Hi Bloggers!

Just a quick one to let you in on the ground floor, as it were......

Our record company, Lazy Bear Records, has launched a great range ot T-shirts, preview only at present, but to be available soon on their website, www.lazybearrecords.com . However, pre-release edition shirts are the prizes of a simple competition - all you have to do is tell the Bear what guitar the cartoon bear on the logo is playing. The answer is to be found on both the Lazy Bear site, and indeed here at the Saints' place. The more accurate your answer, the more likely you are to win a shirt.

Go to www.lazybearrecords.com and visit the T-shirts page - email your answer to shirtcomp@lazybearrecords.com , and win a shirt!

Free T-shirts from Lazy Bear Records!

The entire Deptford Saints' pre-history album, Yella Cross The Dog, is now available for free download, at CD quality - just go to the "Free Album Download" page (tricky one, that eh?) and click away. It's bloody good and completely free! Check it out and click away.

Don't say we never give ya nothin', right?

Don't forget to visit www.lazybearrecords.com either, while we're on the subject.....   Cheers

Kelvin is continuing his battle with the mundane realities of this existance by promoting a series of mini-festivals this Summer in the beer garden of the Hobgoblin pub, New Cross Gate. These events commence at about 4:00 pm every Saturday afternoon, until about 9:00 - these are the best free music gigs available in London, make no mistake. Real solid quality, such as the Redgrass Collective, Hand Hat and the Los Dawsons playing regularly, and also solo gigs form time to time from the jook.

Come along and support this excellent series of gigs - you'll never regret it. Dance to Hand Hat, drink beer to Redgrass, get frightened by the jook's death blues, ogle the Goldsmiths' students........ It's a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Free live music - how bad can that be?

Lazy Bear Records, as one of their first signings have beaten off the competition, and signed the Deptford Saints' first album, Deptford Burning, as a world exclusive.

This is a brand new venture - a fair trade musicians' co-operative - and the site www.lazybearrecords.com  is still under construction, but check it out because there is already a lot of good stuff there and more to come.

We'll keep you in touch.

woo says the Bear

My old friends in the blues, Bullfrog Brown, of Tartu, Estonia, are back in London early next month for a short series of gigs. All details on www.bluesinlondon.com - the Saturday 5th April gig at the British Oak, Old Dover Rd, London SE3, is the one to go for if you live round our way, as the others are in North and West London. Promises to be a great evening, so come early!

Had meetings in the Old Mill pub and by phone over the Easter Hols, and we've pushed the recording project along quite a bit, with Wicksie and I commited to finishing the demo versions as soon as possible now, and doing the full band rehearsals/recordings in Deptford (of course) in the Summer, at a studio currently being used by our friends Hand Hat and soon, the Redgrass Collective. We have the Popes firmly on board as the ideal rhythm section - just what I always wanted!

Way-hey!

Listen peeps, there's these two teenagers from Flanders (Belgium) - they're myspace friends of the Deptford Saints, and you've just got to check 'em out. Really. They're great, and it's incredible how authentic they sound without being po-faced and overly purist, considering that they're like 17. The quality of the slide guitar playing is outstanding, and the singing is remarkable. I have very rarely heard anyone who a) is so young, and b) doesn't have English as their native tongue sing the blues so well. Jane was astonished when she heard the songs and I told her that the singer was 17 and came from Belgium.

Belgium - what a country. Great beers, wonderful food and now delta blues prodigies! You gotta love it.

Don't bother the little one - he's not worth your trouble.

Laters

Oran Tait, singer and mandoline player with the Redgrass Collective, and erstwhile brewer with Meantime, is returning next week from an extended holiday in South East Asia. He confesses to having broken his foot in a drunken accident, losing Mikey, his travelling companion, having tattoos done, kissing a bloke and dancing on the beach to Abba. What a man!

There will be a reunion gig, which Martin is organising, featuring the Collective, plus yours truly, the Jook, and hopefully, Hand Hat, whose new song on myspace is called Whiskey - do yourself a favour and check it out. It, and they, are great. My new gig guitar, the brass Duolian, is now ready to go, having had some neccessary work done, and I'm rehearsing a couple of songs with Martin - a chance to hear the Jook singing Country music! I'll let you know the date when it's arranged.

Cheers for now, and wrap up, it'e cold out there.

Love

Rod

Hi everybody

Just an end of year blog, also to say Merry Christmas to you all, whatever it is you believe in, whatever it is you do, or don't do. Have fun.

It's been a strange year, what with the whole constructive dismissal scenario, but that worked out OK, with my erstwhile employers settling out of court. Then came a rather idyllic period in the summer, building this website, working on Craig's boat, and recording with Wicksie. Then, of course my crash course in brewing, which is ongoing. Overall, things could have worked out much worse.

It's true that we haven't progressed the Deptford Saints' recording project as far as we had planned to by this stage, but both Wicksie and I have had somewhat unforeseen, life-changing years in 2007. I'm confident that the Saints will be back on course in 2008 and that the wait will have been worth it. Besides, how can you budget for a complete change of career on the one hand, and a baby on the other?

2007 was a mixed year, but then, aren't all years when you think about it? One bad thing - death of Michael Jackon, the original Beer Hunter and genuine nice man (I met him a couple of times). One good thing - making contact again after two and a half years with my friend Bryony.

The Brewery's closed until the 2nd of January, and Craig and I are going to be building some fitted wardrobes in my bedroom, which are sorely needed, I can tell you. Jane and I are having a quiet Christmas in Greenwich. It's freezing cold, which is good actually because a lot of stuff that needs to kept cold (wine, beer etc) can be nicely chilling on the balcony. We wouldn't have enough fridge space otherwise. The tree is up, and the festive meats purchased - last year's project was watching the whole of Lord Of The Rings over two days. Don't know what we're going to do this years. Oh yeah - building wardrobes.......

I have my traditional festive cold, without which Christmas wouldn't be Christmas. Glass of hot Gluwein might help, you never know, and couldn't possibly do any harm, could it?

Have a lovely time peeps, and a great New Year when it comes - let's all concentrate hard and collectively through the Jedi power of our concerted efforts make 2008 our best year ever. Worth trying.

See you all in 2008

These are not the droids you're looking for

Rod

In my last blog entry, I mistakenly referred to San Diego as Coyote Slim's hometown. He has pointed out that in fact he comes from San Jose. Whoops, sorry - that'a probably like accusing someone from Bournemouth of coming from Southampton, ie a no no, but he was very nice about it, and I'm pleased to set the record straight, of course.

I've just been for a walk round Greenwich, done a bit of food shopping, like you do, and what a glorious day. The low wintery sun has burned off the early mist, and it's a freezing day with clear blue sky and wonderful winter diffused sunlight. The historical buildings and the park look fantastic, slightly blurred with the faint sun and the remnants of the mist hanging around, as if they'd been painted by one of the great Impressionists, and the sunlight sparkling on the heavy frost. I think of these days like diamonds - clear, hard, cold and precious. There was an old Chinese guy down by the river with a wooden sword, practising some ancient Chinese martial art, and behind him through the filtered sunlight, the great towers of the city of London, Mammon deep in the heart of Babylon.

I love this weather, but it's cold in the brewery early in the morning. Yesterday at six in the  morning the frost on the kegs in the yard was an inch thick, like snow. The Brewmaster came through and remarked that the cold weather is good in a brewery, as it kills all the bugs that could infect the beer. Problem is, it nearly kills the brewers too!

Soon be Christmas

Love Rod

Myspace or Facebook, peeps?

Me, Wicksie, Martin and Red all joined up for Facebook a couple of weekends ago and spend stupid amounts of time dedicating songs to each other like a bunch of teenagers, not realising that the program automatically sends invites to your whole address book, with the result that some of us heard from people we hadn't communicated with in a long time (for whatever reason :-}), and that Martin's page etc got sent to his managers at work, drug references and all!!! It is sort of fun loading up all these apps at first, but we're all bored of it now. Also, if you send or dedicate a song to a friend, iLike asks them if they want to buy it, so much of this stuff is a form of viral marketing and free advertising - it's deeply commercial at heart, and wants to sell you various products. Soon, you'll be able to "identify with your favourite brands" - what?!

Certainly, Myspace is better for bands - we (Wicksie, Martin, Red and I) agree that we have all met interesting people and heard good music through Myspace that we never would have otherwise. The other night I was listening to a guy in Tunis playing the Arabian Oud, and thinking how unlike many peoples' image of Islam this beautiful music was, and yesterday I was swapping notes on open guitar tunings in D with Coyote Slim, my blues picking friend from San Diego. Both Martin and I regularly get friend requests from all over the world, from people who have heard and like our respective songs. Which is great, actually, when someone from France or Sweden takes the trouble to contact you and say "Your stuff's really good - check us out too, please." Invariably, if they like your music, you'll like theirs and so it goes round. And although it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a man of whom I'm naturally very wary of, Myspace is still only very lightly commercial - a few targetted ads - light years away from Facebook IMHO.

There we are - rant over. But what do you think, peeps - perhaps you rather like sending virtual gifts to your illicit Facebook friends, as a frisson of virtual naughtiness........?

Anyway - just finished another week in the brewery, Friday night is setting in, it's cold, dark and raining in London town. We got Hungarian-style stuffed red peppers with paprika sauce, dark beer, red wine, Jacques Brel, the heating's on. No work for two days..................

Laters

The Jook

A very good day to you all

Those of you who follow this blog will know all about Kelvin and his accident/injuries, the Kelvstock benefit gig etc. Just to let you know that he is much recovered now and is running a regular Sunday night gig at the Deptford Arms, Deptford High St, which  features excellent acts such as Hand Hat, the Redgrass Colective, and solo performances of the primitive Delta blues on various resophonic guitars by none other than yours truly. He breaks it up with singer songwriters, stand up and various things, and it's great to see him back in the swing. He calls it Kelvstock, by the way, and if you live in the vicinity it's well worth supporting. Entry free - hat passed round for the artists.

I'm unexpectedly at home today, as the mash pump (don't ask) has broken at the brewery, so we can't brew any beer today. I expect I'll have to go in on Saturday and do a brew to make up. Oh well. I picked my anodised brass finish Duolian from the music shop where it was being re-fretted and fitted with new machine heads ( to replace the not terribly good Dolly Parton-esque ones fitted by the manufacturer), and it's great, so I've been playing that this morning, which is nice.

Otherwise not much to report at the present.

Cheers for now

Congrats to the Wickses!

They have been delivered of a beautiful baby girl, Ruby, and mother and child are both doing absolutely fine. Brilliant! We're going to wet the baby's head soon in the Old Mill.

What a rock and roll name Ruby is, too. Top one. Really pleased. Takes me back to the Blackheath Sessions for the Yella Cross The Dog album, where Trev and I would be practicing and recording with Rosie asleep in her cot in the corner of the room. She's a teenager now - blimey!

Otherwise, I have to report success on the constructive dismissal case front - my former employers have settled out of court. Yes, yes yes! Apart from the money they've had to provide me with an agreed reference which is actually rather good. So that's all worked out then.

Speak soon

So it's farewell Oran Tait, brewer and Redgrass Collective mandoline player/singer, at least for a while, as he's off to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Gary Glitter Land etc, travelling for a few months. He will be sorely missed by friends and colleagues, both within Redgrass, and particularly at Meantime Brewery, where the lunatics (me!) are now in charge of the asylum.........    Have a great time and come home safely, in due course.

Spare a thought for Wicksie, whose first baby is due in the very near future - best wishes and luck to both mother and baby, and of course the proud father. Recording activities and visits to the Old Mill will be resumed as soon as reasonably feasible (ie pretty soon, I'd guess)

It is a perfect hazy sunny Autumn day here in Greenwich today, and besides, I'm on the late shift at the Brewery tonight, so I'll be saying auf Wiedersehen for now.

Keep it real and remember to recycle

JJJ

Hi guys

it's been a long time been a long time been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely time.........

No blogs in a while because I've been working so hard trying to learn how to be a brewer - there's a lot to learn, believe me - and I get home (often after starting work at 6:00 am) a bit wacked, to be truthful. It's all good though - blokes, especially, are a bit open-mouthed when you tell them that you brew beer for a living. "Cool job" is the normal response. Followed by "Do you drink the beer at work, then?" That's strictly forbidden, of course.. :-}} It's hard work, though - part manual labour, part operating a very complex system of machinery, part microbiology

 Also, there's the developments/ongoing regarding my constructive dismissal case, which I have to keep on top of. Oh, and I had two weeks in the beer capital of the planet, Bamberg in Franken, Germany. Which was great - thanks for asking.

Kelvin is now promoting a Sunday night gig at the Deptford Arms, Deptford High St, and I'm doing the first one tomorrow as a solo act, supporting Redgrass and Hand Hat. Come along/wish me luck, as appropriate........

Things are going to be hectic in the brewery for a couple of weeks, as annual leave means manpower shortages, but I'll be back like Arnie. Saints recording sessions will hopefully be re-commencing as soon as possible.

Keep in touch, keep the faith, keep well, keep busy, keep on keeping on

Love     laters      respect

Started my new job at the Meantime Brewing Company this week - what a learning curve! Great fun, but a huge amount of information too pour into my leaky cranium! Luckily, my mentor, Mikey, a graduate of brewing school in Munich, and the Schoenram Brewery in Southern Bavaria, is a very patient man - he needs to be! It's great to learn from him - he's a serious, dedicated brewer, with a real German devotion to beer and perfection.

The other news is that The Nasty Letter has now been followed up, and the papers regarding my claim against my former employers have gone to the industrial tribunal, so we'll see what happens next. Perhaps my former boss will at last have the gumption to consult some professional advice, at which stage he may become aware the I've got a really strong case.

All in all, things are working out pretty well, I think.

Laters, chums.

Kelvstock took place last Sunday night, and what a success it was, with great sets from Hand Hat (only their third gig, and they were truly impressive), the excellent Redgrass Collective fresh from the Quaggy's Carnival gig the day before, the ever-reliable (if nail-bitingly cutting it fine as to their time of arrival!) Steve Morrison and Al Richardson, and the MishMash Band, as much fun as always. A very respectable bit of money was raised, and a big shout to Kelvin's college mate,sorry didn't get his name, who paid the sound engineer his fee out of his own pocket, so it didn't have to come out of the takings - brillant! Everyone had a great time, and just so you know, Kelvin just phoned me a minute ago to say thanks (no need, but nice) and that it was one of the best nights of his life. And he said he was sorry for being a bit the worse for wear - don't worry about that, mate, I was arseholed!

I've already thanked everybody, but just to get it up here in the blogosphere, thanks to everyone who supported Kelvstock in any way, whether by giving your time and talent as a performer, or just coming along, enjoying it, making a contribution and creating the great atmosphere. I'm happy to say it was a genuine success, but that wouldn't have happened without you. Cheers.

Bye for now

Well blogbabes

You'll be happy to know that Kelvin has emerged at long last, and was to be found having a couple of beers in the Union last Saturday afternoon. He's still far from fit - he can't ride his bike or play the guitar for example- but he's on the mend. He's registered as disabled now, and getting benefit, so hopefully the worst of it is over now. I gave him a bunch of flyers for the upcoming Kelvstock extravaganza, and he seemed really pleased at the fact that it had been organised by local musicians, and appreciative of the support. The best news is that he's his old self again, and his mental state is very positive.

Lots of people have been in contact asking for details of the gig and what they can do to support it - the guys he played with up until the accident, old college mates, Bullfrog from Estonia etc etc. Just spread the word and get people along to the Fox and Firkin on Sunday 8th July at 7:30, that's all that is needed now. It's going to be great - everyone's looking forward to it, I know. I certainly am.

See you there - no excuses

Wotcha Blogbabes!

Arrangements are finally complete for the forthcoming Kelvin benefit night, KelvStock, at the Fox and Firkin, 316 Lewisham High St, London SE13 6JZ, on Sunday 8th July, from 7:30pm. It's been a long haul, with eventually insuperable problems at our original choice of venue, but thanks to Simon and Tich of the mighty MishMash for getting it together at last at the Fox. An outstanding night is ahead, with (in order of appearance) Hand Hat, Redgrass, Steve Morrison (hopefully with Blues Abuse) and the MishMash band themselves, with invited guest singers - brilliant! Minimum contribution £5.00 on the door - get there early as places are limited. If you miss this one your kids will take the piss out of you for the rest of your life - saddo saddo.... Thanks also, by the way, to Andy Driver for the great flyers - nice one!

Recording sessions at Wicksie's are going swimmingly, thanks for asking, with the Jook's solo CD very nearly in the can, and some excellent demo versions of Saints' tunes to sent down south to the Bomo rhythm devils. Jook's been emailing back and forth to Ed and it's all getting very exciting. Go to the Recordings page immediately after you finish reading this to hear the latest pure delta sounds to emanate from AP Multimedia's Plumstead Studios. The MySpace thing is going well too - The Saints now have over 200 friends and we've had radio stations aking for our CD before we've even recorded it! Brilliant!

On the subject of MySpace, do yourself a big favour and visit www.myspace.co/stockhausenwaterman - very funny, Bill, very, very funny. If they can't make some money with String Em Up, there's no justice left in this world. Not meaning to drive you off our website, but do check it out - it's demented genius of a kind not seen since Wagner finished the Ring cycle. I just hope they've got good lawyers, that's all.

Finally, The Nasty Letter has gone out to my former employers, a draft having been agreed midweek by myself and my lawyer David the Merciless. Hopefully we might be able to settle things quickly and get some dosh so I can go to the Floating Cockroach alt.blues fest in Helsinki this Summer! Brilliant!

Oh well, ciao for now, mwah mwah!

The Jook

Hi Blogfans!

It feels like ages, doesn't it? Well, me and Mrs Jook went down to the old homestead in the New Forest last weekend for a few days of traditional British Bank Holiday fun, ie pissing rain and screaming kids. No, not really, bless em, only joking!

The journey down seemed to take forever, but we stopped, as usual, in Four Marks , a village near Winchester, to buy the customary case of Gales' HSB and a couple of excellent fresh-baked-on-the-premises   loaves. When we got to South Gorley, my brother-in-law and my cousin had gone trout fishing, and my sister had taken my cousin's wife and the kids shopping, so we walked up to the Oak, where we heard some interesting Forest gossip, which unfortunately can't be passed on to a bunch of townies like you. Some new people have taken over the Oak, and they seem to be doing very well, which is good. Anyway, everybody eventually got back, and there was great excitement showing us my little niece's new Palamino pony, Goldie, and several enormous lake trout to clean and cook, and ice cold white wine to drink, just a shame the weather was crap or we could have barbecued the fish and sat outside. Never mind - it was nice anyway.

Well, the weather deteriorated steadily through Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday - pissing down covers it - so in a desperate attempt at entertaining the children after everything else had been tried, the Copse Farm Blues and Country Festival was inaugerated, with me and my cousin Michael doing some classics of the Mississippi delta, and my brother-in-law and Michael doing a selection from the Hightown Crows' old set. The Festival was notable for the debut performance on harmonicas of Luka "Bend It" Peart and Wailing Annabel Heberle - an historic first for the Forest! We also managed to clear quite a bit of the EU's beer and wine surplus too, which is good.

The weather improved on Tuesday, of course, as everybody was back at work, well not us obviously ha ha ha, we went up the pub, where there was a poster advertising the Trowbridge Festival (Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, The Be Good Tanyas, Eric Bibb - all very good) which has a childrens' entertainment stage. One of the featured artistes is an act called Tosser the Rabbit, and the consensus was that a) he doesn't come from the West Country, and b) he may provoke rather more mirth than he might imagine, particularly amongst Somerset parents.

Otherwise, we had another excellent recording sesh at the Plumstead Studios and got a couple more notepad versions of band songs down. We also recorded a couple of my solo numbers, a couple of Skip James tunes, actually, and got those up on the Recordings page - zoom straight there after reading this!

I chivvied up my Learned Friend a couple of days ago, and we subsequently had a chat where he asked how much I wanted by way of settlement. "Aim high", I told him, "Shy bairns get nowt!" So The Nasty Letter will be going out soon, and we shall see.....

Laters, peeps

A short blog, but a happy one! Thanks very much to keen Deptford Saints fan, Paul Smart, who still lives in the Saints' home town of Bournemouth, who informed us that the Royal Ballrooms (as we always think of them) in Christchurch Rd, Boscombe, has been restored and re-opened as a proper music venue once more. This is wonderful to hear - in the sixties and seventies, it was a really great venue. A brilliant place to see major names in a relatively intimate space. Jook personally saw many great gigs there, including Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac, Rory Gallagher, Free, The Faces, Thin Lizzy (several times, as Mickey Tarrant, who went on to open that brilliant record shop in Westbourne, Armadillo, was their manager and lived in Bournemouth - I was a mate of his younger bro Mark), Dave and Ansell Collins, and even Led Zeppelin, believe it or not. A genuinely legendary venue, and a rare surviving example of an Edwardian music hall cum theatre.

In these days when we hear so much about venues closing, this is a real breath of fresh air, even if, sadly, Rory Gallagher, Phil Lynott or Frank Zappa will never play there again. The venue, which has had various names over the past century, is now called, with no particular logic it seems to us, The Opera House. There is a link to the website on our Links page - please have a look, and if you're in Bomo any time, please support the venue. You know, go in and have a beer - it's not difficult, and there's no decent pubs in that part of town anyway.

Well done, and thanks again to Paul.

Wotcha!

Well, the recording sessions are going well, thanks in large part to Wicksy's knowledge and enthusiasm. We've got several tracks for the Jook solo album that just need a bit of eq and so on, and we've made a good start on a couple of band tracks. So, not bad for two afternoons' work, I reckon.

The brewer boys from the Meantime Brewery gave a party yesterday, which started well and dissolved into a blur, thanks to a combination of a lethal 8% black Belgian Abbey-style beer that had been specially brewed for the occasion (how nuts is that?), and Mikey, the brewer from Schoenarm, near Saltzburg, insisting that I joined him in several shots of Jaegermeister, a powerful southern German herbal schnapps. Oh boy.........

It was a good party, what I can recall of it, and thanks to the boys for their generous hospitality, great beer and food. What was nice was that the Redgrass collective were there and sang and played a few songs, including the lovely Chuck McQuillan song, The River Waltz. They're rehearsing to play the Quaggy's festival again this Summer, so it became kind of an open rehearsal in the kitchen, which was nice. Martin insisted that I play a tune, so I did Pony Blues, fortunately before the F*** Your Dog 8% ale and the Jaegermeister had taken too much of a hold.

The MySpace thing is going well - the Saints now have, at the last count, 53 friends on their page. Not bad for 10 days, and   they seem like really nice, talented people. I don't want to single anyone out, but some very accomplished musicians have had nice things to say about the Saints so far, and the judgement of our peers is very important to us. So thanks, guys - you know who you are.

Thanks to everybody who is supporting us by visiting this site, and/or the MySpace page - we appreciate it.

Cheers for now

Alright peeps?

Great sesh at AP multimedia studios yesterday - two more solo Delta songs on the Recordings page for you to wonder at! The Jook solo album's about half recorded already - me and Wicksy don't mess about. Two or three solid hours work before a drop of alcohol touces our lips. We also got the beginnings of two of the band numbers down which is a good basis to beging working on. Brilliant. Wierd thing, though - it was slashing down with rain, so we decided to record it. Didn't sound even vaguely like rain - more like something rustling about in the undergrowth..........

Went to the Old Mill up on Plumstead Common for a couple of pints of the excellent Bateman's. The Old Mill is really growing on me - at first it just seems like a pretty average unreconstructed boozer, but it's got a great range of beers, and a nice atosphere. Having been a habituee of the Greenwich Union ever since it opened, and a deep devotee of their Meantime Brewing Co's superb hand-crafted lagers, the Old Mill's range of proper hand-pumped English Bitters has re-awoken my taste for cask ale. In the bar were Marc Gachon, who used to be chef/patron of the cracking little Gachon's Bistro on Creek Rd, Greenwich, before it was demolished to make way for the DLR station, and who has apparently doubled in size in the ten years since I last saw him, and a geezer at the bar who should either be a member of ZZ Top or one of Seasick Steve's immediate family. We're talking serious beard here.

Didn't go down to Craig's boat today - most likely wife/car issue. We'll see.........

Cheers

Well, blogsters -

Craig and I drove down to the Medway Delta again yesterday, via his new job site (to collect some tools and materials), having been able to pick up his car from his wife (long story) promptly at the kid's school, and hit the road. Popped into the world's biggest B&Q in Gillingham (DIY City obviously, as well as chav Capital of the World), which is always a ncie start to the day, with me wanting to buy all manner of butch manly grown-up things like tool belts and hammer drills (untill I see the price obviously, which forcefully reminds me that I am no longer in gainful employment ha ha), and me and Craig doing the "Biggest Rip-off in the Store" game. Yesterday's winner was a pack of two disposable dust masks for £2.98!! Breathtaking - but it's a fun game to play.

Well, down the dirt road, as Charley Patten sings it, and offload the MDF and tools etc - we  rememebered to got to the Co-op in Upchurch this time and pick up some bread and ham and cheese and beer and stuff this time, which was nice. I took a load of "Before" photos of the interior of the boat, and some general ones of the dock and the river.

We had a good afternoon at it, and clad and panelled the left hand wall of the main hold and got the dado rail/ corniche detail cut and fitted, which was what Craig said he wanted to do, and it all looks pretty good. So, good day, let's have a beer, and we'll be back in the Greenwich Union for about five. Yee-ha! We sailed through the lane closure where they're doing a load of work, elevated section etc etc near the Dartford Crossing and everything looked great until we got to the end of the A2. Suddenly we were in a world of chaos and traffic jams. London was totally grid-locked for hours around the evening rush hour because a lorry had shed a load of asbestos in the Blackwall Tunnel. Bummer - it took us a good hour to go 2 miles, and would have been longer without Craig's inventive use of back streets and, er, persuasive manner of driving.

Well, anyhow, we got to the Union eventually and had a couple of beers, and I realised why Craig drinks the Red, which has raspberries in it, and a consequent edge of fruitiness. It's because the MDF dust that you've got all over your face, beard etc is really bitter. Consequently the excellent Pilsner, my usual pint of choice tasted really really bitter. But I drank it anyway. Because, jobless, penniless blues bum that I am, I felt I'd deserved it.

See you all soon

Well, true to form, the English weather continues to be the most perverse force of nature on the planet. Having not had any rain whatsoever for six solid weeks, it had to piss down yesterday because it was a Bank Holiday. If you can live in England you can live anywhere, as my Grandfather used to say. Not, actually, that it would have made any difference to me and the Bo's, because we would just have been sitting in the Greenwich Union anyway........

I've had some very kind messages about the website, especially from Andres of Bullfrog Brown, Steve Morrison of himself and Blues Abuse, and Mark the dempster of Hand Hat. All of the above are MySpace friends of The Deptford Saints, all good - please check them out, visit their websites etc etc. Thank you.

The MySpace thing is going quite well, I think - we're getting people wanting to be our friends. That's what I was worried about, that we'd be stood on our own in a corner of the playground with no mates. But, I was wrong to worry it seems - people like us. Well some, quite bluesy, people like us - there's obviously loads of achingly cool ambient lounge House DJs and satanic death Metal bands who think we're wankers, but never mind them, eh?

I'm looking forward to going down to Craig's boat tomorrow and doing some work on the main hold - Craig managed to get a lot of material down there over the Bank Holiday, so we should be able to get going straight away. There's a hell of a wind here in London today, so God knows what it'll be like down there, but never mind. What Larks!

Laters

It is with a tangible sadness that I have to report the death of Bentley, my brother-in-law's grey gelding, a couple of days ago. At 18 hands, he was a magnificent animal, a cross between a Hungarian thoroughbred (whose grandsire was an Olympic show-jumper) and an Irish draught horse. He died peacefully in the night - a lovely placid horse.

Today's big shout goes out to Euan, who is keeping his eye on the Saints - top man!

Now then, I've just had an e-conversation/rant with my mate, the very talented Stuart James, of the Stuart James Band (check em out on My Space - they are friends of the Deptford Saints, and very good they are) about something that, on balance had best remain private, for fear of our learned friends and their nasty letters. (ie if anybody round here is going to be sending out nasty solicitors' letters it's me).

Having said all that, talking to Stuart has put me in the mood for a rant, so here goes -

About ten days ago, when I was trying to build this website, I realised that my broadband speed had plummeted from about 6 Mbps (in itself less than the 8Mbps that I had been promised) to less than 1Mbps - ie dial-up speed. Sometimes it was as low as 0.58Mbps, and the connection crashed five or six times a day. None of which factors made building this website any easier, especially as I had never done it before. Don't let's talk about the work I lost because of crashing connections. Well, I called Bulldog to report the fault, which I assumed would be the proceedure - "Hello, I just wanted to tell you that I'm using your service and it's fluctuating and very slow - thought you'd like to know!" That's the kind of conversation I envisaged having, but, in fact the operatives at Bulldog refused to allow me to report the fault because our Bulldog account is in Jane's name. A manager told me that this "was not a grey area - it's covered by the Data Protection Act". I told him that I didn't want to discuss any aspect of the account I just wanted to tell them that there was a fault in their system, tell them that they had a problem. Nope, not allowed - so Jane had to phone them and tell them that they were allowed to talk to me.

So, once they deigned to actually speak to the person who was experiencing the problem, their immediate response was to blame my hardware -"We don't have any faults on the system at present", they said. Yes you do - I'm trying to report one......  The advice from Bulldog was to change my micro-filter. Yes, replace a piece of plastic that is not capable of causing fluctuations - it either works or it doesn't. That's a bit like calling Volkswagen and saying "Suddenly I'm only getting 5 miles to the gallon" and them telling you to change your spark plugs. Twats.

Well, in the interests of being reasonable, we got another micro-filter, and were going to change it this morning, but, lo and behold, I'm back up to 5.9Mbps, without having done anything to my hardware. So it looks like there was a problem with Bulldog's servers or at the exchange, which has now been fixed, after all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and I'll let you know.

Have a nice day

Well, what a couple of days - I don't know how I ever found time to go to work! Wednesday, after  a bit of a false start, I went down to the Medway delta, near Lower Rainham, with my mate Craig, to do some work on his boat. He bought an 80 ft barge some time ago, and he's converting it into a houseboat. The idea is to eventually tow it up to moorings in London, to replace the tiny boat that he currently lives on.

Once you get down to the Rainham area you get off the beaten track pretty quickly - downtown Rainham is a street and a shopping mall at the far end. Not much going on by the looks of it. To get to the wharf where the boat is moored, you have to go down one of the worst, most potholed dirt tracks this side of Burma - at one stage I thought we'd done serious damage to the back axle. Once you get down there, there isn't much there there, if you know what I mean - some kind of abandoned concrete crunching site, with derelict crushers and diggers, a kind of breakers' yard, a caravan (home to Rob and Bob, guardians of the wharf) and three or four old barges, all in some state of conversion into houseboats. Oh, and the wind, and the dust. And Rob and Bob's boxer dog. The novels of Steinbeck spring forcefully into your mind.

There was some water laying in the bilges, so Craig borrowed Bob's submersible pump, but that wouldn't get the last residual inch and a half of water out, so began the Quest for the In-Line Pump - better and more convoluted than Wagner's Ring Cycle. We scoured Rainham for what you might think would be such a simple thing, but in vain. I either write a book about it , or leave it there.

In the end we sourced some of the materials that Craig needs to panel out the main cabin, measured up for said materials, and sawed up and removed a truly horrible leather sofa, which would have been quite nasty enough even if it hadn't been right under a hatch that allowed rain water in for several weeks. Once we did that we were able to clear out the main cabin, so that next week we can panel out and clad the walls. Great...

Couple of beers - the fridge works! - and back to the Smoke. Not such a bad afternoon's work, all in all.

Thursday - the first Deptford Saints' recording session at Wicksy's Plumstead Studios! Fantastic, compact, loft studio, with bang up-to-date computerised desk and sequencing/editing suite. Absolutely perfect. A fun afternoon, with four solo delta tunes recorded and roughly mixed in three hours. I see some of these gradually morphing into band numbers, but it was nice to get some of the familiar set songs recorded as a first session, and proceed onto the more open-ended stuff as we get more used to working together. Go to the Recordings page of this website to hear the songs we did in our first session, and let me know what you think.

Session two is pencilled in for the same time next week, and we're probably back down Rainham Marshes next Wednesday. See you soon 

Managed to set up a My Space page for the band, with Andres' help. I'm not really convinced that My Space is going to be that much of a help to us, but we'll see. Meantime, to hedge my bets, I've made a big pot of haricot beans stewing away in bacon, onions, garlic, wine, tomatoes, chicken stock, herbs etc, because that can definitely be relied upon, whereas My Space is an unknown quantity. And I've done some practise for Thursday, so I'm feeling virtuous. I've put some old tracks up on My Space that Trev and I did a long time ago, but better to have something until we've recorded some new stuff...

Oh well 

Got off to a slow start this morning - did put new strings on the guitar after all. Mooched about, spoke to my lawyer about the old legal situation vis a vis my former employers. Case looks good - he thinks we should ask for silly money and see if they want to settle. Fingers crossed. Just sorting out a list of tunes to try to get recorded on Thursday - four or five of my solo pieces. My versions of some of the classic Delta songs, that sort of thing to ease us in gently. We kind of worked on the Bullfrog "Statue" vid together, but we haven't recorded together before. I did a radical dub mix of a song by Redgrass that he had produced, but that's it, so take the first sesh a bit steady.

I'm really looking forward to the whole process - can't wait to have a few tracks to put up on the site.

Well, the Meantime Brewing Company managed to seperate me and the boys from large quantities of our money yesterday afternoon, so no shock there....... Glorious day in Greenwich from what I remember of it.

Recording sessions for the Saints' album starts on Thursday, with Wicksy at the controls - we're both hyperventilating with enthusiasm at the prospect, as you can imagine. He's bought a brand new desk and can't wait to use it, and it's been a long time since I was in a studio, so I'm looking forward to that. I suppose that I should really buy a new set of strings for the tricone (guitar pictured on the Home Page), but it sounds alright to me, so sod it.

It may seem funny having a website for a band that hasn't recorded anything yet, but you've got to start somewhere. Why record an album and then start thinking about the cover design and the website and MySpace etc? I've already more or less done the cover, here's the website, and MySpace will soon follow. My good friend Andres Roots of Bullfrog Brown reminded me of something Frank Zappa once said - "If you want people to think you're a great composer, start by telling them you're composing something." I've heard worse advise than that in my time, I can tell you....... 

Thanks to everyone who's visited the site so far - do come back soon.

Well, good productive day yesterday, getting the basics of the site up and pestering people (text, email) to have a look at it. 25 of you did have a look, so thanks for that - do keep coming back, otherwise I'll steal your dog. I was going to say kids, but I'm not that stupid. New recipe section has just gone up - that's going to be an absolute winner, as I share my culinary secrets!! Fuck off yourself, Gordon.

Well, to think that all this has come about because I was unwiling to let the people that I had worked for for over ten years scam the shit out of me any longer, so now I'm sitting around with nothing better to do than write recipes.... Oh well, do come and see me another day! I've got shopping to do now.

Howdy - this is the first day of the Deptford Saints' website. In time there will be all manner of groovy functional stuff for you all to enjoy. Sex,drugs, whiskey (if you bring your own...), but, most of all, dirt-funky, sawdust on the floor, doggy-style, gutbucket music. Oh you guessed that..? You must know us from somewhere..

Imagine Tom Waits, Ry Cooder and Charlie Patton sitting in a bar in New Cross, watching Seasick Steve playing Jools Holland's show, drinking Meantime Brewing Co's Plisner, arguing about which Lightnin Hopkins cd to put on after Seasick finishes, when James Brown's rhythm section show up and Bob Dylan starts playing lapsteel on the bar. And then some kid at the back starts jamming along on sax. And then they all get thrown out and go down to Oliver's jazz bar in Greenwich, and start drinking for real.