Have a listen to The Teacup Song!

  well, that's what i've been told, just keep playing!  i don't think i know enough about the business side of what we do, ironically after the history i've had, but it has to be true that you're never going to get anywhere if you're not out in front of an audience as often as you can be, and you never know who might be sitting behind that pillar, nursing a beer at the end of their working day.
  having said that i don't think you can wait for someone to magically pop up out of the blue and babysit your work so i shall try to explore avenues further!
  another great little gig last night at The Spice Of Life, right next door to where i spent a year of a very different life and i thought there were some stand out gems there - wonderful place to go and listen on a Monday night and see what might surprise you - see you there another time.

it's so easy to allow yourself to drift before you realise you've stopped. perhaps that's a natural quirk of january and it's subtle desire to make us resolve ourselves! well almost at the end of pancake month i feel like i've sucked a very strong mint and after sneezing, as peppermint does that to me, a strong breath has been taken.
i played at the wonderful portebello acoustic sessions last night - with my band of merry men as they were aptly named - and with a new song to try it was a great night away to sit and relax and play. thanks to all there and the incredible reception. we shall return!
about to open the new site at oliverdarley.com so please go over and have a look and now trying hard to get over the barriers to get some slots at a few of the folk festivals - like a few odd thousand others - i know! anyone that has advice there, i'm listening. off to make fish and chips!

It's not an unsurprising statistic as you skate across the pavement wearing two pairs of socks too tightly in your shoes or try to sleep too close to next door's ever fuelled over-flowing cast iron gutter that this is a never ending winter and last year over 400,000 people gave up on old blighty in search of pastures warmer and opportunities greener. But there's still something to be had and a lot to be missed here in this multi-layered, thick jumper wearing, finger thawing freeze - there is - but i'm looking forward to spring!
In the process of getting an ep together to send out to people but have been delayed by gracenote in their hi-tech wisdom refusing to recognise the tracks and constantly defaulting me to a very different kind of music so bear with the low-tech me as i try to sort it out and come and see me play in the meantime in the last few weeks of our winter!

now alright it might have been so cold that the knuckles crack and so wet that the eyelashes hand heavy and my specs became mosaics, but the first little gig of the year at the troubadour was a noble start, and we even got food, rich pasts and wine. doesn't get much better than that!
for the first time the castaway tunes felt the benefit of a little band care of the exceptional Carl on bass and french percussion master, Guillaume! it was wonderful to feel the songs taking off in away i hadn't heard yet and hope you can all hear it soon at the next gigs - start preparing your seats and keep your eyes peeled for new dates. so thanks to all for wednesday and see you soon!

it's that strange day again where living rooms or is it sitting rooms become bare and we trudge off into the new year with expectations high and the sniffles of a new cold that might just keep work away for another day - just one more day to sit wrapped up warm with fresh tea, a Christmas book and the last couple of chocolate seashells to scoff. Imaginations run wild with thoughts of achieving the yet to be done, yielding to that fresh excitement, or engaging with the results of last year's scattered temptation, even enhancing what we've already wisely or foolishly put in place.
happy new year to everyone and let's see what we can do with it, this 2009 - and that's twenty o nine for me!!

It seems I'm slim. As I saunter past street lamps, telegraph poles and two year old saplings in their protective cages I think perhaps this is true so I have decided on action. Most of the gyms I had imagined were loud, very warm and full of screens, whirling wheels and lycra where it was never designed to be, but I have discovered an oasis. Caught in the bubble of time I now visit a room with painted crests peeling off paneled walls, long iron bars that spit rust in protest each time they are disturbed and one old gentleman who still sports the kind of all-in-one blue brushed cotton bathing suit with a wide black belt that strong men used to show off at the circus. It may be cold, I may stay slim but it shows that you never know what you're going to find!

In the spirit of lucky dip, over the next few weeks I'm going to put up some different songs here, some just written and some from long ago so please let me know what you think as and when they appear! O

I have just caught myself blowing into clasped hands to warm and wake them up as i catch myself every year at around this time and it made me think of these funny and peculiar habits that we revisit over and over again. Unless you have the luxury of a Bond Street gifted, triple fur-lined super smooth leather glove or have the metabolic or blood pumping rate of a top of their game power climbing monkey mountain boy, we all do it. From kids laughing and stamping their feet, muffled with spanking new multi-coloured scarves to the old gentleman awaiting his regular bus home, those centuries old, people habits die hard, and i like that!

There's something that happens to my front door around the same time every year. November arrives and my front door sticks, in two places, one just before it decides not to close properly and one where it decides not to open completely. It does this all the way through and over Christmas, snagging the tree as it sheds a multitude of needles onto the floor to be discovered, dried out and brown by my bare feet in summer, through Pancake and Valentine's Day to Easter and the first hint of midday warmth. I thought I'd shut it precisely today but that attempt was proved once again inept by the arrival of six or seven side- plate sized leaves with many little cousin twigs and bits as they sidled towards my cup of tea and half eaten chocolate digestive with an accompanying blast of arctic chill. Cosiness was temporarily shattered. Perhaps I need to discover an older lady somewhere who will witness my plight and knit me ones of those roly-poly snake things to stuff in the gaps or hang an old, red curtain from large iron rings on a pole like Sherlock Holmes always had in those old films. Here's to cosiness and tea and chocolate.

Ok, so we're a few gigs in now within the quest to introduce "The Castaway" songs to the awaiting throng and masses and to introduce me to playing them in front of an audience that isn't just my ever faithful cockers jack and josie, who can give as much criticism with the raising of an eyebrow as they shift themselves back to the next optimum position on the floor with a sigh, as any suited a and r man sipping a recently frothed latte. - well to me anyhow.. and the experience is wonderfully madcap!
I played at The Cavendish Arms in Stockwell on tuesday and that is a great little venue, lovely room, fantastic passionate folks running the night and even though we were ok a little light on numbers there was something incredibly comforting in just playing a few songs to like minded musicians and their friends with a pint of beer and the soothing smell of delicious fresh cooked pies drifting through the air! An amazing experience that is let's face it unlikely to come around again - and i need fattening up a bit!