Last Night’s Gig

Last night I played at the Portobello Acoustic Sessions at the Metropolitan pub near Westbourne Park.

The Metropolitan is a lovely pub to which you should go. It has a snug. This is a good thing.

The gig was fun too, despite the fact that the audience was small. Besides myself there was the lovely folk-pop duo Jespa, a wonderful jazz duo – Rebecca Heynes and Sam (whose surname escapes me) and a bloke called Pete who's surname I can't remember.

Find Jespa at http://www.jespa.co.uk

Pete was interesting – sub-Dylanesque three chord non-songs that he didn't play very well. He also turned up clearly off his head, broke a string on his own guitar, didn't treat the guitar he subsequently borrowed particularly well, took too long to get off stage and made lots of noise during one of my songs right in front of the stage.

I wasn't a fan.

I became a little disillusioned with the London acoustic scene a couple of years ago because I always seemed to be on bills with lots of acts like Pete.

Thankfully, Jespa and Rebecca and Sam were fantastic – some of the best stuff I've heard on the circuit for a while and the couple running the night were wonderful.

Lessons to learn?

1. I should gig more – it was fun and I went down well
2. I'm enjoying calling the setlist on the fly – I've done that the last few appearances and it's quite fun. I played a song I've never played before and hadn't even thought of for a year or so – I'll dig an MP3 out of the vaults and share it with you at some point because you won't have heard of it.
3. People like knowing what the song is about – a bit of a speal about the song works well – and I do enjoy telling people about the stupid things I write lyrics about.

So yes, yesterday's gig was lots of fun. Next Month I'm at the Green Dragon in Croydon on October 25th.

2 Upcoming London Solo Gigs

29th September:

Portobello Acoustic Sessions @ The Metropolitan

60 Great Western Road, Notting Hill, W11 1AB
London, United Kingdom

Doors 7.30pm Entry Free

25th October:

Freedom of Expression
The Green Dragon Croydon, UK CR0 1NA

Doors at 8pm Entry Free

Hope to see you at both of them. Facebook events and details of the rest of the lineup will turn up shortly.

(Distressingly the other acts on the Freedom Of Expression gig are not easy to find on the web. They are: Eddie's Brother, rUM and Chris Parr. I found a reverbnation page for Chris Parr. The other's might be on myspace, but they don't turn up with a bit of googling. )

On another Live Gigs note:-

Joe 'The Dark Power' Slatter and I are going to put together a little band to play my music with. If you know of anyone in London who plays drums and wouldn't mind dressing up in silly steampunk costume every now and then, please steer them my way.

A New Video and a Soundtrack

Joe has finished the video for the Beast of the Air and blimey it looks good.

Should I be saying that about my own music video? Well given that aside from gurning a bit and running like a fool, I can take no credit for what you see there. It’s all my brother’s work, from the prop making and filming to the video effects – aside from equipment that he already owned the budget was about £200. I happen to think it looks bloody good for that budget.

Here’s Joe’s website: www.thedarkpower.com

Here’s a link to download the song, and the whole Ironbark album, or buy a CD: http://tomslatter.bandcamp.com

In other news:

A track of mine will appear on the soundtrack to the new book ‘Blood in the Skies’ by G. D Falksen. More details soon, but anyone into steampunk music needs to get a copy.

Here’s a link with a few more details: http://www.gdfalksen.com/steampunksoundtrack .

And here’s the track list – as you can see it includes pretty much every current steampunk related artist.

Disc 1

Disc 2