A Journey from Darkness to Light

So, it’s a month since the concert. It was great. A lot of very hard work, but all of it was worth it.

To be honest, it might have been a bit long (a tad over two hours), but it’s a balance between trying to get your stuff heard (author’s pride?) and making sure that the audience have a variety os songs that they can both identify with and enjoy. Still, it went down very well. The only slight incident was that one of the stage lights that we had hired decided to burn out towards the end of the night, and no-one told us because those who did notice thought that the rising smoke was part of the effects. Yeah, right!

We enjoyed it so much that we are going to do it again in December – the 8th is looking good at the moment. Lil was absolutely buzzing for about four weeks afterwards, so that was a result in itself.

Still no feedback from the music publisher that we sent our CD too. We got an email about six weeks ago saying that it was “still in the system” – the system will have had it for six months next monday. It is incredibly frustrating because I don’t want to rock any boats whilst there is still the chance of it being published “properly”, however slight, but if they turn around as they almost certtainly will in a couple of months and say “Sorry, it’s not for us”, we then go down the route of publishing it ourselves. That in itself is not a terribly bad thng, and we are all set up to do so. I know what needs doing, and I can get on and do it, but not until the other option is no longer available.

In other news, the next CD is, well, stalled. I have one song finished, two more with the basics done, and one nearing completion for all but vocals. The autumn will bring progress……..

……….and then practise some more.

The concert is only about four weeks away now, and we are practising the second set with the boys on Tuesdays, and the first set with Lilian on Wednesdays.

It’s coming together, but there is so much to do, and I don’t know how Teresa puts up with all the junk lying around to enable the practises to happen……….

We have a final set list now – I will publish it tomorrow.

Wow, it’s a lot of work to get this thing on the road. Backing tracks to prepare (which is a lot of work – removing vocals from the main mixes, balancing volumes etc), mixing to be done on the covers that me, Mike and Phil will be doing, slideshows to do, equipment to build and check, and then everything to be catalogued in boxes so that thngs don’t go missing.

Oh, and I have a cold as well. A man cold, but apparently men do have worse colds because of the effect of testosterone. Well, so it says on the internet this week, so it must be true! I am not sure that it is the best idea to be mixing music when I can hardly hear anything, but whatever!

We are really excited about the gig, and have ten weeks to prepare so we should be ready on time. Lil has been given all the music tracks to play on an iPOD so that she can be sure that she knows all the words in time. I carry a little iPOD shuffle with my everywhere I go now with all my tracks to learn. I have to learn the vocals for all the songs where I take the lead, backing vocals for the ones where Lil takes the lead, and vocals for all the tracks with Mike and Phil. Also, I have to learn the chords to every song because my guitar will be the only live instrument on the night.

And don’t think that just because I wrote the words and music to everything that it makes it any easier to learn. I alternate between “What is THAT chord doing there?” to “Hmm……. it might sound nice if I did……”

Ah, it will be alright on the night!

Me and Teresa are Geocachers. For those of you who don’t know, geocaching is a sort of worldwide treasure hunt.

Basically, people hide “caches” all over the world (there are almost 1 million in existance now!) and then provide a GPS reference to the place where the cache is hidden. In addition, there will be a description of the cache, its location, or a theme (there may be a series of caches all linked by references to Harry Potter, for instance), and usually a clue (it’s not just a case of turning up at a site and finding the cache – often they are very cunningly hidden!).

The caches themselves vary from small tupperware containers, 35mm film canisters, large ammo boxes to small, fiendishly difficult to find “nano” caches. These latter are small (about the size of the end of your little finger with magnets to hold them in place) and all may contain goodies. The idea isn’t to find and take, however, but to contribute. So, if you take an object from a cache, it is generally etiquette that you put something back, or at least transport what you have taken to another cache location. What is present in every cache, however, is a log book for you to sign and record that you have visited the cache. Once you have found the cache, you record it on the internet.

What you do need is some sort of a GPS device to read the co-ordinates. This can be an application on a mobile phone, or a dedicated GPS system – we have a Garmin Oregon 400T. Most modern GPS units let you download the details of the cache from the internet straight to your phone.

So, what’s good about it? Well, it gets you out! We have been to places that we would never have been had it not been for geocaching, and we have walked and walked and walked. And it’s great! We have been caching in Paris, and all over the UK. Because of various things (us being wimps in cold weather a major contributory factor!) we haven’t been out since 21 November, but yesterday was our first caching day of 2010. Hurrah! Can’t wait for the warm weather…………….!

For more details, go to www.geocaching.com

I am looking around for interesting photos for the new website, and I keep coming across  images that are just so cool, and so unbelievable, that I have to grin and scan them for posterity

This one if from when I was at school – being kind it would have to be thirty-two years ago, but I think that it is more likely to be thirty-five! That’s me over on the right, and look at how skinny I was – and those platform shoes! I actually look relatively tall, but from memory those shoes had 4.5″ heels

This was from the era when we all thought that all we had to do to become a pop star was to have a guitar. I have no doubt that we sort of knew what to play, but the trailing leads into th curtains betray the fact that nothing was plugged in. So, a publicity shot from all that time ago – who says that marketing is a new game!

Well, I have spent much of my free time lately getting the website ready. It will be a while yet, but I hope that it will be worth it.

I have pinched a couple of design ideas from my mate Richard Olpin (with his permission), who has a real eye for things. Most sites that I have done in the past have had some sort of colour theme, but this one is black. In the words of Stacey (from Gavin & Stacey), it is looking “lush”!

We have more friends coming round tomorrow to listen to the album. It’s really great to have folks round, but their comments (‘though very welcome, of course) are not really representative of what other people would think. After all, you don’t upset your mates with unfavourable comments, do you? Lilian is coming round again – it is amazing how she has grown into hearing her own voice with others listening too. Her confidence is growing, and it needs to because we are looking at doing a live convert at Our Lady of the Assumption in June. I have already started to make serious arrangements, and it is very exciting. More here as it unfolds………

I mean really? That’s me in 1978 when I was just 18. Did I actually think that I looked good? And look how skinny I was.

I remember that when I started work, the doctor doing my medical told me that I was too thin, and needed “beefing up”. Two years or so later, I got a splinter from a railway sleeper and had to go to the medical centre for attention. It was the same doctor, and he remembered me.

“I didn’t mean that you should put that much weight on”, he said, looking at my expanded figure.

I told him that I had met a chap called “John Smith” and that it was his fault

The words in the title track, “Anam Cara” are a translation of a 9th Century blessing prayer from the Western Isles:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever He may send you.
May He guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May He bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders He will show you.
May He bring you home rejoicing
once again unto our doors.

The Anam Cara
“In the Celtic tradition there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the concept of soul love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara within the Celtic world was soul friend. With the anam cara, you could share your innermost self, mind and your heart.”
(John O’Donohue, Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World)

Anyone can identify with this in one way or another. When Lennon & McCartney wrote “A Little Help From Our Friends”, they expressed a feeling that is present in all of us from time to time. Life can sometimes seem to be a burden, but like all burdens, it becomes easier when there is someone to help take the weight from our shoulders.

That “someone” can be a person – a lover, a friend, a wife/husband, or it can be God. The fact remains, however, that very few of us can get through life without some help. Basically, “We all need somebody to lean on”.

Well, it’s been a long old haul, but my first CD is now completed, mixed, semi-mastered and sent off to a publisher for assessment. That’s the good news, but the bad news is that it is going to take said publisher four months to actually listen to it, which is a tad frustrating. In addition, because the music is religious-based, the potential for publishing is significantly reduced, and the largest UK publisher of this type of music (Kingsway) are not taking any submissions at all at the moment due to re-organisation. Still, I hope that any staff involved are ok.

The tracks on the album are all self-composed (with the exception of “The Yorkshire Gloria” which was a joint effort between me, Mike Baldwin, Phil Hall, Martin Trask and Geoff Hanby), and are as follows:

1. Anam Cara
2. Who Are You?
3. You Hold My Hand
4. Lord of the Earth
5. Thanksgiving Sanctus
6. The Morning Star
7. Set Us Free
8. I Saw a Light
9. Near You My Lord
10. Wherever You May Lead Me
11. On the Wings of a Dove
12. I Was There
13. The Stainforth Mass
14. The Journey
15. The Yorkshire Gloria
16. Praise the Lord

I will provide details of each song in later updates, and maybe even provide a few audio samples.