Hello!

I hope this missive finds you well, and not too cold. I for one am getting really sick of not being able to feel my fingers. Anyway, enough whinging about the cold weather. I have some news!

My first release through 360 is out on the 28th March 2010. It’s a five track EP called ‘Help Yourself Float’, and if I do say so myself, it’s sounding mighty fine! You can pre-order the new CD now from the 360 store at http://paulliddell.360degreemusic.com/shop/categories.php . At £3 for 5 tracks it’s an absolute steal!

To celebrate the arrival of the new EP we’re having a pre-launch gig on Saturday 20th March. It’s at Sunderland Minster, a beautiful sandstone church complete with stained glass windows and perfect acoustics. Parts of the church are almost 1000 years old, and the place has a great feel about it. Hopefully it will be a great venue for a gig. As well as tracks from the new EP I’ll be playing some of my older stuff and some brand new songs too. Support on the night comes from 4Square, a Manchester based modern folk quartet. They have a great live show (including simultaneous clog dancing and violin playing!) and I’m sure you’ll love them! http://www.4squaremusic.co.uk/

You will also be pleased to hear that I have persuaded the minster to let me set up a bar, so there WILL be beer and wine available on the night! Tickets for the gig are £5 in advance or £7 on the door (subject to availability). Doors are at 7:30. To get hold of tickets you can call or text me on 07971 011 732 or email paul@paulliddell.com .

There are also a couple of Radio sessions booked in to co-incide with the release of the new EP. I’ll be on BBC Newcastle with Paddy McDee on the 24th March at 10:30pm, and BBC Tees with Bob Fischer on the 29th March. You can listen to the shows online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/tees/hi/ and http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/tyne/hi/tv_and_radio/ or tune in to BBC Tees at 95fm and BBC Newcastle at 96fm.

Also, my website www.paulliddell.com has been given a nice new makeover! Feel free to head over and have a look. Huge thanks to Paul at www.wsme.co.uk .

It would be lovely to see you at the launch gig on the 20th, hopefully see you soon!

Cheers!

Paul.

Hey. My blogging endeavours have been slack of late. But I’m not apologising for that, because I’ve been running around all over the place, doing gigs and travelling and blogging has been low down on my list! However, here I am, back from the dead for another meandering ramble through my life.

I went to Lithuania! The missus has friends there, so we went visiting. A national park littered with statues of Lenin, great beer so cheap you could afford to swim in it, architecturally perfect cobbled streets with your breath in the air and rain in your shoes. Perfect.

Gigs have been frickin’ ace too. I supported Curved Air (60s psych folk rock band), Ezio (singer/songwriter/brilliant) and Mark Morriss (from The Bluetones). Made a load of new friends, and sold absolutely loads of CDs. People were asking me to sign them, which I find totally weird. I was very good though, and I just wrote my name. No cartoon cocks, although the temptation was great.

I’ve also begun the process of re-homing my studio. I’m getting started on recording some more new tracks (which will hopefully be an album for the middle of next year). Time runs out on the current premises in December though, so I’m moving in advance so I don’t get interrupted halfway through recording. I’ve got mixed feelings about it. The new room will be better, both in terms of acoustics and layout. I’ve got some great memories of the old place though. It used to be a builders yard and a warehouse for antique fireplaces, so the layout is wacky. You can hear it in the recordings, and I always hated it, but now I think I’ll probably miss it. I remember sticking carpet to the ceiling with my Mam and Stepdad, and trying to plaster the walls and failing badly. The studio was called Scary Organ, named after a really fucking scary bellows organ that lived in the building. You have to pump the footpedals to make it work. I’ve rescued that though, it lives in my front room now. Onwards and upward though I suppose. At least I’ll have fun pissing the neighbours off with my massively loud out of tune bellows organ. I’ve put a candleabra on it, it looks all Phantom Of The Opera. Scary Organ Studio RIP.xx

Hey!

I mentioned in my last blog that I was going into the studio with some folks to re-record an Alan Hull song. The thought behind it is that it would be good to have something to sell at the yearly Heroes And Scarecrows gig, which is both an Alan Hull tribute gig and a charity event. Proceeds from sales would go to charity. So, I toddled along to The Cluny in Newcastle to do some vocals. The track is called ‘Walk A Crooked Mile’ and it’s taken from the album Statues And Liberties (which I think was a collection of souped up demos released after his death.) Great day in the studio, and the track is sounding ace. Good stuff.

I played quite a lot this week too. Magnesia Bank in North Shields first , straight after recording. Strangely enough the Maggie was one of Alan Hull’s haunts. I really enjoyed the gig, although I got it into my head that a beefy, hard looking chap hated me and was going to start pummeling me at the end. Turns out he liked it and bought a CD, shows what I know.

Next was High Barn in Essex. Fantastic venue, lovely people. I was supporting The Floe, who were great and lovely guys and girls to boot. Check ‘em out.

Next was a gig in a pub attached to a station in Newton Aycliffe. Nice quiet listening atmosphere, good Guinness, no raging paranoia about crowd members hating me. All good. The Black Horse the next night finished up pretty much the same, although it’s proximity to my home enabled me to get a taxi, and so it goes that I drank too much wine (lots too much) and had to consume vast amounts of grease based food to sort myself out the next day.

Which is how I arrived at The Gaslight Club in Leeds – bilious and bloated, but happy! Nice room , lots of tables lit with candles and some muso punters who looked so cool that I felt like an awkward schoolboy in shorts and white socks. Gig went fine though.

I’m doing some final mastering work on the EP soon, then that’s it. I’m working out with 360 when to put it out, but roughlu expect it near the start of next year. It’s sounding well swish, in a shuffly, epic, strummy kind of way.

Catch ya soon.

P.x

Hey! How are you? I’ve had a bit of a bizzare weekend. Highs and lows aplenty. Started with a band gig at The Smugglers in Sunderland. Amazing to play as always, I think it’s probably the best the band has played ever. The chaps seem to have gained a measure of newfound confidence after doing the ‘big stage’ gig recently. However, I was alerted to the fact that people think I wear the same waistcoat, t-shirt and jeans constantly, and that I’m some kind of one outfit wearing tramp. I do get changed people, it’s just gig uniform! I’ve got 5 identical sets!

The next day, me and Geoff (the lexicon of filth) headed off to play at a beer festival. Me Mam drove (awesome, thanks Ma!). The gig was great, about 300 drunken people crammed into a sunshine filled courtyard, necking huge quantities of the finest real ale around. Kudos must go to Mr. John Taylor, master brewer at Bull Lane and Beamish hall breweries, for putting on such a great event and brewing beer that can make you lose your marbles after 5 pints. And Joanne too.

Next come the low parts. We drove up to Blyth, set up the gear, and did battle with an absolutely hostile rabble for an hour and a half. We met a couple of nice folks, but on the whole it was appaling both in terms of the reception, and the people themselves. Hhmph. I guess it takes gigs like these to make me really appreciate how lucky I am not to have to do that kind of thing, and to be able to say “I’m booked solid until January, so I don’t need to beg to come back to this gig.” So there is a positive. I think that the main skill in doing what I do is being able to focus on the good stuff, and not lose your bottle after bad gigs like that. I’m hoping not to lose any sleep over it!

Got some interestiong studio stuff happening this week, I’m recording some vocals for an Alan Hull tribute. Alan Hull being the singer and principal songwriter in the band Lindisfarne. I’ll let you know how it goes, I’m really looking forward to it.

Ta!

Paul.

Hey! Turns out that when it comes to blogging, I’m a less than perfect candidate. If there was a catchy abbreviation for infrequent rambling then that would be more accurate, but since there isn’t I’ve decided to get me finger out and tell you about some stuff. I hope that’s OK!

I’ve been getting around a bit this past week or so. I started in Yorkshire in a litte market town called Pickering. Only problem was getting there. After the horrors of a trip to the eye infirmary, I set off for Pickering with heavily dilated pupils and blurred vision. Luckily I managed to make it without squishing any of the suicidal roadside bunnies thak kept jumping out at me. Crowd were mad and noisy, and the gig was great fun. Some vaguely familiar looking Yorkshire girls kept asking me to play ’sound of the underground’ ‘cos they had seen it on you tube. I obliged even though it made me feel dirty inside.

The night after was South Shields in a great Real Ale bar called The Dolly Peel. Maybe the original owner had a fetish for skinning mannequins. Who knows. Anyway, at this gig, they were trying to get me to play Led Zeppelin all night. Although I love Zep, it’s not gonna happen on an acoustic. The Rage Against The Machine/Springsteen cover seemed to go down well though. Managed to avoid drinking copious amounts of ale, and got in the car 100% sober.

Amount of times that I’ve been told ‘You should go on X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent’ this week: 4

Catch you soon.

Paul.

Well, I’ve been trapped in the studio for what feels like years, and I think I’ve got the new EP finished. It’s sounding rather good, and I think it’s considerably better that anything I’ve done before (fingers crossed). I’m hoping this isn’t just the honeymoon period! We’ll see what happens next, but I’m looking forward to unleashing it upon the world! I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve had some good gigs over the summer, support slots for Billy Bragg and various festival spots being the highlights. Just fould out that I’m going to be playing the main stage at Freedom Festival in Hull this week too. Florence and the Machine are headlining. Sounds quite posh!

Ta!

Paul.

www.paulliddell.com

Hello! For my first posting here, I thought I’d vent some feelings about LABELS. Not labels as in money grabbing corporate whore type multinationals, but labels as in the little boxes that people put music into. Rock. Grime. Electro. Folk.

I’m a solo performer most of the time, I stand by myself on stage with an acoustic guitar and a microphone, and sing songs about all sorts of things, so you could say I was singer/songwriter or folk. I also have a huge boxful of pedals and electronic gadgets and samples playing up there too. Does that make it not folk, or singer/songwriter? To the purists it most certainly does! I use a sampler live onstage, creating big piles of guitars and harmonies and beats. Samplers are more common to hip hop or dance than folk or songwriter, so am I that? Definitely not!

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that music shouldn’t be about genres, it should be about songs. I’m a songwriter, and I don’t write in any specific genre as such, I just try and express a feeling or story through the medium of song. It’s dead easy really! I think that good songs transcend genre (take for example The Futureheads brilliant punk rock version of ‘Hounds Of Love’ originally by Kate Bush, or on a more esoteric level, my own high speed acoustic punk version of ‘Sound Of The Underground’) .

I reckon that genres are just a sales mechanism allowing people to attach fashion and other extraneous shite to what is essentially a form of pure art – songwriting. Hence our music industry of today, which (in my humble opinion) is vein, vacuous and without much real content!

So, in the words of Howard Moon “you try and put me in a box, I’ll eat the box, and wash it down with a cup of hot steaming rules.” Acoustic? Folk? Rock? All irrelevant. I feel a song coming on.

P.x