Tom(p) Banana

Hello avid readers. Guest blogger Robin Beatty posting here, which is a great honour, and my debut in the blogosphere.

Well, for me the day started out with an early morning run up onto the hill above the cottage here – the beautifully named Bryn Titli. The rarely trodden path up through the bilberry leads out onto a heath where, hidden up on this exposed spot of Wales, twelve great wind generators churning their giant fins, and I enjoyed lying at the foot of one feeling it’s mighty weight right overhead. With a windy new minor 7/8 tune in my head, I followed a little stream back to my breakfast coffee, and got to the manuscript.

Bryn Titli

We spent the morning in the rehearsal room discovering all the little corners and made some good progress, and I enjoyed trying some new textures and tunings for the desired effect. Always really exciting as everyone’s new ideas and bits of material get fused.

Tom had written a very difficult (albeit uplifting) C section and pretty spaced in the brain, we made an expedition for a swim in the river down the hill. It’s a charming spot up on the early reaches of the Wye, where, winding down the continuation of the stream off the moor, crazed with speedwell and lady’s smock, we reach a brilliant Indiana Jones rope bridge spanning a twirling plunge pool, perfect! Strip off and in, and a slow countdown from five for Helen’s audacious leap to avoid slippery rocks.

A few hours more tinkering with scattered string parts for a new song and we’re ready for dinner, which I am told is what you’re all really here to read about…

Tom Chapman, Master Innuendist.

Tom was our chef for the night and darted around the kitchen for two hours chopping, basting, sizzling and rhythmically bashing cream crackers with a wooden mallet. Welsh Lamb meatballs, served in a pitta with lettuce. Dead tasty. For desert, there appeared on our plates a far out anatomical duo of roasted banana nuzzling alongside a Vimto flavoured iced lolly on a stick. The phallus is eaten with a spoon, and the baculum in the hand resulting in a delightful experience – foul in taste and texture, exquisite in originality and entertainment. Much like Tom’s percussion work in fact. R x

It now falls upon me, Laura Carter, as the vegetarian of the group, to discuss the veggie option. When Tom (whose ridiculous idea this ‘come dine with me ‘  week had been) first mentioned meatballs, I was sceptical. I’ve been a veggie for 20 years – I’ve seen my mum attempt them with Quorn and fail. However, off Tom went, sweating away in the kitchen for a good two hours longer than Samantha or I had, battling with eggs and flour whilst Helen whizzed around him trying to make a video diary! And the end result; well good reader, mush is what best describes it… tasty, but mush all the same. Whilst the other members of the band squashed a juicy looking ball into a pitta and garnished it with salad I did wonder if now was the time to eat Lamb but stopped when I remembered how nice it had been to lie watching them gambolling around the field earlier today. What followed was , as Helen described it, “an hysterical dessert’, the banana and Vimto lolly lying side by side clearly made this into a winning meal, how could one not enjoy such a phallic dish!

Samantha’s got talent

Today we worked particularly hard.

No, we really did. Honest. The swing escapade was just one of our allotted “funny five minutes” and we only ever have two of those in a working day. Ever.

But seriously, we must’ve been through at least four key signatures today – there’s only twelve in the world and I’m a drummer.

Anyway, tonight’s meal, as you’ll no doubt know from last night’s post, avid reader, was provided by Samantha.

During the first of today’s two alloted “funny five minutes”, I had read a tweet about a circular email that, if genuine, had come from a Sony UK whistle blower, suggesting that Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor were fixed. Serious professional musicians like us find it hard to give any credit to such wild fantasy – you don’t need me to tell you that these talent shows are the very backbone of British culture – but none the less, in the wake of these accusations, tonight’s competition had an added air of seriousness. I can assure you that this competition is regulated with stringency worthy of an MP’s accountant.

First course was Tagliatelle with mushrooms in a white wine and soya cream sauce.

This was excellent. The pasta was fresh and cooked to perfection, the sauce had a surprising but pleasing sweetness. Actually, it shouldn’t have been surprising as I was designated by Samantha to buy the “cheap white plonk” necessary for the sauce… although if I’d known at the time she was going to actually cook with it I might have upped my budget. An interesting dish for me, as I was sincerely grateful for the non-dairy sauce – a real treat – but I’m not the world’s biggest mushroom fan. Although I have it on good authority that I am a fun guy.

I’m really sorry. That one’s for my dad. Dad, reassure me that SOMEBODY out there is reading this twaddle.

The main course was also accompanied by garlic bread. I couldn’t eat this without first getting a volunteer to remove the tainted, butter-based green stuff but I know how irritating my intolerances (dairy and otherwise) are to just about everyone so I did this discreetly. And then blogged about it.

I couldn’t eat this fantastic looking cake but I enjoyed watching everybody else eat it. (pfff) Luckily there were plenty of soft fruits and some more soya cream, so I didn’t go hungry. Although a cake premade at home with fresh fruit was quite low effort, it was enjoyed by all. It definitely made up for last night’s jelly fiasco and I think everyone was still bowled over by the incredible main knocked up by The Old Dance School member least likely to proclaim them self culinarily proficient. (Did you see how I put that link in to remind you that we are actually a band.)

I think Samantha will have scored well. It’s my turn tomorrow and I’m getting quite worried. I’d best go to bed now, as I have to fit in a trip to the butcher’s before we get stuck into more work at early o’clock. That’s right folks, I’ll leave you on the bombshell that I’m going to be the first to include meat…

Oh for the green hills

This week The Old Dance School have battened down the hatches of a converted cow shed, nestled in the Welsh hills, for something of a rehearsal retreat. After a lot of head scratching and pencil nibbling, we eventually found enough smudgy white space in our diaries to block out a week during which most of the band could spend most of their time in mostly the same place. Mostly. So here we are, enjoying the luxury of plenty of time and space to work away at new tunes without another (human) soul in earshot.

The only logistical problem we could foresee in the run up was the fact that the cottage is self catering, and feeding the seven of us, with our various dietary requirements and range of appetites (naming no names) can be more of a feat than you might think. Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, it occurred to us – seven people, seven nights… Old Dance School Come Dine With Me.

After a highly productive first day looking at new music, Laura was first up to cook.

There’s just one rule: cook for everyone. Given that I’m lactose intolerant and Laura’s veggie, you can cook a wholly vegan meal (although goat or sheep milk products are fine) or provide “options”. The bare minimum is a main course but elaboration is welcome. Laura set the bar high, with a straight forward but delicious meal of stuffed aubergine with cous cous. It went down an absolute storm.

Topped with goats’ cheese and including the obligatory salad garnish, this certainly had me worried about my planned meal not being up to scratch. Laura followed up with what, on paper, looked set to be legendary. Lime jelly with marshmallows. It’s simple and classic – it brings about a sense of nostalgia as well as admiration for having gone to the effort of even bothering to make something for pud. Unfortunately, her decision to speed up the setting of said jelly by putting it in the freezer turned out to be a disastrous one and we were left slurping at green water with icey bits, desperately trying to mop it up with the flumps.

On the whole, a valiant effort from Laura though, and I think it’s fair to say a highly successful one. Although the pudding wasn’t quite as expected it was entertaining none the less. Laura’s eleventh hour attempt to win things back by bribing Samantha with Dairy Milk (cunning) may well prove to have won her some extra points in one corner, but we’ll have to wait a week, as I am hiding all the votes, unopened, in what I have to say is an ingenius secret location until then.

Tomorrow, after another gruelling day of tune-tweaking, it’s Samantha’s turn and I reckon her soya cream based sauce will definitely be getting some points form me.

Suf Folk

Just a quick post today to try out blogging from my phone. Here’s a shot of some fine young folkies in Godmanchester, where we stopped for lunch on our way to Suffolk for tonight’s gig. The other gripping news is that my new one-handed triangle has arrived and it’s so good I think I might have to buy one for the other hand too.

(A nice contribution from Adam at the end of the video there…and then he did this….)

Dreams, ‘zines and behind the scenes

It’s quiet on the gig front for a week or two so I’ve thrown myself into all manner of work behind the scenes. Firstly, I’m busy beavering away at the artwork for  ”The Urban Folk Quartet : Live”, a limited edition live album which we’ll be releasing alongside the first leg of our “world tour” this summer. I don’t want to show you just yet, but it involved the editing together of a few hundred tiny live shots into a collage, so I don’t think my eyes have ever been squarer. I’m really excited about the release though – more on that in due course. The Old Dance School are making rapid progress on the third album. I can’t wait to play some of the new stuff out live – I’ve even penned some material that’s made it past the other six-good-men-and-true, and my Canadian brandy (a 3/4 reel) inspired tune will make it’s debut next Wednesday at The Cross in Moseley, when in honour of a longstanding tradition, we perform alongside the crazy 50-piece circus of fun that is The Conservatoire Folk Ensemble.

But the big news is that I’m delighted to have become an official endorser of Dream Cymbals. I’ve got a beautiful set from their “Bliss” range that really sound great together. The idea behind Dream is that you take Canadian designers of Turkish style cymbals (a longstanding winning formula, as any cymbal geek will know) and marry that to the ancient knowledge and craftsmanship of Chinese gongsmiths. The results are stunning, hand made cymbals with real character that are affordable too. To me they are the nearest modern cymbals can come to classic jazz cymbals and I’m loving playing them. More here.

In other news, I’m going to be recording some tuition videos for the lovely folks over at http://idrummag.com, the world’s first fully interactive drum magazine. I’ll be covering the cajon and cajon-setup playing. Check out the first issue, online now and I’ll keep you posted as to when my vids go live.

My new blog

Hello! I’ve finally bitten the bullet and taken my first tentative steps into the blogosphere. After toying with the idea for a while I’ve decided that the village halls of rural England, aging estate cars converted for camping and my over excited reactions to new types of musical carpentry have gone unrecorded too long. Henceforth, I’ll be giving my facebook friends’ newfeeds a bit of a rest and directing my babble through wordpress.

I do a few gigs too.

I’ve just synced all the photos from my iPhone and there were 3,000. I realised that I’d barely looked at most of them. I’ve also realised that I don’t make enough effort to keep a record of what I’ve been up to – I’ve not kept a diary or scrapbook for years. So I’m going to endeavour to capture things more succinctly and post them as soon as I can. I’m hoping it might even improve my photography.

I’m also about to embark on a bit of an adventure. I’m set to be on the road for the longest time in my life so far, with just a handful of days at home in a two month block that will see me visiting five countries (and two principalities if you include Wales and The Isle Of Mann) playing a host of festivals of all shapes and sizes, recording a couple of albums and crossing the Atlantic for the first time in my life. That all kicks off in July, after a nice run of UK festivals so for now, I’ll leave you with a couple of videos.