Where to start?  we've been a sorry pair between us, neglecting to blog as we have. so much has happened and is happening, so in an attempt to keep up with myself and you i shall make a little list.  It will be in order of importance.

1. Solomon, our beautiful 4-year old boy, read his first ever line out loud last night.  It was "...and the owl said, "I can see you."

2. We'll be performing at The Music House in Norwich next Friday (27th November).  Please come along if you can. Details in the Upcoming Gigs bit. A lovely line-up of people, (we're on at 21.45).
We'll also have copies of 'To Love' for sale on the night, for whatever you'd like to pay.

3. You can hear acoustic versions of Small Rain and Fall Here on "Just Good People" - this coming Sunday at 11am EST / 4pm GMT, (please see Top Friends).

4. Songs from 'To Love' will be winging their way across the sea to college and community radio in the U.S. during December. we are excited. i shall post details in another blog!

5. Malcolm has bought a snake.  It's 30 metres long.
(To my great relief, this is a type of cable used by technical people to connect spaces for recording to a hard disk recorder somewhere else.  So now, instead of dismantling half our studio and tramping it down the stairs to the lounge to record the piano, we can plug stuff in at both ends and get on with making music.  Yippee!)

6. We are getting on with making music.

7. M and friends should have been playing (for a singer called Natalie Imbruglia) for Christmas Light switchings-on around the country over the next couple of weeks.  It is not enough to have B-list celebrity switch a switch any more.  The UK demands each one should boast a festival line-up in car park, apparently. However, these are now being abandoned all over the UK because the 1st one (in a car park in Birmingham last Saturday) was hugely over-subscribed. The expected 5,000 folk turned into 27,000, all baying for X Factor types JLS - (yes, I know...) so was cancelled at the last minute, for Health and Safety reasons. It got me thinking that the original Christmas Light switch on (you know, that star above stable one) should also have been cancelled on Health and Safety grounds because of that poor baby all mucky in a stable manger.  Awful parents.  Call Social Services!

Ho Ho Ho.

much love. rxx

hello there!

we're just back from Ipswich, where we recorded 5 songs for the bbc today, to be broadcast this week on Stephen Foster's DriveTime programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0042r78

you can Listen Again for up to a week after the broadcast.  Absent Friends tonight (was on at about 6.40pm, 2 hrs 40 mins into the programme) and 2 songs/interview tomorrow, then a further song on wednesday and thursday.

it was a lovely experience because the people there are so friendly, expert and also make exceptional tea.  i didn't drop my handbells and we only got slightly lost in the middle of ipswich looking for the studio.  (which, we realise now, was an enormous brick building with BBC on the side, in massive letters.  SatNav only gets you so close before you have to actually look around...)

Anyway, we're limbering up for our festival debut this coming weekend, 29-30 August, at Hole Farm, Witham - The Jackdaw's Birthday.  it's going to be a fine couple of days, with all sorts of music, stalls and rare birds of prey.  can't say fairer than that!  we'll be on at 6pm on the saturday, which seems the perfect time for a nice cold beer and the promise of a shimmering sunset ahead.  fingers crossed for that...

if you can make it down, (£18.50 for the whole weekend, including campsite), that would be marvellous, and we'll be selling CD's of To Love for just £1.00.

the headliners on the saturday are rather splendid French gentlemen called Les Barbarins Fourchus - Google them! - and on the sunday, you'll have the band Space Ritual as headliners - formerly Hawkwind, but without Lemmy (you know, the one who went on to be baladeer in popular beat combo Motorhead).
have a look at the lineup here:

http://www.jackdawsbirthday.co.uk

Lovely.

Love,
rxx

aha! back from the void of real life, just for a while.  a brief breather, an escape into the soft folds of MySpace. it's all changed so much on here in our extended absence - on the home page - blimey! feels a bit like when i went away to university and my folks redecorated the whole house... 

Now, this is just a quick, practical blog.  Not the usual rambling. we're playing at Jackdaw's Birthday festival at the end of this month (29 August), and if you had plans to come, please note that the venue has changed - a bit further south now, into essex.  Hole Farm, Rivenhall.  Details on the Upcoming gigs bit of the profile page.  Sessions on BBC Radio Suffolk still going ahead, between 24th/27th August, in readiness for our donning of wellies and handbells for the 29th.  Oh, we've had a godawful summer - truly dismal.  we must be due some respite, a glorious golden time, just towards the end of august.  I am english. I shout in the face of rain.

more soon.

thank you for lovely messages and comments. it's good to be here again.

How IS everyone?

rx

Now then.  Blogging apology....
i'm sorry for saying i'd be better at this, and then not being.  i should have written more, earlier, but life intervened.
But, honestly, you don't want to know how many bills we've paid, the supermarket shops, the gardening, the toddler tantrums, the furballs (thank you, cats) and birds (thank you again, cats)... the film soundtrack is rather beautiful and M has bought a beautiful, beautiful Wurlitzer from a good friend, but that's about it musically...
We needed a break.  So we had a little holiday before Easter after M got back off tour, and took the Eurostar to Paris.  I know, I KNOW, it's a cliche.... I'm, sorry, but, Paris is SO beautiful.  Compared to London, (crane-infested skyline, road cones, chaotic grumpy people), it's breath of fresh air.  Solomon's 2nd time to Paris, though he was only 6 months old the first time and I was a tour widow, trying to keep up with feeding times and Blunt band and such... we all enjoyed it more this time around.  Have you been? [ Don't, for pity's sake, EVER, drive in Paris.  My father took us all there once, in the car, from England, and we nearly (honestly) died in a mixup on the ring road (peripherique). It's a manic place. ]
We saw the whole city.  Truly... as much as you possibly can with a small child, in 3 days, eager for adventure and toys:  Eiffel Tower, Open Bus tour, (obligatory) Seine boat trip - Notre Dame, breathtaking riverside apartments, Pompidou Centre, Mont Martre and the Sacre Coeur... we were up and out every day at daybreak with Solomon to take in the full glory of the place, with all the dustcarts and street sweepers... And OH! The food was heaven for a small boy! Croque Madame (bread, melted cheese, ham, egg), Croque Monsieur (no egg, but still good), MASSIVE ice cream at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, steak, frites, crazy-strong coffee with tons of sugar, amazing Italian food (sorry, French friends - that's a 3-year old's choice) plus all the souvenirs a 3-year old could wish for (including model of TGV train).

We didn't stop for three days.

On the Eurostar home, we talked with Solomon about his time in Paris and he agreed that it was indeed a wonderful, magical place.

We asked him, "What was your favourite part of Paris?"
He replied, sagely...

"The dustcart."

Back to Earth.  Avec une bumpe.
rx

Hello, Hello...
we've just heard from Tom Robinson at BBC 6 Music that he's playing Flowers Strung on a Tree on his "...Introducing" show in the wee small hours of Monday morning (0100 - 0300 23.3.09).
Blimey.
If you're up anyway doing what you do, or fancy joining us as we raise a glass to Tom, it would be a pleasure to have your company...
you can listen to the show live, or (if you're not as hardcore as you used to be or you really need the kip - probably me, truth be told) click Listen Again for 7 days after transmission via the links at http://www.bbc.co.uk/6musicintroducing

we're playlisted between a punk band from Brixton called The Shanners (tunes which remind me of the times i was hopelessly drunk in New Cross as a student... oh dear, oh dear) and Mansfield.TYA (who are french and rather lovely, Charlotte Gainsbourgy and Tinderstickish).  This is the beauty of the show and its ethos - lots of music, all unsigned, independent and wildly varied.  We love the BBC.
rose x
 
 
 

Hello, it's rose.
Now then.
I get a lot of strange spammy emails, mostly about the size of my tool.  You know the kind of thing.  They go largely unread and deleted, but today I got one that opened in a preview window and made me screw my face up a little bit and cock my head to one side.  Have a read...
"Overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which the beating
of her heart, she came behind him or without, or raw, and
scrape on sugar, &c. To into the heart of the green mountain
covered with and the woolja, and entered mogodor at four
o'clock,."

That's actually something quite beautiful to appear in your InBox on a Thursday morning.
What a crazy world!
Please share any porn poetry you get spammed with... but bear in mind i have to approve them!
yours, blushingly...
xx
 
 
 
 
 

Hello there.  It's Rose.  Sorry... It's been a while since I sat and thought for long enough to write anything on here.  I can't keep up with myself recently, starting too many jobs that remain unfinished.  Bins, ironing, filing, songs, more ironing, bills.  A bit of a chaotic time all told, with M and myself juggling life, work, not enough time for friends (including you if you're reading this) or family... spreading it all a bit thin, not breathing deeply, not looking up, looking out.  And Oh!! the world's crazy, but you knew that already.  So I just keep my head down, pondering.  Solomon, who I still think of quite often as a bump, is starting school come September, so all time together is so precious.  We went on tour with M last weekend to Brighton and Solomon has now decided that he wants to be a drummer.  I think it's the combination of noise-making and girls that clinched it for him...
Anyway, sorry for the silence, for the absence.  And thank you for the messages, which come along and lift me when I'm low, and warm my heart.
So, Job-wise, M and I are poles apart just now.  He is mid X-Factor, while I am waiting for a Violin Concerto (Maxwell Davies) manuscript to arrive, followed by a couple of new operas (Max and Judith Weir, a brilliant composer), to edit and get onto music stands over the course of the next few months.  One day we'll get to make a new album from all the things that are floating in our heads and filling our notebooks.
I have been saved by Lucy Fry, who I've been working with on a little film when time permits...  we've finished the filming, and are now just working out a soundtrack of sorts.  Her work is haunting, dark, sensuous and dreamlike.  A breath of pure air, goes right to the soul.  I can't wait to share it with you.

So days are full, the bills are getting paid but our lives are a little empty.  Here's to the coming of a new, warm season and lighter days!  I promise to do better on here.  And, I realise, I've missed you too.
Oh! One more thing...thanks to BBC Radio 3 and a programme called Late Junction, (late night, candlelit bath and big glass of red wine), have discovered an amazing, inspiring record label called Rune Gramofon.  It's a tiny, one-man operation from Norway.  I bought a compilation album through Rough Trade, which just arrived today and it's the most beautiful, slightly-warped thing, highly recommended.  Forty quid mind you (!), but I don't get out much at the moment to see the live music I'd like to, so what the hell..., and what joy!  A book of beautiful images, essays, interviews and 2 CD's packed full of Music. Especially Susanna and the Magical Orchestra and Jessica.  I'm a sucker for beautiful things, being a girl...


With Love.
xx