Saturday 31 May 2014

Cardiff is cancelled (update: so are Derby and Durham)

A wise man once said, if Ben Marwood makes three blog posts within a week then life is either going very well or very badly.

Sadly, it's the latter. After fighting something off for three weeks, yesterday (Friday) I was finally put in my place by my stupid human body. With reduced voice, hearing, balance and dignity, it's physically impossible for me to do the show in Cardiff tonight.

I try not to use the word hate that often but I hate cancelling a show, and this is the first time I've had to do it since Cheltenham in 2009. The plan is to reschedule this show for a date later in the year, but in the meantime if you're heading down to Cardiff anyway, I recommend going to the Full Moon (downstairs at the Moon Club) where they will have an excellent gig, and after that, The Moon Club will be open late in the evening for Ultimate Power, the UK's best power ballads night. I'm not just saying that because that's what they'd have you believe, I'm saying it because I went to Ultimate Power after my show in Bristol three weeks ago and it. was. amazing.

I'll keep you posted. Apologies again. Now, a race against the calendar to be fit in time for Derby on Thursday.
xx

!!UPDATE!!
So, the being fit for Derby and Durham thing didn't quite work out. After a few days of recovery, I finally succumbed to Labyrinthitis late on Wednesday, leaving me literally unable to carry my guitar to the train station. I'll reschedule the Cardiff, Derby and Durham shows as soon as I can, hopefully for the autumn.

Thursday 29 May 2014

Ctrl + Alt + Reading

An addendum to yesterday's post (as in, I'd have included it yesterday, but got excited and clicked Publish too early):

I recently had the chance to sit down have an email chat with Niall of Alt Reading which you can read here.

Topics covered include how I managed to escape the local pond, how a collection of excellent people prevented me from sobbing into glasses of lemonade at open mic nights forevermore and why the US and the UK are not the same place.

I encourage you to read it, at your leisure.
x

Wednesday 28 May 2014

The unfinal countdown

Everyone!

There you are. Where have you been hiding? I'm sat on my bed with a king-size cold, the second half of one which I caught on my birthday (yay, thanks!) which lasted for a week and then disappeared. Clearly it only comes out when I have to play a gig, since I had Bristol and Reading last time, and we're fast approaching shows in Cardiff, Derby and Durham this time.

As sure as eggs are eggs, I have just five shows to go before I shall depart to do something else for a while. When people ask me about it, I would like to say Ben Marwood Is Taking Time Off To Pursue Other Interests, but that sort of sounds like a code for Ben Marwood Has Been Fired From His Own Solo Project. Instead I'll probably introduce them to the 2014 Wish List.

Before the end of 2014, I, Ben Marwood, wish to:

1. watch every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation
2. expand my collection of really sharp rocks
3. test my new ground-to-air missile defence system
4. work on my biceps, triceps and pieceps

In reality, really, it's much more like:

5. the second album's been out for over a year now, and i have new songs i'd like to record, but i can't do that whilst i'm working and spending the weekends doing gigs, so we have to stop the gigs for a while.

Which isn't as exciting as saying stupid stuff like:

6. i'm taking a leave of absence to star in Game of Thrones as an invisible king that none of the cast ever interactive with.


Come and see my final three headline shows of 2014, if you dare:

Saturday 31st May - CARDIFF Moon Club
Thursday 5th June - DERBY Ryan's Bar
Friday 6th June - DURHAM Old Cinema Launderette


xx