Happy New Year. Hope you all had a good time.
Here is my year in review and some tits and bits of
forthcoming news.
1) A
Means to an End had a good 2012 year I feel with the band however
Likely to remind a 3 piece instead
of a 4 piece on a more regular basis as Dave I don’t think will remind a
regular member (Reasons I won’t go into here in more detail but it’s not bad). We
did a few open mikes (Bay Horse to name but one) but generally tried to find
bits and pieces to do longer sets at (Open Mind in May 2012, Hulme is where the
art is in August 2012, Salford Music Festival in September 2012 and lastly
Acoustic Wednesdays in October 2012 to name but four). In the New Year, we
already have one pencilled in for Open Mind in March 2013, and Glossop in
August 2013. I’ve completed some applications for Didsbury and Chorlton Arts
Festival and am researching others, so plenty on the go and more to research.
2) Next
time I see Jeff we will be discussing about an album also for the band in
Springtime and we will carry on working for a Means to an End book II (11 poems
wrote so far for it) which I reckon’ll be done maybe in 2013 / 2014.
3) I
am still plodding along work with my friend, Amanda Silbernagel also – think we
have done maybe 14 or so tracks for our album. Hoping we will be able to
release this probably though bandcamp this year. Also thinking about a name for
our project instead of just Amanda and Andy. Watch this space of course.
Our last track ‘Glowing in the
dark’ (Xmas Mix) can be heard here..
4) Some
work from maybe 2009 or 2010 has appeared with a band called Poortosh which I
had almost forgotten about on soundcloud. (Include links). When I check how
many more pieces were recorded, I’ll sit down and try to do some more as there
was several un-recorded lyrics from that and I hope we’ll also sell that on
bandcamp.
These tracks can be heard as
follows:
(Wish)
(Thank you Ky)
(Forgotten Hero)
5) My
poetry has had some nice headline slots, although sadly down to my diabetes
nowadays I try to be a more careful what I do – i.e. not do everything going. I
am still a regular at W.O.L. Stockport which I use to debut two brand new
pieces each month and have done headline slots this year at Write Out Loud –
Middleton, Guitar and Verse (Manchester )
and several others I have forgot about at the moment. I’m doing a headline slot
at Performance! In Wigan in February and maybe
some others later in the year.
6) Bookswise.
Poetry, work has been a bit slow this year on my next poetry book ‘the end of
summer’ but after 18 months or so on it, I can admit I am around 23 or 24 poems
into the book (around 40 or so pages). I think it’s going to need another 8 or
9 more poems to bring it around 52 or 53 pages from which I can then decide to
finalise the line-up and then look for a publisher. I think this’ll be around
2014 or so.
7) I
now have Love Songs for Cathy IV almost finished, a year after book III. This
of course will be a private press book for Cathy, but I’ll offer it as a free
download for anybody who wants to read some good love poetry etc in February
2013 around Valentines Day.
8) Publishing
wise, after a age of quietness, one of my pieces ‘Samantha will be getting published
viva turtle press on 20/01/2013. More details to follow but their blog is: http://turtleway.wordpress.com/
Also two of my poems appeared
last year on the online magazine ‘Herecomeseveryone’ on the theme of the
English riots which I have only just found out about (5 months late!) but it’s
two new pieces ‘drums of their flick knives’ – these can be read here..
9) My
writing workshop with Manda Lee ‘Writers of the third kind’ is still ongoing in
Bolton and I am very pleased with the way it is going too with a nice hardcore
bunch of writers coming in each month, In a ideal world, I would like to bring
out a phamplet to highlight what the workshop is producing later on, or maybe a
full collection. Wait this space for more details there.
10) There is
also a few irons in the fire pending, but I’ll talk about them as and when they
develop.
11) Lastly,
just want to wish you all a wonderful New Year in whatever you do and just to
tell Cathy I love her as always and looking forward to our engagement do soon
(ish)
