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.

My first proper American adventure is not yet properly over. I’m sat in the venue in Olympia, WA, killing time before the last show of the tour. Tonight we drive back to Portland and tomorrow I catch my plane home, where I have a meagre amount of time off followed by more UK touring. On the plus-side, this is apparently the home of Courtney Love, and I’ve been singing that Rancid song to myself all day too.

I have learnt much on this little jaunt. America is huge; this is a fact everyone knows but that it’s hard to appreciate until you’ve been driving for 8 fucking hours and you’re STILL IN TEXAS. There’s such variation as well; the North-West versus the Arizona desert, for example, and I haven’t touched the East coast on this tour. One of my big impressions is how little impact people have made on their natural environment here compared with Europe. Human civilization here feels like it’s perched on the edge of the landscape, resting on the surface, transitory and impermanent. And there’s so much empty space here as well. It’s sort of reassuring in its own way.

The shows have been great and I’m hoping to come back here as soon as I can. Big thankyou’s need to go out to Josh English, my ertswhile touring buddy / driver / sarcasm well, and of course to Scrabble failure Jonah Matranga. Big ups to Justin at Welcome Home, to all the promoters and floor-space providers as well. Thanks people.

Well, the new video should be here any day, the tour dates are all up and the shows are all on sale now, the tour supports are finally figured out (check the gigs page for details, it’s complicated). Back to blighty.

The title of this blog is derived from one of my more profound experiences of Americana. We were searching through stations on the radio en route to LA and stumbled across Bible Radio. It really exists – they were in the middle of a section explaining why it was OK to be Christian and rich, haha… A few stations later we came across a bunch of pro-lifers patting each other on the back. The DJ introduced a song (with the above as the title), which was apparently written by a policeman and his wife after hearing the said DJ discourse on abortion politics. It sounded like the verse to “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson on the wrong speed, dirging along without a chorus in sight. It was, in short, horse. This country is odd.

Our other amazing experience this week has been (possibly) chasing Yngwie Malmsteem (sp?) down the I-10 highway at 80 mph for about half an hour. I say possibly because there was no 100% confirmed sighting, but basically we were tailgating a black BMW with personalized “Yngwie” plates, and I really can’t imagine it was anyone else…

So yes, America is fun and culturallty intriguing. They’re good at food, and San Fransisco is good at pretty much everything lefty or liberal, but then they collectively suck at Tea making and Scrabble (hahahaha). It’s great fun though, and I’m already talking to some folks about coming back out here again, maybe covering some new ground as well as coming up the West coast again.

In LA I did a quick session for Mike Davies’ Radio 1 show, which will be out on Monday night, so keep ears peeled for that one.

I kinda jumped the gun on the tour support thing, incidentally. It’s all a little hazy at the moment, but will essentially feature a mix of some of my favourite bands (The Tailors, Captain Black, Jay Jay & The Pistolets). Kid Harpoon can’t make it, sadly, but everyone should check out his myspace all the same.

Right, that’s quite enough blurb for one day. Over and out.