plan is to start and end in the UK but do a bit in france and germany as well (and possibly a cheeky trip to Sofia)
more soon when its all confirmed! xx
STCD027 – released 8/03/2010
MP3 | Limited CD | Spotify
Order: iTunes | Amazon | Other stores
Acoustic punk-in-disguise Lonely Joe Parker began his career with indie-rock kids The Power, but after festival appearances and national airplay he put down his electric guitar and set out alone last summer to discover ‘a more interesting way to tell stories in sound’.
His bold, performance style harks back to Billy Bragg, while musically he owes more to Pavement, Broken Social Scene and The Clash. “I quickly realised that I wasn’t very good at the guitar,” he explains, “at least, not good enough to be a “guitarist”. But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring, either – you can make just as good a racket with two fingers on a fretboard, you just got to know which ones!”
As his growing live reputation across the UK proves, melody, harmony and performance make a potent combination and Lonely Joe Parker has already supported significant artists such as Band of Skulls, My Luminaires, Stornoway, The Moulettes, Edward J Hicks and Thomas Tantrum in his burgoning solo career.
Joe recently released a split EP, What’s Wrong With Broken Glass, on vinyl and download with Sotones label mate David Miatt a.k.a Jackie Paper. The EP gained the pair a “Track of the Day” accolade on the Q Magazine website, an extensive interview on Fairtilizer, features on The 405 and a great review in The Fly. All proceeds from the vinyl copy of the EP went to Oxfam.
Shanty is taken from the aforementioned EP and gloriously encapsulates Joe’s sincere lo-fi folk sound, with nods to greats such as Nick Drake. His ability to take you on a journey far, far away with heartfelt vocals and simple, beautiful strums will more than charm you into submission. Lonely Joe Parker is defintely set to become one of the most enchanting, underground songerwriters of our generation.
Tracks:
1. Shanty
2. Mary Rose
3. Shanty – Live At Den Of Iniquity
Press release (c) Sotones / A Badge of Friendship, 2010. All rights reserved.
Hey peeps,
How’s it all going? Big men of 2010? Rode from Hythe to Islington to see Thomas Tantrum, the Moules and Montage Populaire last weekend, brought back some memories of the summer, seems like aaages since i toured then – not for long, read below.. see you at a gig real soon..
New Band, New Years
wow. Mental new years! Basically jimmy shivers, dave wade-brown, and me have got together for a little side-project. It’s called ANN THE ARC and sounds a bit grungy like sonic youth, a bit grungy like pavement, and a bit grungy like nirvana or the replacements.
Ace, basically. so all the fuss at new years was, we went down to cornwall to record some tracks in our friends’ house with Dan Parry (who did the Fresh Legs stuff and also some 6NS stuff, among others). in the end we managed to get through about 12 tracks (and a shitload of booze and leccy on the metre – was reeeeal cold) so whaddya know, there’s an album there! we recorded pretty much 95% of it LIVE too!!! I’m itching like hell to show you the stuff, but there’s a wee bit of mixing left to do so it all sounds really really good. but, remember the band: ANN THE ARC… rest assured i’ll let you all know! loudly…
‘Shanty’ single
Sotones are releasing ‘Shanty’, one of the tracks from the Oxjam EP I did with Jackie Paper last summer. It’s gonna be out on iTunes / Spotify / VERY limited cassette on the 8th March and like the EP, all proceeds will go to Oxjam. As well as the title track, there’s a live version featuring The Moulettes and ‘Mary Rose’ which some of you will remember from like, years ago.. we’ve kind of resurrected it. Or ‘raised’ it, if you will..
To, well, flog records basically, I’ll be on tour in March. We’re still settling the dates but stay tuned for an announcement soon. If you think there’s somewhere cool I / we could play (some dates will be solo, others with the East Street Band) drop me an email to joe@sotones.co.uk huh? like, good club nights but weird interesting stuff too, yeah?
Live Record! 11th Feb at Hamptons
Let’s face it, I’m shit at recording. I’m not very good at playing the guitar, and I even get a bit nervous singing when there’s nothing but a red light to look at, which is weird. I overcook stuff; I take way too many takes, or too few; I try and drink to chill out and get wasted; I redo the lyrics at the last moment, then find I can’t get my tongue around them, or it sounds naff.
No, I prefer playing live by about a million miles and to be honest, most of the time I only really see recording as a way to get you to come to gigs so we can all hang out. cos lord knows records don’t make ANY money, ever! haharrrr!!! (by the way, did i mention i’ve got a bunch of stuff on digital now? buy buy buy, $uckers…)
SO.
The obvious thing to do is try a live record. simple, really. get a load of people down, rehearse loads, maybe even film a little bit, offer everyone who comes a free copy of said record when it’s finished? yeah, that’s what i’m talking about. i’ve been running down the setlist, trying out various guitars for different songs, really getting into it all. it’s going to be quite a quiet / intimate kind of show. maybe even a bit sad here and there. but ultimately good and happy etc.
When is this epic live event taking place, I hear you ask? It so happens I’m playing at Hamptons in Southampton on the 11th of February. I’ll be supporting Polly And The Billets Doux, who are well good, having been all over the radio etc. At the moment they’re doing the whole tour-gig-instore thing.
Because of getting rid of the recording equipment etc (plus no-one gives a shit) we have to do the recording at the start of the night, so make sure you get there at the start of the night – doors are 7.30. it’s £5 and like i said, make sure we get your name and details so w can send you a record when we’re done (we won’t put them on any maillist or anything like that)
The facebook page, if you can be arsed, is: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=307285802081, and make sure you’ve got your best rowdy singing / heckling voice on!
see you,
joe x x
PS: in other unrelated news, some group somewhere have found a way to ask people in comas what they think about stuff using fMRI (kinda). I reckon they think about what we think about, ie highways, sex and bombay mix. or is that just me?
so – a bit quiet for a while because all that goddamn snow just before christmas killed my laptop. cycling through a mad blizzard in northeast london with the moulettes’ manager to get to their video shoot and heaving in looking like a yeti did my indiana jones rating a power of pooj, but buried the precious silicon chips. god knows how i’m going to survive without one.
but then, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because straight after christmas i set out with shivers, dan parry and dave wade-brown in my nan’s camper van on a super-secret mission to falmouth. it was cold, we ran out of electricity and storm’s very kind housemates might have just gone deaf for the rest of this new decade, but it was WELL worth it. more to come soon, hahharr!
also dave got drunk on NYE at mags’ in land’s end. and I mean VERY drunk.
what else apart from drinking, skating and seditious sessions? well, i’m back working for sotones for another few weeks. hopefully i’ll get the sack at the AGM, we’ll see. plus i want a canoe, anyone got one?
oh yeah – on the 22nd i’m curating a night at hamptons. i know i play there all the bloody time, but this go round i actually get to pick the bands and DJs and dress the stage and stuff, it’s totally my night!
here’s the event, http://www.facebook.com/ev..ent.php?eid=238389029806woooooooooooohoooo! the idea is to go for a kind of film noir thing like raymond chandler, or the dwarf bit in twin peaks, or something. hope everyone comes and dresses up loads. like this stuff http://t2.gstatic.com/imag..es?q=tbn:ymiOMYXaBFDE0M%3A..http://justfellshort.files…wordpress.com/2009/09/nig..ht-hawks.jpg
playing are MY LUMINARIES who i have fucking loved since I ran into them in dublin years ago, and nato, who are in my opinion the best band in the south by a million miles, joe ann the arc and a special guest.
so i hope to see you there! x
ps: congrats to barny & robin, getting engaged behind my back, apparently… huh.
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/lonelyjoeparker/blog?page=1#ixzz1524Y35Uy
In the meantime there’s also some good gigs coming up this month:
So to get today’s head over to http://www.myspace.com/lonelyjoeparker .. and tell your friends!
Have a good christmas,
Joe xx
yo peeps,
doing a bit of writing at the moment, but got a few low-key gigs coming up where i’ll be trying out the new stuff etc… most of these are FREE shows, so do come, would be ace to see what you think:
NOVEMBER 2009
6th – secret gig, london (but email me if you wanna come)
9th – Mr Wolf’s, bristol
10th – 3One7, finchley
16th – Winchester School of Art
hope to see you there, exciting shit coming up i promise! more later x
I’m writing this with my battered laptop on my lap (and the ever present cup of strong, shitty, HOT instant coffee) in yet another front room belonging to someone else.
I sat down the other day while I waited in the drizzle for the train from somewhere weird in Sussex to London, and started to work out how many trains/busses/cycle rides I’ve taken in the last year since I set out busking up the East Coast in the states…
It turned out to be a bit to hard to remember. Looking back my memory is kind of a bit too fucked, but my diary and the persistent ache in my back and patches on my gig bag tell me that the longest I’ve spent in one place since this time last year is a whopping 7 nights . . and that was technically while on holiday, helping out a friend at a studio in Bulgaria (Furnace – will be recording there soon – check it).
But I’m not complaining. Couldn’t. I fucking love this! Megabus stubs and empty bottles; scribbled set-lists; snatches of new songs on answerphones and coffee, coffee, coffee. Would be nice to get a week or two to sit around and relax, maybe write some of this up, though. For instance…
It’s been a hectic ole year. From busking on the L train in NYC to recording the Oxfam 12″ in London, Bike Touring across the UK to hitching a ride in Georgia – and some wonderful amazing shows and audiences! Big thanks to everyone at Sotones, Hamptons / Long Live Rock & Roll, Ejector Seat, Believe Digital, CSV and Oxfam for all their help..
Also, really special buttlicky love to everyone who helped out or promoted us on the Bike Tour. You were all amazing and couldn’t have done it. Especially the BBC and Campaign Against Arms Trade – we were meant to be helping them, but they were so organised it was a massive kick up the arse for us!
~~~
Oh yeah – about the Oxfam EP. Thanks again to everyone who helped. Got some great reviews, have been selling well and generally ace. Please have a listen and buy it if you like – it all supports Oxfam and god knows however hard the credit crunch is stiffing us in the UK, the rest of the world is even more shafted.
You can buy MP3s online here, or get the 12″ vinyl! We’ll send you MP3s if you want those too with every vinyl purchase, just ask. The vinyl looks and sounds fucking lush (they’re individually numbered, you know), and you can get it in southampton and reading Oxfam Music stores, or from Rough Trade East (they’ve nearly sold out though). You can also mail-order through Rough Trade.
~ ~ ~
So what next? most of the 100+ performances this year have been me, solo, with my smashed acoustic. It’s been nice doing things that way – you get a lot more freedom when you’ve only got yourself to rely on – but it definitely limits what you can do and where you can play. It does. And the lows are as dark as the highs are bright.
Over the summer we experimented with some full-band arrangements; a whole range of sounds, some folky, some electronic, some Feist-y, some straight-up rock stuff. What I found was that I like them all, and that there’s plenty of room in the songs I’m writing at the moment for all of this stuff.
So I think we’ll probably just keep doing that for a bit. Maybe a single or two early next year, see how we go? You never can tell. I’ve been listening to a lot of Feist, St. Vincent, PJH and Cat Power (all girls strangely; I think they make much smarter music) this year. It would be nice to weave some of their, like, eclecticism and subtlety into stuff I’ve listened to for ages like YYY, Tom Waits, At The Drive In, Pavement and of course THE CLASH who will never ever stop being my favourite band ever.
Live shows for the next few months are gonna be a bit of a pick and mix then, as I’ll be trying out a few different arrangements of stuff and try and blag various people into playing with me.
I like the idea of having a power trio at the centre (which tonight means Jimmy Shivers, me and Dave Wade-Brown) with maybe a couple of multi-instrumentalist types most of the time, and pulling in friends like The Moulettes, Pete Lyons or Moneytree for big gigs and special stuff. Stay tuned, we’ll see…
All the best, thank-you so very very much for all your kind support (& keep teling your friends!). Hope to see you at a show sometime and crash on your floor,
Joe x x
ps: thanks again to the East Street Band, at various times:
Jimi Ray
Campbell Austin
Ben Stoop
Peter Lyons
David Miatt
Jimmy Shivers
Dave Wade-Brown
Barny Lanman
Ollie Austin
Hannah Miller
Ruth Skipper
Tom Cummings
Rysia Burmicz
.. and admin/press/artwork stuff from:
Storm Poorun
Sally Campbell (CAAT)
Rob Milner (Oxfam)
Billy Mather
Caity
Liz Moores
Jimmy Hatherley.
Jim, you get two credits, see? Happy?! x
STEP017 – released 28/07/2010
Buy now: iTunes | eMusic | Amazon | Spotify
“A split release of jaunty confidence and empathy. It’s worth buying a turntable just to hear this.”
Matt Golding, The Fly
“intriguing melodies and playful composition… highly alluring.”
Track Of The Day 15/12/09, Q Magazine
“Gentle finger picked guitar and stream of conscious lyrics.. like a late night busker serenading the drunks staggering their way home… Get it for the Indie kid in your life.”
Singles Round-up 14/12/09, Clash Music
“a strange, yet fantastic collaboration”
Will Slater, The 405
Itinerant bum, romantic, and songwriting-genius-in-rags Lonely Joe Parker stumbled on a brilliant idea when he made it back to the UK last year, fresh from a busking tour of the eastern US seaboard. A planned tour following the Obama campaign trail had threatened to derail when a robbery in Miami left him penniless with 1000 miles to home.
But down on his luck amid the squalour and splendour of an American election, he sat down with a $20 pawnshop guitar and wrote a new clutch of songs inspired by his surroundings. Motivated by the chink of change in commuters’ pockets, he dug deep into americana, conceieving a twisted soundtrack to his predicament that took Tom Waits-ian observation and St. Vincent or Feist’s sonic vision, blended with a streets-eye view of the USA. The songs earnt their creator enough change to make it up to NYC, where gigs in the East Village and Williamsburg followed.
Back in the UK he began to wonder why the songs that had earnt his own keep couldn’t help others too. Hitting the buffers in the docklands of his native Southampton, he ran into guitarist and songsmith Jackie Paper – better known as David Miatt – himself taking time to decompress with a raft of misfit songs written following a hectic six months with his band Thomas Tantrum. Critical acclaim had seen them catapulted from rehearsing in a garage by the docks to the Reading, Bestival, SGP and Latitude festivals and national radio appearances (including BBC1 and 6Music), but now winter had bitten and an older, folkier impulse led him to pen a book of wistful, almost melancholic songs that didn’t fit in with his day-job-band’s indie-pop template, referencing Elliot Smith and Nick Drake more often than YYY or the Pixies.
Whilst browsing for vintage Lemonheads in their local Oxfam Music Store, the two hit on the idea of a split EP to shamelessly showcase their songs while raising money and awareness for Oxfam Music. It seemed deceptively simple: do a record on tick, release it through the UK’s network of Oxfam stores specializing in vinyl (touring them to promote the release), get new punters into the stores themselves (essentially great local indie record shops that happen to be benefit empowering development projects worldwide) and walk off with the memories while letting Oxfam pocket all the filthy money.
Six months later, after many long hours waiting outside friends’ studios (Furnace, The Ranch) for spare time, instruments and beds to sleep on, these six songs are the fruit of that collaboration. Friends in Modernaire, Peter Lyons Band, The Moulettes and Moneytree also perform, while the record was mastered by Thomas Tantrum drummer Dave Wade-Brown. Co-operative indie label Sotones release the EP, with original artwork commissioned from local illustrator Billy Mather.
Tracklisting:
1. Brooklyn
2. Shanty
3. Raining
4. All The Wine
5. Natural History
6. Down Among the Dead Men
Press release (c) Sotones, 2009-2010. All rights reserved.
In other very insteresting (to us) news, we’ve got a deal to press some vinyl of this EP i’m working on… ace huh?
More to come.. x x
