Follow for free on my Patreon.
I post updates and new music every few days.
Making 'Second March'
The physical edition of my next release is finished and the first batch were sent out today. ‘Second March’ is available as hand stamped CD-r with a typed, personalised sleeve. €15 including postage anywhere through my Patreon and Bandcamp sites.
Full track list and details are here and also in the blog post below this one. It was a nice little recording to make and I hope people enjoy it.
'Lover O Lover' from last month out in the forest
The next in the subscription series of monthly releases is ‘Second March’ and will be available at the end of the month through my Patreon and Bandcamp sites. I recorded a bunch of music, including two new songs, outside in the forest at the same spot where I had previously made ‘March Wood’.
Digital and physical, where the physical edition follows the previous ones - a hand stamped CD-r, typed personalised cover and only available for the month of April.
Also as a reminder - you just have until the end of March if you’d like to receive a copy of the double disc edition of ‘The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings’. Available at the €15 option through the Patreon or Bandcamp subscriptions.
More details and images in a week.
Reminder - the double disc 'The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings' is only available this month
Just to remind anyone interested in this that each physical edition of the monthly subscription releases is only available for the month I make it, so this 2 X CD version won’t be available in two weeks. The digital version will always be available to anyone signing up but as I make something new each month there will be something else in April.
'The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings' is 30 songs recorded between 2007 and 2013, including four tracks not broadcast and previously unavailable. It’s out as a digital download or the 2 X CD version - with a unique personalised cover and sent to you where ever you are. Sign up for my Patreon or Bandcamp subscriptions and it’s available there.
Each month I put together something like this (or usually make something completely new) as well as post single tracks, images and other things there. Massive thanks to everyone who subscribes - it means the world and keeps the enthusiasm levels for making new things nice and high.
Hannover, last September
Finally got to see some of the photographs made at this little show in September last year. Strange then and now to have so many people inside together and I able to play songs to them.
202102 Music Playlist
Thought I might start with posting some of what I’ve been listening to each month.
This mostly from a few car trips through the south of Germany the last couple of weeks and certainly lots missing and no full albums, which is what I usually listen to. Random then.
'The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings' out 01.03.21
Thirty tracks recorded over three sessions between 2007 and 2013, including 4 previously unreleased, ‘The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings’ is out 01.03.21 through my Patreon or Bandcamp subscriptions.
€10 - digital edition
€15 - digital + 2 x CD-r edition hand typed by me and sent to you wherever you are
All subscriptions enable downloads of all 11 previous monthly releases and a bunch of single tracks, image sets and posts I make between them.
These were always nice things to work on and I am grateful for having had the chance to know Dillon and his Simple Folk Radio show back in Brighton. The show is currently on hiatus but there are plenty of wonderful sessions archived and available to listen to over on the website.
This set collects everything I recorded for them and runs like this:
2007
The Weeping Well (with The Diamond Family Archive)
The Good Lord (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Paper Birds (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Not Yet Gone (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Blackwater (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Tender And True
2010
Annabel
You Are Better Than This
St Mary
Song For Fee
Song For A Coalman
Tom
Winter
The Royal Canal
If You Can Hold It You Can Throw It
Portugal
Bad Things Happen
2013
The Royal Canal
You Are Better Than This
Deserter
Barbara Allen
Rearranging
When I Was Away
Make A Dead One Of It
Paper Birds
Dear Leise
A Fair Mile (previously unreleased)
Deserter (previously unreleased)
The Burning Of Two (previously unreleased)
Good And Gone (previously unreleased
'Schloss' EP this weekend
As well as making a monthly full release each month, I’ve been going through recordings and images and posting a few times a week to my Patreon.
This weekend I’m making a simple EP ‘Schloss’ also available to download there. Four songs recorded live in front of a tiny audience in various rooms of the Schloss Hünegg in Thun, Switzerland on the 7th of September 2019.
Subscription to Patreon starts at just €3 a month and everyone will be able to download this as well as lots of other things I’m finding and making these days.
I also have a subscription over on my Bandcamp and anything posted to Patreon goes there too. Massive thanks to everyone already into all this, means the world these days.
Relics (I)
Lyrics for ‘We Could Have, We Should Have, We Didn’t’ carried about in my guitar case at every concert in case I forget the words whilst playing.
First in a series, more on my Patreon.
'Gostenhof' now available
The 11th in my series of monthly releases since the start of the lockdown is available now through my Patreon and Bandcamp subscriptions.
'Gostenhof' is a recording of an 8 song set played at the Gostner Hoftheater last February and is out now as a digital download and handmade CD edition to my Patreon and Bandcamp subscribers.
The track list for 'Gostenhof' runs like this:
It Don’t Stop The Bleeding
The Royal Canal
I Was In The North Before The Fall
Pure Black Coal
Lover O Lover
Winter (song by The Diamond Family Archive)
SUPER GOOD ADVICE
So Long Song
Here’s the first song of the night over on the Youtube:
‘Gostenhof’ is also available through my Bandcamp subscription, of course. Find details about that here:
New music through my Patreon and Bandcamp now
Just a short video with a couple of songs I released through my Patreon and Bandcamp subscriptions this month. The Patreon is new for me and allows me to upload single tracks very easily, as well as supporting Paypal payments for as little as €3 a month.
Please consider signing up and a massive thank you to everyone who’s already done so. You’re brilliant.
'If I Have To Walk All The Way To England' live in Karlsruhe
The one and only performance of this song is up on my Patreon page now, seemed somehow fitting for these days. Find it with other special recordings and releases here.
Photo by Gudrun from the year before.
Random cover version - 'Blind Willie McTell'
I am trying to organise a bunch of old hard drives and folders of music and I found this Bob Dylan song, played spontaneously for Markus at a concert he organised in Düsseldorf at Butze back in 2017. I mean, it’s not very good but I stopped at it this afternoon so here it is.
Perhaps the rest of the concert could go up later, remember it being a fun night.
Anyway, reality check:
Since I heard this song years ago it’s been on my mind and in my orbit somehow - I’m always interested in hearing different versions and interpretations and could speak about it for hours with anyone that’s daft enough to appear interested. For one of my favourites here’s an almighty roar through it in Brixton some years ago. I was lucky to be at the incredible Shepherds Bush Empire and Hammersmith concerts the previous nights, but sadly missed this one.
And Freddy Koella on the electric guitar my word, what imagination and arrogance for the thing. Great.
Nürnberg Recording expanded
A set of songs I recorded back in 2011 are available in an expanded set over on my Patreon and Bandcamp pages for everyone subscribing there.
I’ve found a few extra songs and made a new mix and now it runs like this:
Make A Dead One Of It
Cargo
I Know What I Make Isn’t Fine
The Burning Of Two
Suit Of Stones
You Have Painted A Cross On My Ceiling
Blood (early version)
Some Somehow Get Home
The Good Doesn’t Get Any Better
Patreon starts at €3 a month and it’s a direct way of supporting me and getting to hear the new music I make and am finding again.
20 concerts from 2020
I played just twenty concerts last year and here’s the pages from my diary for the last two. I scanned the rest and made a series of all of them that are over on my Patreon here now.
I’d like to think everyone that’s into my stuff considers supporting me directly over on Patreon but more than that I do hope I get to play more concerts soon, my word.
It's my birthday and I now have a Patreon
I now have a Patreon page and I urge you to come and support me. From here on in I’ll be making and posting more music and images there and I hope that a small number of you will want to be involved with it.
I have a large catalogue of work that I’ll make available to everyone subscribing and every month I’ll make something new. This last year I have made 10 releases and also a couple of full albums, with many occasional bits and pieces along the way. I make digital and physical releases and send them to anyone signed up. It goes on, with somewhere to put it.
There are a number of options for subscribing and it’s still new so I’m completely open to suggestions and what anyone thinks is fair for the work that I make. Please let me know if you have any reason why you wouldn’t, or you would but something isn’t right.
It’s not for everyone, I get that - but there has to be a better way than all of us throwing all our time, energy and work into the void of social media. Perhaps this is just the same, I’m willing to suck it and see.
More soon then, thanks everyone and I wish you a happy and healthy start to the new year.
Stephen
ps: for everyone signed up for my Bandcamp subscription - I thank you and salute you and promise you that you won’t miss anything. Whatever I make for Patreon I’ll post to you too, and vice versa.
pps: it really is my birthday
The Man Who Loved Beer (Lambchop cover)
From my new 11 song release ‘framus’ available through my new Patreon and Bandcamp subscription pages now. More words about that in a couple of days, for now my Patreon page is here and there’s this cosy clip.
Two early versions of songs from the last album now available
Two early version of songs, acoustic and with different lyrics, are now available to everyone subscribing to my Patreon or Bandcamp.
Each month I make a new release for people subscribed there but this is just a little something in between.
The next proper release in the series of exclusives is an 11 song set I just recorded on a very cheap, but very pretty, 1950’s parlour guitar. That’s out on the 1st, my birthday.
Stay well and eat loads. Got to keep the strength up.
Stephen
