I bought a DVD on amazon about how to play Irish traditional guitar and it arrived last night; I was very excited I can tell you. To want to learn how to finger-pick my way through ‘The Waves Of Tory’ at this time of life, is odd I suppose - no odder than making a funk album in Wood Green with those three comp-avericks (that’s an old one - haven’t used that in a while).

 

Perhaps I am delirious, it’s true that my head is swimming with new ideas whilst this current record drives me slightly insane. This always happens when I mix an album, my brain says ‘fuck off I’m not listening to this track again - think about something else - learn how to play folk guitar’. It’s like an in-built dimmer switch. The neural equivalent of lighting some candles and pouring a crisp glass of vino veritas.

 

The only problem with this is that there is another part of my brain that says ‘THAT’S A GOOD IDEA - YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO THAT...’ - this has been my particular brand of problem for many years. I find it incredibly hard to say no to things and therefore the list of projects that I sign myself up for grows ever longer and the cumulative time it would take to complete them extends well beyond the years I’m like to have on this planet we like to call Earth.

 

The others in the band are either intensely practical minds (esp. when it comes to budgets) or complete optimists, like Cahir ‘it will be rammed/it will sell out/it will be fine’. These ‘powers’ combined is probably the reason we’re still making records and aren’t (quite)bankrupt yet.

 

I suppose the thing I am most proud of about Jetplane Landing is the fact that we’re still here - hanging in there, learning to finger-pick, painting and decorating, writing songs, dreaming schemes, scheming dreams.

 

On a practical note, the album now is half mixed, I can see the end in sight, so I’ve set a potentially stressful release date of June 4th. July 4th perhaps would have been more appropriate, but that’s on a Wednesday this year - are there any other words in the English Language that have a ‘d’ and ‘n’ next to each other? Hmmm....

 

I’m tired, back to work bitches

-kisses-and-hugs-to-you-all-betty-davis-style