Pilton 'awash with craic'

Every year on St Patricks day, the good people at Guinness send out vast quantities of promotional material to every alehouse, whorehouse, outhouse and quite possibly crackhouse on the planet with a Guinness pump installed. Landlords then slash the price of the black stuff for the night, book an Irish band and wait for 'the craic' to materialise - something that they apparently think happens as if by magic if enough people are wearing a funny hat.

In my experience though, the best parties tend to be the ones that haven't been organised.

So, back at the Pilton Working Men's Club again, we found ourselves playing to a crowd far more interested in the cheap stout and funny hats than us, which is always a bit galling, especially if like me you'd driven there, and therefore couldn't partake in Dublin's finest yourself.

Oh, and as someone mentioned at the end of the evening, we're not a Irish band, so calling out for 'A Fairytale of New York' or 'Irish Rover' is a bit of a waste of breath. Especially when half the kit's been dismantled and lugged off the stage...

In the Studio

Some people (step forward, Chris) love the process of recording; personally I regard it as a bit of a necessary evil - that said, it helps a lot if the surroundings are pleasant & the engineer knows what he's doing, and Simon & Jammer at Product23 certainly know their stuff.
Top marks to Simon for turning up at all, as his new baby came home from hospital for the first time on Saturday morning, and he was looking decidedly grey and sleep-deprived! I can honestly say that on the two occasions I've been in that situation myself, the last thing on Earth I would have wanted to do was spend several hours in the company of a bunch of beer-fuelled chainsmoking musicians...
Everything went pretty well on the weekend, and we've got the drum & bass tracks for at least 10 songs in the can. Just got to add the other stuff over the top, and let Simon work his magic removing all the bum notes...

Festival of Colours

Here's my brother Gavin in Hampi, India, getting into the spirit of the Festival of Colours, apparently an India-wide celebration where everyone chucks paint-filled balloons at each other until they've had enough.
At least, that's what they told Gavin; seconds after this picture was taken, he was carried off by the local constabulary after the temptation to empty his bottle of yellow paint over the bemused looking officer became too great...

The Prom, Bristol

One of my favourite venues, this one, and not just because it's down the road!
It's got it's own P.A. & sound engineer and everything always sounds great onstage, which gives us a bit of a lift. Place started out pretty empty (well, it was a Thursday night), but a decent crowd by the end, and very appreciative too, which makes up for the fact that it's not exactly the best-paid gig on the circuit. In fact, once my Guinness bill for the night was settled I was operating at a ruinous loss. Mind you, if we were doing this for the money we'd all have starved to death years ago - and a quick glance at us will confirm that we are all very well nourished, thank you very much...
Good to see some familiar faces there too, especially the trio who rushed their prawn curry to get there in time - I just hope they didn't rush the actual cooking part, or they may still be in A & E.
Oh, and cheers for the tequila, lads!
We're off to the studio to do a spot of recording next weekend, so hopefully there'll be some new CDs for Chris to forget to bring to gigs soon...