Paul Henshaw

5 Day Fast

Ok, so I've been thinking of doing this whole 5 day fasting thing for years and always been too chicken, the thought of not sacrificing my body to that velvety bar of chocolate, the moistness of a welsh cake or whatever sugar laden treat literally struck fear into my very soul. After a lot of research, a lot of additional reading and a lot of telling myself it's a good idea I was going in.

I kissed the dog, wrote my will and left a note saying "If you don't hear from me in 5 days send help, I may be dead"

Let's talk a little about what got me here? Many years ago I ate my feelings and bloated to a American Goodyear blimp size 30 stone. After realizing this wasn't a good or healthy look I spent a couple of years getting down to 20 stone and then after reading Dr Michael Moseley's book about fasting and a 600 calorie a day diet, stopped all my Metformin and Insulin injections and lost 2.5 stone.

My HBa1C reading put me virtually "un" diabetic and I had won, I pulled my oversized t shirt over my head and ran round shouting "GOOOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!!"I had taken on the Gods of the faulty pancreas and defeated them......WRONG!

Whereas I lost about another half stone I took my eye off the cake ball and 3 years, 3 house moves, a divorce and a year eating ready meals, KFC's, kebabs and drinking a lot of Heineken, Budweiser and Birra Moretti I cleverly punted my blood sugars thru the uprights to the cheers of "You're diabetic AGAIN! WELL DONE KNOBHEAD"

Ok, serious stuff now, I need to make this statement right here.

DO NOT DO WHAT I'VE DONE, I AM MERELY SHARING AN EXPERIENCE, I'M NOT MAKING A SUGGESTION OK? BEFORE DOING ANYTHING YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR. IF I DIE BECAUSE I DO THIS IT'S ME DYING AND I'M RESPONSIBLE FOR ME, YOU TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES, ITS GOT NOWT TO DO WITH ME!

Right, Fasting! Let's dance you and I.........

DAY ONE

11am - Woke up. Last night I had a massive kebab, I'm regretting it as I'm heavy as hell this morning and I had chips too, a stupid fasting rookie mistake because I've woken up hangry (Hungry / Angry)

I don't feel too bad, but then again I've not actually done anything more fasting wise than I usually have by this time of day?

I'm feeling a bit doomy and gloomy, Midnight Thurs / Friday seems an eternity away right now.

4pm - It's been a bit weird as I thought I'd have less energy but I have energy, I just feel a bit disjointed, again though I'm still not in unknown territory, I go this long without food a fair bit. I'm wondering if I should take the hour long drive to Cambridge tonight to play an open mic but think I will, just need to make sure I don't wobble too much.

4:30pm - Went for a sleep, listened to some sounds of a stream on spotify which was lush but felt very cold and have a naggy headache.

Decided against the Open Mic, it's an hour away and don't think I should drive, I'm sure I'll feel better soon though

7pm - Had a spoon of marmite in hot water, tasted like the greatest thing I've ever eaten, been very tired all day but will still have an early night

DAY TWO

11am - Slept well and pretty much unbroken BUT have a head ache and generally feel moody. Strange how I don't actually feel hungry though? It's quite bizarre?

2pm - Feel pretty lethargic and generally shitty but still no hunger to speak of, that said I'm doing very little, finding it difficult to concentrate on stuff a lot.

5:30pm - Went out and played a gig in Peterborough's finest pizza parlour brilliantly called the Pizza Parlour and Music Cafe. Trust me, the food in there is beyond immense, a fact I remind myself of at regular intervals throughout my show. As an additional stroke of luck the birthday party who were eating and partying in the venue put a slice of birthday cake on the stage right in front of me at the start of my 2nd set. I'm not usually a fan of cake, more a savoury cheese fan but my heads telling me I'd eat cake from the nostril of a camel right now so THANKS FOR THAT!!!! Good job they didn't have a celebratory baked camembert, I may have dived into it.

Home by 10:30 and in bed for 11. Had a strange feeling of euphoria driving home, something felt like it changed in my body, like a switch had been thrown. It wore off pretty quickly when I realized my post gig cheese on toast wasn't happening

DAY THREE

Woken up by a noisy girlfriend at 7am, strangely didn't fall back to sleep but stayed awake while she smashed around the bedroom, dropping her phone and drying her hair with the worlds only Boeing powered hairdryer. I go back to sleep when she goes to work catching an hour's worth of wonderful slumber while she battles the A14, I call THAT penance.

10am - I'm up and feeling ok, I try to do a little bit of basic yoga and realize I'm at a level which is lower than Youtube's collection of "Basic low level yoga for infants and great grand parents" yoga instructional videos. I choose to meditate and manage that pretty well without thinking of cheese.

Midday - I get a sudden rush of energy, I fill in forms I need to, I deliver a hoodie to a printers that I need to and when I get home I walk the forms to the place they should be and then walk the dog a good couple of miles. I feel a little wobbly but I've not eaten since Saturday night and its Tuesday lunch time so what do I expect?

4pm - Really bored of not eating, even though I'm not hungry

5pm - Even more bored yet still not hungry......Figure that one out!

11pm - Sod it, I'm going to bed, still not hungry, and when I say hungry I mean proper hungry, you know when you could eat dog food off the floor hungry? I've had the odd pang but it really is just more the boredom of not planning around food, maybe there's something in that?

DAY FOUR

The good lady is off today, normally I'd look forward to this but today I know that 4 days in I'm going to be a bit ratty.

I weighed myself and found I'd lost 5lbs and did a "60% of the way through / am I doing the right thing" blood sugar check, I was 16.3 when I started, today I was 5.1!!!!

The foggy head, slight headache, minor wobbliness and boredom at not eating cloud was generally lifted up out of sight when I saw that! I could still murder a pie though or some cheese..........mmmm cheese. STOP IT HENSHAW!

It's a busy day, putting cover designs together for the duo album with a violinist I've been recording with, listening to final masters and getting them away to the printers ready for the first gig we have on our short tour this coming Sunday. I can't get over how cold I've been, I feel the cold anyway due to being an old git but it's been worse for a day or two now, I'm not being overly scientific here, more a simpleton (see what I did there? My band is called The Scientific Simpletons) and put this down to the fact I've not eaten since Saturday and its Wednesday! I'm boosted by the fact that I'm actually achieving this!

Mid day - Feel a bit sick if I'm honest, breathless too but still going

2pm - Feel rank

4pm - Felt really dreadful so thought walking the dog might help, I was a bit of a dick to the girlfriend because I felt wobbly (sorry hunny)

Strangely the walk did me good, I felt a lot better when I got home but can't wait for this to be over now

STATEMENT - Sorry to everyone I've pissed off this week

Bed at 11pm

DAY FIVE

The end is in sight! I was up early as I had a rehearsal to get to in Nottingham which is an hour and a half away and I successfully got there within the allotted 30 mins late window.

Again I'm surprised at how "un" hungry I am. I have a mild head ache and feel like something's not right (It's not, its Thursday and the last food I had was on Saturday night) but hunger is just not one of the things I've really felt

5pm - Home, I'm short tempered, but know the end is nigh! When I was a kid and my Dad used to take me to the Transatlantic motorbike match races there were always ranty loud men with "The End is Nigh" painted on boards which they wore either side of their torsos, are motorcyclists really such sinners? Why do they care? Why am I thinking about this now? It's to stop me thinking of cheese again isn't it?

6pm, it's the very last quarter of a day, 6 hours left out of 120, I've not eaten for 114 hours! Its bonkers how much energy I have, I feel no different to normal now, it has been a gradual increase in energy levels but seriously, I feel fine.

I do need to decide on whether I stay up till midnight to eat something or go to bed and waiting till morning? and then what am I having? Coffee for starters and I think maybe a little omelette, I need to remember to break back into it gently

11pm - Give up on the day and go to bed, I can eat tomorrow, what's 8 hours between friends and an empty stomach?

I woke up this morning, a massive smile on my face and a huge sense of achievement, I've not eaten for 5 days! FIVE DAYS!!!! That's huge for me. Obviously now I have the whole measurements thing to do, will I have made any difference to my bloods and will I have lost some weight? I have to admit I'm pretty nervous.

When I started this I weighed 16st 12lbs, I tentatively step on to the scales, digital numbers race round and seem to take an age.......6ft 5..........................!!!! EH? I KNOW THAT!!!!!, I step off the scales, zero it again, select setting 4 (mine) and wait again......16st 3lbs!!!!! Sodding hell, thats 9lbs, I'm amazed and very happy but it's the bloods that are key to me, my ability to not have toes and feet cut off in later life is something I find important. My recently eaten kebab blood sugar reading was a massive 16.3, a short pin prick later and its.......5!!!!

Get the f**k in! I WIN, I WIN!!!!!

All in all, as I sit back now, a good 12 hours since I ate 2 Cornish wafer crackers and a tiny slice of Tor Valley tickler cheese I reflect on how the last 5 days wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. I was hardly hungry, maybe 5 times in total, I was more bored, I was bored when I realized I didn't have a breakfast or lunch or dinner or tea or secret KFC to look forward to. I didn't have that thing you key your day around, that thing we call "mealtime" and until now I hadn't realized what a ritual it had become, a ritual for my entire life.

I eat 3 meals a day because I was taught to, I also like salt because I was told by some sick bastard in my distant past that it cooled your food down?? I was impressionable, gullible and I think it was about the time I got into Duran Duran in a big way but less said about that the better, needless to say I love salt because I've always put loads on my food.

Back to this whole Autophagy thing I mentioned in the title? What exactly is it? Well short answer is I don't know, or need to know if truth be told but I do know that Autophagy kicks in somewhere around the 12 to 18 hour mark of not eating. I read somewhere that its 48 hours in when your good cells hunker down and your body has the crappy ones go into repair mode. It was certainly day 3 when I felt a big difference to energy and my general feeling of crap-ness, I was fuzzy for 2 days then something flicked a switch and I had energy.

It seems numerous things happen when autophagy kicks in, but the key is that the process instigates depriving the body of nutrients. Now I'm no human biologist, scientist or anyone with a big understanding of this but what I've gleaned from research is this, Glucagon is the hormone opposite to insulin, and when we eat insulin levels go up and glucagon goes down, if we don't eat glucagon goes up and insulin goes down, glucagon stimulates the process of autophagy, in fact it's the biggest boost to autophagy, at least its the biggest boost clever people who research these things know of.

So fasting does this, it stimulates autophagy, but it also does more. Fasting stimulates a growth hormone which makes the body produce new bits for the old worn out bits, the bits that need replacing, like giving your car a service, replacing the old bits and fitting new ones. Pretty much an all round good thing to do to yourself.

For me this was about flushing some fat from my liver, getting control of my blood sugar again and seeing if I could do this fasting thing everyone is talking about and I've put on a pedestal for a few years. I'm happy I've done it and will definitely do it again (Sorry Hunny) It did me good, I'd change things around, maybe getting out of everyone's way would at least help the people in my life.

Right, crackers and cheese, where did I hide you???

FIVE COMPASS LIGHTHOUSE

Hey everyone,

New album is out as of 1st November 2019!!...

I did this a few years back for "YOU JUST LOST THE GAME" I wrote a little bit of uninteresting information about each song on the album so thought I'd do it again, maybe you'd like to hear it.

WHERE I WAS

This isn't a song, merely a poem set to sounds that kicks the album off. There's train noises, foreign radio stations I got off this amazing app called "radio garden" (I love listening to that) and the noise right at the start is a Tibetan singing bowl my daughter bought me for Xmas years ago and that I've been promising to use on every album to date! The spoken word bit was difficult for me, I wondered if I was a bit "up my own arse" but I often get asked about what certain songs are about and I realized the whole album is a contradiction so wrote 2 poems, each with a line from each of the songs on the album in order. What I found was that you could write one very negative piece and one very positive piece, this is what bookcases the album.

HEADS, HEARTS AND VOICES

This song was written in a big group of songs I wrote half way through the writing process, GLASGOW, 21 TRAINS, BIBLE CHORDS and about 6 songs that didn't make it were written in about 3 weeks, VOICES was one of that group. It's working title was "fiddle song" based on us just having a fiddle player in the band and I wrote it totally as a song to open the set with. The lyrical content is just about me being a bit of a dick at times and being sorry for that. It's been a set opener at various stages over the last few months and will be across the tour.

THROWING LINES

One of the last songs I wrote for the album I stole the title off the TV programme Deadliest Catch (I'm a massive fan of this show - you can probably guess that) The bit that resonated with me is how the crab fishermen throw lines and head off into the unknown which we could probably all do with doing every so often, I know I could. That in mind the subject of the song is someone I am very proud of for how they battle with all kinds of shit, keep smiling and stay supportive to the people in their life.

WAVES

Pretty much the first song I wrote for this album. I wrote it when I lived in North Wales and it's about a house, my old house and the only home my parents ever lived in together. My whole childhood was there, it was the anchor of my life, and where I felt at home. 2 and a bit years ago I sold it and moved to the seaside, that's where the album title came from, the FIVE was the number of the old house, The COMPASS was finding my way to the new home and the LIGHTHOUSE is because I could see a lighthouse from my back garden. Moving was traumatic for me, at the time we had a band member leave and I spent 3 weeks emptying the loft of my Mum and Dad's life. The day I left I walked around and kissed every wall and touched every ceiling, it was shit. The song is more about being surrounded by a group of people who all thought I should be happy and bouncing about the move, which I was, I just needed a bit of time to grieve and have a break.

LAST DAY BEFORE BEDLAM

This is basically the story of the day I left the dream of living by the sea behind me, the most aggressive and noisy song of the lot. It's an introspective look at what I thought about myself that day. I drove the hundred miles from the house by the sea to where I'd moved to 6 times that day, 600 miles driving, moving boxes with my best mate Paul Bell and eating lots of Greggs caramel donuts. I wasn't sure if the main opening guitar part was a bit clichéd, what the band did to it input wise made me realize I didn't care, it's just a brilliant song to play, I enjoy it, they enjoy it and at the end of the day this whole thing should be FUN, when it's not I'll stop.

I'M STILL EMPTY

I know I write a lot of songs about me and stuff I've done, stupid stuff like lobbing a beer can at a policeman's head, or drunken nights in town, but this one's different for me. I was playing around with chords and wanted to have this repetitive electric line over the top so recorded the acoustic onto my phone and then messed with a picked line above it. I wrote 4 in the end and had to remember how to TAB so as not to forget them. I thought about moving around the 4 different parts or maybe just a couple of them but decided to stick with the one over and over. It was a bitch to record as when we record we all play together and this time in different rooms, knowing where the hell we were in the song was almost impossible without singing, I mean, we're not the Breeders are we? Still, we got there in the end.

THE ROAD TO KRUMLOV

I was on tour last year and went to the CZ Republic for more than a one off gig for the first time. I wrote the idea behind this song sat in a car park, freezing cold, waiting for hours to go and load in at that nights gig. After the show I found out that my sofa for the night hadn't materialized so was left with finding somewhere else or sleeping in the car. Angie (my partner) did some rapid hotel finding and found one close by which I spent 3 hours locating. I had a sat nav but hadn't factored in that sat navs can locate your position pretty accurately but it doesn't handle where you are height wise very well. Those 3 hours were spent looking for a hotel which I discovered after a very fraught phone call to the hotel desk was 100 feet beneath the bridge that I was standing on! The great bit about this, I was supposed to have travelled to Cesky Budovice and slept on a sofa and instead I woke up in a nice room, had a bath and then spent the day in a world heritage site, a truly beautiful city that I'd have missed if arrangements had held up.

GLASGOW

I'm a late comer to Frightened Rabbit but I like them a lot. I'd only ever bypassed Glasgow and spent one night there when I worked for a company who had a plant there, I ate a 12 pc KFC bucket and watched a Eurovision highlights rerun, I was sure Glasgow had more to offer if I'm honest but had never made it back. This year Angie suggested we go for a weekend, it's her hometown, to see the sights, ride the trains, see some Lochs etc so we did. I was blown away by how at home I felt there, from the hardness of it all and freezing, biting cold wind, but then the warmth of the people and the countryside with such incredible views. I'm a bit of an engineering geek so there was lots to see. Back to the Frightened Rabbit bit, I wanted to be honest with this album, so for this song I recorded a little bit of Glasgow "Happening" from Scott Hutchinson's memorial bench, I didn't know where it was going to fit but if you have a song called Glasgow, you'd better bloody have Glasgow city sounds in the background and not some random British libraries audio clip eh?

21 TRAINS

Not a lot to say about this except there are 21 trains in there if you want to listen out for them.

WREN

Before I moved to Wales I was part parent to 2 cats called Dave. Black Dave was scared of leaves and light breezes, White Dave wanted to take over the world. White Dave would catch birds, Mice, Cattle, Giraffes and virtually anything that had a pulse, this one day he caught a Wren so I threw a bucket of water at him to chase him off then sat on the lawn trying to revive this poor little bird I failed. The wren died.

PROMISED LULLABY

I promised to write this, and I did. I love this song, easily the frailest thing I've ever written, everything that everyone plays on this fits perfectly and Gareth's keys and noises take it way beyond what I thought it ever could be It's about wanting to be there to catch someone when they slip.

far REACHING Rage

I don't do politics, I'm not sure I believe anyone in a position of power these days although I definitely lean one way over the other. However, there is a vile human being in the political arena today. In any other position in life he would be in prison or had been taken out and shot. What makes my shit itch is the fact he's still fucking here! I hate him. The song title is written in a way which his name (first 3 letters and last 3 letters) is in lower case, he doesn't deserve caps. I wanted a bouncy song so wrote this by standing at the end of my kitchen table and jumping up and down to a tempo I hoped people in a crowd would bounce to, let's see if that works.

BIBLE CHORDS

One of the main body of songs that came out when I first moved house from the seaside but the one which took the longest to complete, I could never get the verse to fit, some might say it still doesn't. Gareth came up with the idea of getting some backing vocals done via people recording them on phones and sending them in, the "Whoahs" are made up of a load of people singing from all over the World. I was still unsure about the song till Dylan sent me a video of his drum parts and then i pretty much knew we'd got this one.

NOTHING O'CLOCK

Yep, that's Frank Dog barking at the start, obviously! I'm not going to record an album and not have my buddy on it am I? This is as close to a musical picture I've ever written, it's about Mudeford Sandspit and a stay in a beach hut there. Angie came up with the idea that all dogs look happy, really happy, that in some way they all look like they're smiling. I started there sat on the seating bit at the back of the hut and pretty much wrote what I saw. From Abigail getting bored with the scooter, Henry not having any time for his sisters tantrum, the joggers struggling with their blue tooth while they run on the beach (surely waves work well as a soundtrack to a run????) it all happened in about 10 minutes It's a fabulous place to escape to. I think listening to this album and looking at the song subjects it's got a very strong location thread running through all the songs, maybe not so much where I was physically although that comes across, but more where I was in my head at the time.

I know I wrote about being in the CZ Republic, houses I spent my childhood in, a beach hut by the sea and a well known Scottish city but it's all relative to where I was in my head at the time of writing, some of those times were good and others weren't as good. It's very easy to get sucked into writing and recording an album, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of what I'm actually trying to say, it pretty much takes over your life and I found myself getting quite insular during this one, shutting myself off and pushing people away I normally wouldn't. I certainly have more grey hair! I can say this though, sat listening to the finished mastered album, writing what you're hopefully still reading, it was personally worth every single sleepless night, angry moment, the times where I pulled my hair out in desperation, it's a very healing thing to sit and listen to "it" finished. Anyway, that's it, 14 useless facts about the album. I hope you enjoy it; I do.

Love ph x

Happy Monday all!

Well to say that I'm sat here after 2 awesome gigs yesterday, totally gobsmacked at what I'm seeing on the lap top is a bit of an understatement

Yesterday was great fun first of all, the first gig at a private party was played in a dining room to 40 or 50 pissed up party goers at 4pm! What a blast that was, literally raising the roof in sing a longs.

We then packed up, loaded up and got to the next gig 20 miles away in 40 minutes and played a full 2.5 hours to a pub full of more pissed up party revellers!

I love days like yesterday 

So, the lap top thing. I can't believe that YOU! JUST LOST THE GAME, the album is at #6 in the Amazon Folk chart, the lead song "I declare shenanigans" was #1 in hot new releases and the album has even made it into the overall "ALL ALBUMS" hot new release chart at #83!

I recorded this in my bedroom with no recording experience, just proves to me IT IS ABOUT THE SONGS!

Thank you so much xxx

ph

As the new album is out now I thought I'd share some unknown facts about it

Maybe you'll find them interesting, maybe not, they are however true

The albums available on iTunes, Amazon and on CD at gigs and via the website store

Ok, here goes........

1) The "You! Just Lost The Game" album title came from a conversation about "The Game" with my good friend Tim Compton. Apparently if you google "The Game" the rules are there but basically everyone is playing it, no one knows they are, if you think about the game you've lost the game and the game only ends if the Prime minister announces in parliament that the game is officially over, and then a new game starts. I called the album You! Just Lost The Game so Tim loses it everytime his fiance Rhi puts it on in the car.

2) Braddaz had never recorded anything EVER before this album and his bodhran playing on "Bandages and Glue" was the first time he'd ever sat infront of a mic and it was his first run thru for the scratch track. When we came to record it for the album I couldn't fault it so it was never rerecorded, basically Braddaz's very first drum hit ever recorded made it onto the album.

3) While we're on about Braddaz, in "Gone" we couldn't remember the rim shots he had rehearsed so we ended up playing the beat on a chair in the studio

4) "Silence is Not Acceptance" is a true story, from a long time ago. I did throw a beercan at a policeman and it bounced off his head, I threw it because he was being obnoxious about making sure I put it in the bin. I threw it at him and it hit him and the police cars chased me up Claremont Hill and I jumped into the quarry by St Chads and buggered my ankle up. I'm not proud but makes for a fun story.

5) "Gone" was the first song I started writing and almost the last to be finished as I couldn't work out the melody I wanted. It took 16 months to write.

6) "Another Protest Song" grew from one line thats in the 2nd verse. "Now I'm too busy reading mails from a solicitor in Uganda" was about the spam emails you get saying you're the only surviving relative and theres a $10,000,000 inheritance waiting for you if you send your ban account details.

7) "Dancing in Laybys" was written in 10 minutes and recorded in 10 more. The tune popped into my head while watching a film and I ran upstairs, wrote and recorded it in 20 minutes. On the flip side to that, I spent more time on "My Last Rant" than any other song on the album as it was going to be the song that accompanied the video, which now accompanies "Silence is not acceptance" Because there is no band input to the video and its a story of a Z lister superhero "The Urban Ninja" Oliver at Intrigue Videos just swapped the songs over. 

All of Nikki's backing vocals were recorded while she was full of flu, wearing a onsie and she sat down after every line to get her breath back. She got through an entire pack of toilet rolls blowing her nose

9) After Paul C had been in and recorded his bass lines I accidentally deleted 3 of them, at least I lost them somewhere and was at the point of owning up when they magically reappeared? This is still something that baffles me.

10) The album was recorded in my studio and my studio is in the home my parents lived in before they passed away. The studio is in their old bedroom so there is every chance I was made in the same room I recorded this in.  

So there you go, the story behind the album in 10 useless facts, if Chris Tarrant ever asks you about it you'll know, my gift to you

Hope you are enjoying the album

ph

Well it's been a long rime coming but finally we're 6 days from the release of the new album

You! Just Lost The Game is my heart and soul put into 13 songs, sounding exactly how I want it to, its not totally pretty and shiney but then again I grew up in grunge and punk and non of that ever was either.

I'm really proud, I've wanted to do something like this for years and although I know its a big risk, considering the way the world expects to hear music these days but I've spent more time on songwriting, both lyrically an musically and less time on making it sound "shiney"

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, I truly hope you can see what i was trying to do

Nothing much left to do now excpet let you hear it......

Oh yeah! If anyone wants to come to the release party next Friday at Percys in Whitchurch, all are welcome. I can promise some serious shenanigans in a fabulous venue

See you down the front

ph 

I sit here, chilling in my front room, while Judge Rinder is ranting at some girl who is interupting him, puffing on a E-Cig with a coffee and life is relaxed

This weekend was not so chilled

Me and the Simpletons (less Nikki) headed off to Europe for some shenanigans with our friends Bunch of Bastards

3 gigs, 3 days, 1300 miles, easy enough right? Well, even with a broken car (Which is still in Holland by the way) having such good friends like Andries and his fellow bastards kept me sane at least 

The gigs were fabulous, and we cemented bonds with Andries, Cor, Peter, Huib (not prononced Hweeeeeb) John and Dex very early on in Germany on the first date.

What surprised me was the way the venues treated us, they all literally fell over themselves to make us welcome, including meals, drinks and in the case of the German gig in Nordhorn, somewhere to sleep! Its a pity that doesn't always get mirrored across in the UK

After Nordhorn we drove to Delft (This is where the breakdown happened) so while Braddaz and Paul headed off with the Bastards to set up, Andries the Accordian player and me waiting for a pick up and hire car.

A crazy drive to Delft and i am dropped outside the venue and 5 mins later we're heading into song #1

After being looked after by Singer Cor we got up, had a great breakfast and headed to the Merz in Dordtrecht for the last gig on this little run. A great venue, lovely people and the end of tour meal of satay chicken was IMMENSE!

It was hard saying goodbye, in the space of just over 48 hours we became huge friends, considering only Andries and I had spoken via facebook and one short 15 min conversation last year but for everyone else was a first meet up, but the road is a long one and I'm stoked to say that Bunch of Bastards will be with us in May for a reunion and 3 gigs here

I could go on about just how much these crazy guys put themselves out for us and made us welcome, lets just say they did and they proved theres more to family than just blood. You guys are FUCKING AWESOME!

So, back to it here, theres gig news, theres album news, theres video news, wqatch out for these at the weekend

BASTARDS FOREVER!

Well that was a weekend or two of highs and lows, luckily mostly highs, in fact there was only one low so happy days all round

Last weekend we filmed a show at one of my favourite venues to play. Percy’s Coffee and Curios in Whitchurch, Shropshire is the most quirky and brilliant place to play and ever since we played there for the first time back in Feb this year I’ve been mulling over filming something there. It’s just an incredible little place, stained glass windows on the stage, all kinds of fairground detritus and a sound desk built into a church pulpit!

The DVD, as yet untitled will be available at gigs and via the merch page on the website and is set for Christmas release, just so we can corner the Xmas DVD market! Sometimes even I believe my own crap :-)

The show itself was a whole ton of fun and I’m happy to say we gave some of the new songs a run out live. I’m feeling good about how they’re coming together in advance of recording.

The “unintentional” after show party ended at my house at about 5:30am, I drank too much red wine but there was another gig Saturday otherwise I think it may have just carried on till daylight.

This last weekend was spent way down south. Friday night saw me and the band (Less Nikki unfortunately) playing the last night of September Fest at The Copperhouse in Hayle, Cornwall. I got down there early and met up with Braddaz who'd been camping most of the week so after a romantic walk on the beach (I’m joking) we headed to soundcheck. Christ was the place hot? At the end of the gig I had white spots flashing in front of me but a couple of gallons of water and a kebab and I was all good again.

Braddaz and me headed back to the campsite and after a couple of beers looking out to sea I hunkered down in the back of my car for one of the most uncomfortable night’s sleep I ever had.

A cup of tea (In a beaker – remember those?) and 2 Viennese whirls that I found in the car and at 10am Saturday morning and I’m on the road heading to my buddy Ted’s house / or hospital dependant on whether he’s been discharged following a new knee op.

I only met Ted a few weeks back when I played Occombe festival in Paignton with the band but we instantly realized we’re on the same page regards to music. I was going to surprise Ted and show up to pay him a visit and maybe jam a song or two but fate played a shitty twist and any chance disappeared with a Diesel Particulate Filter issue on the car! I was gutted. It took 3 hours for the incredibly helpful AA man called Steve to get me rolling again but he did, however all chances of a surprise Ted visit had gone.

Ted supports a lot of musicians via his page Cult of SuperTed amongst other things he does including TedFest, click the link below or cut and paste if the link hasn't worked and give the page a like and show some love eh? Ted just has a great passion for helping lots of people like me who charge round the country, playing songs, and it’s just really fucking nice to get this kind of support from real music scene fans.

https://www.facebook.com/Cultofsuperted-868657813241616/timeline/

So, back on the road I was, and swiftly heading the 100 miles or so to The Cove Bar in Hope Cove, Devon to play my 100th gig of 2015! This was a real personal milestone for me but also kind of weird that so many people are involved in my musical life, those who have helped and given support and stuff and I’m playing the target gig number for the whole of 2015, on my own, with none of the family, friends, and bandmates there to celebrate with me! It also had a nice strange symmetry to it though, why should the 100th gig be a big celebration? Lots of people do it, why shouldn’t it be somewhere I only know one person (and that’s Toby the venue owner)?

The gig was an absolute blast, safe to say we got Hope Cove singing along, and it appears a good time was had by all, a great way to mark hitting three figures this year. I am reliably informed by the awesome Toby, that I will be back!

So a long drive home got me back at 5am Sunday morning and after a sleep and a day’s chilling watching the MotoGP #10forVR46, and I’m feeling almost human again

Time to restring and head into the studio to start laying some more scratch tracks down over the next couple of days before we’re off to Ludlow for a Blacksmith Hill gig on Thursday, the same in Sandbach on Friday before I play 4 solo sets at Blackberry Fair in Whitchurch before heading out to play another Blacksmith Hill gig on Saturday

Charge!!!!!!!

PH

So I thought I'd see if the text was white now and not that horrible poo colour

If this is white I'm going to man hug Mark Hambley alot when I see him!