It’s raining in Toronto. This is particularly galling because when I left London the weather was unseasonably delightful. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’m back on the North American continent, which is always a delightful thing. Also, after the triumphant chaos that was my 1000th show in London the other day, I played my 1001st last night, and celebrated with my tour manager Jimmy giving me a prison-style tattoo (hand-pricked, no gun) in the hotel afterwards. Rock, and indeed roll.

Today is, for the UK at least, radio D-Day, and there is much to discuss. First of all, the new single, “Peggy Sang The Blues“, is getting its first plays on air tonight. First of all my old pal Zane Lowe will be spinning the tune on his show between 7 and 8 tonight on BBC Radio One. After that it’ll be getting plays on XFM and Kerrang Radio too. All of which is ace. To coincide with all that, the song will be available to buy from UK iTunes pretty much straight after that, so check the link.

Also, for the UK, here are the pre-order links for the album, each of which has its own individual super-powers. The Amazon link gets you a special edition with a signed sleeve. The HMV link enters you for a chance to get tickets to the Barfly show on June 6th. And the Banquet Records people will treat you right and support independent music and record shops. Take your pick.

For those outside the UK, tonight at 9pm UK time (4pm EST) the good people at Spin.com will be putting “Peggy” up to stream on their website for everyone to check out. Enjoy! Also, if you want to pre-order the record (and I hope you do..!) you can now get it on CD and vinyl from the Kings Road online store, complete with exclusive shirts.

Next on the agenda: we’re looking for some people (from the UK again) to help out with album promotion. Basically, we’ll send you some stickers, posters and the like, and you pester the living shit out of your nearest and dearest. If that interests you at all, here’s what you do: send a mail to fan.support@pias.com, with the subject line “Frank Turner Album Attack“, and include your name and what town / city / village / prison / rural settlement you live in. After that we’ll get back to you and let you know the score. Thanks!

Finally, online merch. We’ve been having some teething problems with the Kings Road store, not least with shipping costs to the UK. I’m not unaware of the problem and we’ve been working on sorting it out. I think we have it down now, and there’s also some new designs in there, so do check it out.

I think that’s everything for today. Things are really starting to gear up for the new record right now, which is exciting for me, so expect further manic updates from hotel rooms across America in the coming days.