Well it's April & the chocolate eggs have gone already. The sun is racing north & this year is clearly on speed.

That said, I've recorded a live album with Andi Neate, helped Tracey B pen & record her solo material & performed a couple of shows with her, glued myself to the computer for over 100 hours recording and mixing the latest Gecko 3 mini-album which we launched a couple of weeks ago and spread my wings on the solo front with several 40 minute sets around the country.

Between that and organising monthly events for Acoustic Edinburgh and Spectrum 4 and The Acoustic Edinburgh Festival", studio plans are now to finally give Douglas Kay the double bass part for his new album and lay down a couple of lines for local acoustic groovers Hoochie Fig. Those out of the way, I'll at last be able to get back to my solo release. I may call it 'Sysiphus'...

Had lots of nice feedback at gigs recently - notably the Mercat gig hosted by the incredible The Dead Beat Club and at the Kirkcaldy gig last week when I (along with with Tracey B.) opened for legendary Scottish singer/songwriter Horse McDonald.

After some small post-gig libations we talked about my doing some session work for her & (no point in hanging around) I'll be joining her on tour this thursday & friday on double bass & guitar. Now I've just got to learn the set and pray my wee car hangs together before what could be it's last MOT in 2 weeks time. : (

Talking of things breaking, my equipment woes continue with "Dave" (my acoustic amp speaker) who joined me for my solo headline set in St. Andrews at an acoustic night hosted by the very talented Alice Challiner (sings like Joan Baez - check her out in my top friends). Normally Dave grooves away with the bass but we needed more amplification so I brought him up for the guitar gig. All was going well & Dave was getting into it so much that he started flashing bright lights in time with the music - a trick I didn't know he could pull off. Funky, I thought until I could smell burning - then the tweeter stopped working.

Apparently Dave's got a special aircraft bulb which absorbs excess treble until it reaches the point of (funk) overload, after which the bulb blows and more than likely the tweeter & the attenuator circuit burns out. So Dave's not bothering with treble until I can sort out the repair bill. Disco inferno.

Damien Rice's new album is really good, but he's clearly still not got over that bird. Cheer up dude. Also, 15 minutes of Tibetan Singing Bowl solo is too much for any album...