I HAVE SO MANY FRIENDS

Summer is here and all of a sudden I’m about to release an album that I’ve been working at off and on for, well, it feels like forever.

I can’t even remember exactly when Matti Müller, Jonny Gee, Angi Stricker and I first found ourselves in a recording studio in Hildesheim, Germany. Matti had arranged it. He’d promised the help of a recording engineer whom I’m still yet to meet. Instead at the last minute a university student arrived at the studio only to inform us that he didn’t know how to run Cubase, the studio’s operating software. The next day we even managed to lock ourselves out of the studio. I had to jerry-rig a long branch with some kind of hook on it in order to fish the keys off the mixing console.

During the first winter of the pandemic I finally took a stab at mixing the tracks. This was after Matti’s engineer friend had once again disappeared. Despite my own impeccable Luddite credentials I now had to figure out how to transfer all the tracks into Logic, an entirely different recording software. Days of home-schooling my young daughter were followed by steep climbs up the icy and deserted London streets to West Hampstead for solitary late night mixing sessions. I’ve participated at plenty of final mix sessions but I’ve never before been the one at the controls.

To make the whole experience stranger, half the songs on the album are ones I’ve previously recorded, either with my Enemies or with Riley McMahon for our S&M record. Some of those S&M songs were in Riley’s laboratory for such a long time it felt particularly weird to be going back to them. Tunes like Cold Days Of December, Mummy’s Got Strange Friends, Laura Ingraham. Riley’s production was so gorgeous why even revisit the songs in the first place?

The only answer is that this is an unplugged album. Four musicians - four voices, two guitars, double bass, percussion. The song choices were based on the ones we found ourselves playing the most at our European gigs. That includes old Enemies standbys like In The Pouring Rain, Beautiful Monday and Building A Road. Happily, there are a few more recent tunes as well including the title track.

The full album of I Have So Many Friends will be released digitally on August 1st. You can read more about it HERE and pre-order it HERE. Watch the video of the title track HERE.

The summer release takes me to Newcastle for the first time in my life. We’ll play at The Bridge, the second oldest folk club in Britain. We’ll then be back in London for a release party at The Green Note before a journey to the Twinwood Festival in Bedfordshire for three separate sets including one on the main stage in front of thousands vintage music lovers. Check the Gigs page for other summer shows including another debut in Totnes, Devon.

Stay tuned for later dates in Europe and the States…

RAVE REVIEWS & SELL-OUTS

The band celebrated their 21st anniversary with sold-out shows for the release of their 7th record, LOST IN THE CITY, at both Joe’s Pub in NYC and the deej in Washington DC. In NYC they were joined by special guest Antoine Silverman who played soaring gypsy fiddle on two of the songs, Walk Of Shame and I Don’t Regret. Rave reviews for the new record produced by Riley McMahon and also for the Joe’s Pub concert will be posted on the Press Page.

Double Award Winner

The title track of my recent solo record BLAZE OF GLORY has just won two awards in a row. First it won the Mark Award in Los Angeles for Best Underscore In a Television Show. And then it won the Production Music Award in London in the same category. The whole song was used beautifully in an episode of the DirecTV mixed martial arts drama, Kingdom. You can watch the entire clip HERE. 

Many thanks to Thomas and Gregoire Kouzinier at the French label Super Pitch for commissioning the album. Thanks also to Riley McMahon, producer extraordinaire at New Warsaw Studio in Brooklyn. And further thanks to Carol Sue Baker at Ocean Park Music for pitching the song for the show. 

A Street Cat Named Bob

There's a lot happening this Autumn.
On November 4th the lovely feature film A Street Cat Named Bob will be released in the UK. Two weeks after that, on November 18th, the film will be released in the US. Two of my songs are in the film. Indeed, one of my songs, Beautiful Monday, opens the picture. The second song, Still Small Voice Inside, turns into a bit of a singalong halfway through the story.
The film's star, Luke Treadaway, plays a drug-addicted London busker who ultimately gets "rescued" by a stray cat. He performs both songs along with a few by Charlie Fink of Noah and The Whale. The story is based on the international best-selling memoir by James Bowen. 
How did the songs end up in the film? 
Funny you should ask. Since the director's name is Roger Spottiswoode it may seem like an obvious case of nepotism. But we're not related. Roger - who has directed everything from James Bond to Tom Hanks and Sylvester Stallone movies - happened to read a couple of scripts of mine during the summer of 2015. At the time he was in the middle of pre-production for A Street Cat Named Bob. He contacted me and asked if I might have a few songs...
To celebrate the New York release, the band will play its only show of the season at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan on Saturday, November 19th.

Germany

After five scintillating East Coast spring shows with my Enemies I've retreated to Europe. Next plan: invade Germany. Playing three gigs this July, two in Berlin and one in Hildesheim. Accomplices? Matti Muller, German gypsy gentleman guitarist; Jonny Gee, lunatic Anglo bassist; Angie Stricker, beauteous Berlin siren. A debut for the quartet. Makes me very curious. Particularly regarding backing vocal harmony textures. Matti and Jonny did an excellent job in London last Christmas. Who knows what the added dimension of Ms. Stricker's steely tones will bring. A German Emmylou Harris perchance? All to be discovered soon. Check the shows page for details... 

BLOODLINE

I'm a wee bit chuffed about this. A song I wrote a while back will be the closing track of the closing episode of the new Netflix series, BLOODLINE, starring Kyle Chandler, Sissy Spacek, Chloe Sevigny and Sam Shepard. 

I first blurted out ALL IN THE PAST in my old East Village apartment in about 2007. To this day I can't tell if it's bitter or righteous. "I was young not so long ago but that was then and you'll never know…" I took it to the band and it turned into even more of a rocker than I imagined. 

A few years later we recorded it at Old Soul Studios and it became the fourth track of WILD GOOSECHASE EXPEDITION, our Independent Music Award-winning 2011 album produced by the incomparable Kenny Siegal and mixed by the sonically ingenious Tom Schick.

The band still plays the tune. In fact, it's one of the most liberating ditties in the repertoire for me to sing. I can't really explain why. I just still connect to it.

A couple of months ago Mark Wike, the BLOODLINE music supervisor, approached our LA rep Carol Sue Baker, and asked if she could find him "a dark song sung by an older dude about not being able to escape the past." Carol Sue kindly thought of me and supplied him with a few of my songs.

Completely coincidentally, one of the writers on the series is the remarkable novelist, Arthur Phillips. Arthur, a big fan of the band, had separately approached the show's producers recommending they use an Enemies track - thanks, Arthur! - but apparently by the time they were syncing the final episode they had completely forgotten his suggestion. 

BLOODLINE will be released by Netflix in its entirety on Friday, March 20th. All thirteen episodes. And we're at the very end. A good excuse to binge-watch.