Hello,
Long time no speak.
I have been so busy recently, working my way round all of europe for festival season. I'm glad it's over if i'm honest as the novelty of Portaloos wears off very fast.
All the summer gigs have been great and me and the band have had so much fun. We all got a little emotional at the last gig in Bochum, Germany.
It's been 3 years since the guys and i started playing these songs and that gig will have been the last time we ever played that set.
It has been one hell of a journey with some ups and downs, luckily the ups outweigh the downs by a huge way. It feels a little strange to be finally saying goodbye to the first album.
It probably would have happened alot earlier if it wasn't for the amazing support i've had from all across Europe. I feel i have a million second homes now in Switzerland, Germany, France, Holland etc.. Everyone has been so amazing and i can say with great delight that it has been an absolute pleasure.
We are now well on the way to selling 3 million albums. It's quite unbelievable. I am just so thankful to all the people who worked so hard and all of the amazing public that went out and bought the record. Without your support we would be nowhere.
As well as touring across Europe, i've also been very busy in the recording studio over the summer. We have a selection of songs recorded and i have to say i'm really excitied. I can't wait for all you guys to hear them and i promise it won't be a long time. We're hoping to release the album early next year so it's only really a few months.
Pete has done an amazing job with the production, some of the sounds are just amazing and they are exactly how i imagined my little acoustic ditties when i handed them all over. We've also managed to persuade one of my favourite artists to whack some stuff down on them but you'll have to wait and see ;-)
So it was only really last week that we officially finished with 'This is the Life' and as soon as i got home i jet off straight away to Las Vegas with my two best friends for a little break. It was great fun and we were like sad old women sitting on slot machines at 3am losing all our money. We were a bit naive with them thinking everytime they made a noise we had won money. We had crowds gathering round only to find we'd won $3.
We spent the Wednesday Morning watching Scotland v Holland. I have to say i quite enjoyed watching football at that time. 11am kick offs are great. It's just a shame that we didn't get a result as we had so many chances. It's just the nature of the beast that comes with Being a Scotland fan. Amazing highs and Devastating lows.
So now i'm having a little break. I want to try and write some more songs but i'm not a particularly prolific writer. It can take me months to come up with one song so i'll see how it goes.
I also have to add my opinion on music piracy. Lily Allen has spoken out at those that are for illegal downloading and i say good on her! I hate file sharing. I think it's ruining the whole music industry. It takes one person to download and think to themselves 'oh it won't harm anyone' but when there are a million people sharing this same thought then it does harm the whole industry. Record sales continue to slip year on year and this is directly affected by illegal downloading. The Music industry is a big part of the Uk economy and as you can see our economy is already in a mess so if people continue to download it will just get worse.
I really do hate to be a preacher as i prefer to make my own mind up about things and don't like being told what to do but the more people continue to download the less new music will be available.
People use the argument that they get to hear alot more music if they download but the longer this goes on that will definitely not be the case. The industry is struggling. Album sales are down, ticket sales are down and without this industry people like me wouldn't be able to release music. I don't have the means to release my songs without the help of my label.
I completely agree with Matt Bellamy's comments in that people who use the internet for downloading should pay more for their connection and that we should be taxed to use the internet. I think this is probably the way forward.
I'm glad that there are artists like Matt and Lily who speak up for musicians and i for one offer my support.
On that note i'm off to get the new Muse album from ITUNES!