The first in my brand new video blog series to celebrate my new album coming out on April 9th, woohoo! The album launch extravaganza will be at the Half Moon in Herne Hill, London SE24 on Wednesday 11th April with tickets available very soon.

“In This Boat” will be released on February 14th as digital download and homemade Valentine’s card – more on that next week – and I’ll be celebrating that at a very anti-Valentine’s night at Brixton Windmill supporting Hysterical Injury‘s “Dead Wolf Situation” album launch alongside Lilies On Mars AND that Saturday 18th at Underbelly in Hoxton supporting Birdeatsbaby‘s “Feast Of Hammers” album launch.

Full info and ticket links on the Gigs Page.

The album can be pre-ordered now via Bandcamp with two free songs to grab right now.

I was very excited and pleased to receive an email from the Tom Robinson show last week informing me that “Slow Puncture” would be played on the show early on Monday morning (today), as a result of being selected from songs uploaded to the BBC Introducing Uploader.

After doing a little dance around the room I read the email again and realised I would be on the same show as the wonderful Birdeatsbaby, who I became friends with last year after some online chatting back and forth, and played a Bonfire Night show with at the Half Moon in Herne Hill. So I danced around the room again.

I was fast asleep when the show was on but thankfully it’s available to listen to for the next 7 days right here, featuring a host of awesome tunes, a really cool interview with Mishkin from Birdeatsbaby and the first airing of their spooky new single “Incitatus”. Massive thanks to Mish and Tom for saying such nice things about me, wowee. What a lovely start to “Blue Monday”.

TICKETS FOR FEB SHOWS

I’ll be playing two extra special gigs with friends in February:

Tuesday 14th – VALENTINE’S DAY! – at The Brixton Windmill supporting Hysterical Injury and Lilies On Mars to celebrate HI’s new album “Dead Wolf Situation” (TICKETS).

Saturday 18th – The Underbelly, Hoxton – Birdeatsbaby’s “Feast Of Hammers” album launch show! (TICKETS).

There are more gigs coming up too, in Croydon, Bath and Leeds, so check out the Gigs Page for the most up to date listings and links and email me with subject title GIGS LIST + the name of your town to receive gig alerts in the future.

2012 gigging kicked off in fine style yesterday afternoon at The Good Ship, Kilburn where I was honoured to head up the bill at the first Camden Calling event this year. Camden Calling is a small arts collective of exceptional homeless and ex-homeless people, so please check out their site to find out more and support their work.

It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, thanks so much everyone for travelling in the freeeeeezing cold. Wrap up warm, friends!

Yesterday afternoon I was invited along to East Leeds FM‘s HQ in Seacroft to do a live acoustic Parlour Session and have a chat with the lovely Paddy Garrigan. We covered such thorny topics as MySpace teen pouters, loop pedals, owning your own corner of the internet, my thoughts on mystique and all sorts of other stuff in between, I got to pick three songs I find inspiring – “Looking for Answers” by Hope And Social, “Paris Is Burning” by St Vincent and “What Would The Community Think?” by Cat Power – and I played four new album tracks – “Exit Strategy”, “Shields And Daggers”, “Delete” and “Never Was” – on Baby Taylor, ukulele and loop pedal.

The whole session is available online now (forever, I think) right here, and here’s when stuff happened, cos I know you’re dead busy like:

Start – Intros and “Exit Strategy” (get the album version here)
05m40 – “Shields And Daggers”
15m – Interview Part 1
27m – Interview Part 2
40m30 – “Delete” (get the album version here)
44m30 – “Never Was”

Last night I was honoured to play a house gig alongside some really fantastic artists – Middleman and Soulmates Never Die. Do yourself a massive favour and click on those links now…their stuff is incredible.

Tom and Sean from Anthologies (wonderful live music filmmakers) were there documenting the night and shot a special performance of “Shields And Daggers” which I’ll point you to when it goes online. All in all a really brilliant night of great music and lovely people, so massive thanks to all concerned for your hospitality and for singing / stamping along when instructed

Rich kindly recorded me thanking him for loaning me his gorgeous Takemine acoustic and playing “Exit Strategy”:

. @shemakeswar at @middlemanband’s house. #housegig #awesome by TheHuxCapacitor

These are probably my last shows of the year and they’re all going to be pretty special in their own way, so please come along if you can!

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Sunday 20th November – LONDON – Clit Rock @ The Lexington
TICKETS – £5 advance
w/ Dana Jade, Dark Moon and We Rock Like Girls Don’t + Gaggle / Music Is My Boyfriend DJs + spoken word artists + art!
A Female Genital Mutilation awareness and fundraising event with some kick ass music.
FACEBOOK EVENT LINK

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Tuesday 22nd November – LEEDS – House Gig Extravaganza!
Email now for more info and to be added to the guest list (address will be given out the day before)
w/ super special guests – this is going to be a very exciting night indeed

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Saturday 26th November – LONDON – Strummerville Winter Sessions (at The Yard, West London)
MORE INFO + TICKETS – £5 advance
w/ Kai Fish And The Light (ex Mystery Jets), Breadstealers, Gaz Brookfield, Huw Olesker, The Hysterical Injury, Leon Fender Walker, The Gun$how, The Promenade

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Oh, and if you happen to live in either Chambery or Le Perce Oreille A Reignier, I’m playing shows there this week alongside the marvellous Marianne Lilah – all I know is I’m being collected at Geneva airport tomorrow afternoon and the adventure starts there…there will be video! Dates here.

GIG ALERT LISTS

Despite doing a monthly newsletter and posting gig listings on my website and on Facebook I often get messages from people saying “Oh, I didn’t know you had a gig last night, can you tell me next time please?” – so I’m setting up extra gig alert lists for that purpose.

Simply email me with one of the following subject lines to be added to the relevant lists and receive very occasional gig alerts:

LONDON GIGS

MIDLANDS GIGS

NORTH GIGS

NORTH EAST GIGS

NORTH WEST GIGS

SOUTH GIGS

SOUTH EAST GIGS

SOUTH WEST GIGS

WALES GIGS

SCOTLAND GIGS

IRELAND GIGS

Hope to see you in the next week and a half!

Big thanks also to Tom Lillywhite for asking me to play and to everyone who came along to watch, I had a wonderful night and managed to grab some time to relax and enjoy myself and get to catch up with all of you.

Yesterday I played the atmospheric Blue Tent at Malcfest in Charing, Kent, and had a marvellous time serenading festival goers and having my socks knocked off by some of my favourite bands: Djevara, Orders Of The British Empire, Thumpermonkey, Silent Front and The Andy K Show and found a new one – Scratch Latin.

Well done to the organisers for putting on such an excellent DIY festival!

My set lists this weekend went a little something like this:

MINEFIELDS
NEVER WAS
OLYMPIAN
A-HOLE (Sunday only)
LET THIS BE (Sunday only)
EXIT STRATEGY
SLOW PUNCTURE
IN THIS BOAT
SCARED TO CAPSIZE

A few months ago Rich Huxley and Ben Denison asked me to get involved with a little garden party they were planning. I checked my calendar, saw my studio time booked around it and a functions gig in Bristol the night before, freaked out and said sorry, I can’t do it. Then I thought for about 5 seconds about how magical the world of Hope & Social is and how much I’d regret not making the trip and immediately changed my mind.

NOTE: if you don’t know who Hope & Social are, in brief: they’re a Leeds based band making gorgeous swoonworthy guitar/piano music, putting on incredible events and generally showing the rest of us how it’s done in terms of fan engagement and I’m exceptionally proud to call them my friends. NOW GO AND LISTEN TO SOME OF THEIR LOVELY MUSIC

That’s why on Sunday 31st July at 3am I started mixing epoxy craft putty stuff together to make a blackbird decorated with sequins and glitter, grabbed a very brief sleep, dithered around slightly too long packing my music gear then pegged it through Euston station with my dog sprinting by my side (good boy Benji!) to catch the 8.50 train to Wolverhampton to meet up with my sister Jooles. My four hula hoops had already travelled up to Mirfield courtesy of lovely Chris and Sarah and after dropping the poocher off to spend the day with friends in Wolves we drove up to join the party.

More photos here.

It was really lovely to see all 12 of our hoops in use about 2 minutes after we’d arrived and set them out for people to try. Kids are always much more keen to try new things or show off if they already know how to do something, but even the adults got stuck in and Chris and Ed hooked us up with the amazing Go Pro camera to grab some hoopy footage for a forthcoming H&S music video.

John Popham filmed a little hooping tutorial with a lovely demo from Jooles – make sure you check out the other videos on his YouTube account for more of a flavour of the day.

And Jooles made this lovely video showing snippets from the whole afternoon:

After all this hoopy fun I had the honour of closing the acoustic stage with a precarious looking loopy set from atop a hill of dirt. Thanks to everyone who came over to listen, it was lovely to play in the open air and I didn’t fall over despite skipping about the place wielding my trusty megaphone…

A few people were kind enough to film part of my set, here’s “Scared To Capsize” from Dr Fizzy – check out the wonderful hammocks too, I wish I’d had a chance to have a lie down in one!

And as if that wasn’t enough excellent media coverage, pretty much my whole set was broadcast on ELFM and you can listen back here.

See more photos via the #hsgardenparty tag on Flickr.

A train tour visiting Tunbridge Wells, Bristol, Falmouth, Dartmouth and Oxford, supporting Midge Ure, Sick of Sarah and Little Fish and starring performances from Spring Offensive, Adam Barnes, Djevara Redux and George Chopping. And a STEAM TRAIN.

Photos from the tour are here.

Tickets are now available for a very special gig this September – I’m hosting and performing at a benefit show for Katie Huttlestone, a fantastic girl who is undergoing treatment for stage 3 breast cancer – at the age of 21. Katie has been sharing her story so far via informative and moving video blogs, and I’m honoured to be working alongside her to raise money for youth charities.

The gig will be held at The Corn Exchange in Hertford from 6pm on 10th September 2011, with a full lineup to be confirmed.

Tickets are £5 for under 14-17 year olds and £7 for 18s and over. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE.

You can “like” Katie on Facebook here and watch the rest of her vblogs right here.

TIRED.

Yesterday was a great example of a day when my “All glamour, all the time” mantra came in handy. For anyone still under the impression that the life of a touring musician is all pink fluffy clouds, constant sexual gratification and champagne will be sorely disappointed to hear that the joyful 6.50am lobby call followed by one short flight, 6 hours loitering at BA airport as the Cordoba flight got more and more delayed amidst whispered stories about three planes undergoing maintenance and a fatal crash on the same airline the day before, another short flight and a crazed, circuitous two hour van drive to the venue, all fuelled by far too little food and sleep isn’t unusual for this sort of far flung tour.

I wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for my beloved Kindle and the brilliant book “One Day” by David Nicholls which I finished on the plane to Cordoba, weeping at the beauty and sadness of the novel and weakened by exhaustion and lack of sustenance. Upon arrival in Cordoba I was offered a bottle of fizzy water and a bag of salted crackers by our driver – I could have kissed him.

I Audioboo-ed from BA airport earlier in the day with a little update on the tour so far and a word about my Pledge campaign, which stands at 75% with 25 days to go. Crossing fingers…only if I reach the 100% target do I get the fulfill any of the pledges so please tell your friends!

LISTEN HERE…

AND just so you know…I’m absolutely not complaining about anything on this trip, because at the end of the world’s longest Thursday I got to play a nice long set of awesome tunes with a brilliant band to a really warm, receptive, excitable crowd, which is a joy rarely matched. Right now I’m lucky enough to be in a really beautiful hotel room, nourished with a nice lunch, contemplating visiting the spa downstairs and planning my set list for tonight’s She Makes War house concert in a neighbourhood called Núñez, organised by some new but ardent SMW fans.

Swings and roundabouts, innit