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.
