couple of tickets for one of our UK gigs!...
Preferred format for photos - low res web ready jpeg or gif square shots please!!...(Link to the wall of 5s: go to http://bit.ly/3XcDKN)

so we're finally home from our three week trip across scotland and ireland. we've had an amazing trip so a big thanks/hello to everyone who's promoted gigs, hosted us, come down to see us play or randomly come across us on the road....

highlights for me included:

a hailstone picnic in the lakes under the roof of a disabled loo

walking in a wild, windy aberdeenshire with fraser and fiona after the tin hut sessions

talking tatties over late night malts....

hearing a cuckoo on the beach in ullapool

radio sessions with rob ellen in scotland

breaking rob's handbrake....(ooops!)

small but perfectly formed gig in dingwall - and more single malts...

jo's fabulous late night hospitality

mountains, mountains, mountains.....

the hugest double rainbow i've ever seen on the way from belfast to dublin

eating fantastic food at cornucopia in dublin with the wonderful michael grimes

rte 1, shannonside, bbc northern ireland and dublin city radio sessions - thanks guys!

visiting newgrange in bright sunshine and crossing paths with a very chilled out hare

Hi guys,

So we were sitting next to a couple of pekinese dogs in a basket in Copenhagen last week and an email came in to tell us that our Bonecrusher animation, produced by Phil Davies, is in the finals of the Independent Music Awards.
We're all very excited so please take a look and then vote for us in the 'people's voice' section of the Awards! There are five videos under consideration, so every vote will count!...

http://www.musiciansatlas.com/imafinalist/Default.aspx?maincat=10&yr=2009

Hooray!
Kirsty

Oh no, somewhere between Gothenburg and Copenhagen my lovely hat has gone missing! Please look in your house and garden and see if it's there...! I miss it very much!
Turned up in Gothenburg - hooray!

we've left it a long time to do this, and we've done heaps so we'll forget loads, but here are the standard cryptic highlights of the first week and a half of our euro tour...

1. belgian wrinkelboms & dudelsaks
2. 24 hour bread machines
3. playing to mating dogs in a church full of delightful stoned people
4. the biggest woodburner in the world
5. throwing darts live on friesland radio, and missing the entire world
6. throwing darts live on friesland radio and destroying central africa
7. the button that goes 'doodle doodle parp' (again on friesland radio)
8. the land of cookies (or coekijes, or something)
9. lunch with annemarieke
10. the smallest woodburner in the world
11. coffee with annemarieke
12. pindekaas, pindekaas, pindekaas, pindekaas
13. rotterdam with brenda & pijke, belgian beer and snuffly cold starts
14. tempeh sambal & banana chips (mmmmmmmmmm)
15. plastic cups from j c de bunker
16. beer with annemarieke
17. bert's small garage-house
18. sammy the cat
19. kurt, the clompensokken, the kippen and the hospitality
20. the beautiful church at wirdum
21. a show at 11am!?
22. auke's pompoen soep
23. groningen cake, and even more biscuits
24. the singing library in amsterdam (shhhhhhhh!)
25. hospitality and friendship from sandra and eowyn - thanks!
26. playing live on national dutch radio, throughout a show we couldn't understand...
27. the awesome breakfast bakery and goats cheese sandwich
28. driving through denmark in a day
29. norwegian scenery..! like 15 countries in the space of an hour's drive!
30. gunnar's lovely house and lovely family.
31. learning to eat brown cheese the proper way (not the way it comes out of gren's fridge)
32. cans of bog and of snurring, and entertaining nesehornen
33. the random man with the nosefulte
34. great shows and delightful audiences in stavanger and in klepp
35. moooooooooon!
36. being blown around on the beach in orre
37. seaweed fights and sand in our teeth

we leave for the islands today - finnøy then utsira - then onto oslo.

if you have vlc or windows media player or something like that, you can catch a slice of our dutch radio performance here - http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/ikon/OBAlive/11-07-08/muziek.wmv

finally - these lovelies just in from rough trade and rock n' reel...

'inspirational musicianship - full of joyously engaging songs.'
- rough trade

'a fine album, and possibly her best so far'
- rock n' reel ****

full reviews online and in the mag - we are also on the covermount for rock n' reel this month.

see you all soon,

m&k x

here's an awesome review of 'the kansas sessions' from the HMV chain...

If you're unfamiliar with Kirsty McGee and you don't read the small print (Boo Hewerdine, Capercaillie, Karine Polwart etc.), you'd never guess she hails from this side of the Atlantic. The Kansas Sessions is sheer, banjo-dominated Americana from its Tom Waits-like washboard blowouts (no less than three musicians are credited with "junk") to its clarinet soliloquies, recorded at the evocatively named "ninth ward pickin' parlour" in Lawrence, KS. No surprise that a Maverick review cites the Coen Brothers, and there's certainly enough of the offbeat in the restless tempos and illicit still-cum-Dixieland arrangements to justify that.

McGee can neo-yodel with the best of them (check out opener Bonecrusher), yet there's also, in the sensuous, deliberate turn of her phrase and her bare-bulb lyrics, a hint of an anglophone Lhasa or even Madeleine Peyroux, and it's through clarinet-whispering ballads like Sandman which she really inhabits her brand of waymarked noir.


and here's a clip from the manchester launch party at nexus on september 01st, with special guest ragnhild ziegler on musical saw :




hope to see y'all at the london launch at the electroacoustic club!

k&m x

just to let you all know that due to problems at the original venue, the london launch for the kansas sessions will now be at the electroacoustic club @ the slaughtered lamb. the date and time remain the same :

8pm, wednesday 08th october, 2008

come down - it will be a splendid night.

the bill is now fixed too - expect stellar sets from quiet loner & from blue rose code, and guest spots with the collective from christopher cundy (guillemots) and james steel (the brute chorus). mr steel will also be spinning lovely records before, after and during the show.

the slaughtered lamb in the clerkenwell area of london is a truly magic space, quirky and comfortable, and will be the ideal setting for the evening's entertainment. it's at 34-35 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, and you can find info on how to get there etc at http://www.electroacousticclub.com/lambdirections.htm

also more info on the electroacoustic club at http://www.electroacousticclub.com
quiet loner - www.myspace.com/quietloner
blue rose code - www.myspace.com/bluerosecode
hobopop collective - www.myspace.com/thehobopopcollective

see you there!

a day... (can sometimes feel like a month). highlights and memorables...

 

1. more traffic than you could ever imagine

2. more banjos than people!

3. gren playing 'cow cow yickey yickey yea' (wish i'd had a video camera)

4. pink night-time clovers

5. 'let's make a leadbelly covers album!' (thurs. morning)

6. nerdy banjo-tuning fest.

7. jimmy the friendly grouch

tonight - wivenhoe... back soon.

an awesome time with what is feeling like an awesome show already. highlights include :

1. pictures of fruit in compromising positions (liverpool)

2. ragnhild's legs (manchester)

3. plate of suspicious bananas (manchester)

4. 7,000 flights of stairs with 8,000 guitar and banjo cases (liverpool)

5. old friends reunited (manchester & liverpool)

6. 'i f**king love this life!' (car journey home from liverpool)

7. old crappy sounding jazz from the '20s (both shows, and most to come)

9. the genius of the musical saw (video to follow)

10. bill's champagne (manchester)

11. the new 'vaudebilly' t-shirts (http://www.kirstymcgee.com/previews.html)

12. alan on pedal steel (manchester)

13. quiet loner being extra nice to mat's guitar (manchester)

14. j. fergus evans' man-flu (manchester)

15. 130 people!!!! (manchester)

16. the delicious hobopop collective back in action (manchester, and shows to follow)

looking forward to tomorrow night's show in leicester with gren.

night night x

the current issue of maverick magazine is now out, and contains a full two-pager on kirsty mcgee, mat martin and the kansas sessions. get your copy from www.maverick-country.com, and have a look at it at www.kirstymcgee.com/maverick.html

in the meantime here is a nice big nugget for you...

'the kansas sessions is full of beautifully produced, immediately accessible, joyously engaging music that, like a carnival barker, draws you inside to take a closer look at the disturbing, the weird and the wonderful... if it was a film, it would be a coen brothers film, full of startlingly arresting images, visual grace and impossibly cool moments of rich dark humour'

we also have posted four free live tracks featuring our good friend inge thomson which were recorded in scotland in june. they are for download at http://www.last.fm/music/Kirsty+McGee/Live+Downloads or on the hobopop collective myspace page - just click the link in our top friends.

don't forget you can pre-order you copy of the kansas sessions from www.kirstymcgee.com/hoboshop.html