happy new ears

all,

a belated happy new year to you. i would've posted this message earlier, but i had to recover from my experiences this year at the stroke of midnight as me and my girlfriend saw in 2012.. kettled around the back of London Waterloo, able to hear fireworks, somewhere, but more able to hear the shouts of the general public, annoyed that we'd all left it too late to make it to the South Bank.

so, we went home to Reading, shared some champagne and watched Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and made our plans for 2012.

i don't have any plans for 2012, dear reader. well, i do, but they're pretty vague. i have no resolutions, merely plans:

Plan #1: make album #2

this past weekend I visited the good kids at White House for album recording days 8 - 10. it was crunch weekend, because by the time day #11 rolls around it will be over a year since day #1, and i don't want to have a five year gap between first and second albums (though i'd definitely string you along for that amount of time if you let me).

the songs are sounding natural. i have a fear that some are a bit basic, but a second album of puns and smart-alec quips will only cause some of you to punch me in the ego eventually. still, all the music is written, and the next step is to flesh out the twenty-something songs into finished articles. all necessary musicians have been recruited, what we need now is Time.

Plan #2: finally, some t-shirts

i think i've finally tired of being the only musician to sell more than 50 records in a shop who doesn't have a t-shirt with his name on and/or a hilarious statement about how cool/uncool/subversive they are. expect this to be remedied by the time i get out on the road

Plan #3: do some gigs

i know that should be a given that any musician is going to do gigs, but i'm one of the few who could accidentally go a year without really doing very many (see: 2007, 2008, 2010). the reason i'm not doing any at the minute is very simple. number 1: i have nothing to sell, number 2: i have no new set, and i've been playing this current one for a couple of years now. it's time for a change. i have some one-off shows planned in the coming months, as well as a track on a new compilation, and i'll get to those this week.

so, there you go

consider yourself updated. i'm off to grovel to my e-mailing list that i haven't spoken to them for many, many months, and i just (FINALLY) found the mailing list from the Frank Turner/Franz Nicolay tour back in May in a box just now, so i will also have to grovel at them and see if they remember who i am.

YOU, take it easy..

x