In late January/early February I went out on tour with Dave Hughes and Adam Bennett. Here’s a lovely video I made to document the tour:

I won’t bore you with a write up of it. I think the video shows that a good time was had by all. Easily my most successful tour to date and a great start to the year.

The band started the year existing only in theory after I fired Jon and Steve for being disloyal, and for joining in fun in a way that excluded their employer. In January I had two people lined up to replace them and by February we’d had our first practice and already nailed four songs. So, The Dead Set became Naomi (of Naomi Hates Humans/Mothers Opposed To The Occult and er Jesus & Tequila fame) on bass and new guy Johnny Yeates on drums (thanks to Mike Only and Johnny’s impressive totally shitfaced networking skills).

After only a few practices we played our first gig in Brighton:

Plans were then afoot for more gigs and some recording. Sadly though things slowed to a crawl, with Johnny unable to practice for a few months and then Naomi announcing that she was moving to New York. What is it with me and bass players feeling the need to leave the country rather than play in a band with me?

Anyhoo, so knowing the band was in limbo again, I set about recording, ultimately having Naomi, Johnny, Jon and Steve all helping out. Despite planning to have stuff done by now, what was meant to be a demo massively ballooned once I realised I could get a fairly decent sound from my DIY home studio set-up. Add to this learning everything as I go, and it’s dragged on. But it’ll be completed soon and most likely be a full album. Just my vocals to go now and hopefully I’ll have something ready for release early in the new year.

In between the recording, there was one more band gig. Naomi couldn’t make it and so I got Jon to step in on bass:

Not bad for a band that hadn’t rehearsed together at all.

So at the end of the year, the band has become a sort of loose group of musicians. Essentially, whoever’s around and willing to help. Fuck knows what’ll happen next year beyond releasing the recordings, but fingers crossed for a bit of stability in the line-up so we can gig and possibly do some more recording, maybe in a real studio.

That’s pretty much it. One more year. A few gigs and recording. Funny how easy it is to do a lot and have nothing to show for it! Honestly, I have been busy!

So, 2011 has been an odd year. I’m not much for looking back on stuff at the end of a year, but I thought it’d be good to do a brief catch up. I’m starting with the legally required ‘favourite albums of the year’ post.

These are only some of the albums that have soundtracked the year for me, in no particular order and oddly almost all of which I bought on vinyl, in an attempt to get back to sitting down with an album without all the modern day distractions.

Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness

If I could pick a favourite album of the year, I think it’s this. I uterly loved their last album ‘Romance Is Boring’ and wondered what they would come up with next, especially with new members. This is a really concise album, devoid of any filler. Gareth Campesinos is probably my favourite lyricist of the past god-knows-how-long and I’ve fallen massively in love with Kim Campesinos’ vocals. When her vocal comes in on ‘The Black Bird, The Dark Slope’ it’s just brilliant. If I could level any criticism at the album, it’s that there isn’t enough of her vocals. But in reality, they’re perfect for the songs, I’d just like to hear what the band sounded like with her vocals a bit more prominent, like on their older songs with Aleks singing.

I saw them at The Barfly in Camden and KCLSU and both gigs were so good. It really feels like they’re a cohesive unit and only getting better with each new album.



Bangers – Small Pleasures

Awesome, straight-ahead catchy punk trio. I was a fan from the opening line: ‘How could any conscientious soul with a brain to call its own give in to nesting instinct for a night and say Baby I’m so bored, why don’t we create a life?’.

Caves – Homeward Bound

I discovered Caves at the start of the year, when one of the shows on my tour was cancelled. We wound up in Leeds instead at a gig with Caves on the bill and from the first note I was a fan. Simple songs. Catchy as fuck and loads of power. They’re a wicked live band and this album is pretty damn close to the experience of seeing them live.

Fucked Up – David Comes to Life

Late to party with this band. When I was piecing the band back together at the start of the year, Naomi mentioned them (she worked on the DCTL website) and I duly went home to check them out on the internets. The first thing I saw was a youtube video of them performing Baiting The Public on Canadian MTV, complete with their fans running amok. Utterly brilliant.

Great Cynics – Don’t Need Much

I first saw Great Cynics when it was just Giles playing as Cynics, supporting Bomb The Music Industry!. While I liked his set, I wasn’t blown away. The moment I heard the Dave and Angela EP with drums and bass added, it totally clicked into place. Another great, solid album. This is a band that are only going to get better and better with each new release.

Bomb The Music Industry! – Vacation

I love BTMI! If I remember rightly, I checked them out after my friend Dave Hughes put a show on for Jeff on one of his iPod tours. From there I actually wound up stumbling upon Allison Weiss (who is really really fucking great) doing a BTMI! cover on youtube and subsequently a shitload of other awesome bands/musicians also. So BTMI! have been hugely important in indirectly influencing my listening habits. This is their most cohesive album and the closest they’ve come to a ‘normal’ band record. I love this band and everything they stand for. Check out Quote Unquote records where you can download all their stuff for free/donation.

Dave Hughes – Despite The Blackout

The pedant in me wants to exclude this because it’s only 14 minutes and six songs long (So more of an EP in my eyes). Also, it’s only on CD, thus making it look I have massive freak hands in the photo above. However, Dave is a DIY punker and great songwriter and I’m clearly a dickhead, so it gets on the list.

It also gets on the list because it’s arguably Dave’s strongest collection of songs and features the best recording quality of his releases to date (It’s a totally DIY home recorded effort). I can be heard yelling in the background on the title track too. Decide for yourselves whether or not this is a good thing.

There’s a few more parts to come back and then the small matter of the guitars and vocals, which are in various stages of completion. I need to stop dawdling and get on with it basically.

We’ve recorded twelve songs. One of which is almost definitely not getting past the guide guitar/vocals stage. The others all sound ace.

Here’s a photo of Johnny, distracted by my CDs when he should be listening to the drum take:

What have I been up to? Recording mainly. The original idea was to record simple demos of the band versions of my songs with the current line-up of Johnny and Naomi. So we’d have something to show people as an example of the songs with the new line-up. As is the way with most things I do, the idea quickly escalated and it now looks to be some kind of DIY home recorded release. Maybe two. It will also involve all members of The Dead Set, past and present as Jon and Steve helped me record a bunch of the songs the new line-up hasn’t yet worked on.

Here’s Johnny ‘in the studio’ working out his parts:

I’ve been dawdling on recording my parts though, so things are progressing slowly. I hate recording vocals and I only marginally less hate recording guitar. Today I managed four vocal takes each for three songs. Hopefully, some of it’s usable. Here’s a photo I took earlier to try and convey the sense of boredom and despair I feel when recording. Instead it sort of looks like some Wall-E-esque home studio character:

In other news, the band played a pretty decent gig in Bournemouth recently. Naomi couldn’t make it, so Jon stepped in on bass. We didn’t have a chance to rehearse so we went straight up on stage and just plowed through a six song set (including two new songs) and winged it. On the night I was satisfied but not over the moon. Watching the video back, we were so much tighter than I thought. Makes me wonder how good we could be if we can nail down a solid lineup and get gigging/rehearsing regularly. Mad props (as the youth would say) to Johnny and Jon for being solid enough musicians that they were able to just jump right in from cold. Also, it was great to see so many friendly faces and we oddly had the biggest audience of the night, despite being the out of town opening act. Huge thanks to Paul, Hannah, Liam, Dean, Georgia and the one and only Poet Hi-Ho for coming out and to any of the other people who saw us and didn’t run off to the beer garden. A few new people signed the mailing list. As usual though, I can’t read their handwriting all that well. D’oh!

Lastly, I’m still looking for a bass player. London based. So if you know anyone, email me – adam-at-adamboucher.com. There must be someone out there? Preferably willing to commit to regular gigs/practice and hopefully recording and ideally someone who already plays bass. But don’t let that put you off getting in touch if you’re willing to give bass a shot.

Naomi isn’t leaving the band immediately (we have plans to do some recording soon) but I thought I’d get the word out early that I need a replacement. Ideally London based and up for gigging/touring (usually weekend/long weekend trips rather than quit-your-job-and-starve affairs) and recording.

If you’re interested or know anyone who might fit the bill, please get in touch:
adam-at-adamboucher.com.

Youtube is being rubbish with the live video of this song, so I’ve uploaded a version of ‘Exceptions’ from practice to give an idea of what the band sounds like, for anyone who might be interested. Oddly, Naomi is out of shot for most of it, save for a brief glimpse of her headstock…

Also, be sure to check out Sophie’s website for all your photographic needs:

www.sophiefrancisco.carbonmade.com

Everyone say a virtual hello to Naomi on bass and Johnny on drums.

Naomi has been a friend for ages and we previously played in a not-very-good-but-fun-for-a-bit garagey rock band together. Her main musical endeavour is the awesome Naomi Hates Humans and she can also be found partaking of lots of side projects like Mothers Opposed To The Occult and Baby Streuth.

I have the lovely Mike Only to thank for putting me in touch with Johnny. As well as now drumming in The Dead Set he plays in the rather excellent Will Tun & The Wasters. Go check them out. He also currently lives in Reading, but has an incredibly sunny disposition despite this.

The band is sounding fucking great so far and we played our first gig together on Thursday and I have to say it went even better than I could have hoped. The previous Dead Set line-up rehearsed for quite a while before gigging. This new line up had just two and a bit practices, but we still managed to pull off a pretty decent set at The Cobblers Thumb in Brighton. Definitely the best we’ve played so far in our short time as a band. Stay tuned for more info and hopefully more gigs. In fact, if you fancy booking us, do get in touch.

Finally, I should say a massive thanks to Jon and Steve for all their efforts in the previous version of the band. Prior to us jamming I was pretty resolutely against having a band for my solo stuff and now I can’t really imagine not having one. You may have noticed that they still appear in the banner at the top of the site. That’s because there aren’t any pictures of the new line up yet. I await one of them bitching about using their likeness without permission or other such tripe! And to that I say, bring it bitches!

Seriously though, there wasn’t a single crap moment playing in a band with them and the highlight had to be our tour with Dave Hughes. We played to practically nobody, made no money and had the best time ever. Keep an eye out for them in the ‘Behind The Music’ episode in years to come!

In the past I’ve blogged about the tours in detail, but since that’s time consuming and I should be using my free time to do stuff like writing new songs and gigging, I’ll just offer up this short post instead. Also, there’ll be a tour video along soon that will chronicle the best bits of life on the road with the delightful company of Adam Bennett and Dave Hughes.

The tour was amazing and every show was great, with only one exception (a last minute London show on Friday) and even that wasn’t the most terrible experience ever. A straight run of 7 shows in 9 days (with two last minute cancellations, one of which we couldn’t replace) or 9 shows in total over 14 days with three days stuck at work in between.

I made a load of new friends and discovered some awesome bands. Tour highlights included: playing again with ONSIND, discovering the awesomeness of Caves on an unscheduled day off in Leeds, exposing Adam Bennett to some horrific sites on the interwebs, watching Dave and his band totally own the stage at Lexapalooza (easily the best band of the day), trying to avoid the seemingly endless potholes on the roads in Scotland and listening to Dave play the same fingerpicked chord progression for what seemed like three full days in Paisley… No wait, those last two weren’t so much fun!

I think in the past all three of us have been a bit slack at promoting ourselves, but on this tour we made a point of setting up a merch table each night and keeping a proper log of money. Dave should be doing a blog about this in more detail soon. We certainly can’t quit our day jobs yet but we managed to break even. Result!

So, in all a really successful tour with almost entirely great shows and lots of fun.

Huge thanks to everyone who put us on, gave us a place to crash, fed us, came out to see us, bought a cd, signed the mailing list, shared the stage with us etc etc. In short, we were treated really well by some amazing people and had a blast.

Here’s to tour number 8….