Dave Pegg

Currently sat on a train craving a brew. WHERE'S THE SERVICE TROLLEY?! On my interior I'm having a mini rage, on the outside I'm typing away furiously and listening to Gabrielle Aplin. I found out today via a lovely email from Wembley Arena that she is supporting John Mayer this weekend. It's my Dad's birthday present from me this year - a Mayer gig, which I'm sure will promise supreme guitarwork, bluesiness and country vibes. I'm excited, and so is Papa Chad. 

It'll be awesome to escape this week's rigmarole and take some down time. This week seems to have been a craze pot of constant diary events, early starts, late finishes, but above all a LOT of fun.

I'm ever so content to be working all the hours under the sun, working at my goals and having a good laugh. This week I hosted the second, and certainly my favourite of the two SRA Selector shows I have done so far. 2/2 - back of the net.

With Robbie Boyd in town I was pleased to catch up with him on the phone for the show this week - his new song Under My Skin sat alongside music that's been delighting my lug holes this past week. New additions to my favourites list have got to be Wolf Alice, Lea Lea and George Ezra - who I saw a few weeks ago in Notting Hill. He's got a brooding, deep voice and delectable acoustic guitar work. Worth a listen, and his track Budapest is a free download on his website!

Today - alongside pals Connor and Jen - I was honoured to interview Dave Pegg, who is the bass player with Fairport Convention and who has played with, and booked for the Cropredy festival, outstanding musicians such as Richard Thompson, Ralph McTell, Steeleye Span and many many more. His back catalogue of CD credits is way to vast to contain to a blog post. We once bumped in to him in a foggy-headed daze at the Cropredy after-party and he amused us for a solid 45-mins with tales of touring and his life in music. To catch up with him in the humbling setting of Banbury's oldest building, Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn, was a slightly clearer-minded affair. 

I stuck 5 Hooky's on the slate and sat in the pub's Globe Room, a cute room round the back of the bar lavishly decorated in rich mahogany (no leather bound books), paintings of immense landscapes, rustic oak floor and a grand fireplace. Dave and I got talking about pubs, their importance for villages and communities, how they get on board with the Cropredy festival and how crucial real ale and local music are in village life. It's for a documentary-ballad, which we're making as a 3-parter exploring Villages, Pubs, and Hook Norton Brewery as the engine room behind a huge array of cracking local pubs.

This is one of the last cogs in the machine for the documentary, most of it is now assembled with Dave's sections, some final recording in Morton Pinkney, and finally the excellent music of our local singer-songwriter Franc Sutherland who is composing original music for the programme. It's an incredibly exciting point in production, we're so close to tieing the knot after a summer of recording and editing. I'm really eager to hear the finished doc and indeed Connor's film, which follows the same subject thread. It will be set for a December broadcast.

Back again..

This blog has been dormant for a while now, dormant like a sleepy volcano. Time to turn the page and fill you in with the current fun and games...

Since my last post a few months ago, nothing's changed on the Key103 front, still loving my work there and it seems to be snowballing in the right direction!.. Indeed I've made a wee video of all the awesome stuff:

Third and final year at uni is upon me - so 5Live style radio shows and documentary projects await... I'm excited to get started with next semester's final project. We have free reign over a documentary project and can spend a whole semester producing it. 

I'm currently in the throes of a doc about countryside village pubs, and how the twee, one-man-and-his-dog stereotype of the countryside is far from the case in this bustling community of pubs and locals, all fuelled by family-run nearby Brewery: Hook Norton.

I'm eager to hear the original songs created especially for the doc by a musician we're working with - as soon as they're written/recorded, that doc will be on it's way to air, and I'll be turning my gaze towards the final year doc.

Presenter gigs have been the object of my strife this past summer - demo'ing left-right-centre and working on feedback to try and land a show. Well right at the end of the summer, I managed to get one, then another! 

Firstly the exciting opportunity to present Saturday afternoon's on Wire FM - part of the UTV group. A good few hours of airtime each week to have a bit of banter, tell some stories and play some music. Thrilled to bits with that - I feel like an excitable terrier.

And within a few days of the news of Wire - a show I'd applied for called The SRA Selector got back in touch to tell me I'd been successful with that!

Wee bit of background - The Selector is produced for the British Council - by top London production company Folded Wing - to showcase the best British new music across the world. The show broadcasts in 39 countries globally and reaches an audience of 4 million people! I've now got a chance - along with 5 other people - to broadcast the SRA Selector on my student radio station, which is Shock Radio.  A chance to chat about my favourite subject each week - new music. First show's on Wednesday. I'm excited.
I went down to a training day at Folded Wing, which was awesome: masterclasses and tutorials about the show and presenting new music radio. As if that wasn't good enough, we all went for a few beers in the evening and sampled the local ales. Managed to get a few people keen on Strava - a cycling app that maps your routes and shows how well you compared against other cyclists! And in return I have come away with an app called Untappd - a social network for beer drinkers!

The new chapter begins with lots of exciting projects on the blend, and many more to come!