Surrounded by the night by glenkirkham

Enjoy

G

Hiya !

Apologies for being slightly neglectful of this blog in the last couple of weeks… I’ve been a very busy boy! Following 4 gigs this week ending with a great show at The Living Room on Regent street Saturday, I finally found an hour to sit down and let you know what’s going on.

In terms of the album, We were in the studio all of last week mainly laying new guitar lines and vocal harmonies and we’re just tying up the loose ends of the mixing process, which is a slower process than I initially assumed. Rest assured, it will be here shortly. You can still sign up for your free copy on the right hand side of this page ——>

There’s been some pretty special gigs this week playing in St Katherines Dock, Smithfields, Angel, Regent street as well as being in the studio all seven days of the week. Check out all upcoming gigs on the gigs page

There’s a massive schedule of live shows coming up in London over the rest of August, September and October which coincides with a tour around Europe at the end of 2009 before to promote the album and play some shows outside of London.

We are also in the process of shooting a rockumentary of sorts to give you guys an insiders view of the album making process and a backstage preview into what happens pre and post gigs… More to follow.

The pic above is taken from the mac store in regent street. Although I use the blackberry, the iPhone is starting to gain a huge following based purely on the user generated content the app store offers it’s users. If the iphone didn’t have a touch screen keyboard, I’d seriously consider getting one…. Still, the Blackberry is a pretty special bit of gear. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Another 4 gigs this week around London, all the gigs are free entry and it’s always a fun night so if you can get down, come and say hello

Cheers

Glen

Hey

Had a pretty productive week so far in the studio…. Thought I’d throw some video updates your way

check it out

Surrounded by the night

Future – Overdubs

More soon x

Glen

WARNING !!!!

This blog is epic, those with a short attention span are advised to turn back.

So… we have recently been approached by an exciting new events company called ‘Brit Beat’ who supply music events for high class clients around Europe. After seeing some videos and live shows, The band and I were invited to Switzerland in order to play a show for an event in a glorious town called Luzern. The show was on Saturday night and as I was playing a gig in London on the Friday, consequently I spent a glorious night on the floor of Heathrow airport in order to catch the ridiculously early flight.

Heathrow Terminal 5

Neon Escalator

Destination Curve

At about 4 in the morning with a weary head and an unquenchable desire for a beer, I got my guitar out in the terminal and started playing some tunes fresh from the gig before. Slowly, a group of people started forming and requesting songs on their uneventful wait for their flight. With about 20 or so people sat in a circle singing along, a policeman approached, pulled me to one side and proceeded to give me a ‘majesties warning’ for congregating a crowd without a license !! Apparently, A majesties warning means the Queen’s pretty pissed, so I decided to end the jam early due to the huge canister of mace hanging from his belt. I would’ve though the only way to get a majesties warning would be if the Queen arrived at the airport and politely ask me to ’shut the f**k up’ ! …. No such luck.

With only a couple of hours before check-in I was counting squares on the walls, reading the fine print of the import and export laws and examining my passport. Has anyone else noticed that British passports have a unicorn on the front ??????

Unicorn Passport

At 5am, we caught a shockingly early flight out of Heathrow heading towards Zurich.

Fluffy Clouds !

The train from Zurich to Luzern was around an hour away and gave us the opportunity to see some of the mountains which I had wrongly assumed A: would be covered in snow and B: would have Julie Andrews dancing around singing in the early morning dew…. Both assumptions ended up being false.

Instantly, you realise that the Swiss are ridiculously efficient. The trains ran on time, the staff spoke at least 4 different languages and everything is automated to the point where as a traveller, you really don’t have any of the stresses you have in Britain. Oh… And they don’t allow guitars in shopping malls.

Double-Decker Train

Urinal

Guitar Forbidden

Scenery

Scenery 2

Luzern Train Station

So, we arrived at the house of the friends we were staying at and were in total awe of the view

Room with a view

Something that amazed me (despite my lack of German fluency) was the TV shows in Switzerland. They have over 30 channels of terrestrial TV and many of the channels are just fixed videos of a fire crackling away, an aquarium, breaking waves and just really high quality screensavers…. I was also amazed by ‘rape’…

TV channel

Cheese rape

The gig was on the evening of the Saturday, and considering I hadn’t slept since 7am Friday morning, we were all pretty tired and decided to get some sleep, essentially, giving ourselves Jet lag. We went for a beer in the local village then headed over to the gig, which surprisingly enough was mostly British Ex-Pats who had retired very wealthy and decided to move to a place which makes London look like a prison…. The gig was LOUD and a whole lot of fun with some really good responses to the new choons!!

Smokey Stage

Giggage

Crowd

New York

The show was close to 3 hours long and everyone seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the live music. Hopefully in the future there will be more tours around Europe as it is a culturally astounding, beautiful place.

We flew back early on Monday and arrived in England to the standard cloud/rain. We had to circle Heathrow airport for 10 minutes due to lack of organisation on the part of air traffic control, but we landed safely.

I’m just in the process of editing some videos and they will be up soon and then we’re in the studio for a week starting on the 17th Aug.. After that, the album should be ready… Pre-order your free copy on the right hand side of this page and I’ll mail it to you when it’s done.

Cheers

Glen

P.S. If you meet someone Swiss, you kiss 3 times on the cheeks

So, there’s 4 shows this week around central London ending with a big gig in Switzerland on saturday at the world famous Luzern. It’s going to be huge as it hold’s a pretty big crowd, and, as we all know, the swiss are crazy into their music…(?) Shame the flight out there is at 5am on saturday morning and I still need to locate my passport !

You know how you have a drawer where you keep your passport and other random and seemingly unconnected documents… I notice every house has one of them… A Lighter/matches, A single (and probably used) battery, an unlabeled phone number, some sort of device for sticking things together i.e. a small role of sellotape or no more than 12 staples.

And why does everyone keep a cupboard available for plastic bags ??

Anyway, Switzerland will be a great opportunity to play in such an amazing location and we’re trying to mix our set in with new stuff, old stuff that people know as well as afew interesting covers here and there…. I’m still tying with the idea of a 80’s megamix medley starting with Journey and ending with A-ha.

The response has been really positive towards the new material and I can’t wait for you guys to hear it on record… Please bare with us, it will all be available soon… Meanwhile you can sign up on the right hand side of this post to get on the pre-release list. The day we launch it I think the sigh of relief at the completion of such a great amount of work will be a monumental exhale.

Anyway, I’ll check back with pics of gigs at the end of the week…. In the mean time, make sure you get yourself on the pre-release list for the album (It’s so nearly done) on the right hand side  —->

There’s only 250 available for free and already 172 are accounted at the time of this posting, so get involved and get signed up… You’ll also receive some special bonus items which I can’t tell you about until closer to the time

I miss you

Glen x

Here we go, if you fancy getting yourselves out for a few drinks with some great entertainment and plenty of laughs, please come and see some live music this month.

4th August – Prohibition, St Katherines dock, London E1

7th August – Smithfields Bar and Gril, Faringdon, London Ec1

8th August – The Roadhouse Bar in Luzern, Switzerland (fancy it?!)

11th August – Prohibition, St Katherines dock, London E1

13th Augut – Smithfields Bar and Gril, Faringdon, London Ec1

20th August – Smithfields Bar and Gril, Faringdon, London Ec1

21st August – O’Neils, Wimbledon London SW19

22nd August – The Living Room, Regent Street W1

25th August – Prohibition, St Katherines dock, London E1

27th August – Smithfields Bar and Gril, Faringdon, London Ec1

28th August – The Living Room, Essex Road, Angel, N1

I Hope to see you down at a show one night this month, plenty of new music mixed with modern contemporary covers and a great night out.

See you in Switzerland

Ciao

G

I understand the idea of capitalism and the trend of sales up to the christmas period but seriously… Why is this going on in August !?

Silly santa

Might get my tinsel in now

Finally Glenkirkham.com is up and running.

It feels like the proverbial estate agent has handed us the keys to a new home. The one bedroom apartment is now a 3 bed semi with en-suite bathroom and garden for the unpredicatable British summer.

As for the music, well, it’s all going a little bit too well ! The bass extrordinaire (Gene Burton) is back from 2 months away in France and the rhythm section (Along with Papi) is now back in the same country. It’s been a long and (to say the least) interesting summer and the record is sounding bloody marvellous !

It’s kind of cool to take a break from working solidly with each other because when the individual force regroups after a regenerating summer, the sound is fresher than the metaphoric daisy. We are still looking to give the album away for free (signup here http://htxt.it/UMrV) and it is sounding top notch and I am very proud to put my name to it.

So, come back here for more updates and info on the album and we hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed making it.

I would say feel free to look around, but theres not much going on right now.

Check out the myspace http://www.myspace.com/glenkirkham or become a fan on facebook http://htxt.it/UMrV .

Hope all is cool in your world

Cheers

Glen