touring | Lonely Joe Parker

Hello dear peeps

so – the US was crazy. Obama, hey?! they _really_ love that guy – was p[layin on election night and it was MENTAL. met some guys on williamsburg bridge, made a lil vid, bit silly. caught CMJ and especially Kirsten Ketsjer who were a.c.e., check them out. please.

lots and lotsa gigs, some of them in some really interesting places. i mean that as well, more later when i get a chance to write my little journal up! or maybe i’ll just scan it in.we’ll see. but here’s a sneak preview: what do ex-cons, spare shoes and oranges have in common??

answers on a postcard. whats up now then?

well, i’m pretty much utterly flat fucking broke. in money terms, at least. but one thing i found out is that when i’m travelling and touring, looking and listening, the songs come thick and fast and better yet, i have an ace ace time. why is it whenever you’re on the radio you miss it? cos we were on RADIO ONE thats right. thought i’d sneak in getting played by steve lamaqc really subtly. see what i did there? big mad props to dave jackie paper miatt for that one, love you dave x.

so the idea is to work really hard in some shitty jobs till the new year while i finish off some songs in the meantime. these ones are really good, i can already tell they’re better than anything i’ve written so far since just in gtr/vox they sound ace. when i get some other stuff on there it’s going to blow up. theres still some love and loss themes in there, but i’ve got a lot better at noticing what’s going on around me, so expect lots of other peoples’ stories too. they’re all our tall tales after all.

so in december i’m demoing some new stuff, doing lots of gigs nearer home to work the kinks till january and a bit of proper recordings in feb before touring a bit more widely. if you would like me to come and play for you drop me a line. I need to cover travel expenses these days though – if you end up out of pocket on ten gigs a month playing becomes a big fat un-fun expensive hobby, and i’m not into that! just so you know. for any charidee stuff thats different of course..

in the meantime the last few gigs planned before december are:

NOV
20 light lounge, BASINGSTOKE
21 jericho tavern, OXFORD
30 orange rooms SOUTHAMPTON

hope to see you there! tell your friends, thanks for all your nice words,
later then, love you
joe xx

Tweet this Digg Post to LinkedIn Slashdot Stumble This

heres a bit recycled from the power page… then a bit that isn’t…

The Future
(i wrote a long, eloquent bit this morning and i poured my damn guts out. but myspace stole it away into the ether between ‘submit’ and you reading it. huh.)

Well we all know what Leonard Cohen thinks. And other people think it’s a foreign country. if that’s the case it seems like I must be on the wrong side of the fence. it’s all about the UK i think. there’s a whole land of weird little b+bs, couches to crash on and national distress coach tickets to fake and the other day i realised how little i really know about the rest of the country.

did you know you can’t even get pea fritters up north?

i mean, i’ve been there before, played a fair bit of it and worked in scotland, etc etc etc but with a whole band you’re always a bit distracted; focused; zeroed in on the mythology of Your Band On The Road. so i want to take some time to meet some new people and introduce them to my frankenstein guitar. and filthy moods in the morning before the coffee comes.

now, to a pretty large degree this is me rationalizing as the rest of The Power have all got their own very exciting projects to work on, but i’d like to think i’ve got some free will in it. which is either totally true or totally an illusion, depending on how you look at it.

also – after a wee break in the states to find out a bit about how they elect people over there – and probably a couple of months pouring concrete for dosh (like over twice what a scientist gets, which reflects shit on the people who pay the scientists) i’ve got a feeling that i’ll have some quite different songs in the book.

we’ll still release Do This! the last power EP at some point i hope, depending on what Sotones’ other priorities are, i guess. at the moment it looks like either a rush job before christmas, or shelving it for a year or so. i hope we do get to release it though cos its a cracker – ‘Points’ is like the third or fourth best track off it, ‘Buttercup’ is going to blow you away.

in fact making ‘Do This!’ was probably the most satisfying thing i’ve done so far. that’s probably why i’m not in a rush to get it out, cos i really, actually, for once believe its okay enough that i don’t need to worry. also it reminds me of bob and davo and cams and jimmy.

in the meantime there’s a bike tour to do, a guitar to fix, and some relationships to patch up. see you on the tour or a bit later on,

joe xx

—ooh, a new bit—–luckyReadersOfLonelyJoe—-

I really like cycling. i’m really pissed off at the moment cos i can’t cycle. i haven’t been able to for weeks now since i got hit on my way to camden and cracked out a cotter pin (bikeoids know what i mean) leaving my bottom bracket a bit of a wreck.

so i’m looking forward to the tour really.

but! don’t forget confidence – cos okay, he did pull out, but i was coming down the hill in the sunny, happy, isnt-the-day-nice-on-top-of-the-world way you do when you’re cocky, but don’t realise it.

then – bump. and that’s that

Tweet this Digg Post to LinkedIn Slashdot Stumble This