Cinema Museum

Tonight it's Lydia Pappas's birthday party which she's holding at the Cinema Museum in Dugard Way. I have to dress up 1940s style and I'm going to sing some Doodlebug Alley songs with my ukulele.

Sydenham Radio - the Ashley Cowan show

Ashley kindly recorded me singing 'Nations, Nations' from Doodlebug Alley live on his Open Mic show last week

http://vimeo.com/15662397

Googling myself

I guess I do google myself a bit, to see if there's any new reviews that come up for 'Doodlebug Alley' mostly. And I do laugh at strange combinations of my names. This one tells a story ...

Muogammar Nature Reserve Discovery Season
I will be on a train that arrives at Cowan Station at 9:36am, the next train ... “ friend from the netherlands is over, will see if i come ”. Jude Manik ...

Adventures in the Australian bush are going on as I google, stuck in front of my computer. It's time to get out and have some real life adventures myself.

Thank you Billy Bad Brakes

That witty lad, Billy Bad Brakes, has written Doodlebug Alley a jolly fine review on Amazon. I am moved by the effort he's put in, he's clearly had it spinning a number of times. Awwww, thanks BBB.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doodlebug-Alley-Jude-Cowan/dp/B0039BD928

Tom Robinson, Fresh on the Net

'Doodlebug Alley' was on the show at 1am on Sunday 18 July, and it's still on listen again on the BBC iplayer for a couple of days. Thanks Tom.

There was a warning about language at the beginning of the show - only suitable for over 16s. My friend Tracey Marie laughed and said 'I bet that's Jude'! She was probably right ...

http://beta.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00t3t01/BBC_Introducing_with_Tom_Robinson_Fresh_On_The_Net_Pull_Yourself_Together

Welcome to the white house

On Saturday I rolled up at a little white house balancing on a rocky finger which points into the Atlantic towards America. I had come to this walker's paradise at the kind invitation of Kylyra Ameringer, performance poet extraordinaire and very generous host. Ky is amazing. Her hair is a beautiful and vibrant mixture of blonde and red, she is a beautiful woman and her voice is velvety, deep and rich. She and her brother are from Canada, I believe, but have settled in the sheep-munched farming rocks of West Cork, where she brings poets from different parts of Ireland and the UK together once a year for a delightful event, Poets Express.

On Saturday night we performed in the Bay View pub in the centre of town. I was in the acoustic room, playing my uke and singing alongside other musicians and poets. It was a great atmosphere ... thoughtful, reflective poems were read alongside the bawdy and in-yer-face songs of Dublin band the Lonely Schizophrenic whose tales about panda porn and STDs were well received. Eric the Anchorite, a locally based American poet, played host, organising the room, videoing the performers and elegantly kept the evening in order. He is himself a compelling poet, with a very composed delivery.

Back at Ky's house next day, her brother Tor efficiently set up a recording system in the lounge for the group of writers to make a podcast, some of which might be partially broadcast on County Sound, West Cork radio. It was part discussion, part performance. Poets talked about poetry and read pieces, I sang a couple of songs from Doodlebug Alley.

It must have been a lot of work to organise this event in such a remote location - so it's hats off and thank yous to our friends from Kilcrohane.

Tom Robinson, Introducing, Radio 6

So my track Doodlebug Alley will be played on Tom Robinson's BBC Introducing show Fresh on the Net on Radio 6 this weekend.

I suspect the show goes out late enough for the producer to feel unperturbed by my singing 'arse' and the light swearing that helps create the song's swinging wartime chic.

Here's my preamble: 'It's the Second World War, 1944, and there's a new beast in the air. They call it the V1, the flying bomb, the doodlebug. It's a strange bird and it makes a strange sound; a long, low, farting sound. If you can hear it, you're in danger. If it stops, you're in the blast range.'

It will be available on a podcast afterwards.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0089jhs/episodes/upcoming

Rehearsal with Andy Gordon

Andy arrived promptly as usual and we settled down for a lovely rehearsal. It was such a beautiful evening that soon we took our beer into the garden and had a little chat about life, the universe and how we both love walking in the evening and at night.

We accidentally pulled off a lovely version of 'She Moved through the Fair' and followed it up with a rather mixed jam on the mixolydian mode. Both Andy and I get a bit fret-confused as we are more used to jamming on guitar than bouzouki and/or ukulele. Still we started to make some progress, and I found myself recalling some approaches from the days when I played African guitar with Folo Graaf from Sierra Leone. Funny how things can come back to you when you are not expecting them, and connections arise between different parts of your artistic life. It feels a little way to go yet, but perhaps we'll make some instrumental bouzouki and ukulele pieces to join the songs ...

Andy was particularly tickled to see that I had got a review for Doodlebug Alley in the County Times, Powys. Apparently he knows the guy who did the article - a chap called Barry. He even knows where he sits in his local pub, and is looking forward to having a chat with him about it. It was a nice review, so it shouldn't be the start of any alehouse fisticuffs.

We finished off with our version of Lord Randall. Our version seems to really be about the relationship between Lord Randall and his mother! Dialogue is such fun to sing, especially when you do both voices yourself. He's come out rather falsetto whereas his insistent mother is deeper and delivers her questions with a sinister gravitas.

These long summer evenings are blissful. Have to make the most of them.