Weymouth

I really didn't think we knew what to expect of Weymouth, for some reason i was imagining a sleepy seaside town, ice creams, boats, fish and chips etc etc and to be honest that's fairly true, but they don't tell you about weymouth is that they are clearly the only place in Britian that has fully adopted 24 hour drinking...and my god, it took us by suprise.

The Journey down was fairly uneventful, phil picked me up about 10 ish and it took us about an hour to get out of cheltenham folowing a necessary pit stop at tesco for breakfast (not wholly anti-capitalist but we were WELL hungry after Slak had destroyed us the night before). we played some songs on Joe Guitar in the back of the van cause somehow we have one of those iPod tape converters stuck in the cassette radio, whcih we can't get out and can't listen to any music, not even through an ipod for some reasons we will never discover. the Blink 182 section of cover songs was defnitely my favourite.

Heading over the hill into a panoramice view of Weymouth, the sea and our guide for today Rob Kimber's fabulous island of Portland, we were greeted with sunshine and high hopes for a beach day before heading to the venue. then it started raining. we did still manage to squeeze in fish and chips from the best chippy on the south coast, and quite honestly the best ice cream we have ever tasted. it's all about food on tour, all about food.

The Venue, the queens hotel, is fucking ace. exactly what you want from a venue, dark, kinda dingy (in a good way), WELL small with a jukebox and a dart board. (which incidently has taken up most of our tour filming so far - Joe and Tom playing darts for seemingly ages while we waited for a tired and quite deflated Frank Turner, having blown a tire on the M5 on the way down and having to wait for repairs). We were very well looked after at this show, good food again, a LOT of cider and then the set.

Which was ace. it's nice playing to a full house whether its 1000 or 150 people, altough the people of weymouth can make as much noise as a 1000 people quite easily. Whilst the sweating walls of the queens expanded and contracted under the momumental body heat circulation, we took to the stage (myself rather regrettably clad in one of my signature 'wolf' jumpers, which was clearly a fucking awful idea) i felt Weymouth warmed to us quite quickly, leading me into the frienzied idea of posing metal-rock god style for the solo of Waitress.

If there's anything you never want to do at a show where no one knows you is to fall down. but that's what i did. all it took was my foot up on that monitor, barely achieveing two seperate notes picked form the solo of waitress i rapidly discovered that the seemingly unharmful speaker that had been filling my ears with our music for the past 20 mins  was not attached to the stage and merely balancing on a upturned beer crate, which collapsed, as did i. face planting the front barrier and struggling to regain any composure to finish the solo i did what any man would do in this situation and laughed it off. there was no going back, so we had to go forward. (i think Frank quite enjoyed asking the people of weymouth whether they enjoyed my "face plant solo", fairplay though it definitely broke the ice with the 'mouth crowd, though it almost broke my face in the process. hahaha.

These blogs are getting well long so i will finish this one with a brief description of the carnage that ensued after the show. Having met Rob's hometown friends and the place we were crashing at ( the guys were fucking legends by the way) we began drinking, and drinking and drinking, leading us in and out of various watering holes in the fine seaside town, borrowing a homeless man's guitar to play billy bragg songs before paying him for the privellege, swimming in the sea, meeting old people that still go clubbing and watching rather brave newly-met couples adventurously fornicating on weymouths beach before becoming distracted by our shouting and laughter.

this was followed by a morning of nursing headaches with mid afternoon breakfasts and sitting/paddling on the beach. we love the 'mouth and we're going back soon. Day three. DONE!

Ok..... so you may or may not notice that all of these blogs are being written in the same hour...this is the only opportunity ive had to get to a computer properly so i'm gonna have to do it all now before we leave for Kidderminster..

Cheltenham

ah the mighty 'nham, the best town in the world, so cool i have to write about it in bold! We also discovered quite early on that this was ours and apparently Mr Turners biggest show to date, 1000 beautiful cheltonians, bristolians, somerset cider types, midlanders and londoners filled the hallowed room of the 'nhams town hall for a sweaty but marvellously entertaining spectacle in the aftermath of the two thousand trees festival. and fuck me it was good....

Following a frankly short trip to the venue  we were greeted by the mighty Frankie T ( seriously this man is actually a legend - prob the friendliest man in music if i'm honest) and watched in awe as he and his band tore through 'the road' cementing it as my favourite song at the moment and leading us into our check with the mighty Donny Choonara on the faders. Check was awesome!

Following a brief refuelling at the newly refurbished Burger King and a cocktail of cheap beers and scrumpy cider, we returned to watch our bestest mate Joe Summers open the evenings proceedings, and what a fine job he did (you can find him here). I however could only watch two songs as i began to contemplate the sheer scale of this show for us, i nipped back satge to have a calming cigarette before running into philly opting for the same relaxation technique.  We both nervously awaited our opportunity to 'spill our guts' on this massive stage by chain smoking prison rollies and engaging in idle chatter with the very friendly support staff at the venue. 

and so it came...it a rush of lights, shouting, skiffle beats, tinkling glocks, hand claps, 'smoke and fireworks' the greatest show we'd played and the single most fun we have ever had on stage in our lives. 

and it was over. kind of. 

While we nestled down on the side stage to watch Turners set with a strong sense of belief and faith in what we love and spend all of our time thinking about, we prepared for our stage invasion during 'Photosynthesis' the crowing moment of an awesome night and the precursor to a drunken rambling session at the Slak aftershow, where we were treated to a covers fest provided by "Cheltenham's best band" Thrill Collins, Ruth Bewsey, Oxygen Thief, Dan Batchelor, and Mr Turner himself. before returing home to re engergise for our onslaught on Weymouth the next night. 
Day two. DONE!  

Howdy Partners,

the JL&tSS ship has taken a small stop off in sunny walsall, before chuggin' on to Kidderminster and Wednesbury (hope of the mighty Addistock!) and finally reaching our destination at Y-Not. So... you may be wondering where its passengers have been and what's be going on and how we came to practically kill oursleves in the first 5 days of touring so - in bite size chunks -  here goes......

Bristol

the first night, and maiden voyage of our unamed vessel, led our hapless crew to Brizzles very own (and possibly only bar/venue/noodle bar) Mr Wolfs. Arriving early we decided to get some grub in and chill out til check this is where our first recommendation comes in - go to the little pub next to the hippodrome for food, it's £3.50 and whilst its prob microwaved tastes fecking ace!! 
Anyways the show....was alright, unknown by ourselves the night was kind of turned into a suprise party for man named Charlie, whom we didn't meet, and alas did not title 'Happy Birthday Cunt' at the show but just played it to a fairly friendly crowd of onlookers and our favourite Bristolian Noise-Monger and rock royalty Mr Oxygen Thief and Mrs Thief TOO! TO be fair, if i was at my mates party and some random band turned up to play who i didn't know i'd prob be the same. all in all it was a good show, the promoter was sound as fuck and plyed us with needed beers, and then we all invaded Mr and Mrs Thief's house to sample his japanese single malt whisky (awesome!!) and jager before heading back to the 'nham. Day one. DONE 

( we can't work out how to get photos off our phones onto this computer so they'll be up on  our bookface page when we get home find it here ) 

Howdy fine folk of myspace, i come bearing gifts. 

Howdy Partners,

well there's a lot to talk about so here goes......



NEW BAND
After 6 or so months of jamming through old songs and playing shows we've decided that the band should have a name and so it was named 'the solemn sun'.

I'll still be around doing some shows solo but you can expect us to be invading every festival field we can get our feet into this summer as the four of us.

NEW SONGS
We've made rough demos of the new songs which'll be on the next record. recording live is definitely the way forward for us, none of pissing around dropping in on bad takes, or standing in a vocal booth on your own trying to remember how you even sing the song. the recording day was nuts, all of us in one room, 4 mics and a tape machine (with a nice Watkins copycat for the tape delay) and we were done in a few hours. sorted!!


NEW MYSPAZZZ


In accordance with our new demo recordings of songs from 'Atlases' being put up on our page we decided it was time for a fresh look (thank you s to Phil and Andy for making it all look nice!). New photos of the band are also coming this week.

NEW DATES
We're busying ourselves with booking at the moment - trying to book two tours at the same time and loads of other dates, we just want to get out and play the new songs. So i thought i'd pick out a few dates for your diaries/debit cards.

FIRSTLY, we have a solo instore at Badlands in Cheltenham on Monday 16th March, with a selection of awesome folk /punk artists from the big smoke and down south. James Black, El Morgan and Pog. Check out the Facebook event for more details here



SECONDLY, i've kindly been invited to do a solo set at this years LEXAPALOOZA, an awesome little festival that dontaes all of its profits to cancer research. For more info on what's going on check out www.lexapalooza.wordpress.com .Tickets are selling fast so grab yours from www.wegottickets.com

(i did just try to make hyperlinks out of those but i couldn't im rubbish with html, sorry)

AND FINALLY.. myself, Oxygen Thief and Ben Marwood are going out on the road to support a split E.P we're making for the summer, i've posted all the dates we plan to do - we just need to fill them in now... so if you or anyone you know knows of a venue or promoter somewhere around the country that might be interested in putting us on, send me a message and we'll chase it up.


that's all for now i think.....
was good talking to you.

JL&tSS