Yes, yes, I know. Months and months and I don't write and I don't call.
I could say I was out planning something huge for your next birthday, but eventually you'll find out that I've just been down the chip shop for five months and I've only come home in search of ketchup.
Oh, that and I finally released my third album, Get Found.
Don't believe me? Here it is:
It's been out now for four months and twenty-three days* and just to prove to myself it still exists I'm listening to it right now. As a single piece of work I think it's up there (maybe better than) things I've done before, even if it is probably one song too long. It's always been one song too long - problem was, every time I dropped a song, it suddenly felt one song too short. This is how men go mad.
What else happened? Oh yes, I hit the road to promote the album on a ten-date UK tour, with four of those sold out, making it the Most Successful Ben Marwood Headline Tour ever. I could pretend like that was anything to do with me, but it was probably something to do with my excellent touring friends and opening acts Non Canon (aka Barry) and Helen Chambers (aka.. Helen). We had excellent fun heading to places I personally hadn't been in a while and then it was Easter Monday and it was over and Barry and I went to an Asda and left with armfuls (quite literally) of cut-price Easter eggs for our loved ones.
Barry also made me this video, which is precisely fuck all to do with the tour but has everything to do with the album:
Is that it? Probably not. I also played the Roundhouse as part of Frank Turner's Lost Evenings festival (ta, Frank), played at 10.30 a.m. - yes, 10.30 a.m. in the morning - to some very hungover faces at this year's 2000 Trees Festival and probably some other stuff I've forgotten.
Life continues to be interesting and occasionally admittedly a bit of a struggle, mostly from a limited mobility/maximum exhaustion standpoint, but I'm delighted that I have 15 shows under my belt this year without being even slightly dead. 15 shows! Sure, you punk kids can do that in a week, but for me it's more than the previous two years combined.
I have some more shows coming up, but more on that another time.
I hope you're all well,
b
*(no matter how many years we get past 1990, describing any period of time still puts the start of Nothing Compares 2 U in my head)
