For any of you who don’t already know, we’re now called Skinny Machines. We have a new guitarist called Rikki and a whole load of new songs. Don’t worry, we’ve not changed into something unrecognisable but we are slightly rockier these days…

We’re in the process of making our debut album which should be ready by the summer. If you’d like a sneak preview then either visits www.myspace.com/skinnymachines to listen to a couple of pre-production demos or come to see a gig!

Cheers,

Jay x

I’ve got to be honest and say that at the start of the day, it wasn’t looking good. I got woken by a morose text from Jay ‘Doomsday’ Marsh at six in the morning saying that he hadn’t slept all night, feels really
ill, can’t swallow and may have to cancel the Nottingham show, along with Christmas. This immediately
reminded me of a glorious article I had read on how Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age deals with illness AND unruly fans at the same time.

Mother, don’t read this. Please.

http://www.nme.com/news/nme/37399

Still, to be fair to Jay, he wasn’t looking his usual best…

We hit the road and got to Nottingham eventually.

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Bluu wasn’t a classic gig venue but after several complaints from the neighbours during sound-check, we eventually got underway and all the bands managed to put on a great show. Particularly impressive were I Only Date Models. Nice hoods and nice broody sounds. Everyone had their party pants on and everyone was happy. Good night all in all.

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Off to Leeds now - we;ll be hitting Mr Ben’s in Leeds tonight!

Ed TBF x

PS. Do check out the Jack Wills video diaries as well. Search for JW unsigned on Google.

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By 7:00am Rob had already knocked back four shots of whiskey to help with his fear of flying, or at least that was his excuse. It’s a little odd asking the stewardess for an apple juice and a blueberry muffin for me, oh and a single malt on the rocks for my nervous friend here…yes, for his breakfast.

Anyway, we’ve now arrived back in Switzerland for a four day stint of gigs and good times after a brief return home to the UK, except for Jay, who had stayed in Switzerland to spend some quality time with his girlfriend. By all accounts they had a lovely couple of days being shown around by Laura, Dan’s girlfriend, climbing mountains and visiting museums and such, but by his own admission he was probably driving poor Laura mad with his Kulturschwamm intensity. He can’t even swear anymore without asking for the German translation…

Speaking of undeserved hospitality, we were being treated (again) last week to a beautiful brunch and I couldn’t help but notice the brand name on a jar of gherkins. Charles Christ. What followed was a (probably far too long) conversation speculating on how tough life must have been for poor Charles, living in the shadow of his more famous and, let’s face it, successful older brother. The saddest part is that although Charles dedicated his life to gherkins, as gherkins go, they weren’t even that good. Yes, Charles’ story is one of constant under-achievement, jealousy and… revenge??

Well, we’re off to Fribourg tonight for a show at Paddy Reilly’s. Twas a good one last time round so we’re very much looking forward to blowing ‘em away once again. I hear we’re being plugged all day by Radio Fribourg so let’s hope that reaps some results! Sadly, Amelle (see previous blogs) can’t join us this time, which to be honest we’re all pretty gutted about. Oh Amelle…la belle de La Rochelle…

Rock!

Ed x

We were slightly upset we didn’t get asked to produce our passports even once in the whole trip (despite travelling through 6 different countries). No one seemed to care that we were travelling at her Majesty’s pleasure.

Thanks to all the heavy power ballads on European radio, we came close to deciding that we were going to take a break from the band to write a Hollywood romance about our secret love together that could never have been consummated in England. The plot would have basically been that we had to travel all the way to Switzerland in a post van just to screw. We abandoned the idea pretty quickly though.

Talking of power balads, check out Radio Regen Bogen!

We were woken up at 8.40am this morning (day after travelling) by Dan who claimed we had ‘lots of shit to do today’. It’s now 12.30pm and we have done everything (really not very much) so I am going to go and have  a kip until 7pm when we’re off to rehearse in a nuclear bunker underneath a primary school.

Jay x

You might wonder why TBF decided to go back to play Wigan
for a second time. Good question. Was it because we have a massive northern
following there? Well, no. Was it because we were getting paid handsomely? Not
exactly.  But there must be a good
passing trade at the venue, right? Well, not particularly, no.  We couldn’t think of many good reasons. After
much discussion, Dan decided that the cheap Boddington’s was a good enough
reason to drive six hours north. Easily pleased, them Swiss.

The Tudor House is, to be frank, not the kind of place where
TBF’s brand of indie-pop good time party anthems (ya dig?) would usually be
appreciated by the black clad northern make-up sporting warriors of the night.
And so it proved, but thankfully there were enough regular folk who seemed to
enjoy our work. Throw in a cover of Ace of Bass’s All That She Wants and everyone’s happy…right? Maybe.

We had the pleasure of being introduced to something called
Life Metal by a Scouse band that were supporting us. Their name escapes me, but
the singer claimed to be the eighth wonder of the world, and they certainly
proved to be something else.

What was even more memorable, however, was the confirmation
of my outlook on life that stereotypes exist for good reason – It’s because
they tend to be true. All Scousers are car thieves? Yes and no. The video below
certainly does show a group of Liverpudlians breaking into a very nice looking
Audi, and it doesn’t matter that it was the guy’s own car he was breaking into
in order to get to the keys he had accidentally locked in his boot – which, of
course, rendered the smashing of the driver’s window totally and utterly
pointless, other than it being hilarious.

We’re about to head further north to Edinburgh now. Our poor
wee van’s been having a bit of trouble for the fy4huyw2….e3irst time (thanks
for that contribution, Gabby, our three year old groupie) so I hope we get
there eventually…

Ed x 

We’re absolutely delighted to announce that our new EP ‘Katy McCain’ is now on sale. If you’re an iTunes user, you can get it here. It’s also available on Amazon and Play.com. We’re pretty proud of it, to be honest, and we very much hope you enjoy it!

For those of you who prefer the real deal, you can order a signed CD directly from us.

Enjoy!

Recent gig stats:

Days      - 3

Gigs       - 3

Miles     - 1224

You may notice that we have a pretty poor gig:miles ratio and a similar days:miles ratio. Once again, our attention was drawn to our van.

We were wondering what it might be like if we pimped it up massively:

Cream/white tires and HUGE chrome alloys on only two wheels for example.

Can anyone beat that for stupidity?

You can click HERE for a TBF interview with UlsterMusic.com. There’s also a gig review to let you know how the Easter Belfast show went down. Please note that the song referred to in the review is in fact called ‘I Kissed The Dirt’ - not ‘I Kissed A Boy’!!

Enjoy,

TBF x

Having gone hungry on our way to Switzerland after being forced to line Monsieur Sarkozy’s pockets with 20 Euro notes every ten miles, it was time for a rethink. For the return leg, we tore up the history books and decided to side with the Germans. So we bombed it up the Autobahn (a debut for our trusty ex-postal van) through west Germany, tip-toed our way through Belgium (the birthplace of Rock n Roll) and finished off the manouevre with a stealthy entry from the north east into France and on the boat before anyone could say ‘J’ai mal à la tête’.

In reality, we were stuck in Calais for some 3 hours and let me tell you, it ain’t a pretty sight. The ‘cafe’ was a dodgy machine serving cafe cremes sans la creme. It’s amazing what fun you make for yourself when forced to, though:

There were a group of French school kids (again, never any English school kids on the Dover ferry, no wonder our children isn’t learning) milling around the car park. One of them, who could make a good living impersonating smooth R&B lover-boy susperstar NeYo, was being coaxed into giving the class some kind of musical rendition over their bus tanoy. After about 15 minutues of playing demure, he stepped up, and the crowd drew their breath. We were expecting him to spit some fearsome bars of the grittiest Gallic grime but instead, in a really rather meek voice he trembled, ‘My life is brilliant, my love is pure…’. We nearly choked on our Pringles.

Anyway, back to what we did in Switzerland on our final two days. On Thursday we went to a beautiful town called Fribourg in the French speaking part of the country.

We began the day by dropping in on Radio Fribourg for a quick interview and a live acoustic set. It was all conducted in English/French and the presenter, Amaëlle (pictured below… and frankly, who we all fell in love with), handled the situation perfectly by switching between the two languages and managing to somehow coax reasonable answers out of us at the same time.

Somebody was bound to let the side down at some stage, though, and I will never forget making my European radio debut with the words, ’sorry, what?’. It was at that point I decided I am going to dust down my GCSE French books and knuckle down to some learning for next time. Not a bad way to spend one’s time in the tour bus actually. Now there’s a plan! More productive than doing this kind of thing.

The gig that night in Paddy Reilly’s was a stormer and we played THREE 45 min sets, a TBF first! It was very encouraging to see some familiar faces from Burgdorf who had made the trip down after seeing us the weekend before for the first time. People coming back = we must be doing something right. See video below re. this concept. (especially from 1:05, although the rest is gold too!)

Our final stop was in Interlaken. Now, I gotta tell you, the photos don’t do this part of the world justice. I have never seen anywhere so beautiful in my life. The town is tucked in between two massive lakes and surrounded by the Alps shooting miles into the sky. Truly breathtaking.

Our final show of the tour was a riot as usual and the celebrations continued very late into the night. It’s a rather nice feeling having a room full of people who have absolutely no obligation to pretend to like us chanting ‘The Brent Flooood’ (as opposed to ‘Flud’). Nailed it.

The tunes after were provided by none other than Roger, one of the hotel managers. L.E.G.E.N.D.

Take a look at this ridiculous picture and imagine the kind of night it was…

But all good things… and all that. We honestly didn’t know what to expect when Dan presented the idea of a Swiss tour a few months back. If nothing else, it’ll be a bit of a holiday, right? The reality is that it really couldn’t have gone much better. The gigs were mostly fantastic, audience reactions were extremely positive and the word on the street is that we will be making a return journey sometime around September. I must mention the generosity and hospitality of the people of Switzerland. Everywhere we went we were fed with wonderful food (admittedly, mostly cheese) and a special thanks to Laura and her house-mates for letting us occupy Villa Schmid at all hours of the day and night. It can’t have been easy having a bunch of smelly Brits taking up your time and space! Seriously, thanks.

So, where next? Northern Ireland. Let’s do it. I’m off to crack open a Burgdorfer.

Ed xxx (keepin’ it Swiss one last time)