We’re now three shows into our 11 date tour with the Goo Goo Dolls. Today is a day off and as i’m writing this we’re sitting in Ron’s parents’ house in County Durham – it’s very quiet, very relaxing and to be honest it’s complete bliss.  It feels great to be on the road again, playing big shows to excited crowds every night not to mention having the luxury of a big tech crew helping us out whenever we need.

The Goo Goo Dolls themselves are wonderful guys, very humble and polite and a pleasure to hang around with. The food is as customary so good it’s almost dangerous! So far puddings-wise we’ve had belgium chocolate cheesecake and raspberrys, sticky toffee pudding and crumble. Its a good thing that the tour is only two weeks otherwise we’d have to change our name to unkle blob..

As for shows the crowds have been great; it’s unusual for a support band to play to a packed room however from the moment we walk on stage there is a constant sea of very enthusiastic faces. The sound is brilliant and the lights are amazing; generally speaking its so much fun you almost forget that this is actually real. Cant wait for the next lot of shows…Infact I dont want it to ever end!

i thought i would write a blog on the eve of our second album coming out & scottish tour.. its so good to finish it and get on with the next project…  Thanks to everyone who bought a pre-order- we’ve been pleased with the take up and surprised to be honest.  It feels like the way forward for a band to be able to sell directly to its audience – You’re all supporting our next record which is much appreciated.  It also feels good to be able to create, record, release, market, etc our own records without relying on others – It makes me think of one of my favourite artists  known as the godfather of home-taping (see below- he’s well ahead of his time!).  Making albums on 4 and 8 track recorders and posting them out on a mailing list – my Mum’s friend introduced me to his albums “Delicate Tension” and “Teenage spectacular”, the video below is from 1986– check his site here

Sticking with the vibe of home recording I’ve also been getting into John Fruciante’s solo records – particularly Shadows collide with people – It’s a great pop record in my view:  this is a demo from it.

Oh and I also love YouTube for enabling this kind of creation! – if you aren’t one of the 28 million people who has already seen it watch both videos (top one first) – thanks for reading if you got this far – hopefully catch up again soon. and maybe see you at a gig!

cheers,
Rick x

For our album “Sugar and Spite” I made a music video with our old keyboard player Geoff. It was for the song “Put A Record On” and we used two 7” vinyls that were black and pink. We actually did this for fun because we were flying to Portugal to make a “proper production” of the video.  However, our homemade video has ended up having nearly twice as many plays! If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Anyway I recently found the original video files of when we made it and so I made a little video of some of the clips and outtakes. I was great fun filming, trying to avoid getting the string and feet in shot. However I think the imperfections in this film give it it’s charm:

However, often I don’t need to try too hard because people keep making their own videos to our tunes, be it montages to their favourite films, choreographed dances or full on music videos and short films.  And I am very grateful for the people who take time to make these and spread our music to the rest of the world.  Some people view this as using music without permission (and will remove their music from your video!) but I can only see this a positive way of keeping music alive. I am glad that it inspires people to be creative and express their own ideas.  This is a recent one i found and has to be the strangest i’ve seen:

So now it’s time for me to come up with my own new ideas and make some more little videos. But I know our friends and fans are going to come up with some great videos too…

Ron

Day one; the long 10 hr van drive to Edinburgh travelodge. Nerves are mounting as we set off in our (t)rusty van for the James tour. As we drive to the venue the following day, my excitement is now at boiling point as this is the first big tour I’ve ever been on-much to the amusement of everyone. The venue is very impressive! A soup obsession is at hand with the whole of the crew & band but its easy to see why-the catering is INCREDIBLE! Gig goes wonderfully, I wear a tartan mini dress (courtesy of friend Roxy) which is well received. The next couple of gigs go well too other than a few technical errors in Sheffield. One of the Road crew affectionately nick names our van ‘Treasure’, and asks us where on earth did we dig it up?! I soon realize that a few people have taken a notice of me on the forum, noticing my various outfit themes I do for each town. Very surreal! Before you can say ‘blimey that was quick’ we drive home for a few days off while the James boys do South-end on Sea and Bournemouth.

Back on the road. Bristol was fun although the house lights were left on for our set which was slightly unnerving. ‘Oh my effing god’ are the words uttered by us all as we walk into the Royal Albert Hall for the first time. Feeling Physically sick with nerves/excitement or hunger looking around the place. The idea that I’m to stand up straight and remember how to play the bass later on is a silly one! Sound check goes well, a friend of ours Andy takes some brilliant photo’s and its time to eat some gorgeous food and calm the nerves. Luckily the gig goes down a storm, We start with ‘proud’ and build up to finisher ‘so sorry’ which is always a crowd pleaser. Watch James’ set again tonight-absolutely mind blowing! Brilliant after show party too. Liverpool is the end to a wonderful eight dates, none of us want to leave! Saul joins us for the last two songs ‘let it go’ and ‘so sorry’ which totally brings down the house. After party is again great although very emotional as goodbyes are said and photo’s are taken. Will never forget it, the James crew and band are all completely lovely and lets hope we get to repeat this soon!!!

x

ps: a working title for the album has breifly been “desire” but i just realised that having both “Bob” in our name AND calling an album the same thing as Dylan once did is probably too much so back to the drawing board on that one .

We shall be playing at the following venues:

20 Sept London, Bush Hall
22 Sept Manchester, Dry Bar
29 Sept Brighton, Sactuary Cellar
30 Sept Bristol, The Prom
2 Oct Head of Steam, Newcastle
3 Oct Glasgow, Oran Mor
4 Oct Leeds, Fathersham
7 Oct Edinburgh, Voodoo Rooms
8 Oct Inverness, Mad Hatters
9 Oct Forres, The Loft
11 Oct Aberdeen, The Tunnels
18 Oct Oxford, Jericho Tavern

We will be joined on the English dates of the tour by the Vagabond Trills, four delightful young ladies who have been touring the country quietly for the last year. More information can be found here:

www.myspace.com/thetrillsmusic

In preparation for the tour, Rick has moved into a warehouse where we are able to set the band gear up in and rehearse. We are going over old tunes (e.g. the hit parade, put a record on), practicing the latest ones (satellite, bad dream) and writing new songs – which you will be able to hear when you come to a show! Here is what the space looks like:

We’re very happy to be inviting along Chloe Treacher, who will be playing double-bass and singing backing vocals for the whole tour. We mainly chose her because she is small and won’t take up too much room in the van:

We’ll have information about tickets soon. But for now, tell us which shows you can come to and what songs you’d like to hear us play…..?

I write you now from my garden sitting listening to radio 2 and the birds. Apparently Dermot O’Leary is gonna play our song Satellite today whoop (just listening to bat for lashes doing a cover!) We did a session for Dermot back in 2006 when we first released our debut album Sugar and Spite and i guess he remembered us… the record has also been played loads on Radio Scotland by Tom Morton, Iain Anderson, and Jim Gellatly- which is also great news for us- a big thankyou to all of those guys. As for the band, we’re busy writing new songs and recording demos / finshed masters (we can never tell which( i’ve uploaded a bunch of demos today – some new, some from the vault. Any feedback you wanna throw us might just be the difference between a track making the album or not! so please do.. We’re looking at getting the Unkle Bob circus back on the road this Sept for a Uk so look out for live dates soon.

Here is a YouTube video of the band (and saul) in the studio gettin a song together (we never did finish it) -