brian stone – Page 2 – Ferocious Blog

Rock-Stock is rising.. friday..

One hell of a bar has been set as the festival season commenced this weekend, for Ella and I it started on Thursday evening for Jonny’s EP Launch. After finishing up at work Ella got a train in to Solihull and we headed off to grab last minute stuff from home and jump into Ludo to take the short drive up to The Chimneys in Willington for Rockstock and Barrel. On a normal day it’s a nice-but-functual former industrial social club site – when Debbo, Phily and the team get their hands on it they turn it into a magical festival wonderland. Â We got ourselves parked up in a handy spot, and set to the quick job of getting the van sorted as our accomodation for the next few nights.

The Cheezy Vinyl Bar and The Scrumptiddly Cider Bar were set up outside, the former also housing a Murphy’s Stage giving a third performance space at the festival. Inside the main hall housed the main stage area, the acoustic stage moved into the former snooker room which had – predictably – had a Rockstock and Barrel makeover to create a wonderful intimate space. Friday morning started with helping John move his tent – then a stint covering the gate to the Riverside campsite for just under a couple of hours. It was quite nice to just watch the world go by and guide in a few early arrivals to their camping spots.

Then it was time to loiter around the Chimneys campsite as people started to rouse or arrive – a quick walk to Willington for supplies passed some more time, and a chance to ‘vandalise’ Tim and Jo’s new van, Tootle (it has a blackboard-paint covered boot lid and they had chalk pens for us to use). We were pretty restrained I think, it will be interesting to see how it fairs over the course of the festival season! Soon enough though it was time for the music to start. I’ll make no apology for doing lots of dipping in and out of things and not making detailed notes – but hopefully I can still do the weekend some kind of justice!

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Freeborn Al / 2nd April 2017 / Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos

Year of the Fox…

I’m going to tackle Jonny Wallis’ EP launch night as a separate blog post I think – because well, an EP launch is a big deal and whilst he utilised the night-before-Rockstock to use the same venue, it was a separate and significant event in its own right, so should be treated as such in blog terms I think! We’d arrived on site early evening near enough straight from work for me via a quick trip home to get changed, packed and a quick vehicle change – so by the time the music was starting we’d already been having a great time!

With a few folk already on site (and clearly had been for a while!) we were summoned over to Ian and Lynne’s van (Eleanor) for an impromptu jam – with Jamie in attendance it wasn’t long before tequila slammers were produced. All in all, a thoroughly lovely way to ease into the evening – this wasn’t technically part of the festival, but an EP release night for the excellent Jonny Wallis – he’d got Stevie Simpson and Brian Stone to provide support slots for what promised to be a splendid warm-up for the festival proper.

Rather than have an outdoor/tented acoustic stage for the festival this year, the recently cleared former snooker room had been appropriated and used to create an amazing intimate space. This was where Jonny’s launch was taking place, from our point of view in The Star Copiers it was of intense interest to us too as we would be playing in there on the Saturday night, a great space and it was great to see plenty of people had managed to get to the site early in order to support the launch and enjoy a bonus night of excellent entertainment.

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Freeborn Al / 2nd April 2017 / Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos

Foxy bingo!

I’ve been really looking forward to getting my hands on Jonny Wallis‘ debut EP ever since we collectively coaxed him into setting up a crowdfunding page to get the cash in to make it happen, so to find it hand-delivered (thanks Katie – sorry I wasn’t in to offer you a cup of tea!) when I got in from work this evening was a real treat (admittedly, the email confirming the digital download details probably spoiled the surprise a bit, but that’s okay!). Clad in a cardboard monochrome sleeve featuring an excellent shot by Dan of Ferocious Photography, I eagerly got it downloaded and synced over to my phone to get it playing.

The Year of the Fox is a reference to Jonny’s old band, 3 Eyed Fox, who I first encountered way back in 2011 – way before Ferocious Blog existed, although it did warrant a mention on my (even more) self-centred personal blog – a very short mention. By the time I started more dutifully writing about music I don’t think they were any more sadly, so I couldn’t tell you how many times I got to see them – although obviously since this platform has been available to me Jonny has featured quite a lot on my gigging roster! One musical door closes, another opens – catalysed perhaps somewhat by his occasional partnering with Brian Stone for a spot of The Fox and the Pirate.

Light the Darkness has a ludicrously catchy finger-picked riff breaking into occasional strums overlaid with initially gentle lyrics. Jonny has a wonderfully melodic voice – but then get let rip into empassioned mode too as he does in the chorus here. It’s a powerful song of togetherness, offering support to bring someone out of a dark place. It’s a lovely start, having heard it live a few times now it’s translated brilliantly to a recording – it sounds polished without losing its heart, so some credit needs to go to Electric-Bear Productions who provided the mixing and mastering. They’ve really rendered something here that sounds slick but is a great representation of what Jonny delivers live too.

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Freeborn Al / 21st March 2017 / Music, Other Bands, Photos

The Leylines tour is underway!

I’m a bit late with this update – apologies, but last weekend a rather splendid event took place at The Black Market Venue in Sunny Warsop. Well, threatening-to-be-snowy Warsop I suppose! I hotfooted it up there early, because it would let me get a good spot to park the van which would be our bed for the night, but also because Becky and Pete were bringing Buster down for a bit of socialising practice. The band were in place soundchecking, I passed a lovely few hours nattering with folk and supping a pint of Illicit or four!

This was the opening night for The Leylines tour – and Andrea had pulled out all the stops as promoter (is anyone really surprised at that? Ha!) and snagged not one, not two, not three, but four support acts so the night got underway pretty early – utilising the main stage which is sporting a new sound system for the assembled crowd. It was particularly exciting to see Dirty Davey get his first announced outing for a while (although I did make a sneaky trip to see him at an open mic night last week!).

The last time I saw Dirty Davey performing at an announced event it was his first time being microphoned up and it’s fair to say the experience was overwhelming – but this time the practice has clearly paid off, a very confident performance – showcasing two of his own compositions as well as a couple of well-chosen cover versions. It was a short set as he’s been struggling with illness, but it left not just me bursting with pride watching him do his thing on the big stage.

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Freeborn Al / 14th February 2017 / Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

The year the music died?

Image credit: christhebarker

2016 will probably go down as one of those years where sad news overshadowed the good – certainly that was true for me both in personal terms, which I won’t cover here, but also the seemingly relentless march of famous icons being taken by the grim reaper. Just as we were coming to terms with Lemmy passing away at the end of 2015, in 2016 we’d be constantly reminded by social media of a glittering parade of cultural icons shuffling from this mortal coil.

David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Jimmy Bain, Terry Wogan, Harper Lee, Frank Kelly, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Frank Sinatra Jr, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett, David Gest, Victoria Wood, Lonnie Mack, Prince, John Berry, Nick Menza, Muhammad Ali, Henry McCullough, Anton Yelchin, Caroline Aherne, Kenny Baker, Dalian Atkinson, Gene Wilder, Pete Burns, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Rick Parfitt, George Michael, Liz Smith, Richard Adams, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

That’s not an exhaustive list, I’m sure, but that’s not really what I wanted this blog post to be about – but you can’t really do a review of the year without mentioning the elephant in the room. As with seemingly most things these days it caused ruckuses on Facebook with folk taking to social media to express their sadness whilst others get irked at seeming over-emotionalness. Certainly there’s a lot in that list who whilst I’ve never met have had huge influences over my life, and I felt genuine sadness at them moving on – some seemingly far too early, others having reached a ripe of age.

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Freeborn Al / 30th December 2016 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Lee Bonsall, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

Doozering Derbyshire..

I won’t deny that the last gig at Rock City meant I was eyeing people heading to Brixton to the next leg of the Levellers tour with envious eyes, however, that’s not to say I wasn’t really chuffed to be able to take in a much closer to home leg of Doozer McDooze’s ‘Flick the V sign and do it anyway’ tour. Whilst it was only a few miles up the road for me I decided to take Ludo and take advantage of the hospitality of the pub and sleep over in the car park so I could have a few drinks.

To that end I was in the pub car park mid-afternoon, once I’d got the bed set up I decamped to Dave and Caroline’s van where Murph was kind enough to share his sleeping space for me for a couple of cheeky drinks, Rob joined us shortly after and before long with John, Angela, Russ and Michelle arriving (with the awesome Merlin) we headed into the pub where there was a bit more room (and warmth!). The Yew Tree Inn is a lovely building, I’m really sad that the brewery is moving Chris on as he’s created such a lovely atmosphere in the place.

A few folk ordered some pizzas, whilst most of us decided to hold out for the curry and chilli on offer upstairs. I’d never been in the function room upstairs – what a cracking space, a bar, loos and a nice big room set up for the gig. Doozer was on hand to personally hand stamp people by drawing a picture of himself on your hand (or you might’ve got something worse if Birdy had the marker!), we had plenty of time to find a spot to sit and get comfortable.

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Freeborn Al / 4th December 2016 / Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

The return of the Fox and the Pirate!

I wasn’t sure I’d make this, with revelry for birthday celebrations the night before I might not feel too energetic. On the flipside, I didn’t have the north-south-north run to make – as it happened, I had some errands to run on Sunday that took me nearly half way to Warsop anyway – so well, it would’ve been daft not to have taken advantage of the opportunity to take in a bit of live music to finish up the weekend. With an early finish it’s definitely do-able on a work night.

Plenty of folk had the same idea – there was a great gathering of friends either already at the Black Market venue or arriving shortly after me. With tables arranged suitably it was soon time for The Star Botherers to kick things off. The first thing I noticed was that Dave has added a cajón to his arrangement of instruments with a kick pedal that may or may not have also been attached to his tambourine, alongside his more familiar bass drum. Exciting!

They kicked off the set with Ringing in Sick, possibly a subliminal move on Dave’s part to encourage people to take part in the quiz straight after the music – haha! I’m pretty sure it’s been a while since I’ve heard One Inch Death Punch aside from when it pops up on a music shuffle in the car. Just Around the Corner followed, Bart muttered something about it being his favourite of theirs – I do like it a lot too to be fair.

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Freeborn Al / 31st October 2016 / Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

The Fox and the Pirate!

We had a lot of fun tonight at the opening night of The Fox and the Pirate (I think you need a Facebook page chaps if this is gonna be a ‘thing’) tour in the Yewtree Inn and Lodge in Ednaston, Derbyshire. They comprise of Jonny Wallis and Brian Stone, excellent musicians and friends both! Arriving in the car park we found the advanced camping party – Dave and Caroline (and Murph!) along with Barry and Debs were already in situ, getting the party started early!

As we’d had daytime activities, and because we’d piked out as it was cold, we decided to just drive to and from the gig rather than stay over in the car park. Since I’m sat comfy in my lounge (albeit not toasty warm given the boiler is knackered!) it’s not a decision I rue, although a stay over is always fun. So after general car park catchups we made our way into the pub. It’s a lovely pub, great food and drink, a relaxed atmosphere and of course some excellent music.

Brian and Karen were already in and tucking into some rather tasty looking pizzas. We’d not planned on eating as we’d had a massive meal earlier in the day, but the temptation was pretty big – we relented. A pizza for me and Ella more restrained with just a garlic bread (she can’t eat dairy – booo!) – it was bloody nice, although I’m sure Scott Doonican would have something to say about it being served on a wooden board (indeed, he did later via the medium of Facebook!).

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Freeborn Al / 23rd October 2016 / Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

That difficult second festival… day two!

Friday night was so memorable, so it was with that ambivalent mixture of excitement and tired reluctance we hauled ourselves out of the hotel come Saturday to taxi our way back to the Robin 2. As such, we owe apologies to Stevie Simpson for missing his set in its entirely and to Emma & The Professor who were half way into theirs by the time we made it – but well, non-stop music for twelve hours, it wouldn’t be the only stuff we missed – and I must confess to sitting and feeling daunted about trying to write it all down!

Heading back into the gloomy venue worked a lot like the casinos in Vegas – it made it seem perpetually evening. Emma & The Professor were on the second stage, and just striking up Bostin’ track Men An Tol – thankfully plenty of folk were more disciplined at getting up than we were, there was a good crowd in already! This was followed up with Battle of the Marches and The Old Black Crow. They have such a unique sound, and a new album in the offing which I’m excited about!

The two stages were alternating – Stevie Simpson compering the main stage, handing over to (or being handed over from) Brian Stone on the second stage. If you take a moment to think about the logistics, soundchecking through the sound-desk only, the first chance to artists get to hear their monitor mix was starting the set – the sound guys and stage management deserves some serious kudos for even considering this way of working, to have pulled it off – just wow!

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Freeborn Al / 19th October 2016 / Gigs, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

That difficult second festival… night one!

I’m sure you know the story behind Bostin’ Days – in a nutshell, an accident happens at Beautiful Days… it’s sorted out thanks to the local air ambulance. Addie Burns has a crazy idea. It’s the kind of idea that people probably have all the time – but in this case, he made it happen – get a fabulous array of musicians to record a cover of a Levellers song and release it as a compilation, then have an associated event by the said same artists.

That album is still a regular feature on my playlists – and last year’s event was superb. How do you follow up something like that? Well, they bloody well did it – I’ve just got back from a fabulous weekend, and after sorting out assorted domestic stuff now I have the unenviable task of trying to put it in to words! Unlike last year I was able to make the Friday night too, so arrived at the hotel in Wolverhampton early afternoon in time for a bit of a chill out.

Ella and her Mum would be arriving later – so after a pleasant afternoon with a book (rock and roll, huh?) – I hopped in a taxi to The Robin 2 in Bilston with Mark and Amanda. I’d booked it using an app, and pre-paid for it – which confused my journey companions when I thanked the driver and got out without paying, as they thought! Haha! The venue wasn’t open yet, but the attached bar was so we headed in there and got ourselves some beers.

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Freeborn Al / 16th October 2016 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments