Gott Nytt År

Hej! Many scenes of many days and nights have been played out since I last wrote. I've been preoccupied with studying for the last few months, little to no musical movements have been made. That said I have written a lions share of an album which may or may not transpire to be one I release under my ever baffling moniker. They were written two weeks in October where I attempted to be Husker Du without Norton and Hart. I don't know how successful I was.

I had ideas of drum machines, full band arrangements, field recordings, a million possibilities. I just couldn't decide which one. Every possibility I seemed to agree on I saw hundreds of problems with. I've decided to give it some time, some air, some time by the sea to recharge itself. This project has bronchitis; just as it starts running positively in the right direction it suddenly has to sit down with the magic sponge and some anti-inflammatory drugs.

So this album will just 'happen' I estimate: a collection of songs from time and space when I appreciate the enjoyment of finishing a piece of music for the cathartic qualities it has alone. I'm tired of writing two lines and then my brain concerning itself with the intricacies of a double album featuring Dee Dee Ramone on harp, Edie Sedgwick on flute and Jesus monged out producing the whole fucking detritus rather than concentrating on concluding a cadence. Me + 4-track = win. Perhaps in a similar mould to this: Crystal Missile MP3

I've also retired from playing live by myself. It's really not my vibe. It's like drinking alone: fun at first but ultimately wrong.

I'll post updates as to how everything is going.

Har du en bra kvell.

The importance of being sensible

Hmmm...not written in a while seemingly. I've been working on new songs but not LT ones. I've got stuck in a rather large a rut with what I'm doing and I don't see the point in just making music just for the sake of it. I've got incredibly bored of working by myself too, it's really not helping me out one bit. I'm working on another project which I hope to unveil quite soon, it'll hopefully be unrecognisable to what I've been doing with LT.

At some point there will be some form of inspiration to make the long awaited LT album of doom but something pretty major would have to happen for that to be the case anytime soon. There are one or two songs knocking around that I might try an mix and anyone who wants them can just email me (loyaltrooper[at]gmail[dot]com) and I'll send them on.

I shall however be playing the gig at Cha Cha Cha in Watford on the 6th November. Probably the last one for a while.

Thanks for everyone who's been supporting me!

Cinematic genius

My friend Ceri sent this through to me the other week. We're all a little sideways. Steam trains and 7% cider do that to you, apparently. That and the photos are good mementos of a weekend I scarcely remember. Good times

Anyway, nostalgia over. The new songs are coming along very well, I'm about halfway through the album. I've scrapped this record twice already but I'm on it now. It's all coming together. Having the support and interest of writing for a full band is fantastic. I feel like the shackles have been truly removed. It's the most interesting thing I've written by myself, no doubt. I guess going back to the idea of being a band and feeling less limited, more like anything is possible, has really benefited me. I mean that as much creatively as I do psychologically. Knowing that there will be a band with me to perform this eases how much pressure I place on myself.


The EP might be a way off. My work is done but stuff out of my control is holding that back and has been for a while. So yeah, sorry there's no news on that.

My parents, brother and his girlfriend came to see me this week. This made me incredibly happy. Mum and dad brought Doctor Who series 4 on DVD and a homemade Apple Cake. I'm gonna get involved with both of those now.

A happy man I am

Firstly, I'm listening to Wild Beasts second album which, bearing in mind them and Grammatics are the two bands I'm genuinely, uncontrollably and potentially worryingly obsessed with, can only be a good thing. My brother sent me a message on Facebook today saying that my girlfriend and I dancing to Wild Beasts was his favourite memory from 2000 Trees this year. I had to take my flip-flops off to dance properly in the mud! They mesmerise me this band, amazing. Anyway, enough hero worship!

Secondly, I'm working on a four track EP, which I think will be named 'Stygn' as I mentioned a while back. Basically, the album isn't anywhere near done and won't be for sometime. However, I have figured what I want it to be and getting to that stage has taken a LONG time. In the meantime the Stygn EP shall fill the void between releases. It will include 'Crystal Missile', 'Draw Me A New Outline', 'Rule Of Three' and a new song with the working title of 'Walker's Rocket'.

The previously mentioned song is probably the biggest indication yet of what the album will be like. I've worked really hard on it to create a really impressive piece of music which I feel is something that perhaps was lacking on 'One Day...'. 'The Doctor' recording does demonstrate much more attention to the crafting of songs and production but 'Walker's Rocket' is another step forward. It's a full band arrangement and I'm working with the intention of not strumming any chords. It's all picked guitar parts and the bass is quite tricky, especially for a man with as smaller fingers as I! The drums parts are quite quirky but with an emphasis on people being able to move their little legs to the beat, not something I normally pay attention to. It's a pop song with really strong melodies running throughout it but it's also been loving created, I've not been lazy with it, far from it. I want my debut to be a pop record. Something to enjoy and to sing to, to dance to, to share with people and not be a typical solo-singer-songwriter-totally-isolated-insular-type-thing. It will be pop but in addition I want it to be the most interesting work I've ever done. So herein lays a significant challenge to attempt to be both accessible and avant grade in the same breathe. Difficult nay impossible to achieve? Yes! Worth a shot? Most definitely.

And as the new sound evolves (not like 'the new sound' of Mighty Boosh fame) my ambitions grow with it. The most instantaneous difference is that my band and I are going to be rehearsing in the coming weeks and that's how I'm going to be looking at presenting Loyal Trooper to the world for the foreseeable future: both live and on record. This is exciting. I'm looking forward to having people to keep me in time! I'm going to be looking at a heightened amount of coverage for the EP, mainly blogs and radio support. I want at some point to see life from the perspective of a man on a supportive label so I'm going to talk to a few people regarding that.

I guess all ends up I'm bored of the whole "Andy Walker has potential..." type stuff. It's time to start delivering some knockout punches into the musical world and I feel that time is here.

More festivals please

What an excellent weekend. Indietracks was BRILLIANT. My debut festival performance was everything I'd hoped it would be. Firstly, the people who run and organise Indietracks are some of the most lovely people you will ever meet. This is a fact, not an opinion. A massive thank you to: Stuart, Natalie, Emma, Make Do And Mend records, John and everyone on the merch stall plus anyone I've left out and the countless other people who helped out including the lovely lovely Pocketbooks.

On Friday evening a load of us convened round my mate Dave's house in Nottingham as it's only 14 miles to the festival site from his house. My intention was to have a couple of drinks and retire early to bed to get my vocal beauty sleep for the following days frivolities. Instead I drank many 8.5% Belgian beers, got six hours sleep and woke feeling like death had relieved himself in my mouth. Thanks Death. I did vocal warm ups for an hour which, at 10am, my voice definitely did NOT like. Cue squealing and bum notes all over the place.

The cab driver didn't really know the way and his Sat Nav takes us via Cape Canaveral seemingly. Arriving later than planned, we discover that we must catch a train to the festival from the station we're dropped off at. In fairness, this is my fault as I had not re-checked this information despite Stuart's informative emails. Next train is at 12.30. One problem, I play at 12.30. So we walk to the festival which is not unlike a nature trail. I steal Meg's festival hat and don some straw in an attempt to look slightly more like a farmer to blend in with the aesthetic of the field. However, I'm wearing Chelsea boots so I look like an indie version of Worzel Gummidge. We're lost, late and getting muddy.

We get there. Pocketbooks are on the door. I'm not late. Everything is fine. We go to the bar. Dave and Steve have a drink each in five minutes. We get another. We go to the platform but you can't take alcohol. So Dave and Steve neck their pints. We've been here fifteen minutes, they've had two pints and it's still only 12.15. In festival season this is a regular occurrence. My mate Jamie (Travels by Telephone, see previous Leeds Primrose related posts/tour diaries) is here. We have a hug. The world is smiling on me today. Time to play.

The train arrives. I'm incredibly nervous but very excited. We go to the luggage carriage where I'm playing as we go to and from Swanwick. The carriage fills up very quickly and this is odd as at a normal gig people arrive in dribs and drabs, right? I'm not used to doors open, rush, play! But yeah, it's full so I'm very very far from complaining! I play 'M1 To The A52'. It's end is greeted with cheering, clapping, whooping, more clapping. This is AMAZING. I joke that I'm used to playing crapholes in Colchester where at the end of a song people just swear at me. The rest of the set is sadly a blur but I remember doing a little dance, waving at passing trains and generally feeling like king of the world. No, the universe. Thanks to everyone who came to see me. Awesome.

I finish pretty much as we're coming back to our stop. I give out EP's, many people make contributions towards their copy, I'm very grateful. I have my photo taken, people give me money, take EP's, congratulate me and ask for autographs. Multitasking? Am I good at it? Fudge no. I sign autographs outside the train in the basking sunlight having played my songs well in the company of my many of the most important people ever to me and I am champion in this moment. Invincible. Touchable. Winning, I guess.

An experience like that, had I have been alone, would have been nowhere near as intoxicating. And intoxication is what follows. More music. More sun. A LOT more booze. I get interviewed for the Derby Telegraph. I waffle but hopefully come out coherent. I do the Indietracks podcast where I play a song and do a small interview.

We leave as one happy collective. My friends have put more time into helping me than I care to remember: driving me to gigs, playing on records, doing artwork, coming to endless gigs etc. I made them proud of me which, frankly, is very important to me. I felt like a repaid a little bit of faith yesterday by showing I can be the performer that I'm capable of being. My girlfriend and I recently went to Sweden where we found a joke book that planned out which stereotypical stage you would be in your life at a certain age. At the end it had a tick list of things you'd done or not done. One of them was "Did you fulfill your potential?" Which frightened the living hell out of me as, to date, I haven't. Yesterday I made a step towards doing that. Hopefully.

P.s. Check out a picture diary of the day in my previous post...

Indietracks photo diary

The Indietracks performance train of doom

I'm looking fairly lonely here. There were people I swear...

Oh there they are! Hello people!

Signing autographs. What the fudge? I must have a striking resemblance to Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura or something

As I'm a vegetarian I'm not into this but if anyone with a large carnivorous side is thinking of going next year and needs something to convince them into coming to Indietracks, they do have a huge hog thing. One of our party thought it was smiling. I have my doubts.

My friend Dave has a reputation as a bit of a boozehound. The caption when texting this to his girlfriend was "Dave's finally drunk himself into oblivion. Sorry. xxx"

Dave re-appears and we laugh about him getting trousers in the 12-14 years old's size in the Back to School section of Tesco's

Thou shalt not pull levers Stephen

Steve is interviewed by the Derby Telegraph about the pro's of watching Indietracks upside down

Home time

Gigs and things

The press for the single has increased to a marginally more healthy level. All of these reviews are incredibly positive. The marks don't drop below 4/5 and the Organ review claimed: "If we still had Singles Of The Week around then no doubt this would be this week's...this would be single of most weeks". Sweet. So then to the links of doom: Organ, Stereokill and Beat Surrender. I think for the album I might have to get someone to help with the PR. Maybe it'll be easier to 'work' an album as they're much more frequently reviewed than singles. But some of these sites, publications and DJ's I'm banging my head against a massive wall made out of old promo CD's trying to get them to play/review it. I think perhaps releasing it myself wouldn't be so hard if I had some help doing the PR. That's probably the plan. I'll just have to find £100,000 million to finance someone to talk to the NME for me.

Thanks to everyone who came to the Manchester show. I was awful. The weekend was awesome. I got to spend it with some friends I've not seen in ages and if I'd not have been playing we might not have got together. However, I've lost my passion for playing to people. In that format at least; just me and a guitar. I've had enough. Those songs. Played by me. Anywhere. I don't find it enjoyable anymore. I'm still doing Indietracks as that will be different and I'm pretty sure playing in the sunshine at at festival at 12pm is slightly more enjoyable to playing on a damp Tuesday night in...Chelmsford. I'll still probably play on my birthday. Other than that though, for the time being, no more gigs. I'm not having fun doing it, so I'm going to stop. I might get the band together now, rehearse properly and build up to releasing the album that way. I've played more gigs in the last six months or so than a lot of bands manage in their careers so I've nothing to regret on that front. One day I'll play lots again but right now touring/gigging can go fudge itself.

By the way, for those of you who remember the post about a change of career, I'm going to be a psychologist. Hopefully rising to the title of Lord and Master of Psychology to the Universe. Either that or I'll get a 2:2 and end up working pushing trolleys round ASDA car park. We'll see, I guess.