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A little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come apon you like a robber.

When I feel very depressed, or maybe a better way of saying: when I am very depressed, I can handle very little stress. I am irritable. Very small things can make me snap completely, and this is very hard to handle for the people around me.

I passed by the field of a sluggard by the vinyard of a man with no sense and low it was all overgrown with thornes and the ground was covered with nettles and its stone wall was broken down then I saw and considered it I looked and received instruction

A little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come apon you like a robber.

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My first ever live vocal performance on ST FM in Burnham Essex with Elephant shelf

A Pink Hippo says: I had quite a fun weekend;

Saturday May 8th was a great night at the Blues Room in St Albans backing the rather good >> Earl Jackson which was basically a Rock & Roll night. We did an opening Elephant Shelf set and get Earl up to keep the folks rocking till about 12:30 so another 3 hour set fueled only by 2 pints  of draft Guinness. A great bunch of people there and I think they really enjoyed it, and they were up and dancing right till the end. We also had a guest appearance from Rollo Marquee a very good blues harp player who will be playing at the Blues Room soon too.

Sunday May 9th of to ST FM in Burnham Essex to do a live to air set with Elephant Shelf .

We did four songs, with an interview with the band sandwiched in-between.  We were on the Sunday night show with Veteran Essex musician, journalist and broadcaster Tim Aves ‘Blues is back’ show.

Elephant Shelf viewed from the piano at the ST-FM studio
Elephant Shelf viewed from the Piano at the ST-FM studio

We met Tim previously when he played with the shelf at the Blues Room. Tim  is a very well-known, award-winning figure on the national UK blues scene, as a performer, writer and event organiser.He sings and plays harmonica and guitar and spent 17 years on the road, clocking up more than 3,000 gigs across the UK and continental Europe in the 1980s and 1990s with legendary Essex rhythm’n’blues band AUTOMATIC SLIM, who shared stages with a huge range of major artistes, including Status Quo and Dr Feelgood. He later spent a further 13 years fronting the highly-regarded (but sadly, now disbanded) Texas blues outfit, THE ROCKIN’ ARMADILLOS (The band also featured Saint FM Rock Show co-host Paul Lester on drums and Gasbags co-presenter Jane English on vocals.)
We enjoyed the experience and we hope to be back down in Burnham on Crouch in the not too distant future . The live sound was mixed by Pete Crisp who engineers at the St Peters Studio and who also gave us a copy of the tracks that went to air.  Then another Real Ale and a Veggie burger, and off home to London.

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April news round-up

OK, well I am still here just about, though feeling a little fragile at the moment.I have been giging a quite bit, between 2 and 3 gigs a week with Elephant Shelf & the Deltas so that’s kept me suitably distracted. I still don’t have much of a long term plan, but it seems to me that much of what used to constitute my life has  blown away on the wind somewhere.

An average day for me when not gigging  consists of about 3 hours of piano practice and maybe working on writing new material and working on ideas for demos.  Also updating web stuff, and trying to keep my rusting programming skills intact, so that if any freelance stuff comes in I am actually ready to roll. I do miss the routine of going to an office and the certainty’s that it provides.  Mood-wise I have been quite low on a couple of days, and that has made the day to day mundane stuff difficult to get through. I have lost a lot of confidence and really do feel that would be quiet a good idea to retire to bed and stay there most days.