It’s been a little while since I posted on here, so I figured it was time for an update from FTHQ (a.k.a. my bedroom). The summer is chaping up very nicely gig/festival-wise, most of my dates are now confirmed and up on the gigs page. It’s a pretty good spread (apart from Scotland, sorry) and I should be able to catch some decent sun if this weather holds.

Speaking of festivals, we’re looking for a few volunteers to help out over the summer with a bit of flyering. It’s important for me to stress that I’m conceptually opposed to “Street Teaming” (ugh), being, as it is, a cross between organized blagging and child labour. But basically, if you’re going to be at one of my festival sets anyway (in particular Reading, Leeds, Wireless, Truck, but any will do) and you ave 10 minutes of time to spare, we’ve got some flyers to be handed out. If you’re interested in helping, please email dani (at) presscounsel.com and she’ll fill you in with details. We can’t offer much in the way of payment, but I will be eternally grateful, and I’ll get you a beer too.

Aside from the gigging front, my mind has started wandering over towards album #2. It’s not going to be released (or even recorded) for quite a while yet, but I’m taking some time off this summer to write new material and to start thinking about production and so on. So look out for new songs in the set. I’m pretty excited about new material myself.

The DVD is shaping up better than I could have hoped, people have been amazingly enthusiastic about it all – thanks for that. The first submissions for videos are coming in and they’re great. To answer a regular question, the deadline is the end of July. Also, bear in mind that these are for DVD (not YouTube) so better quality is… um… better.

See you at a Festival somewhere.

I’m currently in Oxford rrokes University on the Biffy Clyro tour, and all is well. We’re one date in, and I must say this is an ace tour to be a part of. Everyone on the tour is friendly, we’re all pretty well-travelled road warriors, and we all ROCK (haha). Seriously, this tour is SO 2004. Good times.

A couple of things for you. First of all, if anyone uses or understands Bebo (I don’t) then they can find a brand spanking new fan page here. Go befriend it, or whatever it is you pesky kids are up to these days.

Also, we’re putting together a DVD for me at the moment. It’s going to feature a number of little films, a bunch of live footage, and all the vids I’ve done thusfar, plus maybe a few new ones. This is where you come in. If you have the time and the inclination, have a stab at making a video for any song of mine. Ideally it’d be nice to get one for every song. Have a sense of humour, go lo-fi, try not to use copyrighted images, and have fun with it. We’ll be including the best ones on the DVD. Get to your Windows Movie Maker / iMovie / whatever and get to work! More on this plan later…

So the tour is finished and I’m back in Winchester for a 24 hour pit-stop before hitting the road again, for a few solo shows (including Brighton’s Great Escape) and then of course the Biffy tour. Massive, massive thanks to Blah Blah Blah, Captain Black, Jay Jay Pistolet and Beans on Toast for upping my game, thanks to Ben, Nigel, Tarrant and Mark for making the tour happen, and to everyone who came down and rocked out. Much appreciated.

On a slightly more serious note, June 16th this year sees the 2nd annual Lexapalooza Festival. It’s a breast cancer charity day organized by / for my friend Lexy, and it needs your help. Basically, if you’re a band who can play, a punter who can go, a volunteer who can help out, or if you simply can pass word about this on to everyone you know, it’d be much appreciated. The good stuff is here: http://www.myspace.com/lexapaloozafestival

Thanks.

In a lovely closing to a frankly cracking week, I can let you all know now that I am opening the English part of the Biffy Clyro tour later this month. Yourcodenameis:Milo are on the bill as well, making it the best tour ever (officially). I’ll be playing solo, for those who want to know. See you all there.

Yes mate, it’s finally in, I’m confirmed for the Carling Stage for Reading (Friday 24th) and Leeds (Saturday 25th) Festivals this year. More info on exact stage times and all that kind of thing as soon as possible. I’m very pleased about this, it’s going to wrap up the summer nicely.

In other news, there are a whole host of other festivals I’m doing but one worth checking out is the Two Thosand Trees festival near Cheltenham. Go have a look. There are others being confirmed all the time, check the gigs page.

Also, for those who are interested, Nigel Powell, my loverly drummer, has a solo project called The Sad Song Co, which has been ruling my stereo of late. Go check it out, the man has two kick arse albums to his name and both are well worth picking up.

See you in the summer.

The tour rolls on, developing new levels of weirdness day by day… Jeremy Kyle seems to have taken us all over to the extent that everyone was overjoyed this morning (Monday) that he was back on again after the weekend – seriously, we get up at 9.30 especially. Odd. The shows have been fun, much kudos to Blah Blah Blah, Beans On Toast and Jay Pistolet for good music and good times.

The EP is out a week today. If you have time to get to your local record shop and make sure it’s been pre-ordered, that’d be great. The situation is so chicken-and-egg – record shops don’t think they’ll shift many so they don’t get many so they don’t shift many… annoying. You can also preorder from places like Amazon and that. Thanks.

Moustaches are taking over, by the way… Fear the tache. And not just on me…

As anyone who was down at Frog last Saturday will be aware, I took the rash decision to try shaving myself a full on, manly ‘tache. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, and for a while I felt invincible, but then I felt… shady. I think the crux was when I was introduced to some friends of friends, who then looked at me like a total escaped paedophile. I’m now frantically concentrating on growing my beard back. The only thing which would mitigate this would be the success of my plan to get everyone on the next tour to grow a tache as well. However, thusfar only Ben has agreed and it doesn’t look like there’s any give. Oh well.

Speaking of tours, I’m in Oxford at the moment gearing up for the next one, rehearsing the new set. It seemed important to me not to play the same songs in a different order or whatever, to try and bring something new to the table. So to that end we’ve got 4 songs in the set that weren’t there in January / February, with one or two surprises in there and a brand new song (as yet untitled – having massive trouble with titles at the mo). Manchester on Sunday… heed the wrath.

In the meantime the Video for ‘The Real Damage’ (below) has been picked up by MTV2′s Me Myself & I show, so keep looking for that and elsewhere. Tomorrow night is the Camden Crawl, which will be muchas fun, not least because I’m sharing a stage with my old friends Yourcodenameis:Milo. And I’ve been checking out the possibilities of going back to the States sooner rather than later. Pip pip.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkFPwDYZYHo]

Finally it’s here, the video for “The Real Damage” (shot and directed by me n George Steel). Enjoy. Remember that the EP is out May 7th.

I’m at home recovering, slowly feeling better and warming up for some more band shows, in particular Frog club, this Saturday, at the Mean Fiddler, London. Playing Frog is funny – the guys who run the club are old old friends of mine, but they were never Million Dead fans, and it was always taken for granted, when I was in MD, that I’d never play at Frog. How times change… see you there.

A message for anyone planning on hitting up Copsale tonight for my show at the Bridge House…

I fucking utterly utterly hate doing this but basically my voice is totally fucked and there are no nice sounds coming out of me today, only croaking and quite a lot of pain… So in short I’m not going to make the gig. Justin Pistolet may well still be there for the show, havn’t heard yet. But yup, a million apologies to everyone for that, I fucking hate this. Arg.

It’s all the more annoying as the last batch of shows have been fucking amazing. Jay Jay, the crowds, the filming with Richard, all has been ace. I feel like shit.

A quick update from the Winchester FTHQ. All busy as ever, putting together stuff for the next round of touring (anyone got any crash-space in Glasgow?). Merch is coming together nicely, the EP will be here in a few days, posters have arrived… All go.

The next week or so sees a little string of dates around the south of the UK. I’m excited about these for two reasons: firstly, they’re solo shows, which I’ve been enjoying more recently. It’s nice to have a mix up between band shows and solo shows, it keeps things interesting, and there are different effects you can achieve in both situations. I’m also stoked because Jay Jay & The Pistolets will be on the tour. This means mayhem, as well as some quality chooons. We’re also doing some more documentary filming type stuff at these shows, so everyone be on their best behaviour, haha…

Finally, today the Public Relations Exercise album comes out. Go listen to the myspace, realize they totally fucking rule, and go buy it.