ally's journal

saturday night's full band gig was great fun and sebastian (aka cineplexx) and nick garrie (both were on the bill) enjoyed it very much too and played great sets. here's a photo of me playing with my sparkling new backing band:



thanks so much to ryan (guitar), mike (bass) and andy (drums). they play in a great new band called the 17th century. i thought they were really excellent on saturday night. unfortunately this is the only photo i have and andy's invisible, but once i get more i'll put them up. it was a magical night and great for me to play more than just acoustically. we did two new songs last night - "man's man" and "the other side". there should be a couple of youtube clips up over the next few days.

plans are still being worked out for the asian tour in late august and early september with baybeats 2009 in singapore being the first stop. more will be announced just as soon as it's all tied up.


it's chucking it down (raining heavily) here. it's a shame but i can't complain; it's been glorious in recent times here in glasgow, both in experiences and in weather. i think a little downtime and rain is probably in order..

i'll leave you with a few photos sebastian took from the west end festival parade which took place on sunday.








i have an image quite strongly imprinted in my head from sunday evening walking to a venue where i was going to do a DJ set. everyone had gone home after the parade and the streets were quiet and calm but i spotted a solitary banana shuffling off home down the empty street.

hi there. i'm very pleased to confirm that i'll be heading out to singapore to play the baybeats festival on friday 28th aug. i'll be doing an acoustic set and a full band set. more info at http://www.baybeats.com.sg/2009/

right now other dates in southesat asia are being discussed so i'll post more once they're confirmed. show time on saturday. full band in glasgow. looking forward to it :)

hola. i've felt a bit flat since i came back from madrid. it was a really great mini-tour (does two gigs count as a tour?) with some wonderful people, great hosts, tremendous tapas and bucketfuls of booze. i caught a cold on the last morning and shuffled back to glasgow to a few days of boiled eggs and cups of tea. i feel much better now, thanks to a couple of afternoons of steam room indulgence and good films. i think sometimes i never know when to stop when i'm away! but that's just coz it's all there to play for:) quite a few people i know had the cold before i went away, so at least i didn't sucumb to it before the shows. i think last week i was trying to figure out a few things too and people weren't responding so sometimes that can get a bit hard. it's a tough place out there in music biz land, often it seems like quite a lonely old battle. but i just needed a bit of time out to buff up my armour :P

this is a photo of me (hello) playing in london on thursday night at the green note (thanks to nigel for letting me use it). it's a perfect acoustic club to play i think, especially for a solo show. the set up was great and i thought the people really cared about the music and their venue. i was really at home here. it was fun to try out some non-album songs and i did one called "monkey business" for the first time ever. my set mostly consisted of songs from my latest album 'off the radar' but also a couple from the first one. immediately after coming off stage i had a surreal conversation with a guy who was wolfing down chocolate with wreckless abandon. my mind was still digesting what had just happened over the forty minutes of my set and i was heading briskly (or possibly running) towards the bar coz i had a right thirst on. anyway, the guy in question told me he'd enjoyed the set and would i prefer to possess crab claws or tentacles. the unexpected nature of the questioning continued and towards the end of our bizarre q&a session i noticed that he was holding his phone in a way that suggested our conversation (or my bemused replies to these unusual questions) might be being recorded. so, maybe it'll appear online one day. my fingers - or possibly crab claws - are crossed that it won’t however.

gin and tonic is my new drink. usually i'm a beer / wine / jack daniels guy but i don't know, i seem to be enjoying this drink lately. also, i noticed that i seem i suffer no ill effects from it. i'm sure this theory will be shattered (along with my nerves) as i push it to its limit one night in the not-so-distant future. coming back from london i saw mark lawrenson from bbc tv's 'match of the day'. i was contemplating trying to whip a bit of his moustache, but i didn't. i got another gin and tonic instead and watched some planes taking off. at glasgow airport my guitar was a no-show and when i was reunited with it the following day, i noticed the guitar case was cracked. ah, the power of the 'fragile' sticker. the case looked like it had been on an adventure. madrid next friday, hopefully that'll be an adventure too. i'm looking forward to returning to spain :)

coffee and cake mid-afternoon. i love it. i'm eating banana bread actually. it's really tasty and a great way to utilise nanas that are pretty much at the decaying, bruised and battered stage. i've just put the acoustic guitar down for a while to think about my set list for the solo gig in london on thursday. i'm having trouble deciding which of the new songs to play. i'm having to decide what key to play one of them in coz on the demo recording it's got a female vocal that comes in and struggle as i might, i just cannot reach the notes. so, i'm playing around with that and also some whistling on another track that i've recorded as a demo and which has some flute/strings kicking in at the beginning. i'm getting on well with the third album demos. i'm at about eight tracks that i'm sure are going to be on it and i'll record a few more. i reckon ten to twelve tracks on this one if i'm really happy with each one. no room for messing about here. oh no.

i finally made a facebook page for my music. there was an ally kerr 'group' already kindly created by someone else and then on christmas morning (maybe someone abroad who doesn't bother with christmas) another person set up one as a 'musician' for me (and which looks like it's my own page), but both pages were static, so i decided to make one myself. the problem is that there's people who have joined on the other two but no one on the official one:) so, if you want to come over you can find it by going to facebook and searching for "ally kerr - musician (official)". it's very well hidden just now sadly!

it'll be updated with gigs/news etc. i think. the best place though is always my website. there's so many places out there with the potential to hold all this info.

twitter. i'm not sure. i'm still not convinced. but, i signed up anyway. you can find me on twitter at www.twitter.com/musicallykerr . i think i'll do a few, see how it goes. i'm not sure it's for me, but we'll see. is it a lazy person's blog? 140 characters. not a lot of room there for messing around. it would be good on tours i think. i'll see how that goes.

if i was to twitter right now i'd maybe tell about how today whilst ambling down towards the post office i saw a schoolboy scoop up a pigeon in his friend's hat and try to hurl it into the fish 'n chip shop. it was rather disgusting but the bird was fine. i really dislike pigeons. not a big fan of birds i have to say. my friend told me about the time he was waiting for a taxi in town on a saturday night and saw a guy scoop up a massive dead seagull and run around freaking everyone out with it before dumping it in a wheelie bin. that's a nasty image. birds in city centres. hmmm. not convinced either!

as i mentioned on twitter about the demos before i'll mention the subject again here. i'm going to continue with the demo recording tonight. i've got a new one called "the other side" that i wrote a few nights ago then recorded the next day. i really like it so we'll see if it holds up.

bye for now,
ally.

hola! i was playing at an indoor festival in barcelona on saturday night and had a great time. here are a few photos from the trip :)

we see dawn in the scottish sky.

the flat is really quiet now that i've decided to stop recording for the night. the birds outside the front window (and the back for that matter) are making a hell of a racket mind you. it reminds me of late nights / early morning in summer. very odd that they're so noisy. maybe they're getting their own back after i've been up late recording and they're sick of it. actually, a neighbour complained last week. i honestly couldn't believe it. i'm a very considerate neighbour; in fact i hate neighbour noise. so the fact that i was the culprit was a bit of a shock. i was working on songs till 5/6am but it wasn't loud. however, i want to practise what i preach, so i've turned the volume right down and use headphones more. i really don't think it was louder than maybe someone watching tv, but i can help ease the neighbour's suffering so i'm quite happy to do so. it doesn't affect what i'm doing either which is a bonus.

so, i've been working on a few songs lately, all of them demos. i've completed and mixed one, need to re-do vocals on another and i was just adding parts to one tonight. i'm really happy with these ones so far. hopefully i'll be able to go to the studio later in the year, but i'm really enjoying the process of working on them in the comfort of my flat, with the jolly birds outside for company.

right, i've made a promise to myself to go to bed now, so i will. i could easily sit up till 5 or 6am, but i've a lot i want to do (non-recording wise) tomorrow and i'm terribly bad at getting out my bed/scratcher/kipper.

so, i'll bid you good night.

ps. i'll go to bed and these songs will be going round and round in my head. this is always the problem with late night recording for me. oh well, at least it was a productive night and i've managed to avoid sparking open cans of beer as is usually the case. a few nights off beer is definitely in order..

is it too late to say happy new year? i think probably after lunch on the 16th of january it's socially unacceptable to wish someone good wishes for the rest of the year. so, i won't wish you a happy new year now, but i was secretly wishing every one good wishes on the 15th of january, just after i'd eaten a rather large spoonful of cold baked beans. i love cold baked beans. is that odd? well, not cold, but rather lukewarm, in their just-taken-out-the-cupboard state. did i ever tell you that i once had an arguement with a particularly annoying/patronising/overbearing scottish old dear (kind of 56-60 years old) who was insisting that a cheesy beano was melted cheese on toast with beans on top. i maintained it was beans on toast with melted cheese on top! it all got rather heated, my passion for the subject representing the fact that she had irritated me for a least an hour up until that point with her theatrics and attention-seeking manner towards us youngsters. anyway, you'll be relieved to know that it all ended quite calmly and we split a can of diet sprite, had an arm wrestle and chuckled. oh, i just invented one part of that make-up scenario up, but i won't tell you which.




(click to make bigger i think)

Winter-Time by Robert Louis Stevenson

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding cake

hola! i was really happy to discover that the amorino animation had been selected by an american newspaper's website as their music video pick of the day. the paper serves washington dc in the usa and is called "Express" ... it's a part of the washington post company. i was happy but surprised as it's often so hard to get heard. it's obvious of course that there's sooo much information floating around out there on the internet connected to music, be it videos, words, sounds, images and it can be a bit overwhelming. it got me to thinking whether artists / musicians are now encouraged to blog too much? it seems to me that we're all being informed that interaction is the key to keeping close to your audience, but is something being lost in the process? is it becoming too much like a process? i'm not sure, but the more i think about it, the more i'm inclined to think that it's nice to have some mystery in the relationship between artist and audience/fan. if writing is just a forced exercise then i actually think that can be quite damaging and a little revealing. i look forward to reading certain artists' words because i know they're selective, they're good at editing and when they write, even short bursts, i know i'll usually get something from it. however, i do think it is interesting to have an insight and i hope that in my writing i'm expressing myself honestly and giving anyone that cares to read an insight and not an excuse to climb into the washing machine. being able to communicate directly without the approval / manipulation of journalists / media / third party is liberating too of course.

so, these are my thoughts today. to blog or not to blog, that is the question. today the answer was yes. it just felt right and i wanted to. i wrote fiction and words before i wrote music or even picked up the guitar and i enjoy it when i'm in the right mood. but of course sometimes i'm introverted and it's my guitar i reach for, rather than the keyboard. i wrote a song the other evening actually. it's passed the test and i've been singing it to myself on and off for days. the one before that seems to have failed that test. that's how it goes.

oh, please look out for the new messageboard (we'll give it a try, see how it goes - the last one was relatively active but was killed by spam) and also a more dynamic news page.

now, if you'll excuse me i have to go and smear cumin onto a lamb chop.

tuesday night:

wow, the last time i blogged i was in germany drinking in that hotel (the one mentioned just below this post), propping up the bar and listening to neil young's classic lyric ("i think i'll pack it in and buy a pick-up, take it down to LA") at 3am in a neon-red soaked bliss. i love that neil young line. hamburg was great. so was the gig. so was the hotel. so was the beer and kebab. i'd definitely like to return to hamburg. the audience at the venue seemed really enthuasistic and gave paul and i a real shot in the arm. metaphorically speaking of course.

anyway, yes, i have been quiet on the bloggery front, instead i've been working away on music and all the related gubbings that go along with being an independent artist in the 21st century. i do sometimes blog over at myspace.com/allykerr but only with issues specifically relating to the myspace page/updates. everything else is posted both here and on myspace. i'm bet you're glad you know that :P

well, a beautiful (i'm biased) animation is up now on youtube, and i'm very proud of it. the whole thing was a real labour of love and the artist/animator akiko did a wonderful job in my opinion. she really captured and realised the script. i'm really chuffed with it. it takes patience with me coz i change my mind so often and i kept having these ideas pop up as it was being animated. so thanks to akiko for her patience and artistic talent! it was her first animation, believe it or not. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1RxfjvN8eU&fmt=18

i'm drinking wine. it's really cold outside. crisp and chilly. a bit like this glass of white wine actually. i took this photo (below) today when strolling along by the river clyde. this area has undergone a lot of change in recent years. did you know glasgow used to be a thriving industrial port? i'll leave you with the scene i walked through today.


time to crank the heating up....