Ok. So, er, the last few days have been absolute hell! Happy hell of course. A hell where at least you can nip to the corner shop and buy an egg sandwich and a cup of tea. Or skip to the pub in a frenzy of excitement for a well deserved beer after a hard days grind. Actually that last bit never happened. I've spent over 40 hours in the studio since friday...

Bloody backing tracks is all I can say. The drum parts from the records we've made are all over the place. We managed to find two. The rest I had to program beats in at a frantic pace, mixing while going along and then rehearsing it to see if it fits. It is a horrible job. Soooooo boring and tedious. A little bit like data input. It almost got to the point where I said to Will why don't you just do the tour. No no Tilley! You're coming! Oh fiddlesticks.

All this stress led to Will crashing his car on Saturday morning at 1am. He smacked into the back of a drunk Polish driver who got out the car and continued drinking in front of the police! Poor Will, the car is a wreck! His air bag worked and he and his girlfriend were wearing seat belts thankfully though he bashed his right hand and I rushed him to A and E and mercifully nothing is broken.

Now my old band mate wants his gear back from the studio - two bass amps and the acoustic guitar! Plus the bloke upstairs is getting suspicious about his electricity bill and thinks we're not paying our share, which we're not as our landlord agreed to pay our bills. However there's an impending bill about to be discovered somewhere and I'm in the thick of it!

Oh well. Will and the People are not about stress and this has been the most difficult four days for us. The raging wind is banging tempestuously on the door and the hailstones keep pelting down from above and there seems little shelter at the moment. Ahh, look at me trying to be poetic and searching for sympathy!!

On the positive side the set does sound really good and hopefully you won't notice Simon isn't there! (is it ever possible?)

Cup cakes and cream. We're off on Thursday with Papa Lewis and we'll forget all our woes!

x

Never Rains But It Pours!

Oh balls, it never rains but it pours! Now, with four days left before leaving our drummer has decided not to tour with us! So now WaTp are down to two and it's looking pretty thin on the ice but, as Churchill famously said, we will fight them on the beaches....we will never surrender!

Although that's not really appropriate in any way regarding drummer's leaving bands I suppose. And we're not fighting anyone, although we may cross a beach or two. But we'll certainly never surrender! Though technically someone has to be fighting you for you to surrender and no-ones fighting us. Except perhaps the gods. So maybe it works.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Time to rally then! Simon will be greatly missed but the show must go on. Will and I are frantically trying to re-create the sound again, three days to go and we have to work out a set between the two of us. The countdown begins!

Plus we spent all yesterday trying to insure Papa Lewis on my friends camper van but all in abject vain. No-one will insure him as he's 23 and the cut off is 24! So we're back to Dusty, the original red VW, now only with three people to weigh her down. What a shambles we are. Love it!

Wish us luck. I feel bad for Will who's not really had much luck this year, what with being dropped and band members constantly coming and going. I think he deserves a break in the industry more than most by now and I hope the wind favors him more next year.

Still, off we go again!

x

Dr Sellaband Anyone?

So, erm, firworks night...missed it completely. Didn't even see one explosion. Does that make me a bad person? I hope so. I was in the pub having a very interesting discussion...

http://www.sellaband.com

This sellaband bizzle. Does anybody know much about this thing? It was started by Public Enemy recently and seems to work and I've been trying to pick holes in it since last night but haven't fallen in yet. However it looks like most of the artists are no-where near their target and there's only a few who are near so my mind starts wandering...

Does anyone think this would be a good idea for WaTp to do? I think these days you can make a record for peanuts if the musicianship is good enough and touring doesn't necessarily have to cost an arm and a leg but the real money should be thrown into advertising.

I'm worried that even if we had money to market you still need a corporation like Sony or Warner to do a proper job of advertising. Getting it on radio, TV, syncs, adverts etc. You still need contacts and that's kinda something money can't buy...

So I don't know. It's great for the fans in that they might feel they're really part of something and that they have an element of ownership, but without being too cheesy our followers are already a massive part of what we do.

Anyone any thought? x

Big Hairy Scary Balls!

I finished a book this morning. Gad it took me hours. Until the wee small hours. Why is reading such a bloody chore I ask you? You have to lie there, holding paper bound together by the forces of glue and your brain has to engage in plots that twist and turn like a snake in a field of needles. Why can't the story just be quickly imprinted in ones head without having to go through this whole rigmarole of sitting down, relaxing, putting the feet up and smoking a pipe...

C'est n'est pas une pipe?

Yes of course it is a pipe you fool! Ok, I know it's only a picture but are you really being that profound?

Non monsieur, tu est un vache!

Oui d'accord.

Alors! Duschamps! I can see very well that it's a urinal but can I wee in it? Is it functional? Who really made it....Twyfords or do they make only the teas, as Poirot would say?

Enough of this foolishness. Good ship WaTp are heading on to Europe soon and the excitement is palpable in the encompassing camps. Also looks like we're set to sell an EP in December despite most fans already having one, but good for us. We're about as organized as a hen party in a chicken coop and with no money and little means of attaining any in the immediate future or indeed the future future we're set to sail the high seas and blow all comers into the raging, torrential waves below.

Save ya souls me hearties, we're wading in too deep...!

x

PS see I told you I write absolute bollocks. There's nothing in this blog of any use to anyone with a modicum of sense.

Sometimes I wanna Hurt my

Well, I have to confess yesterday was a hideously trivial day. When you're in an industry like music a day with nothing to do and little inspiration can often be torture.

I woke up later than I'd hoped (9ish) and made some tea. Checked emails. Nothing. Had a shower then tried sitting with the guitar for a bit. Nothing. Switched on the piano and stared at the notes. Still nothing. Thought about having a cigarette but stopped myself. Coffee instead? Why not. Realized I needed a mic to record anything anyways so decided to go collect one from studio. At studio I thought I'd try and define our bass sound with a bit of experimentation. Three hours later it was no better than before. Left studio despondently with mic. Back home tried recording new song. Wasn't feeling it at all. By now it was 4.30pm.

I needed to do something today so I decided to clean the cooker. How desperate is that!? Cooker cleaned and floor swept tried writing again. Nothing. Checked emails. Nothing. Looked on gumtree for much needed boring bar work...No need for a musician to go on a six month Wildlife Expedition to Cambodia then. Checked Facebook. Nothing. Started reading "Pillars of the Earth". That was perhaps the only bit of excitement of the day. Watched Sherlock Holmes The Red Circle on Youtube. Not his best episode. Played Championship Manager 2 on my iphone. Ate left over curry. Read for three hours more. Didn't get to sleep 'til 2.30am frustrated and irritable.

Despite all the showiness and glamour associated with music and pop days like these are the real slogs that people don't recognize have to go on. Days when nothing happens and no money is earnt. The frustration is so intense that you can't relax. One minute you're having a blast on tour playing and then the next thing you know you're back home wondering where it all went feeling very sorry for yourself.

I often wonder if I had pots of money and could do anything I like would I still have days like these? I suspect the answer is yes. It's all about riding the difficult times and disciplining yourself, avoiding guilt and sticking to what you love.

As an ancient Chinese philosopher once said: the roller coaster has to stop sometimes to let people on and off.

x

Halloween

Fiendishly devilish and mischievous we played a secret gig last night in a pub in Oxted to test out our new three piece sound and we had an absolute blast. It was upstairs in a ye olde pub called The Crown and the room was full of demons and witches, ghosts and axe-men etc.

Free beer all night which was a huge bonus and then a late night feast of melted camembert and warm ciabbatta with mulled ghoulish wine beside a roaring fire. Bed at 4am in the spare room in the attic for me cobwebs 'n all.

The only picture I took all night is displayed in this blog and it is of Simon's drum kit with a skull attached. Apologies for lack of effort but there were some fans there who took some pics and if I can hunt them down I'm sure they'll share.

We also played Lion In The Morning Sun which sounded great, so great in fact to our tiny ears that we played it twice.

Ferry to Amsterdam from Hull or Channel Tunnel...Any advice...?

x

Countdown

Ok great day worked with Will and Simon in brixton studio Weirdos sounds fucking amazing so too does new track and I would share a snippet but there's no link to an audio bit in these ruddy blogs so I'll have to think of another way and it's friday night so I'm not going to look too hard just yet but it is a lovely track and you'll have to wait until it is crisply finished but we did rehearse Lion in the Morning Sun which is sounding awesome and we'll play it on the Paolo tour and play it tomorrow at our gig in Oxted which will be fun as it's Halloween and I've given up using full stops because let's face it they are pointless which is ironic because they are actually indeed a point but let's have fun and finish the blog with one.

Imagine if I'd finished with a comma the full stop would have been so pissed off,

x