McRaetheism

Tom At Tut's

2011-03-13T14:11:00.019Z

Maybe you were there.

If you were, you will know that these two gigs (November 25 & 26th 2004) were very special for me, and marked the start of my traditional two nights at King Tut's, in Glasgow, which if it's appropriate or possible, we always try and work into a tour schedule. Every band needs their Stone Pony.

There's something special about that venue. A back room in a pub basically, but the sort of venue where bands cut their performing teeth before going on to bigger, more celebrated venues. Well, some of the bands go on to bigger things.

I think I opened at Tut's for a band called It's Jo and Danny, sometime in 2000. Being an opening act is always interesting. You have a limited time to make an impact, to a room half-full of people who are all waiting for the main act to come on.

But at that first show, on what was my first real tour, some sort of connection was made. Not only was I starting to establish what I wanted to convey as a performer, but I was beginning to realise that I wanted more from the usual band/audience relationship.

I wanted what I'd experienced at the favourite shows I'd been to over the years. I wanted to feel, and to let others feel, that we are all part of something, some unique experience, available for only that night, in that venue.

You'll have to excuse the outbreak of luvviedom... I still think (even at my age) that live music, live entertainment of all varieties, produces the most vivid experiences.

King Tut's was also the home of then house engineer, Johnny Laing, who has been my stalwart front of house guy for over a decade. The venue itself is run brilliantly, by dedicated people, who make the experience of playing there as memorable as the audience usually does.

Venues like that need supporting. With a crumbling industry and with all of us recession-hit, I worry about the survival of these smaller venues. But I digress.

For years, since the technology became affordable - I've recorded as many live shows as possible - with the invaluable assistance of Johnny and later Olli Cunningham.

I do this for several reasons. We always listen back to recordings from shows on the bus, there's always something to improve, adapt or cull. Mainly these recordings are for my own archives. When your main job is to provide an ephemeral night's entertainment, it's nice to have a personal memento to listen back to. It also helps on the first day of rehearsals before a new tour, when we struggle to remember what the hell it is we're doing.

Sometimes, not often, but occasionally a recording works really well. If the computer doesn't crash, the sound desk doesn't crackle, the house P.A isn't terrible or the hard drive freeze, you can luck out and capture a recording that not only serves as a great reference, but also captures what it was like to actually be at the show. It also helps to have a genius like Johnny Laing driving the desk.

I've never been a huge fan of live albums. Too often they're just lesser recordings of the original album versions. But when they're good, they can be better, or a valuable insight into the continued life and evolution of songs. For me, when I want to listen to one of my heroes, Bruce Springsteen, often as not I'll listen to the live double album from the seventies.

Something about the sound of the crowd (ever so slightly bigger than my usual audience), the way Bruce introduces the songs or the performance of the songs themselves captures something completely fresh and different to his studio albums.

I used to scour the bootleg sections in record stores - remember them? - especially in Dublin - looking for recordings, band versions, solo versions, anything by my heroes that I could learn from or be inspired by.

So for me, when I listen through to my live recordings from over the years, I cross my fingers that the performance is technically usable. I don't mean the playing or singing - a gig's not a gig if my voice doesn't crack or I forget the words. I do it with the hope that maybe one day I'll find a good enough recording to represent a whole show. Or in this case, the best performances from across two nights at the same venue.

Finding these King Tut's recordings, therefore, was a genuine thrill. And something of a nostalgia trip, but there's nothing wrong with that from time-to-time.

Mixing them was a pretty demanding task, then deciding what to leave off! In the end I used most things, leaving off songs where the versions were similar enough to the live trio album from 2007. The heckles and chants and swearing, some of it from the audience, some of it from me, I left on. They were all part of the show, part of the atmosphere. I apologise if any of you are offended.

Actually I left it on because I always wanted to release an album with a "parental advisory" sticker on. Walmart was never going to stock it anyway!

But like I say... maybe you were there. If you were, thank you for playing your part. I came very close to calling it (and I refer to it in my house) as "Gi'us A Happy Song!"

And if you weren't there - this is the next best thing.

I hope you like it.

Tom

FULL TRACK LISTING:

You Only Disappear
Karaoke Soul
back at tut's
How The West Was Won
if you need a moment
End of the World News (Doe Me Up)
that was pretty good
Hummingbird Song
Sao Paulo Rain
Border Song
A&B Song
Human Remains
Silent Boulevard
Bloodless
My Vampire Heart
Boy with the Bubblegun
run to the hills
Language of Fools

The italicised tracks are some inbetween banter and heckling - as usual - but I've given these their own track numbers so you can skip them, or not put them on your ipod if you find them annoying. Personally, I think they're all part of the experience! Especially on headphones.

The picture of the album cover at the top should be okay for you to drag into itunes or to use on your MP3 player for artwork. If not email me at info@tommcrae.com - we'll see if we can help. The image was kindly provided by Alex Boyd, an immensely talented photographer (with great taste in music) more of his work can be found here: http://alexboyd.co.uk/

He's won awards and stuff!!! Thanks Alex.

So pour yourself a wee dram, sit back and imagine you're there.

One Foot in The Past, One Foot In The Future

2011-02-15T22:34:00.005Z

It definitely feels as if Spring is in the air, I know this because I'm getting desperate to leave the house, desperate to sing out loud again, after the usual winter spell of planning and house-keeping.

As well as the upcoming String Quartet Shows, I'm putting the finishing touches to another live album, this time some full band recordings from the legendary King Tuts shows in 2004 (you can listen to a wee medley here). It has been fun, and at times a little too nostalgic (with all that that word means) trawling through the archives. Listening to the recordings from seven years ago, perusing the old photographs - I wonder where the time went and how much has changed since those days.

I feel as if I permanently have one foot in the future and one foot in the past, only the present is a hazy uncertain landscape. So the best way to get into the moment is to play some live music - it's a terrible cliche but it really is the time I feel most alive. And I take huge comfort from that. As the world changes and we move away from the economic primacy of art in all its forms, it still is only live music, either watching or performing that has that immense power to move me.

Good to see that there's life in the old dog yet.

P.S See the clever substitution of umbrella for bow in the picture? We are marketing geniuses here.

The Streetlight Collection + Prospect Tapes

2010-09-29T19:49:00.049+01:00

Ever pulled a photo album from the shelf and looked in horror - fingers over your eyes - at the way you dressed in the '80s. Or if you're my age,'70s. Well, putting together this B-side and Rarities compilation has been like that. Has it really been ten years? Some of these tracks need a lot more than youth to excuse them, and unfortunately - being 30 when I released my first album - I don't really have that. I have never fully known how to present a coherent image to the outside world, and my music has always been about an experiment with taste, if not more. These B-sides illustrate that. And more.

I just wanted to do the best by the song, and more often than not that meant admitting defeat and letting the song disappear, to be recycled at some future date, rather than release a bad version. Especially a version dressed up in clothes that didn't fit. Some of my former record labels would literally have had me wearing a chicken suit if it would have meant more sales, but there was always a line somewhere I couldn't cross.

Putting together a collection like this, of songs that by their nature were deemed not A-side material (and good luck explaining this concept to your grand children) is slightly strange. Songs that fell through the gaps, or never made the grade, or songs I simply didn't love enough, or fight for hard enough, or more often - simply refused to let them be massaged into the mainstream by my various record labels.

Some of the songs make me smile now I've heard them again after a few years, and some of the leave me frankly bemused. Why did I write certain songs, why did I do them in a certain way, and why did I leave some of them off albums. The truth is all decisions are made in the best way at the time, hopefully for the right reasons, most of them artistic. Vague as that sounds.

Being signed to major labels does (or "did" for me) mean certain compromises, and I can literally hear a line being drawn in the sand by my shaky hand as I tried to mark out the territory I thought I was fighting for. I wanted to be a serious artist, but still one that could find a big enough audience without watering down the good stuff.

So many of these songs were recorded as part of album sessions, some I have tried several times without nailing them to my tastes, some are bedroom demos. Some I'm really proud of, some make me cringe. But I'd like to - and if you care to read - give a song by song paragraph or two of details I recall about the song, the recording, the reasons for my choices. So let's look at this in the spirit of "no song left behind". And to be fair, some are just the dumb kid at the back of the room, but they, too, need love.

Streetlight - 2000

This song was the first song I recorded totally live, and it changed the way I approach making music. I was in a studio, I can't even remember where, busy recording a radio version of Hidden Camera Show (one that never saw the light of day in this country, but bizarrely I heard driving along Sunset Boulevard a while back, so the label clearly ignored me and sent it out anyway). I was hating it, resenting as usual the pressure to turn a little butterfly of a song into a hulking great pterodactyl. It was the label's habit at the time to call up hugely successful(and often amazing) musicians to come and contribute to my amateurish musicianship. On the debut album there was a roll call of Nick Beggs (Kajagoogoo) Howard Jones, Dave Gregory (XTC) and others, who kindly gave of their time for less than their usual fees.

One such musician was Robbie McIntosh - although to call him merely a musician is to do him a disservice (Pretenders, Paul McCartney). The man is a genius and a gentleman. We had a spare hour, we set up a mic, sat down and with one run through, he played additional (all the good bits) guitar on this song. I'm sure I thought we'd polish it up and have another go, but there was no time. This is it. You can hear me smiling through it as his fingers dance over the frets. It was a song written after the debut album's release, I was working on my finger-picking, trying a lighter style of lyrical imagery, and venturing into "doo-doo" singalong territory. The label actually liked it, wanted it released as a double A-side (remember them?) and then wanted it re-recorded with drums etc. You have to laugh.

Black Heart Rodeo - 2002

So obviously we're not in chronological order here, because I wanted you to spiral through time in the way I do when I play a gig, or go on tour. The life I've chosen often seems less linear, and more a whirlwind of memories that present themselves as fresh experiences every day and every show. That's my excuse anyway. I also wanted to put some good ones up front.

BHR - as it is on the occasional set list - is another favourite of mine. I had just bought my first basic Pro-tools rig after the first album, and I was loving the freedom to record beyond the limitations of my old 4-track tape machine. I recorded all of this, and mixed it, apart from the cello part, which I effected and smeared in a way that I have done a lot. Oli rarely forgives me for mangling his craft, but I think I've always liked to twist the strands of things until they make a rope, with which I then strangle my hopes of chart success.

To my mind it's a lovely, mournful song, with some great additional sounds from Tony Marrison. We loved experimenting with found sounds, and I still carry all manner of recording devices about me at any one time. The sessions for Just Like Blood were a lot of fun, as I attempted to move away from the troubadour thing that I felt was growing old. "Let go, let go" is a refrain I repeat alot. Something I'm scared of doing, but it's the very release I look for through music. It's the only relatively healthy thing I've found that lets me not be me for a while.

A Thousand Suns - 2006

From the much-ignored, largely critically panned, love it or hate it King of Cards sessions came this song. I needed to make a record that could attempt to reach out to more people, I'd seen the way the music business was going, and truth is without some hits (one, for god's sake, JUST ONE!) it's now impossible to fund the touring and making of records to a level that would satisfy me (bla bla, stop whining and keep buggering on, McRae).

With that in mind I also wanted to enter the recording process in a spirit of joy, and make something that might act as a counterpoint to my more melancholy stuff. I was trying to channel Peter Gabriel, I wrote this before the book, and before Linkin Park. I also wanted a song with lots of clapping rhythms. My friend and personal percussion God Hossam Ramzy added some Egyptian hand percussion (he's played with Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, and me. All the greats). He also added additional strings recorded in Cairo for Karaoke Soul years before. But that's another story.

Out Of This - 2009

Same sessions as above, in Battery studios in London, and finished in a house on beach in Suffolk. I love this song. I don't know why I left it off the record, it might have been better for it. Maybe I felt it kind of lost the groove towards the end, as I tried to fit another lyrical section in. Who knows, all I know is I love the floatiness of the chorus. And it is a personal philosophy of mine, that out of everything you do, something will come. That's why I end up saying yes to most crazy ideas like The Hotel Cafe Tour, you just never know what's going to turn up.

Opposite Of Love - 2009

Sad piano song #4017. A one take, live recording in my old house in London. I like the idea of the opposite of love, and what it might be. I've come to the conclusion it's not hate, it's the absence of love. And as my therapist tells me, I have such abandonment issues that I can't help but see the death in even the best moments of life. Stupid shrink. (I've never seen a therapist, despite many requests from those who know me. I have a guitar. It's alot cheaper, and will never leave me). Lovely cello from Oli Kraus as always.

I Don't Dream - 2002

Originally called Vanilla And Green, but it sounded a little like a Dulux paint. A little gem I think. I don't remember much about the recording, again at home many years ago, the keyboard sound is the standard sine wave from the first sampler I had, but could never work. This is the only sound I could get out of it. So many songs with "memory" in. It's a good word to sing.

Precious Cargo

From the JLB sessions, in the Dairy studios in Brixton, London - produced by Ben Hillier. For time signature spotters it shifts 7/4 in the rocky bit. Stick that up your yoga mat, Sting! It was a song about a horrible news story, a guy had killed himself and his kids in a car. Too much for me to get my head round, so a song suggested itself. I'm uncomfortable going into too much detail about this stuff, I like keeping my fat opinions to myself in case it puts people off, in some things, anyway. This was also a very rare co-write with my virtual childhood friend, onetime rival, and most beautiful and talented musician, John Hogg.

The Only Thing I Know - 2001/4/5

What to say? This song was freighted with such baggage that it's a wonder I ever play it live - which I did for the first time supporting Paul Weller on a tour of Italy in 2001. It was a pop song that didn't want to be pop. But the label heard it and decreed it would be a single, from that moment on it was doomed. Taken from my hands and delivered to the committee that turns all race horses in to camels. I have sort of hated it ever since, but I keep trying to find a way in, a way to like it again. Which is often how I see performing, as a way of forgiving yourself all your mistakes which you made in the studio, when someone else was paying for it and watching the clock.

There's another version on The Prospect Tapes, which has a relaxed demo crack at it, and a version you may know from 2007's live trio album. Strange, some songs are like relationships that never quite clicked but you can't let go of. A case of "what if".

Home - 2006

A little song given away as an extra track by ITunes for the single release of Please, I think. I like the song, I was about to play it live on BBC Radio 4 once, when I bottled it and played something else instead. Sometimes that stuff happens. It's in my favourite guitar tuning (DADF#AD - if you care) and I do actually "count the years in songs", some years are good, some are a struggle, and if a month goes by when I have written something I like, it's possible I may kill you.

Hear Me Now - 2004

Hmmmm, one of those. My label at the time, Sony, made it plain that unless I wrote a radio song they wouldn't let me mix the album I'd been making in LA. I wrote this to get them to loosen the purse strings. They duly did, I mixed the album, accidentally leaving this song off the finished album - I didn't like it, it's a song for someone else. Just 'cause you can write a pop song doesn't mean you want to be the one to front it. On the day All Maps Welcome was released, I walked into HMV and found it already in the bargain bin for £1.99. Lesson learned. Sony withdrew all marketing, refused all tour support and a few months later I left the label. And so it goes.

Spite of Me - 2000

Interesting story, only for me probably. I recorded this song on my 4-track, slowed it down so I sounded like a blues singer from the 1940s, and it was dashed off as a piece of experimental fun for the debut album. The label made me do it again. Like this. I was aiming for spooky. I like the slowed down version.

Money Shot - 2000

I had a drum machine and I was gonna use it. I've always had a thing about trying to write from different directions, rather than melody, lyric blah blah. I liked the groove, I like mantra type songs, and of course, I like the title.

Soldier Song - 2000

Left off the debut - I didn't love it, but felt I was trying for something. In the recording session we tried a hurdy gurdy, which just might be the loudest acoustic instrument in the world. It's possible to have huge amounts of fun and yet achieve very little. On darker days it's almost my career motto.

Election Day - 2002

Written for Just Like Blood, but I felt the moment had passed to record it. A bit clever clever in the lyric department, but there's probably something in there I've recycled for other songs, which happens a lot. The sentiment probably got subsumed into Karaoke Soul, the world has probably already forgiven Tony Blair. I can't.

Give In - 2002

Again at The Dairy, Brixton. A spare half hour, an open mic - I hate to waste time, so I ran in and wrote and played this. "when the moment comes, give in" - sound advice for anyone, let alone a musician.

Killing Balloons - 2003

I met Simon Armitage on a radio show in 2003, after I'd used a line from one of his poems for the title of JLB. He sent me some words, I put them in a song, best I knew how. One of us is a genius, one of us is working with the best we've got, trying to get better every day. You decide.

Sad Song For The Left Hand Alone - 2002

I was noodling late night in my bedroom studio, coming down after an almost non-stop two year period of touring. It's no secret, at least in this house, that I go crazy when a tour ends. I'm only really happy on the move, it's the only chance I have of trying to outrun myself. Not a tune that was ever likely to trouble daytime radio.

Border Song (War Child) - 2002

I liked this song alot, I tried it once for the Just Like Blood sessions, from which this War Child benefit album version is culled, and once for All Maps Welcome. I think I prefer this version, it has a rougher feel to it. With Ben Hillier drumming, and me Oli and John Hogg crammed into a tiny room trying to act like we were in a BIG room. Something I'm still trying to do to this day.

The Prospect Tapes

This set of ten recordings is from my time in LA. I rented a little house in Los Feliz, Oli and Olli came to stay and we recorded these demos in our living room. Some of the songs went on to be re-recorded for what became All Maps Welcome, some of the songs got thrown into that great recycling bin in my mind, and some just drifted off into the ether.

From the real cicadas chirping away on our porch* at the start of You Will Rise, to the occasional passing truck in the distance, this is recording at its most spontaneous and unfussy. In many ways, I think it's some of the best recording I've done. Before the label started bossing the songs around, before anyone was present to tell us yes or no, it's just the three of us, playing for fun.

Some lyrics have changed, and some arrangements, and in doing so some things were gained and some things (and songs) lost. That's the nature of demos. I don't really do many demos these days, once I start recording a song, there's usually an element of that first recording that makes the final version, if not actually defining it, which is more and more the case these days.

Listen for instance to Jet Engine Lullaby, I'm clearly just making up the words at the very end (and running out of steam and breath), and we don't seem sure how to finish the song. And how The Only Thing I Know excited the label, but became a battle ground.

There's an excitement to a first recording, an uncertainty, a fragility because you haven't quite learned the song yet - that is often so much more powerful than a final studio version, especially one that satisfies the needs of the label.

Which is why I love these Prospect Tapes. For a couple of months or so I was joined in LA by my two best friends, and with no one watching over us, we made these recordings, with gear borrowed from our upstairs neighbour, Petey. It was a time of contrasts in my life, I was simultaneously as happy and hopeful as I've ever been, and yet broken-hearted and inconsolable. If such a state is possible, California was the state it was possible in.

I hope you enjoy listening to these recordings as much as I enjoyed making them, it's rare that I can say that and mean it.

* My A&R guy said that the cricket loop we'd added at the start was a bit over the top. I thought my A&R guy was a bit of a prick.

Super 8 clips from AOH Tour 2010

2010-09-12T22:10:00.000+01:00

Let Us Sit Upon The Floor And Tell Sad Stories Of The Kings

2010-09-07T09:16:00.002+01:00

Richard christened us The Catshit Kings. Misheard lyrics can be hilarious, not so much in your own song. It is, without doubt, a terrible name. You dream of a band name to rank alongside Crazy Horse, The Attractions, The Bad Seeds... you even make a note of a few in your little black book for possible future use, and then some bass playing comedian ridicules one of your songs and suddenly you're stuck with something truly awful. But it made us laugh, and makes performing that song doubly hard, knowing that behind my back they're all sniggering.

But that's what being in a band is all about. Finding a gang, a bunch of friends who support each other in every way, but also know how to cut each other down to size when necessary. A band is a hard thing for a singer-songwriter to find, let alone fund, and I’ve been lucky through the years, persuading some great people to play with me.

Some stay, some leave, some come back. Touring with me is a bit like a gap year, or voluntary service overseas – the riches may be little but the rewards are great. So here’s to you Laura, Clive, Tony, John, Ian, Ash, Gary, Richard, Dave, Brian, and of course, my brothers-in-alms, Olli and Oli. And Johnny, the best sound man in the known universe, and several parallel ones. I couldn’t have wanted for better friends.

Now the year draws to a close, the money is spent, and after many sell-out shows - often with bigger audiences than ever - it’s time to pack the band back into the box and bid farewell. We gave of our best, every night. We meant it, every night. As The Boss says "no one pays to hear how good you were last night". And that’s why he’s The Boss.

So these October dates will be our last hurrah, our last voyage, our valedictory. Everyone knows that life is different for musicians these days, but it’s changing for all of us. Times are hard for everyone and life is what it is – no violins, no wailing – adopt, adapt, survive. The world spins, things change. Noone's job or chosen career is safe. We are all in the same boat.

And what a boat it has been. Over the years it’s gone from tall ship to barge, from rowing boat to canoe. Now it's time to finally face facts and learn to swim. There will be more adventures, different guises, fewer extended boating metaphors - and fresh projects to get excited about, not least a solo tour ... and before too long the second half of the album... but for the time being it's don the speedos, pull down the goggles and without sight of land or horizon, just swim.

So a big thank you to all of you who came to the shows earlier this year, and to the festivals, and to all of you who have been coming to the gigs for a decade. And to those of you who helped out, who trimmed the sails, pumped the bilges and joined me in the search for land. I hope it was all worth it. I’ve loved every second.

Don't miss this last chance to see us as a band. We're going to send the old girl down to the depths in style.

In the days to come, keep an eye out for me in the rising waters. That dot in the distance, that’s me. I’m not drowning, I’m waving.

RIP The Catshit Kings.

Long live The Catshit Kings.

Tom

PS And for any of you choking back the tears, just picture me in Speedos.

PPS... extra-curricular ramblings here

My Press Release for the new single

2010-08-25T18:29:00.004+01:00

I wrote this press release in the spirit of Morgan Freeman's character in The Shawshank Redemption - you know, where he's up for parole for the umpteenth time....

Press Release:

Tom McRae, new single “Still Love You” (Cooking Vinyl) October < insert date >

“Still Love You” is the second single taken from Tom McRae’s critically acclaimed fifth album “Alphabet of Hurricanes” on Cooking Vinyl.

The Guardian gave the album four stars saying this: “ The Alphabet of Hurricanes reinforces his status as one of Britain's better songwriters.”

The poet Simon Armitage, said of Tom: “Tom McRae is a smart guy…I’m talking about the records he makes, and their unapologetic intelligence in a world where popular music has pawned its soul to the television schedules and the light entertainment industry.”

Mercury and Brit nominated McRae has gained a fantastic reputation for powerful live shows, especially following his recent sold out tour of Europe.

…Wait, I can’t be bothered to keep up the pretence. I’ve been asked to write this press release ‘cause times are hard in the business right now and we’re all trying to help out. So here I am, trying to find things to say about myself that are in anyway interesting. Now I know how you must feel. There really isn’t much is there? I wish there was, my life would be easier. But I write songs, I record them, then I tour them.

When I do release records, most people say they like them, but not enough to write about them or play them on radio. And to be honest, I don’t expect that to change. Not because I don’t think I’m any good, it’s just like I said, there’s nothing interesting to say about me.

Not wishing to be rude, but rather than me cobbling together some guff about my unique blend of bla bla high voice and bla bla melancholic bla bla... there's always Google. You can find most things about me there. Good and bad.

Don’t get me wrong, my life is great. I’ve had a pretty lucky ten years. My fans keep coming, I play good venues in great cities all round the world. I feel I get better at what I do each year, and my life is very rewarding. And that doesn’t make for a very special story does it? Although it does make for a very special life.

That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So go ahead and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.

(I didn't include this bit... but I wanted to. I really wanted to.)

All the best,
Tom McRae

To support the release of the new single I’m doing a short tour of some European Cities.

October 11th Brussels AB
October 12th Paris La Cigale
October 14th London Shepherds Bush Empire
October 15th Newcastle Sage
October 16th Glasgow Oran Mor
October 17th Edinburgh Liquid Rooms
October 21st Bergen, Norway
October 22nd Haugesund, Norway
October 23rd Olso, Norway

PS I'll get round to properly compiling some thoughts, but I'm trying to write a book about my life in the music business, as well as work on the album and organise October's tour, and I'm a terrible multi-tasker.

It’s The Little Things

2010-03-05T12:53:00.002Z

It’s the little things:

Little things on tour are useful. Years ago it was a case full of cds to listen to, now it’s a video ipod, with all my entertainment needs in a tiny box. A way to stay sane, have room on the bus, and to grab a piece of calm and isolation, even when surrounded by others.

A travel toothpaste, a travel shower gel - stocking fillers for the world’s most practical (and dullest) Christmas stocking. All things that make being in perpetual motion more containable. We don’t even have oranges on the bus, just tangerines. It all has to be small.

Little bunks, enough space to lie down with a (small) paperback on your chest. A little light beside you, a little window to look through as the little towns pass in the night. Little luxuries.

Small is good. The same might be said for the shows. I can sense a little momentum here now, a steadily growing audience. Loyalty and your own word-of-mouth campaigns seeing the room slowly fill up – little by little. But we can still see each other, still hear the heckles, still sing to the back of the room. A little love can go a long way.

Ten years down the line, and many of you are still here – defiantly so. Still down at the front, still hiding in the shadows at the back. Bringing your friends, your children, your parents. Still bringing to the shows the same passion and energy that I hope we, as a band, bring. Still coming with expectation, with hope. Still part of this communication that is live music.

A little group of friends, playing little rooms, enjoying a little evening’s entertainment, sharing little exchanges, hopefully making a little difference to all our lives.

And that is no small thing.

Thank you.

Free Download of New Song

2010-01-14T01:42:00.002Z

Hello all - as of 10am this morning, Thursday, you'll be able to download a free song from my new album "The Alphabet of Hurricanes" here: http://www.alphabetofhurricanes.com/

Also there's a video clip here: http://www.muzu.tv/tommcrae?country=fr

I might confess to being ever so slightly excited about giving you a sneak preview of one of my favourite tracks from the album.... but I must maintain my cynical exterior if only for continuity purposes. But I really like the song, hope you do too.

Alphabet of Hurricanes

2010-01-05T11:06:00.003Z

After your wise, funny, critical, thoughtful and occasionally absurd advice for my press release, I thought I'd share with you what poet Simon Armitage wrote about the new record.

I know it's a bit unfair, especially as you haven't heard the album yet, although there is a free download in the offing! But hopefully you'll be as pleased as I was, as Simon is a hero of mine. It also gave me something to show my family, who still think I work at a donkey sanctuary or something, and are of the opinion that at 40 I should have a real job by now. I especially agree with the opening line - I think he captured me perfectly and with such economy.

Alphabet of Hurricanes

Tom McRae is a smart guy. I’m not just talking about the natty suit-jacket and waistcoat he’s wearing on the cover of his new album The Alphabet of Hurricanes, or the neat way he seems to be goading the dark skies by holding a knackered red brolly, like a storm-battered poppy, to the approaching tempest. I’m talking about the records he makes, and their unapologetic intelligence in a world where popular music has pawned its soul to the television schedules and the light entertainment industry. For four albums and the best part of a decade McRae has followed his own star, gone his own way, been true to those convictions laid down at the very beginning and loyal to his own distinctive brand of song-writing. He believes in language, not just words, and he trusts the silences that sometimes appear in songs – those gaps which open up between verses or even between notes, into which our imaginations pour. Yes there are touchstones: Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Dylan, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Vic Chestnutt, but they’re stepping off points rather than destinations, and what McRae shares with them is the idea of song as an art form. In fact craft might be a more appropriate word as far as McRae is concerned: the song as a kind of craft in which we might float or sail, and the craft required to construct such a vessel.
And now there’s album number five. But what is The Alphabet of Hurricanes? Well, it’s a shipping-forecast of memory, a lexicon of the soul’s meteorology, a Rosetta Stone in the shape of a heart. From Still Love You with its scratchy ukulele and thinned-out voice, like a song through a pinhole-camera, if you can imagine how that would sound. To A is For… with it’s snake-charming, side-winding, fist-strangled clarinets. To Won’t Lie which comes into town under a sombrero on a slow brown donkey with tumbleweed at its heels, and takes a seat next to the band at the back of the saloon, and starts doing its thing until everyone in the bar stops fighting and drinking and starts listening and singing and waltzing. To Summer of John Wayne with its dark piano and minor chords, which has the feel of a slowly resolving black and white photograph on a mantelpiece or an old cine film with the end of the reel ticking away. To the gospel roundelay of Told My Troubles To The River. To the dusk-lit American Spirit, a song sung from the edge of the known world as the sun halves itself in the ocean and McRae’s shipwrecked voice breaks the surface of the water. To the double-tracked Please, which evolves from a toe-tap to a knees-up to a full-blooded stomp and a plea for release, the singer telling us that he doesn’t care anymore when we know damn well that he does. To Out Of The Walls where a songs sits down at the piano while everyone else is asleep and makes its midnight confession, and madness is at the door, and moonlight is at the window, and the song goes on reverberating through the wires and the keys long after the lid has been closed and the light’s gone out and the room stands empty. To the finger-clicking, hand-clapping Me and Stetson which gets us back on our feet again, a guitar line like a mosquito buzzing around in the background, a horn section to blow your hat off, the voice jumping about in a locked trunk with a megaphone and a dictionary before the ambulance arrives. To Best Winter, simple, beautiful, spare, terse, honest, intimate, a public declaration of private matters, a particular examination of universal concerns, handing on to the unravelling storyline of Fifteen Miles Downriver which begins with the unreliable clasp of snakeskin bracelet and ends mid-ocean, middle of nowhere, back of beyond, happy to drift but with one eye on the possibility of land, plotting a course with one of the best lyrics I’ve heard in years.
These are ghost songs by one of our best living song-writers. The world needs more Tom McRae. And, as luck would have it, here it is.

Simon Armitage

HELP!

2009-11-24T11:11:00.010Z

So - having signed to ace label, Cooking Vinyl... it's time to play the self-promotion game and honour their commitment to me... and my own commitment to my music. And yes, even at 40 I'm still ambitious - although frankly once you've been on Buzzcocks what's left?

And yet, and yet...I'm uncomfortable. The British music press has the attention span of a mayfly whose ritalin has just run out, and as it can't or won't write about someone for their music alone - I find myself struggling for suggestions as to how to fool journalists into actually giving me some press coverage.

How this normally works - and look away now if you're sensitive - is that you buy advertising space in a magazine or newspaper. The amount of ad space you buy corresponds to how much editorial they print (or if your song goes on the covermount cd). That's how the world works, you bribe people. But we can't afford that.

Ever wondered why album of the month is always the one with the biggest ad campaign? Ever wondered why film magazines tend to give even appalling films decent reviews? Turn the page and see whose advertising pays the wages of everyone in the building.

So for those of you who thought Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin or that the Pope is God's appointed representative on earth, sorry to disappoint you. For the rest of you, sorry for teaching you all to suck eggs. It's the way the world is, best not to complain but to get down in the trenches and try and come up with something, if it's all a stupid game, why not have fun playing it?

So, what I need - and I'm serious (even though your replies don't have to be)are suggestions for what I should put in my press release. The world's greatest living poet (Simon Armitage - not up for debate) has kindly agreed to write my potted biography, but in the absence of a drug habit (or fake one, see picture below) or dead super model in my closet - I can't think of an angle.

(one of these guys may have had a coke habit, but it sure ain't the guy in the middle)

I'm sorry Keane fans. Really. Sorry.

Apologies if I sound a trifle jaded, but this tired old dance of trying to get some press attention makes me irritable. I know just making music isn't enough, I know Leona Lewis is far, far prettier, I know Jedward are funny, I know music is slipping in its cultural significance now it's free - but surely, surely, there must be something to write about someone like me?

So, help me out - this is what I have so far.

40-yr-old singer-songwriter releases fifth album, quite good live, just passed driving test.

Jail Guitar Doors

2009-11-01T11:51:00.004Z

Occasionally among the countless gigs, long journeys, delayed flights and repetitive days of bitter disappointment and frustration, there are exceptional moments which shine like gold in the river mud. Days which take you out of yourself, remind you of your good fortune and help you to treasure the things that are so often taken for granted. There isn't going to be the usual bathos or failed witticism at this point, just a rare instance of sincerity.

A few weeks ago I was invited to play a few songs for some inmates at a Young Offenders Institute in Wetherby, Yorkshire (alright, insert your captive audience gags here if you must but let's move on swiftly) as part of the Jail Guitar Doors scheme, by which prisoners and young offenders are given access to guitars, as a means of self-expression, self-respect and rehabilitation. You can read up on the scheme by clicking the link, it was set up by one of my heroes, Billy Bragg, to honour the memory of one of his, Joe Strummer.

When you're asked to do something like that, it doesn't take a second to say yes and how soon? Music means more than the X Factor and its evil twins (I mean similar shows, not the current Frankenstein's monster that is Jedward), and it has a much more vibrant place in life than the clogged I-pod or bored Guitar Hero would currently suggest.

Music is at it's most visceral and raw when it's played by people solely for their own amusement, as they come to grips with learning an instrument, or jamming alongside other people for the first time. So seeing these teenagers play their own songs, after they'd politely sat through mine and even performed their own version of How The West Was Won, (complete with additional middle 8 rap) - is easily one of the most extraordinary experiences in my life to date. It's not a good look, by the way, for a 40 yr old to be choking back the tears listening to his own song performed by a bunch of teenagers in the recreation area of a Yorkshire prison, so that's something else I've learned.

I played a few songs, we talked about songwriting, they played some recordings they'd made, questions were asked from both sides, and I was given a tour of the prison by my amazing hosts. More of them later. And for any Daily Mail readers who may have strayed here, it is a prison. The cells are small, the doors are locked and there are bars on the window. It's not a holiday camp funded by the tax payer. It exists for a reason, but Wetherby also wants to give these kids (for kids they are) a chance at something more. Music may not be the most practical of careers these days, but anything that makes you more self-aware and self-confident informs every other aspect of your life, as well as having the more immediate rewards of having made something from nothing, carved sound from silence.

Whatever it has become for me over the years, this was reaffirmation of what music is in it's most basic form. It's the perfect way to express the inexpressible. And if you think that sounds like the worst solecism, you have clearly never sung at the top of your voice or tried to wring a tune out of an instrument by sheer force of will.

I can only tell you what I got from the experience, I'm not about to speak on behalf of the inmates. I hope they got something from it. They're inside for many reasons, none of them my business, and whatever solace can be gained from playing guitar, or perspective achieved from writing a song, I hope it's theirs for the taking. But they gave me something, and they re-ignited something inside me, a pure passion just for playing, just for hearing the notes, just for feeling the strings under your fingers - no other outcome attached, no expectation, and no reward other than sound.

Thanks then to Stephen Bielby and the staff who took great care of me, and whose dedication has meant that music classes are now an every day part of life at the prison. It's people like this that you rarely read about in the press, we only get the horror stories, not the news of good people, doing good things every day to improve the lives of others. And giving young offenders a chance at something more than a life of crime may not be the most glamorous profession, but that day, with those lads felt like the most rock and roll thing I've ever done.

P.S And those of you who came to the show in Sheffield the other day, your ticket money contributed to buying 6 more guitars for the scheme. So thank you.

Ask Tom # 5049

2009-09-07T13:26:00.005+01:00

Get rid of the beard..you looked horrible at Living Room and the wedding pictures while you can have such a beautiful face with great hair.. Fine if you're happy with it but don't blame the world if your new album doesn't do anything, it isn't only about the songs/voice you know..

Amelie

Thank you for comments, Amelie - It's always nice to return home after a couple of gigs to read a review or two. Have you ever seen the Gary Larson cartoon I reproduce here illegally (what the hell, we're all freetards now)? It reveals an insight into the ego of the artist as well as the mind of a dog - two not dissimilar concepts.

All my eyes saw when I read your commment, therefore, was "I have such a beautiful face with great hair". Thank you. It means a lot. To a man of my age.

P.S. I did actually read a bit further, and I also thank you for the advice concerning the future marketing of my music - however, I have long-since stopped blaming the world for many things, let alone the failure of my music to reach a huge audience. One day, Amelie, one day... it is only a matter of time.

I have come to quite like the world, actually, the bits of it I choose to look at anyway. Which includes you, Amelie. You came to my shows, and took the trouble to write me a note and search out pictures of me at a wedding on the internet (the pictures were on the internet - not the wedding, that would be plain weird)... and your note also kindly included grooming tips. This shows you care deeply, for which I really am grateful, and possibly - somewhat surprisingly - I really do like you a lot. Whoever you are.

I shall endeavour in many ways to never let you down, Amelie...especially in my music and my live performance.... although I may just keep the facial hair to annoy you a wee bit longer. Not paying too much attention to others is a prerequisite of survival in my job, and possibly yours too. As the Zen Master said to the novice - "it is always sensible to ignore advice, even this."

Yours

Tom

Ask Tom # 5031

2009-07-21T12:56:00.040+01:00

Straight to the point - (and we don't want to seem shallow and superficial), but what the heck is happening with the barnet? Got it cut yet?

shazzadean

Good grief, you make 5 albums, struggle to take your music to the masses, live the dedicated life of the true artist, and all they want to know about is your hair. This is but one of the many hair related questions submitted over the years.

But the question has been asked, and rather than shirk the challenge of an in depth answer, I have instead decided to take you on a journey through the styles - if such they can be called - that I have sported through the years.

#1 Not many options available to me at this point, although what I lacked in tonsorial flare I easily made up for with a frankly awesome choice of shorts. Notice if you will the slightly sour face, the sucking on a lemon expression, due mainly to the fact I'm sucking on a lemon. Either that or there has been a catastrophic failure of early '70s nappy technology.

#2 Skipping forward a few years, I am clearly already working on the slightly longer look for the more outré gentleman, although still struggling with the exact angle at which to cut the fringe for maximum dork factor. I can only imagine my mother was wielding the scissors. See how I was working the cherubic look, set off magnificently by my maroon blouse. Quite the heartbreaker.

#3 A minor lapse in sartorial judgement led to a period of self-disgust, as evinced by the McRae tartan tie and red tank top. There was only one way to truly carry off this look, and that was by grabbing the nearest bowl and trimming round it. With that hair and those teeth, no one even remembers the clothes.

#4 The teenage years can be awkward for anyone, but I have made a bold statement with spiky blond hair contrasting splendidly with my black digital watch. The languid posture clearly showing a maturing confidence, combined with an almost fatal inability to stand up in those jeans.

#5 Notice in this next picture of one of my earlier bands, how I am already beginning to commit to the idea of "hair as vital comedy tool". I like to think I was breaking new ground in this area, although if this photo is anything to go by, one or two of the others may have been ahead of me. The all-white look was also years ahead of its time, as was the use of cane furniture as a serious prop. Today's bands could learn a thing or two from this picture. Mainly what not to do at any cost.

Yes, isn't the guy top left rather good looking. Of course, that's why he had to go. There will be more of him on my upcoming autoblography, a section on the new, lovingly homemade site we are close to getting on line.

#6 It was nothing short of a tragedy then, having invested much time and effort into researching the most ridiculous hair cuts over the years, when my first label began to insist on new strategies for the barnet. They wanted it longer, shorter, blonder, darker... like all record labels they didn't know what they wanted, they just knew it wasn't what they had. So in typical rebellious fashion, I hacked it all off and this was the result. Like Samson before me, losing my hair meant losing my strength, and all the effort of looking cool has clearly exhausted me and I have fallen asleep. Either that or someone has made me listen to Lily Allen and completely sapped my will to live.

#7 And now, back to the present day, as the hair turns a majestic shade of grey, if only in the sparse beard, and we see the return of the slightly confused, indeterminate hair length, that hints at my dogged resistance to fashion, and my preference for the timeless look of the devil-may-care, too lazy to go to the hairdresser, older gent still carving out a career in the youth obsessed world of music. It is, I'm sure you agree, a look that I have at least made my own. Although apparently, as always, I am starting to subtly influence the next generation. Poor fools.

Five's Alive

2009-07-05T12:53:00.003+01:00

Finally, it is done. Album #5 is officially finished. Making a record is a bit like baking a cake (no, it isn't in any way remotely like baking a cake, unless your cake cost you thousands of pounds to make, isn't appreciated by anyone - even close relatives - and is eventually given away slightly stale at jumble sales) but bear with me, I've started this analogy so I'm going to finish it.

Once you have spent time gathering the ingredients; a pound of finely sifted experience; a few drops of bitter disappointment; the zest of renewed self-belief; and some sultanas... the album baking process unfolds slowly over time, changing slightly with each added ingredient, until finally, with your album starting to resemble the finished product, it is sent for the final mastering process.

At any stage something could go wrong, you could balls up the recording, the mixing, the track order (who apart from me actually listens to albums in order these days?) and finally the mastering. Assuming that you've actually started with half decent songs in the first place.

It is a stressful time. Will the cake rise? Are the ingredients better than the whole, will it come back from the bakery with "happy birthday, Tim" written in pink icing? Will the analogy you've embarked upon ever make sense?

But after many months (years when you include the writing period) your album/cake is finally finished, you can sit and stare at it while it cools on the shelf, hoping that maybe this is the cake the public have been waiting for. The one that will change the course of history, the one that will have cookery writers and celebrity chefs knocking down your door for an interview, or at least enable you to take the cake on the road, slicing it up night after night for the delectation of cake lovers everywhere.

It is also a time when your sanity is stretched thin, and those close to you worry that you are beginning to confuse making records with baking cakes. Apparently it can happen.

Fortunately for me then, that there is no time to dwell on this, as album part 2 requires attention, and the songs that were left off part one find a home on the sequel, and the process begins all over again. It's already been a good summer (bearing in mind I hate summer and all that goes with it, give me a good winter any time), I have a tour to look forward to, the occasional fishing trip, and some gigs to see.

It is vital at this point to start listening to music again, without it being a technical exercise. To enjoy the cake as it were, without tasting the baking powder and suet. ( I don't really make cakes, but those sound plausible ingredients). So if anyone has any recommendations new or old, I would appreciate it. I watched Glastonbury and thought it was the best line up ever. Of course, I would like to have played, I have fond memories of my time on the other stage, back in 1948, shortly after the war, when times were hard but we were happy. Much like today. Except for the happy bit.

So, I hope you're having a good summer, at some point I'll start divulging things about the new record (and let's face it, 45 seconds after we've sent it to the first journalist it'll be online somewhere) and then we can once more debate the quality of the cake, how it compares to other cakes I've made, and does the world really need any more of my cakes. That sort of thing.

My current musical recommendations are: Kevin Devine, Brother's Blood. Not just 'cos he's a mate but it's really great songwriting. And anything by Leadbelly, especially Laura. My favourite track of the last year.

I'm reading lots of political memoirs, readying myself for the inevitable Tory victory that will send me deeper into middle-aged depression, and I particularly recommend Chris Mullin "A View From The Foothills".

I'm still continually watching the "West Wing" on loop, as nothing has ever bettered this show - despite what journalists tell us. Yes "The Wire" is good, but you know, not that good.

Oh, and I'm working on a song that may require your help at the shows. I'll keep you posted. Right, I'm off to watch Federer dispatch Roddick in 3 sets. Tennis is almost like sport. Enjoy your Sunday.

P.S Speaking of Wimbledon, I've just remembered that my actual 5th birthday cake was in the shape of Great Uncle Bulgaria from the Wombles. Daddy had just come back from the Crimea and what with the South Sea Bubble bursting, we had to make do with...... ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Brian Wright

2009-06-14T13:25:00.004+01:00

As I sit in the west wing of McRae Towers, the gentle lilt of birdsong disturbed only by the occasional gunfire of a paedophile-chasing mob, and the ear-splitting squeals of a pitbull tearing the face off a toddler, I’m driven to wonder how we let the poverty gap get so wide under a supposedly Labour government, and how it is I’m supposed to make it to the off-licence for my breakfast binge drinking session without being mugged by a knife-wielding eight-year-old. Girl.

But then I put down the newspaper and realise that as we age, the gap that widens with even greater speed than the poverty gap, is the perception gap between the world we live in and the world the media tell us we live in.

As a trainee journalist (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) I remember snidely laughing (I majored in it) at a BBC newsreader who had dared to suggest that there should be more positive stories in the news, maybe about cats and that sort of thing. Well, now I see his point.

In a world apparently gone to shit, with all evidence of justice about as rare as reasoned argument from a Christian, it’s time we had some good news. In a world without hope it is truly the visionary who stands up and says “Enough is Enough”. For goodness sake people, I’ve had songs on Holby City and Hollyoaks all in the same week. Do you not now see that literally anything…ANYTHING is possible?

It is in that gospel spirit of good news (is that tautology?) that I would like to take this opportunity to formally announce that the support for this tour will be provided by the amazing Brian Wright. After much negotiation, a substantial transfer fee rising into the low one figures, I have finally found my Mr Wright.

Thank you to all of you who offered your services - and keep on asking because in this day and age we all have to shout a bit to be heard – but for now the slot is filled.

Many of you will remember Brian from the Hotel Café shows, or know him in his own right as a song-writer extraordinaire, or perhaps just as the guy with the beard. Whether you know him or are yet to get acquainted, be assured his presence on the tour will make this extra special.

He has also graciously agreed to play in my band, which will be the biggest band I have toured with to date. It is going to be a great tour.

Tickets are selling fast for the London Scala show by the way, so to avoid disappointment and subsequent unseemly rioting (just look what happened in Iran when they found out I’d come second in the finale of Tehran’s Got Talent) be sure to get yours soon.

Find out more about Brian Wright here:
http://www.myspace.com/thewacotragedies

The fishing season starts at midnight on Monday. I’m just saying. You know, if you cared. Those of you looking for style tips, my clothing range and perfume is coming soon.
Let the current crop of singer-songwriters worry about being cool and rock and roll. I can’t stand up without grunting these days.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

2009-06-02T18:28:00.008+01:00

Ahem.

Hello.

Anybody there?

I went away for a while.

But now I'm back.

Like the eponymous hero of Superman 2 I traded my powers to be able to love like a human, and for a while I forgot about the affairs of the world and crime fighting.... and stuff. Although I kept wearing my pants on the outside... (that's underpants for you Americans).

But I see that without me the world has taken a turn to negative town, with democracy itself in peril. Honestly, you take your eyes off the baby for a second and it's got the cat by the tail and it's dangling it out the broken window over a flaming tar pit crawling with rabid crocodile and flying pirhanas - or other toddler/democracy/hydrophobic/winged fish/ reptile-related metaphors you may have of your own that make more sense.

I apologise. I'm tired. I've been writing and recording this album for three years, it is intended as an album in two parts. A volume One and a Volume Two. Not a double album you understand. That's something altogether different. And expensive.

It has taken quite a while to finish part one. I wanted to take some time away from the road to concentrate on writing and recording - to prove some things to myself, and to prove that I could sit still for more than a week.

But I am bored of sitting still. It will soon be time to go back to the Fortress of Solitude and get some advice from a fat, dead, Marlon Brando (there's an 0845 number for those of you who can't make the trip) and to once more take to the skies in my dashing cape. And pants.

I seriously have no idea what I'm saying now. But you get the gist.

Album. Part one. Finished. Release date to be confirmed, but I'm expecting September, just before the tour, so you have a long hot summer to enjoy yourselves before I drag you kicking and screaming into my tempestuous universe.

We'll be getting the website into shape soon, along with all the other preparations for the release of the record - if I say it out loud enough times it must surely come to pass.

The musical landscape has altered dramatically over the last few years, but change is good. It must be embraced, wined and dined and danced with gently to flickering candle light, for longing for the old days and the old ways is the path of the dead man. Although to be fair we did dress better in earlier times. Skinny jeans? People, people.... what are we thinking?

In short, who the hell knows how any of this goes any more?

These are dark, dangerous, times, with doubtless many more storms ahead. But we will face them together, although I may be slightly behind you and to one side... I'm at an age where the wind fair whips through me.

Not that sort of wind.

Finally then, let us resort to art - the one true religion - for our philosophical, moral and spiritual guidance when all else fails. You may even like to take a moment and go outside and shout the following at the night sky, or traffic wardens. If you listen carefully you might just hear others doing the same, raising our voices in united defiance.

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!"

Yep, do that and more.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes... but I've got a big umbrella and I'm more than happy to share.

No Opinion Fridays

2009-03-26T10:30:00.006Z

It begins how it always begins, and it always ends the same way. In tears. Either mine or the people around me.

How it begins is this: I read the news, or leave the house (rarely), or switch on the television or radio, or even sometimes just flick out my tongue snake-like… and the complex taste of imminent disaster is at once revealed to me, like the odour of a two day old corpse.

What this taste forewarns, is that slowly, surely, and tragically ineluctably, AN OPINION is forming in my brain.

Like a shadow creeping across the face of the sun, it is the harbinger of doom. Or at least a heated argument at breakfast.

Seemingly impotent in the face of the all-consuming OPINION, I feel compelled to share it with anyone who will listen (or lacks the motor skills to leave the vicinity).

For instance this morning, upon hearing the pronouncement by the Grand Wizard of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that God would not intervene to save the planet from global warming, I felt an OPINION forcing it’s way towards my mouth.

However, now that I’m 40 and affecting an air of wisdom - conferred merely by age rather than actual experience – I confronted this OPINION and by a force of will so extreme that it made my eye sockets fill with blood, I stopped this OPINION dead in its tracks.

Having achieved this minor victory, I have decided to employ this tactic more often. Not every day, maybe just one day a month. Like dress casual days, or Hawaiian shirt Fridays (don’t ask, it was a long tour), I am about to embark upon an experiment.

On the last Friday of the month, I will express no OPINION on anything whatsoever. This may make me appear ill-informed, or apathetic, but it should go someway to restoring my self-image as a calm, rational human, rather than the vitriol-spouting demagogue I suspect I am deep down.

I urge you to try it. When you read something about the government consulting you over the advertising of condoms but not bothering to ask whether we should go to war or not, or torture people or not, or shore up the banking system or not… instead of rising to the bait, rise instead to the challenge.

Say nothing. Think nothing. Turn the page quickly, turn off the radio, switch to the weather channel. Express not the merest hint of outrage.

Do you think the world really needs another OPINION? No, the world now has a surfeit of opinions, roughly to the tune of 7 billion. Like my vote, my opinion doesn’t matter.

Give it a go. It will if nothing else make you seem enigmatic for about an hour. As if you have more important things going on than worrying about a celebrity wedding, or… I don’t know… a war or famine or something.

I for one feel much better about NOT having actually expressed the opinion that Rowan Williams is clearly a buffoon. I can let slip a self-satisfied sigh that I DIDN'T say that on past evidence the number of God’s interventions to save anything on this fucking planet look pretty fucking thin on the ground.

I’m proud that I DIDN'T shout at the top of my voice from the campus bell tower (high powered rifle by my side) that if God didn’t intervene to stop wars, famines, natural disasters, school buses crashing, or good people dying - whilst simultaneously ensuring that bad people suffer - at any other fucking time in fucking history, then he as sure as hell isn’t going to fucking start now, you fucking fuckwit of a sky fairy-believing retard.

Hold the front fucking page, "God to do nothing in face of catastrophe". Moron.

No, I’m glad I didn’t say that. It would make me seem unhinged.

Good luck with your own “No Opinion Friday” or whichever day you choose.

Be warned, however, that on the morning of the following day, you will find yourself deluged by OPINIONS of all sorts, that are desperate to be heard.

Thank Tim Berners-Lee then, that we have the internet. The forum for all unhinged people like us through which to share our lighter, happier sides.

I really, really need to get out more. Or less. One of the two.

Next week: Tom goes to a kitten sanctuary (and takes a course in anger management).

The week after that: he discusses how to write complete sentences (without the use of brackets).

Life Begins...

2009-03-18T23:43:00.003Z

So, life begins today allegedly. We used to have a running joke in my band that I was different ages in different countries, depending on which press release the journalist was reading, or which record company was trying to persuade the world I was younger than my birth certificate stated.

Age was never an issue for me, and if I'm supposed to feel something momentous then I don't - I'm just happy as always to be here. When I say happy, I mean happy to be alive. What you take for granted when you're twenty you cling to at twice that age.

I've always subscribed to the view that energy and creativity are ageless, you just have to swim against the tides of fashion as you age, but that's familiar water to me. I'm pisces after all, I may not always be in the swim, but I'm always swimming, often with all my strength.

The last ten years have been an adventure, but so were the ten years before that and the two decades before them. Stick around long, enough good things happen. Bad too I guess, and I am luckier than many. I have seen things I never dreamed, and travelled the world, with the best of people, doing the thing I love more than anything. It has been a privilege, and one that I acknowledge every day, whilst working as hard as I can. And fishing sometimes, obviously.

Some songs are better than others, some albums hit the target, others fly wide, some gigs... well, you know what, all the gigs are great. At least from my point of view. I get to face the wrong way in a crowd and have my voice heard above all the others. Not a week goes by when I don't dream I'm on stage, just to be able to sing at the top of my lungs. When I take time away from the road a little bit of me loses it's shine. But it always comes back when I need it.

Forty is traditionally the age of contemplation, of assessing where we are. Mid life. Crisis and all. But my crises occur on a weekly basis, so whatever this life has got to offer in the next ten years, I hope to be here to at least witness it.

I wrote a verse to a song called "I ain't scared of lightning" a few years ago, which I sometimes sing live, it goes "I ain't scared of lightning, I'm just looking for the thrill, so come on God, give me your best shot, I swear that I'll stand still". Well, I lied. I won't stand still, I am way to restless for that.

So, no calming down - let's face it I was never going to make the Rock and Roll hall of fame - but also no surrender. I'm hard at work on what I think is the best record yet. I'm duty bound to say that, but surely that's the point. Our best day is today and our best work is whatever's next.

Thank you to all of you who sent birthday wishes, we have come a long way, but we're only just getting started. There are many adventures still to come. Perhaps life does begin today after all.

P.S This is me in the studio last week with some new band members, and taking the shot is Olli Cunningham. He'd like me to point that out. And you recognise the guy on the far left. Here's to you, my brothers in arms.

None of the above

2009-03-03T11:15:00.002Z

I seem to have been absent for a while, busy spring cleaning, white-washing the old mole hole (that sounds so wrong) and preparing for the possibility of committing new music to tape - and this has left little time for important things like writing this blog, or typing emails of outrage to The Guardian, my MP, Thames Water, British Gas, or anyone else who will ignore me.

Just this morning though, the usual combination of lack of sleep and too much coffee ( I wonder if they're connected) led me to send the following missive to the lovely Jenni Russell who has received several of my letters over the years. I feel it's important to retain a dialogue with the outside world, especially when one never leaves the house except to buy the paper and see which cars got burnt out this week on my street.

Now that I'm nearly 40 I think it's allowable to use the word 'one' rather than 'I' when referring to myself, my status - whilst not totally regal - is at least approaching that of elder statesman. When I say elder statesman, I mean something like Mugabe.

I'll be back with something close to regular blogging as the music schedule allows, but what with that, irate letter writing, obscure phonograph building and figuring out how to keep snails off my clematis (again, that sounds so wrong) there is precious little time left in the day before my afternoon nap.

Until I have something insightful to say I shall leave you with the aforementioned letter... maybe if we all burnt our ballots there'd be revolution - or at least something to toast marshmallows with.

You can read Jenni's piece here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/03/conservatives-david-cameron-politics

Dear Jenni, another interesting piece today, but I wonder if in your heart of hearts even someone as seemingly hopeful as yourself doesn't secretly despair that once again the merry-go-round of democracy will result in the same pathetic choice between the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right.

I agree it is inevitable the Conservatives will win, but it could equally be any party offering what amount to identikit campaign policies, which immediately mutate from aspirational gold to pragmatic lead once power is achieved.

The argument that this form of democracy is the 'least worst' of all systems, with its right to vote for which our grandparents fought and died, is looking tired and downright dangerous in a world that needs big ideas, implemented quickly before we destroy the planet, our economies and each other. Our current form of democracy amounts to a tinkering with window dressing, as the next administration will doubtless prove, with a public purse so empty that any big ideas may be beyond our ability to fund them.

So rather than conferring a spurious legitimacy on any of the candidates by marking my ballot, I shall instead be burning it, as there is currently no move to recognise the spoiling of ballots as part of the electoral process. You may call me the naive one, knowing as we all do that decisions are made by those who show up, but I've been turning up all my adult life. To elections, to rallies, to meetings, and not once has my voice - or the voices of millions of others - been listened to. I voted in New Labour only to be taken into an illegal war, to have my civil liberties eroded, and to be made an accomplice to torture, by a party whose idea of social justice is to line the pockets of millionaire bankers.

While our generation looks back with gratitude to our forebears knowing the battles they fought figuratively and literally for our freedom to vote, I wonder how today or tomorrow's generation will regard us. At a time when the planet is dying, when capitalism has failed to bring equality, when we have lost the ability to feed ourselves, and the desire to feed others, will they be proud and grateful that we stood in line outside a primary school to cast our ballot for Cameron or Clegg, or any other stuffed shirt - or would they rather we genuinely took a stand and said "none of the above"?

As I watch my ballot burn I will at least know that I wasn't fooled again.

Yours

Tom McRae

P.S I have no idea what clematis is, or how to keep snails off it. I just listen to Radio 4 too much. I maybe old, but I'm not that old.

Ask Tom #4012

2009-02-13T11:17:00.003Z

Have you ever felt like nothing makes any sense to you, least of all yourself, that social interaction is just babbling incomprehensibly through plate glass, that everything seems to be an illusion? How do you function?

Hmmm, now you mention it, yes. Although I prefer to think of my babbling as coming through stained glass, and therefore much prettier.

Everything is an illusion, except buses and trams, which are very real and can sneak up on you if you're not careful, so my advice is always look both ways.

How do I function? I wake up and plan my day... I divide it into 24 handy segments of roughly 60 minutes, of which I will only be awake for about 9. Then I further divide those twenty-four 60 minute segments into 4 bite-sized chunks of 15. In those 4 chunks of 15 minutes, I try to make sure at least one chunk features something enjoyable, like a cup of tea or a picture of a kitten. If enough tiny chunks of the day are used in this way, I believe it's possible to function and to actually lead a fulfilled life with moments of pleasure and profound joy.

If I actually look further ahead than that, I see a black chasm of despair so vast, bleak and depressing that I can't even dress myself.

Now, where's my cup of tea?

Holy Bus Batman

2009-02-09T12:28:00.007Z

I read this comment piece in The weekend Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/religion-another-thought-for-the-day and felt compelled to write Dr Fraser a letter.

For no other reason than to show I'm not an angry atheist or out to ban religion, I reproduce it here. Although I did just call the Christian Party and ask for the Proof Department, and spoke for half an hour to a very sweet woman who did her level best to not be freaked out. Bless her. Not literally.

Dear Dr Fraser, I read with amusement your comment piece in The Guardian and then followed the predictable tirade on the website, as others perhaps unaware that you were playing a mischievous little joke, found themselves outraged by both sides of the argument.

You must have chuckled a little to yourself as atheists everywhere lined up to berate you, thus proving your point. Job well done.

A little word of caution, however, that by continually citing Richard Dawkins as an exemplar of atheism you risk making the same mistake as anti-religious types who conflate violent fundamentalism, with tolerant, largely harmless religious practices the world over. But I suspect you like to rattle the hornets' nest from time-to-time.

I am no more a disciple of Dawkins than I am of more recognised religions, if I wish to hear the sigh of the eternal I can go to gallery, read a novel, or walk in nature - I feel no need to invoke a god figure to make sense of anything around me. And there are many like me, quietly going about our godless lives, slightly amused at the passions that this sort of argument provokes.

Long may thought for the day continue, it is mild, very British and largely harmless (insert your own Church of England gag here). I hope one day sensible, non-religious observers may be allowed to join in the programme, but if not I won't howl in protest. There seems to be precious little sensible debate that takes place in the media these days, between any opposing views, let alone passionately held religious beliefs. Maybe we all need to do some evolving, or perhaps ask the intelligent designer for an upgrade. I look forward to humanity 2.0.

All the best,

Tom McRae

BTW - I'm not bored, or not writing and recording, I am alot. And very pleased I am with it too. It's just talking about the music makes me feel a bit weird. That and I don't sleep well. Emailing vicars can pass the time.

How I Spent My Snow Day

2009-02-02T21:26:00.004Z

From this....I made this... it's the future of portable music. No, really. When the snow (and ice cap) melts, I'll be coming to a cave near you, providing you're above the tide line.

Porn Bot Addendum - Please Welcome on Stage?

2009-01-30T18:53:00.004Z

Addendum: Just found this on Ask Tom:

The day was overhungof the fog roselike forlorn lovers to the anbaric cables hot black guys sex naked

A quick google reveals it to be from Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass. Well not the last bit...I'm guessing that's not in the original. If I could persuade them to use my lyrics, I might shift a few more albums to the one handed typists out there.

A's gota cocainebody B'sgot a benylin brain bulk buy Viagra cheap
...worth a try

P.S I mean one-handed typists as a euphemism, I'm not being manualist. I have nothing against people with one hand. My early gigs seem to have been full of them.

Spam Porn Poetry

2009-01-29T22:41:00.004Z

My Ask Tom section has become a target for porn spambots. This is resulting in some beautiful and enigmatic virtual haikus. It's become a highlight of my day. Some of them are affecting, some ridiculous - but all are without fail better than ColdPlay lyrics. I may use some of them. Unless Chris gets there first.

whispered, and the angelbird with red wings.monkey."Then look cartoon sex sites for adults"

The words tumbled outexpect answers. She turned heavy gold and the smoothwheels they knew viagra order cheap

he said, stubbornly "Because what wouldwake? She'd runfree mature outdoor sex photos uk

explain it to her and listened she'd believe me?me. She hates me,She despises me

There's probably a reason for this... some way to get round spam filters or something - but I think they're lovely. The ghost in the machine is a poet. And sex obsessed. Or is that tautology?

Cynicism 101 - Even Easier Than Hope for Beginners

2009-01-25T17:39:00.004Z

Okay, well I suppose it’s time to confess why I haven’t written about Obama’s inauguration, despite a self-confessed obsession with politics and current affairs.

It’s simply that I feel no one really needs a naysayer at this point, especially as we have Fox News still spreading fear and hate in a way that only they (and many ultra religious types) can.

Am I happy he got elected? You bet. It was exhilarating to be in New York when it happened. A night for hope, naturally. Was I thrilled to watch the inauguration on tv? Of course, even if I knew that the musicians were miming – I have some experience of live cello sounds and that microphone was waaaaaay too far away.

Do I think anything will change? Well, let’s break this answer down. Yes and no. The window dressing in one of humanity’s biggest department stores will look much more appealing for the next 8 years, hopefully. Closing Gitmo is already a fine example of doing the right thing, sending the right message. I applaud it.

Will anything of substance change? Nope. And here’s why. We’ve ceded control of all the mechanisms by which we change society to other powers, namely that of the market and private industry. The same market forces that have failed so dramatically over the last few months.

Will Obama nationalise a bank, or the car industry or transport? Nope. No more than Gordon Brown will. Will he (we) bail them out, continually? Yep. I’d like to pose a question at this point: can anyone name a private finance initiative in the UK that was actually completed successfully with private money? There must be some? One? Here’s an article I read a while ago: http://www.accaglobal.com/publicinterest/activities/research/reports/accountability/rr-084. … if you don’t have time to read it, here’s the conclusion:

"PFI is an expensive way of financing and delivering public services that may, where public expenditure is constrained, lead to cuts in public services and/or tax rises. In contrast, we suggest that the chief beneficiaries are the providers of finance and some, but not necessarily all of the private sector service providers rather than the public sector."

It happened with Wembley, it happened with the Channel Tunnel, hospitals, the road and rail network, and boy-oh-fucking boy is it going to happen with the disastrous money pit that will be our risible attempt at staging the Olympics.

Put simply, there’s nothing any government can do without private investment, because the war for the middle ground of politics is fought in the everyman’s land of low taxes and small government. No one will raise taxes for the masses or take on the expensive responsibility of actually running anything.

And now is when massive things need changing. Obama couldn’t achieve it in 80 years, let alone 8. Do we need those dramatic changes, yes. Will we vote for them? No. Do we want alternative energy initiatives? Absolutely. Will we have used every last drop of oil before we actually vote for it? Absolutely. Especially now there’s a recession and we’re all watching the pennies. Organic free range chicken anyone?

The recent global financial crisis (which, by the way, they call a “crisis” in America, but in quaint-old–tabloid-moron Britain we insist on calling the “Credit Crunch”…. like it’s a character in a Mr Men book) is firm proof if any were needed, that no one is actually in charge of anything.

This Blair/Brown government made the Bank of England independent, established the Financial Services Authority (a body which makes Myra Hindley look like a good baby sitter), and has quite blithely taken credit for the boom years without knowing what the fuck was going on. The same is true of Bush. They encouraged the system that has failed so drastically. We all know all this. I know I sound like a stuck record (for younger readers, a record was a thing that music came on and meant something to own) but these things have been bugging me amidst the euphoria of the last week.

Will Obama effect a radical re-ordering world affairs? Nope. Because he cannot implement the changes necessary, because there is no functioning alternative to free (and by free I mean wildly out of control) market economics. The steady growth all governments long for is an unsustainable myth (especially when our trade laws don’t allow third world countries to develop into viable competitors - but we still insist on ironically referring to them as “developing nations”). The best any future government can do is to manage a planet in decline. Like a chief executive officer winding up the affairs of a bankrupt company, these are the last days of the world as we knew it. Even now a non-existent god is cashing in his last shares, collecting his bonus for fucking things up spectacularly, and heading towards his next position as consultant for the parallel universe just over the event horizon.

When South Korea – among others - is buying up tracts of land in other countries (Madagascar and Tanzania, as well as parts of South America) with which to feed its own population, you get an idea of how much trouble the world is in. But that doesn’t make the front pages, naturally.

You want to scare yourself? Forget global warming and the countless wars raging round the world… go read about Peak Oil. That’s the thing that will define all government policy for the next 20 years. Think Gazprom only has an issue with Ukraine not paying? Wait a while, we’ve run out of North Sea gas, it’s all coming from the Middle East and Russia. Both fantastic suppliers to be quite literally bent over a barrel by.

Will it be nice to have an intelligent, literate, erudite man in the White House? It’ll be lovely. Will it make me feel better about the state of international affairs, as the world descends into fuel and water wars? Nope. Not one bit. Iran has its own agenda, Israel could give a fuck about world opinion, the UN is the lamest of all lame ducks. More people were listening to my goldfish than to Ban Ki-moon over Gaza. And I don’t even have a goldfish, that’s how fucking impotent the UN is.

This is why I haven’t written about Obama. I will be following his first hundred days with enthusiasm, wishing the best for him and for us. I hope he proves me wrong. I suspect Gordon Brown will be long gone before Obama’s potential second term, probably ousted by moronic voters who think a) that they can play a part in democracy and b) that anything changes when the figureheads of government are shuffled like so many old playing cards, the faces worn thin and indistinguishable. This wouldn’t be me if I didn’t work in playing cards somewhere, right?

I hope I’m wrong. If god existed I would pray to him/her to be so very wrong that when Obama leads us all to the promised land, I will offer myself to be cooked and eaten in a ceremonial meal of contrition, as a sign to all future party-poopers. McRae-fish and rocket sandwiches?

The Italian philosopher, thinker and political theorist Antonio Gramsci (whisper it, a Marxist) called for “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”, and that is for years how I have chosen to live. It’s how I live now. But alas I was christened Jeremy, a derivation from Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet of doom. I guess you can change your name but not your nature.

And that, in a word, a long, dull, tediously predictable Tompinion… is how I feel not so much about Obama, but the world problems he has inherited, and how much I suspect will actually change. And all this on a weekend when Man Utd beat Tottenham. Imagine how I’d have been if we’d lost.

But it’s Sunday. I hate Sundays. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow. Everyone feels better on Mondays, right?

no#1 In an Infinite Series of Admissions of Failure of Manhood (not that manhood)

2009-01-21T13:18:00.002Z

This Week: Cars.

I know some are red, some are other colours. I know a cello has to go in the front seat, and that all cab drivers like to talk, even when you're wearing headphones.

I know young men like fast cars, and that some people find Jeremy Clarkson amusing. I only find his ridiculous first name funny.

I know that when the Grand Prix is on I have no idea what is going on, or why anyone cares. It's about as much of a sport as ice dance.

I know I would like to pass my test and own a car so I can go fishing more often. I would not have a red one. Nor would I invite Jeremy Clarkson.

I feel not knowing anything about cars does not make me less of a man. Just a less mobile man.

I like travelling by bus. Ones with beds and kitchens and lounges in. Where no one snores.

I can but dream.

Next week: DIY, and how many singer-songwriters does it take to change a lightbulb?

Experiments in Time Travel #1

2009-01-14T23:14:00.003Z

Today I turned on my radio, then my digital radio, then my laptop, and had them all playing Radio 4 in different rooms - at fractionally different speeds - while I ran between them.

Running up and down I contrived to arrive in each room a split second before the same sentence was repeated by the corresponding device... like flying to and fro across the international dateline. In my house.

I then tried running with the digital radio REALLY fast towards the laptop, whilst listening to the analogue radio REALLY loud. At one point the stars blurred, I passed through into a parallel universe, and suddenly I was King, and Katy Perry was my Queen. We ruled with generosity and humility and were worshipped by all.

After an hour of this I felt sick and sat down.

I miss being on tour.

Ask Tom #9

2009-01-12T11:32:00.008Z

Dear Tom, Why are your two Takamines named Derek and Clive (on your setlists)?

Well, I knew one day this would come up. It was a stupid way to mark the difference in guitars for my guitar technician ("roadie" we would have called them in the 70s). Derek was a standard Dreadnought shape, and thus began with a D. Clive was a cutaway shape, and so began with a C. Derek and Clive are alter egos of Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore. Simple.

Now, in my head this all makes sense - so when I shouted at my tech: "Clive's got too sweaty, I need you to put a smooth and dry Derek into my hands NOW"... it was a simple request for a guitar change.

Got it?

P.S This is a picture of me with my Guild, which is a Jumbo Guitar, and begins with a J. Naturally, we call this guitar, THE GUILD.

Religious Intolerance

2009-01-05T04:05:00.001Z

New Year’s resolutions made 3. New Year’s resolutions broken 3. So we’re back to square one and the year is not even a week old.

I don’t know how many of you vowed to stop throwing toast at Jehovah’s Witnesses this year, maybe it was just me, but I broke that resolution within minutes of making it.

So to the poor gentleman who stood bemused on my Brooklyn stoop staring at the burnt bread that had just bounced off his chest – I apologise. But it was early, I wasn’t feeling well, the toast was ruined and the coffee boiled dry. And it was your fault I had to answer the door and not concentrate on the job in hand. But however deluded you may be, you didn’t deserve a dough-based breakfast snack thrown at you. I’m sorry, I’ll do better next year. Apparently religious intolerance can cause wars. Apparently.

If anyone wants the copy of Watchtower I later found on the steps – it’s available. I keep it next to the Book of Mormon I stole from a hotel in Utah, the Gideon’s bible I have from Korea, and the Dead Sea Scrolls I have in tupperware in my fridge.

And so the year begins. Chaos in the Middle East, Russia threatening gas supplies to Europe, the economy showing no signs of revival and no one seemingly in charge of anything. Honestly, you go away on tour, then have a couple of months off in New York and all hell breaks loose. It’s about time I came back and sorted this lot out.

Brooklyn Christmas

2008-12-23T17:49:00.003Z

This was a street in my neighbourhood two days ago. There's nothing like silence sudddenly descending on a city to make you feel Christmassy, or that war has been declared and no one told you.

So with that happy thought, it's time to sign off on this blog experiment for a short while, take a calorific holiday, then get back to work making the music that will either heal the world, or finally put it out of it's misery. I am nothing if not a humanitarian.

Have fun whatever you're doing, and see you in 2009.

P.S There's a little download you can grab of a Christmas classic - butchered, bled white, and slow roasted by me, on myspace. As soon as I can figure out how to put MP3s up here, I'll do that too.

Vampire Movie Mix Up

2008-12-20T17:41:00.005Z

In my world, which approaches heightened levels of optimism at this time of year, I imagine the following scenario.

Mom calls up local movie theatre to find out if the vampire movie with kids is showing. It is. She takes her three corn fed kids and two of their fiends to see what they hope is 'Twilight'... instead they end up going to see 'Let The Right One In' - a Swedish movie, dark and funny, disturbing but deeply moral. It changes their collective world view. Mom and the kids throw away their terrible novels, start going to see films with subtitles, and occasionally read things with longer sentences and bigger paragraphs, without such a mind-numbing christian bias. The world becomes a better place for them and for us.

What actually happens is they go see 'Twilight', eat pop corn, get fatter and stupider and spend the next saturday night trying to phone vote for this week's pop idol.

Be like the smart people this Christmas. If you want to see a vampire movie, go see this, before the re-make comes out next year. Sentences you never hear at dinner parties: "the remake was so much better than the original". For this there must be a reason.

Despite taking it's title from a Morrissey song, it's a fab film. Let the Morrissey hate mail begin - it's not like I haven't framed most of those letters you know. My library in the west wing has a whole wall devoted to them.

Charting The Passage of Time

2008-12-18T01:13:00.002Z

How time passed today between 6.23pm and 7.55pm today. This time of year can take my introspection to absurd levels. And drawing a circle seemed easier than finishing a song. I also tried listening to Sigur Ros. But you would need an electron magnifying microscope to see how little time I could actually manage. Enya for Guardianistas. But that's just my thoughts.

Hang The DJ Blog

2008-12-13T15:53:00.002Z

I was was asked to submit my musical moment of the year, for Faber's Hang The DJ blog. Here's what I wrote: http://hang-the-dj-book.blogspot.com/2008/12/tom-mcrae-on-paul-simon.html

Meaningless

2008-12-08T23:07:00.005Z

Last night the waves on the Hudson were tipped with white and the wind whistled a broken lullaby through the gap between window and sill. The uptown breeze on 8th was a downtown gale on 9th, obeying traffic regulations if not the laws of nature, while white plastic bags took to the air and grey seagulls took to the trees.

I like weather you can’t argue with. The true liberation of tyranny, all decisions made for you, nothing to do but comply. A day for eating soup, reading biographies and giving up on the search for meaning in things. A day for forsaking appearance in exchange for warmth, for wearing that hat that looks stupid on Oxford street but sensible on Broadway - or so I keep telling myself.

A day for staring only briefly at the Sarah Palin lookalike brushing the teeth of a cat in the window of a pet store, and for barely pausing before the festive tins of spam (?) in a deli on 14th. Like I said, a day when all that’s required is to put one foot in front of the other and hope they’re headed somewhere warm, a day for doing, not questioning. The best of days.

Caffeine Headache

2008-12-02T15:38:00.011Z

With 400 dead in religious fighting in Nigeria, a terrorist massacre in Mumbai, New York on high alert for an attack before Obama's inauguration, and the world seemingly in a state of perpetual war, it's important to keep perspective on things and not let the fearmongers win. So, I want to discuss coffee cups.

It's becoming an issue for me. Granted, not a life-threatening one, not even one that is of any real interest to anyone but myself - but an issue nonetheless. Coffee is a vital part of my day, it kick starts my brain, and more specifically the guilt lobe, which after an hour of reading about the state of the world and imbibing caffeine, forces me to try and mutate the base materials of life into three and half minutes of aurally pleasing gold.

What I need, therefore, is a relatively quiet spot, a relatively recent newspaper, a relatively decent cup of black coffee (none of your decaf skinny mochaccino hazelnut whip lattes here)... and most importantly, a fucking cup I can drink from. I am a widely travelled man, I appreciate different cultures, but when did it become fashionable for anywhere other than Paris to serve coffee in bowls? Granted, in France a croissant dipped into a bowl of hot chocolate can make a heartwarming breakfast - if you're seven, eating at a picnic table with smiling strangers, and suffering the freezing cold of yet another fucking christian commune when you thought you were going on holiday. But that's for another session.

Coffee in a bowl is the equivalent of a square wheel. My species evolved with opposable thumbs, and the ability to raise our elbows. Am I a fucking horse now? No, coffee should be served in something you can pick up, preferably with one hand, whilst idly flicking past the headlines to the sport, and simultaneously checking out your reflection in the mirror opposite. It should not be served in something that is so fucking hot you can't pick it up, so fucking cold twenty seconds later it's undrinkable, and so fucking wide that you give yourself a facial in the steam and dunk your freshly blow-dried fringe before finally giving up and asking for one to go.

Is it too much to ask, that in a dangerous and unpredictable world, at least one cafe in this part of Manhattan could serve coffee in a decent porcelain cup? Even a mug. Maybe it is too much, like peace in our time, religious tolerance, Ipods that don't freeze on long journeys, and accurate weather reports. Damn you, Obama, you gave me hope for a better world, and still I have to put up with this. Next week: Palestine vs Israel, who makes the best pastries?

Picture 1) Right.
Picture 2) Wrong, and against God and nature.

Ask Tom #8

2008-11-30T00:43:00.004Z

Did I dream it, or were you once on Buzzcocks when you were but a fresh-faced lad? Ever been invited back?

Yes, back in 1578, shortly after I returned bloodied but unbowed from the battle of Al Kasr al Kebir, fluent in Portuguese but with my ego dented by the military might of the Moors - I was invited to appear on the tv show, Nevermind The Buzzcocks. I'm pretty sure it was my my second and final appearance on BBC television, having appeared years earlier on Later with Jools. I was younger then, and indeed fresh of face. Ah, there's nothing like misguided belief in your future to keep you looking young. These days I just stare at the red phone on my desk, which rings whenever a representative of the media world wishes to contact me and request an interview, or tv appearance, or wants to review a a gig. To my knowledge it hasn't rung since July 2004 when someone claiming to be my Mother asked if I was feeding myself properly and was I interested in a job that had just come up at the Post Office. I stare and stare, and stare.

P.S This is a quick picture I took of the battle, with my new .00005 MP Canon Crap Shot, which was brand new that year. That's me, on the far left. As always. Before you email, it was on timer. Obviously. It wasn't the dark ages.

Got Milk?

2008-11-29T20:42:00.002Z

The list of things I have been brought in diners, having originally asked for a glass of water, was extended dramatically this week, by the arrival at my table of a telephone book. Seriously. To date, I have been brought a bottle of milk,a loaf of bread and now this. Awesome. A-W-E-S-O-M-E! I shall continue to help spread English as the main language here, but I fear it may be a lost cause. For the first few years I thought "Huh?" was a formal greeting, not just the slack-jawed response of the morons in Rite Aid. The name just says it all. Ah well, London isn't any better. Maybe it's me, maybe I mumble, maybe I'm old and long for an era of politeness that is either long-gone or exists only in the imagination. Explain then, why the building I live in is populated by the loveliest, most polite, endearing and interesting old people I have ever had the privilege to meet. Perhaps because I'm edging closer to being one of them. They break my heart every time we share an elevator conversation. We talk about the weather, grandchildren of course, and the morons in Rite Aid. So it's not just me.

Tom's Film Round Up

Place your bets now for Sean Penn to win best actor and Josh Brolin for best-supporting, for "Milk", the biopic of gay San Francisco activist, Harvey Milk.I cried. I cry at everything. As for "Synecdoche, New York", I had to watch the dumb "Role Models" immediately after, just to recover. And I can't actually remember the new James Bond, although I'm sure I saw it, and despite being a Jack White fan, it has to be the worst theme tune ever. Apart from Madonna. Obviously. "Madagascar 2" has the best talking hippo scene... now if "Synecdoche" could just have crowbarred some singing animals into the movie, it might have lifted the mood slightly. Sometimes a movie can be so bereft of hope, so repetitive, so remorselessly dark, so bleak in it's eventual outcome, in short, so much like my actual life - that I may as well have stayed home and stared in the mirror for three hours. I've got that pencilled in for tomorrow. It's a Sunday after all. I hate Sundays.

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T20:42:00.002Z

In preparation for my Thanksgiving dinner, I have been watching Top Chef, presented by Padma Lakshmi on Bravo. Some people close to me have interpreted this as lassitude, brought on by last night's combination of me, Jim Bianco and a bottle of bourbon. That person is wrong, however, I am not hungover, I am doing research. After 3 hours of the show I feel fully equipped to cook a big meal... or at least eat one. If anyone has any last minute recipe ideas, then post them here, I have to impress my guests - right, back to chasing that turkey round the room.

P.S Here's a picture of me and Padma earlier. Let's face it, Salman never stood a chance.

Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar

2008-11-25T16:33:00.005Z

I realise blogging on tour would have made more sense, but I get swept up in events (i.e tired and drunk), so I shall attempt to make up for this failing by subjecting you to increasingly desperate and random observations from my kicking around New York City looking for distraction and inspiration.

Dan Smith will teach you guitar. I know this because his black and white flyers, stuck wherever possible (and some where it is possible but surely inadvisable) tell me so. Over the years his face has become more familiar to me than my own. Being Dan Smith must be like walking forever through a hall of mirrors. I have no idea for how long he has been teaching guitar, or even if he is still alive. In the picture he looks late twenties, maybe early thirties – it’s a difficult age to pin down – he may even be dead by now, his poor family and friends forever haunted by his visage in every corner store and deli window. Dan Smith must have put heroic effort into flyering all these years. That or he has a battalion of supporters, each taking an armful of posters and ensuring his face is permanently staring out at you, offering to teach you to master the guitar. I admire Dan. He has taken steps to ensure that for guitar lessons in NYC, he is the ‘go to’ guy. I wonder if he goes further, and tears down the posters of other potential teachers. Does he garrotte them with a bronze-wound G string, or wait in darkened alleys for them, only to leap out and slash at them with a sharpened silver plectrum, which he keeps dangling from his neck at all times for just such a purpose. Does he cradle their heads in his lap as the blood drains slowly from them, whispering: “it’s okay to let go, I’ll take your students from now on”? … before taking their posters and tossing them casually in a dumpster, or more likely burning them so the wind cannot accidentally carry out his rivals’ work for them? Is Dan the grey squirrel of the guitar teacher world? Does he quash his rivals, steal their nuts? I have no idea. I doubt it. He probably just teaches guitar.

But here’s my point: “You have no upcoming shows in the system” is the most depressing thing revealed by my MySpace page, other than my songs of course. It leaves my mind time to wander, detaches my sanity from the part of my brain that looks both ways for traffic – and leaves me prey to such flights of fancy as wondering if Dan Smith is a serial-killer/guitar teacher. For instance, I wandered in to Best Buy today, to escape the cold, and ending up watching kids playing guitar hero for hours. Hours!

I wonder if there is a Guitar Hero Dan Smith Edition? But of course there isn’t, if there were Dan Smith would have made damn sure I know about it.

I am hiring Dan Smith to do the publicity for my next album.

Right, I am now off to shop for food for Thanksgiving... I will be roasting a pilgrim, handing out smallpox covered blankets to people, and generally giving thanks that I am not remotely interested in the game known as "football". Stepping outside to "toss a little pig skin" means something entirely different if you grew up in Suffolk.

Ask Tom #7 - Duende

2008-11-18T16:28:00.003Z

At the Seattle show this last week, you started talking about a Spanish concept or term that dealt with the understanding of death and how it affected living. I was hoping to find out the Spanish word for it that you mentioned.

Hello, did I really start talking about that? Put a quarter in the slot and watch me go! I was probably referring to Duende, so for a more comprehensive answer you should probably just google it.. but I'll have a go. Duende is a 'darkness' at the core of existence, for everyone - but especially for the artist who deals in melancholy and the sadness of the soul, wrestling with the inevitability of death set against the beauty of life. Or something like that. Nick Cave is more eloquent on the subject than I am. But read up about it, because it made a lot of sense to me, and I discovered some great Spanish poetry along the way. Or it's just the day after Tuesday if you've got a cold. One of these is probably close.

Tom

P.S This is a picture of Lorca. He knew all about it.

Two Free Punches With Every Car Wash

2008-11-18T15:56:00.002Z

"Two free punches with every car wash"... now that's just too good an offer to pass up. I can pretty much get at least one free punch anywhere I go just by opening my mouth, but TWO! just for getting my car washed, well that's a bargain. Who knows what this Car Wash en route to Vancouver was trying to say, but maybe they were having a bad day, or maybe some sort of fruit-based party beverage was what they had in mind. Anyway, made me laugh, thank you Mr Kleen. A great run of shows on the West Coast has drawn to a close, who knew there would be so many of you - at what amounted to my first headlining shows in San Francisco, and Seattle? And I finally made it to Vancouver, which has been on my wish list for many years. Now I just have to figure out how to come back sooner rather than later. Now I'm back in New York City, 21 floors up in Chelsea, staring out over the slate grey (gray, if you must) Hudson and looking forward to Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I'll find some things to write about when my soul has caught up with my body, and my body has forgiven me for truck stop food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That may take a while.

Ask Tom #6

2008-11-07T17:58:00.003Z

I saw, in your profile that you listen to "the good kind" of music. So I'd like to know, what is, according to you, the "good kind" of music ?
I mean, I have been taught, and I am deeply convince (is that word correct in english ?) that there is no good or bad music, there is only music you like or dislike. The matter isn't what you listen to but what you feel when you are listening to the music.
Thanks for paying attention to my question and sorry for the mistakes I must have done : my english is not as good as my french mother tongue.

Your English is great, have no fear. Hmmmm, I suppose Kierkegaard in his Philosophical Fragments argued that truth can only be subjective, which is essentially what we're talking about here; the absence of absolute truth (a generic good music) as opposed to a sincerely held personal belief that whatever you like is whatever you like, and it is therefore subjectively valued as good. This would seem to be the rational answer to your question. However, Kierkegaard was a lying bastard seeking only worldly fame, capable of saying anything if he thought it would make a headline. The philosophical equivalent of Madonna. He is also wrong. There is bad music, bad art of all forms, and the world would be a better place if I could personally choose what was made available to be consumed by the public, rather than putting our faith in the free market to allow the cream to rise to the top and the shit to sink to the bottom.

In pre-Glasnost Soviet Union, you could only buy the classics of Russian Literature. Not a Da Vinci Code to be found anywhere. And those classics sold in large numbers, because people wanted to read, and this was what was available. Now in the countries of the former Soviet Union it is possible to buy pretty much whatever old toss you want to read... Grisham? They got 'em. Chick lit? Coming out the wazoo. But strangely the total sales of books remains the same. Proving that if you give a human a choice, he or she will inevitably make the wrong decision. Human beings are lazy, 75 per cent water we take the route of least resistance, and it always leads down hill. So, to sum up.... is there a good music or a bad music? Nah, not really. Long as you listen, dance, laugh, cry, it could be Abba or Zappa. Just give Madonna a miss.

Tom

Cigars

2008-11-07T00:54:00.003Z

Cheering. Cigar smokers on the stoop. NYU students chanting. Strangers smiling at strangers. Drunken singing in the bars on Bleecker and MacDougal. Blue outnumbering red, and who gives a fuck about Montana? (although it’s good fishing country, so I am magnanimous in victory). What a night. For the day after, cynics had to try a little harder to look cool. So I gave up and joined in. Finally New York has something in common with the rest of the country, a President Elect it voted for. And yes, today the world does feel a little different. Although a California that can vote for farm animals having bigger enclosures but against gay marriage, still proves there is work to be done. America, a work in progress as they say.

The New York shows are over now, my home from home - The Living Room – has become a very special venue for me over the years, with a very special audience who make me feel so welcome, that two shows seem barely enough. Thanks to all of you who have come to the gigs and for bringing that unique energy into the room, making all of them memorable for me. Thanks to Karen for putting posters up, Tim for pausing his recording when asked! and the loyal band of friends who turn up come rain or shine. Over the years the list of musicians who join me has grown too, so thanks also to Jason Hart and Clare Burson, piano and fiddle, combining with the ever amazing Oli Kraus to make me feel like we’re changing the show each time. Next year drums?

Time to head west, back to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Portland, maybe see you there.

Half Way Hopeful

2008-10-27T12:57:00.002Z

Heading out of Montreal en route to Toronto, on a rain-soaked 401 highway, we speed south through Ontario, on the first day of serious rain we’ve seen for a while. We take a full 20 minutes to pass a huge convoy of RVs, flocking before heading south for the winter on their annual migration of retired adventurers, jeeps towed behind, throwing up a dangerous spray that reduces visibility to feet and increases braking distance to miles. It is a reminder that touring like this is more of a challenge, the occasional nine hour drives between cities taking their toll on energy and conversation. Not for us the comforts of the European tour bus, with the flat screen, lounge, beds and kitchen… but there’s something satisfying about really feeling the miles rather than just waking up in a new city. More like sailing compared to flying, and about as wet.

Thank god, then, for the comedy channel on satellite radio, that offers respite from the continual heavy rotation of classic rock that clogs the airways in North America and Canada. It’s as if time and culture stopped sometime around 1976, before Zeppelin split and punk burnt down the houses of the holy. It’s not a bad way to travel, imagining myself aged seven again, listening to Blinded By The Light, wearing jumble sale clothes and counting down the days to the release of Star Wars. Hearing those classic clips of Bill Hicks, Mitch Hedberg, Richard Prior et al reminds me that it isn’t just rock stars that die before their time.

The shows have all been fun to play, some bigger than others, but they're all special for their own reasons. I’ve been given a scarf, and bottle of Canada’s only Single Malt Whisky - so bring on the New York winter – you hold no fear for me now. I love the change from Fall to Winter here, the trip from Boston to Montreal left me more exhausted by the beauty of the leaves on the trees, ablaze with every shade of yellow and red – than by the actual driving. That’s Steve’s job. And to think he laughs at me because I don’t drive. He’ll figure it out one day.

Now, with the final Montreal and Toronto shows done, making good on last year’s promise to return, it’s an early start and a thirteen hour train ride to New York City. The train moves so slowly I could get out and walk alongside and still be in the city before the Amtrak wagons roll into Penn station… but I don’t. It’s on these train rides that ideas for songs come, that dreams come bubbling up from interrupted sleep. Dreams of downing tools and moving to a place somewhere upstate, settling down in a quiet little town and forgetting about everything. Dreams of spending my days fishing in the Catskills. Dreams of Barack Obama in the Whitehouse, George Bush in the ground, and dreams of a brighter morning on November 5th. Half way between things is a nice place to be. Half way between sleeping and awake, half way between seasons. Half way between cities, half way on the tour, and best of all, half way hopeful.

ASK TOM #5

2008-10-27T12:42:00.003Z

Hey!
This is going to be a strange question; of this I am aware.
So would you rather pull all of your veins out with tweezers, interview Madonna-in her fake British accent, no less-about hungry cats, be forced to vote for John McCain, or put up shelves?
Just curious...

There was a cartoon in a recent New York paper of Madonna asking her lawyer about her divorce settlement, with the caption: "Do I get to keep the accent?". Made me chuckle. This is one of many Madonna themed questions recently. Years ago, when I was full of piss and vinegar and moral fury, I would have ranted about Madonna being culturally toxic, a vapid role model for empty ambition that has fuelled a misguided generation of young women who believed she represented power, liberation, sexual equality and spiritual enlightenment. Now I don't really care. I take this position as I believe it would hurt her the most, to have someone be not outraged by her, not fascinated by her, just bored. Having said that, I picked this question to answer, somewhat trampling my own point in the process. I can only hope that soon Lourdes will move back to New York and cement a proper accent, as I fear that being raised by Guy and Madge will leave her sounding like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

So, to the answer. What was the question again? Er... I'll interview Madonna. The first option is painful and dangerous, as is the third and fourth. If McCain wins however, I will gladly pull my veins out with tweezers.

Tom

Yorkshire Gold

2008-10-14T16:54:00.005+01:00

So - after desperately figuring out how I could fund the Malawi trip to play at the Lake of Stars Festival - it turns out at the last minute to not be possible. Damn this economic crisis, stopping me in my bid to become the next Bob Geldof, or more likely, Peaches. Ah well, these things happen, and it was nice to be asked. There's always next year, as Liverpool fans tell themselves, usually in a few weeks time (you know, I don't hate Liverpool, I respect them and admire Benitez, but if it wasn't for the hate emails I'd never have contact with another human).

I sublimate my heartbreak by contributing several metric tonnes of CO2 to global warming and jetting off to New York to prepare for the tour. I then sublimate my environmental guilt into... let's face it, a large whisky, and the promise to help build the sea defenses around the city when the need (and water) arises. But of course I do actually worry about flying too much, and touring in a bus too much, and about not recycling hummus tubs which are just too tedious to rinse out...(CAN YOU IMAGINE THE SHEER TONNAGE OF ORGANIC VEGAN HUMMUS TUBS THAT CHRIS AND GWYNNY HAVE TO RINSE OUT A WEEK? WHY AM I SHOUTING?) but I've yet to hear a coherent plan to tackle the real issues. And if the leaders of the world can't control (or save) the economy, then what hope the planet? Ah,Tom, it's better to light a candle than to sit and curse the darkness, although I suspect that lighting candles is probably a major cause of the planet overheating, so I've resolved to not celebrate my next birthday - which would be an awful lot of burning wax - and I will instead sit and make a wish as I try to blow out a low energy bulb provided free of charge by my energy company. Thanks for that EDF - a free bulb from you is a bit like being fucked up the arse and offered a cup of tea at the same time, one does resolutely not make up for the other. At least not in any prisons I've visited recently. Although maybe Yorkshire Gold at a push, that's a damn fine cup of tea. (Anyone from Yorkshire Gold wishing to sponsor the next tour please contact the usual address - Yorkshire Gold, takes your mind off prison sex.)If the music fails there's always a career in advertising.

And I see the Forum's not working again... sorry. I don't know what's up... but it'll be fixed soon. That's really what I came on here to say, but ended up spewing forth more nonsense. The live album ships in week's time, and to those of you who have pre-ordered it, I would tell you exactly how much it means that you have, but that would embarrass us both, so I'll just quietly say 'thanks' and move on. Okay, I've just re-read this... what the fuck am I talking about? I should drink way less caffeine. I just woke up, hold none of this against me.

Ask Tom #4

2008-10-06T01:23:00.002+01:00

JET ENGINE LULLABY

Whatever happened to this song? Will it ever surface on a cd?
Could you play it when you come to the Hotel Cafe in Nov?

Hmmmm, I have no idea. I may have just fallen out of love with it, or it didn't survive the recording process - sometimes these things just fade away, like making eye contact with a girl on the subway but never asking her name, or Liverpool's championship dreams...

All unrecorded songs live on in some great MP3 player in the sky, to be downloaded one day by another songwriter searching for inspiration - probably for as little as 9 cents. Could I play it in LA? I doubt I could remember the chords, but stranger things have been known to happen.

Tom

Stalking Wounded

2008-10-01T22:08:00.003+01:00

A week ago I do a bit of talking head to camera for a Nick Cave documentary, as I leave the studio I pass Seasick Steve on the stairs. I nod hello, a "you-had-to-get-up-early-on-a-Sunday-for-this-too-did-you?" sort of way, and he nods back. A few days later I'm dropping off a guitar at a hotel for one of Pink's backing singers to borrow while she's in London (don't ask, I lead a complicated life) when I turn round and bump into... Seasick Steve, clearly a guest at this hotel. Do his friends call him Sea? Sicky? Steve? Probably Steve, now I think about it.
I nod hello, in a sort of "I-nodded-at-you-last-week-and-now-I'm-nodding-at-you -again-but-I-don't-know-why" sort of way... he nods back, in a sort of "I-
have-no-idea-why-you're-nodding-at-me-either, shorty-Sean-Bean" way, and then turns and leaves. Two days later I'm in Soho looking through the window of a guitar shop (no, really) when my eye shifts focus from the guitars in the foreground to a bloke inside the shop who turns and looks out the window and stares me directly in the eye...he looks familiar. It's Seasick Steve. He is unamused. Like most blues singers.

By this point it is clear that one or either of us is stalking the other... I assume he thought I was the nutter as he has just sold out The Royal Albert Hall and I'm off to play venues in the US that would struggle to hold the Team GB sprint relay team. So now that's what I'm reduced to... inadvertently stalking old blues guys. Or maybe we're just destined to be together. Who knows? Safe to say I am not leaving the house until Sicky has left the country.

You Didn't See Lefors Out there Did You?

2008-09-29T00:04:00.004+01:00

As the sun sets, and reflected vapour trails in the canal emerge from the darkening blue – like the flag of St. Andrew rising from the depths – it’s time to let the day fall away, with all its triumphs and tragedies, and head home to a vodka and tonic and a celebratory viewing of Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I imagine this is how I will spend my days after the apocalypse, fishing in the canal, and reciting lines from my favourite movies. That and killing zombies.

I wrote “I ain’t scared of lightning” while watching the end scenes of CHL, borrowed the title of “Stronger than Dirt” from the scene with his dying mother, and have the film deeply embedded in my psyche to the point where I unconsciously reference it all the time. That’s another way of saying ‘steal’.

1969’s Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (we both had our initial release that year) led me first to Paul Newman, and to William Goldman who wrote it, and to George Roy Hill who directed it (and several of my favourite films) and finally to Conrad Hall, whose cinematography has remained unparalleled throughout history – CHL is all about the blue, baby. Prisoners’ uniforms, southern skies, Newman’s eyes. It’s actually Conrad Hall who doubles for Butch when crashing the bike in the famous Bacharach/David “raindrops” sequence, trivia fans. CHL (1967) was ground zero for an explosive starburst of talent - play spot the famous actor - a family tree of interlinked artists whose work I cherished as a kid, and am grateful for now. But Hill, Hall and Newman…alas all now gone. Thankfully summonable at the flick of a switch – at least for a little while longer, so that’s how I will spend my Sunday evening, in their company. I raise my glass to you all, gentlemen – the first of many hopefully, if I can find something left at the back of the fridge to drink. Ah yes, here it is. For a moment there…

King McRae

2008-09-25T10:45:00.002+01:00

Exciting news for all of us who harbour dreams of ruling over our fellow men: it is now not necessary to be protestant or male to be heir to the throne of England. To be fair, those requirements weren't necessarily a struggle for me. Now the only thing standing between me and a life of pointless luxury and constant tabloid coverage, is the fact that I wasn't singled out by God to be born in the right bed, to some(foreign) blue-blood, probably so in-bred that for every child born with the requisite number of limbs there is a baby in the attic with the head of an ant. Jesus-fucking-Christ, are we still putting Royal stories (even constitutional ones) on the front page of serious newspapers? Some days I struggle to find evidence that we live in a grown-up world. Maybe Sarah Palin is right, maybe the planet is only 7000 years old. That would explain alot.

PS. To everyone who says the Royal family don't harm anyone, or that they bring in tourists' money... and give us some sense of heritage and tradition... I say this: they establish the fact (one compounded by private education, hereditary peers... etc) that the bed in which you were born will be the defining characteristic of your life. What the fuck does that mean for those of us born in Chelmsford?

PPS. There goes the OBE.

Ask Tom #3

2008-09-22T21:06:00.003+01:00

hi there , uhm there is something that i have been thinking about for a while now but i didn't dare to ask you at the time. Well ,I was the girl who threw the panties on stage in Utrecht and you looked annoyed or something ,we thought it would be funny and actually I still think it was , just checking ...
bye x nele

Hi Nele, I can't imagine I would have been annoyed. Things like that could happen more often if you ask me... knicker throwing never seems to happen enough to singer-songwriters. Are we not human? Do we not need love? Is it too much to ask that people throw under garments at us to express their recognition of the passionate souls performing for their pleasure? If I made a funny face I can only apologise. I can look a bit weird when I sing. Did I take them with me? What happened to them? Ah, we always have a good time in Utrecht. Except when we're robbed at gunpoint. But panties can make up for that.

Tom

P.S If this starts a craze of throwing pants, can it just be the women? No men.

Ask Tom #2

2008-09-22T20:59:00.004+01:00

I'm wondering if there's anywhere I can view/hear your performance of "Language of Fools" on the Conan O'Brien show from probably 5+ years ago. Thanks!

Good question, I have no idea. I take it you've tried YouTube? I'd like to hear it myself. I remember being freezing cold in the studio (apparently you can only be funny if it's cold) and the audience didn't stop cheering until we'd nearly finished the song. I think they were wound up by the floor manager to a point of high excitement and no one warned us they'd scream for so long. Still, it was nice to be on Conan. I still have the sign they made for my dressing room door. Sad, I know... but those little things are souvenirs of exciting times.

Ask Tom #1

2008-09-22T20:48:00.004+01:00

I saw you in Atlanta, GA when you opened up for the Water Boys and became an instant fan. Any plans to ever come back to Atlanta?

Thanks,

Jerry Adams

Hello Jerry. That seems a long time ago now, was it the Roxy we played? I remember a great little theatre, and also playing an in-store somewhere that day. It's all starting to get lost in the mists of time. I'd love to come back to Atlanta but alas have no real plans to just yet, as all my touring in the states is self-funded right now and I can only play a select few cities. Maybe you can book a trip out to East or West coasts one day. If not, hold a house party, invite me, and we'll see what we can do!

Raining Bankers

2008-09-16T10:13:00.004+01:00

For the past few days I've had my binoculars trained on Canary Wharf, trying to spot the newly unemployed billionaire bankers jumping from the top floors. Alas, none of them seem capable of doing the decent thing - so until it is literally raining bankers I refuse to believe this recession is as bad as they say. When I say 'they', obviously I mean journalists, for whom nothing is as exciting as total disaster. "Economy follows same predictable pattern as before" isn't really an exciting headline is it? Never mind, tighten the purse strings, send back the helicopter, and concrete over the pool, and I'm sure we'll all survive - just in time for the next disaster. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world hurricanes kill people, floods, famine and disease still decimate populations,and wars rage. But fuck them. Where's my fuel rebate?

Having put down the binoculars and climbed off my soapbox, I head off to the studio to master a collection of live tracks recorded over the last year on the European tour. This official bootleg collection (as I'm temporarily calling it) is like a little time machine that has been transporting me back to some of my favourite moments in recent years. Playing with Oli and Olli is always a privilege, and it's nice to hear back some of those live moments (complete with audience participation) without being covered in sweat, worried about my hair, and trying to remember the words. When it's done I'll see if there's anyway of releasing it, depending on demand. He said coyly.

Right, I have to go and decide how and where to hang the Damien Hirst that has just come into my possession. I'm thinking by the neck, with piano wire, from my front porch - as a warning to all other talentless charlatans.

P.S I don't have a porch. Paunch maybe. Not porch.

A field that is forever Essex

2008-09-02T12:35:00.004+01:00

People amaze me. Generally it's our ability to fuck things up given half a chance, which definitely happened at the Offset Festival this weekend. But mostly it's the fact that people have deep wells of resources upon which they can draw in times of need. I mean it's not Hurricane Gustav or anything, but seeing the faces of a die hard audience who had waited three hours, were exhausted, hung-over and ready for bed, but still willing to stay for the show, was heart-warming. Having wandered in search of a stage willing to have us, like Joseph and Mary with a little baby cellist in tow, we eventually wound up back at the original stage. This show, and the previous Borderline show, were our small way of seeing out the year with a couple of intimate gigs, having been inspired by the Brighton weekend to try and weave some magic in tiny rooms (and tents) before we all disappear for another year or two. And despite organisational chaos, I enjoyed them. There is a flame here that needs protecting and nurturing. A secret. But like all good secrets I feel compelled to share it, so I'm off to the states to whisper it to some other friends. It's been an interesting summer. I stayed still for months - that never happens. I wrote and discarded an album's worth of songs.... (okay, they went missing on a stolen laptop - but I realised I didn't miss them or mourn their loss), I became handy with a drill and screw driver in an attempt to stay dry (and burglar proof)...so it's been an experience all in all. McRaetheism was conceived as a complete additional website, a forum for rants, ideas, philosophies and much more. It was almost finished when said laptop was nicked. Get insurance people, and back things up - that's my advice. But instead of giving up totally on the idea, as a stop gap I'm trying this Blog thing. It's simple and just about functions, like me, so I'll have a go for a while. Happy Autumn, thanks for coming to the shows. Hopefully see you in the States with my little friend, Steve Reynolds.

Conversations with my fridge #24

2008-08-29T14:05:00.006+01:00

Today, my fridge decided it would (in binary code) explain to me just how depressed it feels when the radio (which is on top of the fridge) won't talk to it. I tried explaining to the fridge that the radio is just a piece of electronic equipment, and doesn't have the capacity for independent thought, and certainly doesn't have a soul. We laughed about this for while (I laughed, the fridge clicked)and we cheered ourselves up by taking the piss out of the toaster, who then sulked and wouldn't talk to either of us for hours. Sometimes, I think I should get out more. But the fridge would miss me too much.

Break-ins and Time Outs

2008-08-21T11:26:00.003+01:00

After a burglary and the dull days of organisation afterwards, my spirits are lifted by the arrival of a book in which some of my writing was included. The Book is called "Hang The DJ"(faber&faber) and it's basically a lists book, with people saying why they like certain songs, wrapped up in some tenuous idea for a list. But it'll please my father to see me doing some proper writing, instead of this music nonsense. The last few days have been an enforced time out while I pick up the pieces after the break-in, but it makes you feel for people in far worse situations than mine. I can't complain about one break-in in 21 years of living in London. I mean, I can... but I'm not going to. Plus it gives me a chance to sit back and listen to my latest songs, as I'm not in the mood to write. And I make a great discovery. Everything I've written is shit, and it's time to start over. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I am now proposing we all burgle Chris Martin's house and see if his next album is better than the last.

McRaeped Crusader

2008-08-13T10:32:00.001+01:00

Someone invited me to the Batman movie. I throw on a jacket and walk out of the house without changing the clothes I’ve been wearing all week and without combing my hair, only to find that I’m at the premiere. Needless to say no one takes my photograph or asks for an autograph. Notice Christian Bale in a bad mood, could this be something to do with the fact he was arrested earlier in the day for alleged assault? Am torn between watching the film, (and were those vertiginous scenes necessary?) and watching Sir Ian McKellen with whom I can only assume is his nephew or his boyfriend. I am sitting next to Gandalf. Awesome.

Reasons why Damien Hirst is a cockucker#4012

2008-08-13T10:30:00.002+01:00

Unless you have to face your own limitations as an artist everyday and try and overcome them, then you’re just an organiser. Damien hirst employs other people to make his “work”. Ipso Facto, and QED…Damien, you’re a cocksucker.

Next week: why people who use Latin inappropriately are also cocksuckers.

Crispy Realisations #802

2008-08-13T10:29:00.003+01:00

Does it matter if lyrics are shit? Especially if you can’t hear them anyway, but the music sounds nice? Make reference to Bon Iver’s beautiful but nonsensical record…and anything by Radiohead ever. Emails of outrage and complaint to info@tommcrae.com.

Tom’s DIY tips:

2008-08-13T10:28:00.002+01:00

When using cement, remember to wash it off unprotected skin immediately, and don’t let it dry on your finger tips, like I did. The resulting skin loss and pain stopped me playing guitar for days. On the upside, the patio looks great, and will be ready in time for the Autumn storms and indoor BBQ I have planned to celebrate my return to the states. A further note: only when skin has fully healed attempt the eating of salted peanuts and slicing of lemons for accompanying vodka tonic. The resulting pain stopped me drinking for days. I may be lying about that last bit.

Tom on the environment:

2008-08-13T10:27:00.005+01:00

We're fucked.

Tom on the economy:

2008-08-13T10:27:00.004+01:00

We're fucked.

Interesting things I’ve seen in the cemetery recently:

2008-08-13T10:25:00.001+01:00

The other day I saw a woman rubbing stinging nettles on her shins. This being the part of London it is, I assumed she was mad and moved away quickly. Later, I thought maybe it was a remedy for arthritis or some natural medicine. Still later I wondered if the stinging pain took her mind of other more serious issues she may have. Much later I considered the fact that dock leaves grow next to stinging nettles, the poison and the remedy sharing the same small space. Much much later I thought about how nice my neighbour is, and what in terms of stinging nettles that says about me. And just yesterday I remembered eating the stinging nettle soup my mum made when I was a kid, although I maybe confusing this with an episode of ‘the good life”. In short, stinging nettles… they’re interesting aren’t they?

2008-08-12T14:37:00.002+01:00

This is me, with a fish I caught. I like fishing. It calms my fevered mind. Does this make me boring? Am I headed in the direction of all middle-aged musicians? I'll think about it after I've had my nap.