As the saga is nearly over, I thought I’d put together a playlist of all the episodes of my podcast that include Tarquin the City Boy.
Sunday Bootleg 43 – Mothertongue ‘Fodder for the slander cannon’
EP 43 of The Sunday Bootleg sees me having a chat with Philip Dixon and Louis Smith from Mothertongue – one of my favourite bands – and telling an entirely true story about what happened after a recent rehearsal.
I also play a couple of live Mothertongue songs.
The Sunday Bootleg Episode 42 – Simon Godfrey
In the new episode of my podcast the following things occur:
- I remind us of the origin of the insect creatures and what they’ve been up to
- I have a chat with Simon Godfrey about Simon’s musical adventures and our mutual problems with our record label boss, David Elephant.
- I play Simon’s song ‘Tea Head’ from his album of rarities and obscurities ‘The Black Back Archives Volume 2’
- I tell a little story about what I got up to after my last meeting with the evil label boss, David.
You can find more of Simon’s music at: shineback.badelephant.co.uk/
Sunday bootleg episode 41 Abomnium
Episode 41 of the Sunday Bootleg.
I’ve decided to include more interviews with other people and bootlegs from others on the podcast.
This week:
-An interview with one man extreme metal band Peter Watkinson about his band Abomnium.
-True facts about the war between Tarquin’s City Boys and the metal insects
-True facts about what it’s like being signed to BEM and how different Peter’s label boss is to David Elephant.
-Some heavy metal, including a demo track that Peter and I did together two or three years ago, and a track from Abomnium’s latest album A Hollow Path.
You have been warned.
Sunday Bootleg episode 40 ‘The Horns of the Beast’
Yes, I’ve finally got round to recording more episodes of my podcast.
Does it matter that no-one seemed to miss them? Of course not, I tell these stupid stories to amuse myself.
This episode is all about what happened after the gig at the Horns in Watford the other week.
Gig report and the end of ‘phase 1’ – The Underworld Rally 2017
I didn’t know what to expect from a biker rally. My entire knowledge of biker culture comes from the TV show Sons of Anarchy, so I assumed there was a real danger of being killed by people with unconvincing Irish accents.
More to the point, are silly songs about aliens and tentacles and steampunk shenanigans really the sort of thing to play at a biker rally, even if it is the chill-out Sunday afternoon acoustic session? Might we get booed off, or worse?
It was with a slight sense of trepidation that Gareth and I headed into Sunday’s gig at the Underworld Rally 2017.
I headed up to Nottingham, where Gareth lives with his better half and my dog Charlie on the Saturday evening and we headed off for a very pleasant drive up to the rally which was taking place in Preston, finally turning in to the entrance to the venue, a farm somewhere quite a way from civilisation (being a lousy Southerner, I of course regard the interior of the M25 as civilisation and everything outside it as a bleak, desolate wasteland).
A lovely chap greeted us and gave us wrist bands. There was a woman with a baby at the welcome table with him. We drove in, still nervous, only to find a nice little group of people listening to the opening acoustic act, who was performing under a tree.
It turns out bikers like their rock music and a great many of them were wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts. I was obviously going to like them, wasn’t I? The event even had its own beer, a pleasant, rather wheaty affair. Apart from the bikes, which I have no interest in, this was the perfect event for me.
Gareth caught me off guard, hence the smile. I apologise and will make sure I stick on brand in all photos from now on.
We were performing outside in the shade of a tree and an old carved statue of what I think was supposed to be a native american. It was the afternoon of the third day of the rally and the acoustic acts were the chill-out section before the final evening.
We were last on and played a pleasant little set to about 40 or 50 people. It Is interesting, the different audiences you play to. This gig was definitely a mixture of some people paying attention and some hanging out in the sun with the music as background. Which is fine, and presents a nice challenge for us as performers. Can you find the peolle who want to listen and engage with them, can you win some more round? We had some nice little chats with people afterwards, so I think it’s fair to say we did okay.
So it was a pleasant gig, the fourth as a duo and the end of what I’ve bern thinking of as ‘phase 1’ of gigging.
What’s phase 1? It’s the proof of concept phase where we answered the questions does this duo thing work? And can Gareth and I work together? The answers appear to be ‘yes,’ and ‘yes.’
What’s phase 2? Phase two is where we book gigs strategically and really put some effort into building the audience. This may involve a banner of some kind.
More podcast, whether you want it or not.
No-one asked, literally no-one, but I’m doing it anyway. I’m recording more episodes of my podcast ‘Tom Slatter’s Sunday Bootleg’.
If you don’t know what that is, it is a podcast wot I do on a Sunday that has a ‘bootleg’ recording of some sort and a true story about recent happenings. As an example, here is story about the true things that happened to me at last year’s Prog awards.
I’m not going to apologise. It is fun.
The next new episode will include a true story about what I stole from The Horns in Watford, and I why I gave it back.
IronBark song by song – Watermen’s Square
What’s it about?
Watermen’s Square is about some watermen on the Thames who dredge up an evil rusty twisted metal skeleton, take it back to the the Watermen’s square. Once there the executor turns up and claims it. Terrified, they hand it over.
Watermen’s Square is a real place in Penge, South London. Here’s a picture:
In reality it’s just an exceedingly pretty collection of houses built for the Freemen and Apprentices of the Watermen’s company who worked the Thames and associated waterways. It stands out as an incongruous bit of architecture in an otherwise kinda dull urban street.
In my song, it’s where the watermen drag the huge misshapen iron skeleton that eventually becomes the hulking body of the Miser’s Triumph.
It ain’t a happy place.
Its the middle song from the Miser’s Will, and possibly my favourite. It hangs somewhere in the middle of lullaby and horror story and the one I enjoy singing the most.
The Writing Process:
Watermen’s Square started heavier than it sounds now. I had recorded an instrumental Alice in Chains rip-off with the melody played by several harmonized guitars. A rough version of this was hanging around on my harddrive for about six months until I got the point last month where I needed a third song in the Miser’s Will and didn’t know what to do.
So I dug out this Alice in Chains rip-off, calmed it down, and there it was.
The Recording Process:
It took forever to record the vocals for this. So long and so frustrating a process was it that I ended up writing several entries of a diary about my singing voice.
Mostly I got there in the end.
Inspired by/Blatantly steals from:
Alice in Chains acoustic stuff.
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You can download a free ep here.
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IronBark song by song – What The Orderly Saw
The Miser’s Will II: What the Orderly Saw
What’s it about?
The second song of the Miser’s Will is from the point of view of a hospital orderly. He witnesses a doctor cutting a brain out of a body, placing it in a jar and then trying to diddle the man who hired him to do so. He is killed, as is the orderly.
The Writing Process:
This is connected to the first song musically both in terms of the arrangement, at least to begin with, and the minor arpeggios which aren’t a million miles away from the Cartographer’s Tale either.
Here’s the original demo. As you can hear, it was pretty much fully formed by the time I recorded it:
It’s through composed, the music changing to follow the story, and most of it turned up pretty easily. I’m not the sort of songwriter who slaves over songs, constantly editing and rewriting. I much prefer to let things simmer and stew at the back of my mind until they come to fruition of their own accord. What the Orderly saw obliged me by doing so very quickly. As we shall see, some other tracks on this weren’t as easy to write.
The Recording Process:
There’s some actual live percussion in this! Most of the percussion on Ironbark is programmed drums and sound effects. What the Orderly Saw has real tambourine and Djembe as well.
There are also lots of messy synth sounds which I recorded with my trusty Sonuus G2M midi converter.
Inspired by/Blatantly steals from:
Black Holes in the Sand by Gravenhurst, the poem ‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly’ and a couple of Opeth numbers
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If you enjoyed this post, why not support an independent artist by grabbing some music here.
You can download a free ep here.
You can also join the mailing list for instant access to a free song and a to get regular updates about releases and gigs. Click here for the mailing list!
IronBark – song by song – The Cartographer’s Tale
The Miser’s Will I: The Cartographer’s Tale
What’s it about?
This is the first song from The Miser’s Will, a series of interlinked songs that share a story and some musical ideas.
There were basically two ideas that drove these songs along. One was the desire to write a set of songs I could actually play live, just me and my guitar. I’m a singer songwriter used to performing as a solo acoustic act, but with Spinning the Compass I foolishly composed a set of songs that were very hard to play in that manner. The Miser’s Will is an attempt to rectify this.
The other impetus was the story itself. I have a habit of emailing myself little snippets of lyrics or ideas. Searching through my inbox I came across an email I didn’t remember sending that said ‘A story about the search for strange artefacts that are used to construct a body’. That’s what the Miser’s Will is all about.
The lyrics are from the POV of a cartographer who recieves one of his own maps with instruction to go to a specific place and dig. He does so, unearths some leather and brass claws, and then follows the instructions that came with the map and letter. These take him into the middle of London, where the dark and deadly ‘man in black’ (the executor) promptly shoots him and nicks the claws.
The Writing Process:
The Cartographer’s tale was written for February Album Writing Month, an online challenge I attempt most years to write an album’s worth of songs in the month of February. What i usually do for this is write very quickly, just acoustic guitar and voice. Here’s the demo, which as you can hear is very similar to the final version of the song.
I was trying a couple of things with this song.
1. As I said, The Miser’s Will was designed to be playable solo. A lot of my previous album was not designed with solo gigs in mind and I wanted to remedy this with the new work.
2. An attempt to combine nerdy time signature changes and two relatively unconnected keys and pop-folk sensibilities
Also of note – the chorus in this song is used elsewhere in the Miser’s Will.
The Recording Process:
The drum kit is made up of various samples of plastic bins and things. The percussion arrangement is inspired by ‘The Flying Chaucers’ and English folk group I heard just before starting to record.
The rest is an attempt at relative minimalism. Which I then decided to fill up with synth lines.
Inspired by/Blatantly steals from:
‘The Flying Chaucers’ and the sort of arepggios Matt Stevens might use.
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If you enjoyed this post, why not support an independent artist by grabbing some music here.
You can download a free ep here.
You can also join the mailing list for instant access to a free song and a to get regular updates about releases and gigs. Click here for the mailing list!