We’ll be playing at the “Sundae on the Common” festival which is organised and funded by the “Ben & Jerry’s” ice cream company, on Saturday the 25th of July. Loads of information and gratuitous advertising for their products can be found here. Bloody good ice cream right enough. Cherry Garcia anyone?
We’ll be taking part in the Indietracks Festival which takes place over the weekend of 24th/26th July. We’ll be playing on the Sunday evening. A wealth of information can be found at the Indietracks website located here.
We’ve just been informed that the Outsider Festival, which we were booked to play on the 28th of June has been cancelled. Information about refunds and the like is available at the Festival website.
Our friends at Monorail Music have invited us to play some records at their “Record Store Day” event that’s taking place on the 18th April.
Hundreds of stores across the world will be taking part, so why not go along and “celebrate” your local independently owned record store.
The Breeders have asked us to join them for their All Tomorrow’s Parties weekender, which will be taking place at the Butlins Holiday Centre, Minehead, Somerset between the 15th & 17th May. We’ll be playing on the 16th in the slot immediately before The Breeders. More information can be found here.
We’ve been booked to play at this years Outsider Festival, to be held over the weekend of 27th/28th June at Rothiemurchus (Aviemore), in the Cairngorms National Park. Show day for us is Sunday 28th. Find out more by visiting the website.
We’ll be taking our “densely melodic sound” to Belfast on May 10th as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. Details can be found here.
The band have been booked to play at Summer Sonic 2009. Two shows. August 8th in Osaka and 9th in Tokyo. Details here.
I (Norman) played a show in South Wales on Saturday with Euros Childs. We were one of the musical acts at a literary festival that is held in the town of Laugharne every year. Nice wee place. Dylan Thomas wrote the bulk of Under Milk Wood there.
We played some of the songs that we’ve been working on for our “Jonny” album, along with some Euros originals and a few of my own. I even had the opportunity to try out one of the songs from the new Teenage Fanclub LP. A song called “Dark clouds”.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning at this point that we finished that record last week (March 2009).
The bulk of the album was recorded at Leeder’s Farm Studio in Norfolk with Fanclub stalwart Nick Brine, and then finished off at Rockfield in Monmouth (great to see our dear old friends Kingsley Ward and other Ward family members, Otto the engineer/electrical wizard and Monk the dog, who’s still padding around the courtyard). The cherries and icing were added at Raymond’s place. Needs to be mastered and we have to finish the artwork. But that shouldn’t take us too long. Twelve songs, no title yet, but should be available mid summer.
We have some shows lined up too and I’ll post more information about those when I get a chance to look at our calendar (see subsequent posts).
On the drive home from Laugharne I happened upon a couple of great radio documentary’s. One was about the reclusive poet Rosemary Tonks and I urge you to check out her work. The other was a retrospective look at the life and work of John Updike and can be found at the BBC iplayer site. Only available in the UK, although I’m led to believe that there are ways to subvert the restrictions that are in place there. Perhaps an internet guru could post some instructions on the Teenage Fanclub message board?
For further information please contact our press agent Tom O’Grady.
Euros Childs will be joining Norman as part of a Shoeshine Showcase night curated by Fanclub drummer Francis, on Jan 17th 2009, at the ABC Glasgow. Details below and news of more Celtic Connections involvement to follow.
Attic Lights (featuring the Cairn String Quartet)
Norman Blake & Euros Childs (The Dynamic Duo)
Bmx Bandits (seminal Bellshill indie pop/rock)
Boa Morte (downbeat beauty from Cork, Ireland)
Camera Obscura dj’s (Tracyanne & Carey)
Show begins 7.30pm prompt
Tickets - www.celticconnections.com / 0141 353 8000