Cassiopeia and the Caterpillar

Once upon a time, a girl was leaving her house to visit her dear old granny. Her granny was very, very old; much older than anyone could remember, and moved about with the aid of a wooden caterpillar three times the size of her. The caterpillar was charmed and was very heavy but got Granny where she needed to go. At night, passers by could observe the silhouette of Granny moving around the house by the light of a flickering hurricane lantern (gas was all she swore by) and the sound of the caterpillar's eighteen legs on the creaking floorboards.
The sun was still in the sky when the girl, whose name was Cassiopeia, set off to see Granny. The climate where she lived was mild and boring, and the neighbours rarely spoke to eachother, for fear of causing offence with conflicting views and the consequences thereafter. There were no barbeques, street parties or wild drunken tango nights, like in Lewisham, because no-one had any friends. Once a year they got together on the hill just outside the town to burn one of the witches that passed through. Apart from that, the witches were left alone and so was everyone else.
Cassiopeia was taking her Granny some fresh bread and olives from her garden, as she did every Wednesday. It was agreed, that since Cassiopeia had killed Granny's cat the year before with diesel and airfix glue, she'd have to go and visit the slimy old hag every week, and endure a whole evenings reprimanding from the top of that awful wooden freak insect.
Cassiopeia rounded the curve at the end of the road leading to Granny's house, and felt the box of matches in her pocket. The curtains were open, and she could see the caterpillar skulking around the kitchen with Granny doing something over the stove. She wandered up to the door in no particular hurry and let herself in.
Granny. She said.
Hello my dear. Leered Granny. Have you bought rancid old olives again from your father's miserable vegetable patch?
Of course. Replied Cassiopeia.

Then she lit a match, put it inside the box and shoved it into the wooden caterpillars mouth which looked at her with dead unseeing eyes, and as it exploded into flames she ran out of the door, locking it from the outside.

As the thatched roof blazed, Cassiopeia sat on the hill and ate all the olives and the bread, thinking of what she was going to tell the king.

Postcards from Glastonbury Festival 2011

Photographs by Roxi Kiley

Willowman Festival

After our 250 mile journey this morning to Northallerton for the charming Willowman festival, we pulled onto the ground in a cloud of smoke, exhaust and black coming out of the front instead of the back.

Then we played our show to a crackin' audience who danced for us in the overcast afternoon, (thanks boys and girls!) and then scrounged some free food before checking out the rest of the festival.

After the wonderful Rik deduced the problem, I called the AA and asked for a mend. When he came, he declared in his northern drawl, "ye'd be mad t' drive home in'at...you'll be gassed like."

So, we had to make the decision whether to put our beloved van on a truck for an 8 hour trip tomorrow morning...or tonight. There's more music to play tomorrow so we HAVE to get back.
We're taking our tents down... Slightly disgruntled as neither Tim or me have slept in our new tents yet! Tim hasn't got a clue how to pack his tent up, so I think (and bear in mind it's pouring with rain) he's actually putting it in the van as it is.

Blimey. Not looking forward to this drive home.
Good job the temporary citizens of Willowman are accommodating and enthusiastic!

Beans, sweet tea and tinnitus

So we're awake at ridiculous hour (6am) which some people do every day to go down the mine. Our mission today is get to Willowman festival - about 250 miles away, before we play at 3pm...if you're going!

Louis bought a new waistcoat but he got it from Shanghai and it's stuck in customs... Bad times!

Festivals are coming...return of the blog!

So... we're about to play some more shows in muddy fields with the weather joining in and thousands of mad party people who are all trying to forget that their gas bill is due on Monday.

I personally can't wait, I love festivals. Always have done. I love how cleanliness goes flying out of the window and the sight of one last tin of macaroni cheese can make you jump for joy.
This year we're playing Willowman, Glastonbury, Extalgic, Hop Farm, Croissant Neuf and Bestival.

At the moment I'm sitting in my kitchen musing on whether I should empty the contents of my under-the-stairs cupboard into the corridor to look for my wellies now, or after I've had some beans on toast.

Yes, with me, my normal life diet is pretty much the same as my festival diet.

Riddles

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

After major contributions to and playing countless shows in the UK, France and Albania and on our new album in America, and being a founder member of the band, Chris Owen has departed from Tankus the Henge. He is an amazing musician and has helped shape the band to what it is now. We have had many great, mad adventures with him and he is a true friend with an incredible family who let us write many of our songs in their barn! We all wish him the very best.

Stepping into Chris's footprints is the ex-circus guitarist Tim Fulker. After running away with a circus in India when he was eleven, he learnt the ropes and how to roller-skate and stiltwalk before moving to Wales to be a hermit. When we came a calling he renounced his hermit lifestyle to play the guitar very, very loudly. Our show at the Dublin Castle will be his first one with us. Don't miss it.

Finally in New Orleans

It's been a while since the road blog was updated, so here is the next bit.
After the standard morning coffee for most of the band, and breakfast at a fast food joint (being vegetarian in the deep south is very difficult and I had to rely on baked potatoes and apple pie) we hit the road and approached New Orleans several hours later. Drove along a long straight causeway type elevated road with no junction for about 25 miles. Water on both sides, some ramshackle houses built under the road right on the waters edge. We changed radio stations as the one we'd had on had got consistently less appropriate for our surroundings. Songs from 'Grease' do not fit the mournful beauty of the Big Easy skyline. Muddy Waters was howling on another station, so we let him and turned it up.

As usual we had to catch up with Time, as it always seems to get a head start in any journey we make, also we hadn't the foggiest idea where the venue was. Howlin' Wolfs Den, on South Peters Street - see, I can remember it now! Directions procured from a dimly lit, friendly bar got us there and as others worried about food I set off to walk to the Mississippi. My heart raced as I climbed steps towards it anticipating my first glimpse of that famous river. After walking through a colonnade of shops and seafood stalls, there it was, and I realised it was just a river. The water wasn't even brown. However, paddle steamers still ply their trade for tourists, one in particular, the Natchez, still powered by steam rolls up and down the river with a jazz band on the deck.

Later that evening we met the band we had a gig with, The Dirty Bourbon River Show, and made our acquaintance with the gentlemen involved; Noah, Jimmy, Charlie and Bootsy. Be sure to check them out and lose your inhibitions to their grooves Cab Calloway would jive to.

Our show in Howlin' Wolf's was a lot of fun, if quiet audience-wise in our first half. By the time the DBRS had played a set and we were on again, the atmosphere was more electric and several girls had taken most of their clothes off.
A late night out followed, on Frenchman Street where we danced to a fantastic swing band in a venue called the Spotted Cat, and I met a guy called Ben who grew up in the same town as me. Strange...
Meandering our way in giant curves back to the hotel, I marvelled at the curiously European architecture. This appears to have some history, whereas Nashville, although it is fascinating and it's inhabitants are warm and welcoming, feels like it was built recently, in the grand scheme...
Back in the hotel, around 3am, we found to our delight that the outdoor, unheated pool and hot tub were unguarded so spent the early hours jumping from one extreme to the other. This was yet another moment previously described, of lying on my back in the water in a strange city stargazing.
In the morning, determined not to waste a moment I woke up and and wandered off into the backstreets and down the tramlines on the waters edge. I watched the Natchez moan at the sky in a spray of steam and magnificently roll lazily away. I took a streetcar into Main Street and encountered a parade, band, feathers and dancers winding it's way through the centre, and back with the band later on, saw the Hurricane Katrina damage with my own eyes and I realised what a brave, vibrant city this is, and how much of a crime it was by the government to show such a lack of love when it was needed the most.
I was welcomed so warmly in New Orleans - I wish we could have spent more than three days there.
Later that evening we drove to the Circle Bar for our second show, this one with the excellent Revivalists; one of the tightest, groovin', funkin' bands you'll see live.
When the city was flooded, the Circle Bar was fifteen feet underwater. It's a great venue, and it was rammed for our show.
Afterwards we carried on the revelry on the balcony of a bar somewhere else in the city, and since we were leaving in the morning for Nashville, friendships were made and parting was sweet sorrow, with promises to return next year. We got back to the hotel in the back of a friends car, a few of us. A few too many for the car. Four in the middle, some lapriding and me and a new friend in the boot, watching the lights whizz by sideways. Determined to relive the previous nights exploits in the pool, and having talked it up to our female companions, to their amusement, or bemusement, we all stripped and jumped into the hot tub. Apart from Jake, who jumped in with his clothes on. After a few minutes of raucousness the security guard came up to us, didn't say a word, and turned the bubbles off. The nerve! There we were, trying to host a party and he came and spoilt it. We all got out, feigning apologies and faux dejection, apart from Jake, who hid...under the water.
I just doubled up laughing, wondering how long he would last, hiding from a grumpy security guard at the bottom of a jacuzzi. The next hour was spent waiting for him to leave us alone, then all jumping back in again. Mike, usually attempting to keep an eye on our misdemeanours from a safe distance, was in the bar and heard a commotion between security and reception staff. I don't think he needed to ponder for more than three seconds that we may have been the cause.

We really don't act well in civilised society unless we have eaten something. Even then, we're not your picture perfect gentlemen every hour of the day. So breakfast in the morning, then the long highway back to Tennessee. We stopped for dinner at Chillis in Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis. Just thought I'd mention it as Tony the proprietor was a good guy, he looked after us, and if you're ever there, go and say hello.
That's all for now.
Jaz.

Changing of the guard

As the curtains shut on 2010, our most eventful year by far, performing in such far flung places as the USA, Albania and the Lake District, inciting revelry and riots at twelve festivals, and making a new record in Tennessee, we're saying goodbye to George Bird, who has played drums for Tankus the Henge since June 2006.
George is concentrating on other projects including the brilliant Saltwater Samurai, I urge you to check them out and download the EP from Bandcamp, even better, catch them live.
http://www.saltwatersamurai.bandcamp.com
We wish him all the best in the future.

Taking over on drums is Seb "Seabass" Laverde and we're very excited to play our first shows with him in February in London. To find out more about Seb, stay tuned! Whatever you do, don't miss it.

In the few months between now and when we see you, have a great Christmas and New Year. Beg, borrow and steal the album we were selling this year as it's now unavailable - if you have it, give it out!

In with the new...

From tomorrow night, we're going to be launching previews of the record that we cut in Nashville, TN two months ago. We're very excited about this and can't wait for everyone to hear the full, cataclysmic spectacle next year.
However, due to the legal spiderweb that is the music industry, we have to take down the album that is on MySpace, facebook and Bandcamp.
You will no longer be able to stream it or download it from Monday 29th of November. It's on sale for the shatteringly reduced price of £5 only! Available at www.tankusthehenge.bandcamp.com
- go there now before it's too late! We'd be much obliged if you told your friends on facebook and twitter and all the other 21st century methods you guys and gals communicate.

Added to that, if you own one of the CD's from a festival this year, copy it and pass it on.. there aren't any more!

Sorry the blogging seems to have gone quiet recently... we know there's more America blog to come, and also what we've been doing recently is very exciting and we'll tell you all about it at the opportune moment. But for now, it's a month to the day after Boxing Day, so start being Christmassy and download the first Tankus the Henge album before it's too late!
www.tankusthehenge.bandcamp.com
Talk to you all soon,
Tankus the Henge et al

Graceland and Highway 61 (the long road south)

Eventually we found our way out of Nashville and on the road to Memphis. I think it was the 65. Americans don't appear to use sat navs yet. Maybe this is because they're further behind than the UK in technology stakes, or maybe they just know there way around better than we do. I never worked it out. In any case, our hired car (with aircon, interior mood lighting, automatic sliding doors, under floor smuggling compartments and all the country stations you can imagine as standard) did not have GPS. It had a compass. In the dashboard.

Graceland was something I could not miss, I don't usually go for the 'tourist' option but I grew up listening to Elvis and as a performing artist, he kinda wrote a lot of the guidelines. The house itself is a strange environment of Presley's tacky and usually ridiculous decor, but kept absolutely faithful. It's exactly as he left it. Definitely got a sense of the family man and held-back artist. He always yearned to perform in Europe and the fact that he never did is a huge shame. The Presley memorial/grave meditation garden is one of the strangest, enchanting places I went. You should see it if you pass by.

We hit the road for the South. New Orleans via Highway 61.

This is called the Blues Highway because it passes through Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. It's slower than the interstate but has beautiful scenery as you get into Mississippi and then Louisiana.
We drove for a few hours and with our minds made up about sleeping somewhere, (New Orleans still five hours away) we said, passing through a one horse town, that we'd stop at the next motel we found. This turned out to be over an hour away, so somewhere in-between our misinformed decision and Greenville, where we finally stopped, I had to take a leak.
As good ideas go, the next one isn't flying high. We stopped in a closed gas station, and as I got out to find a tree I realised that we were in the midst of a huge trailer park, on both sides of the road. The trees were unbearably close to these palaces on wheels, so laughing nervously to myself, I pissed on the gas station instead.

Greenville's claim to fame is that Jim Henson was born there. And Kermit. That's all I could find. Neither are there anymore. We stayed in a motel with the trucks balling by outside. The usual argument began on who was going to share rooms with who. In Nashville we had been split in half, with everyone having his own double bed, Chris in the live room, Dan and Jake in their own personal bombsite, and Mike, George and myself in the other studio with a such a selection of strange items suspended from the ceiling I felt as if we lived in a chandelier reject emporium.


So after Mike deals with the sleepy proprietor;
Mike: We'd like three rooms please.
Man: That is fine. Where are you from sir?
Mike: London.
Man: (jabbing himself in the chest and slightly raising his voice) I am INDIAN.
Mike: I know.

We moved in for the night, we appeared to have four rooms. Chris with me, to watch apocalyptic cartoons until we fell asleep or the world ended, whichever sooner, Jake and Dan the slothmen together, foolish idea if inexperienced. We have poured water over Dan's head in the past. George and Mike had double rooms to themselves. Unless they both ended up sleeping with rednecks and just didn't mention it in the morning.
When the sun rose I woke up and wrote to a few people at home before walking to 61 and gazing down it. After everyone was awake apart from The Other Room we moved the car and hid it around the back of the motel, I had a vision of Dan and Jake sloping off down the highway with their instruments. In fact, Jake appeared shockingly promptly looking suave and collected and I don't think Dan even noticed it was in a different place.
The filter coffee replaces the blood.
After the carnivores (everyone else) hit KFC for breakfast because there was nowhere else I felt thankful for being a plant-eater, and we rolled onwards towards the South.

To be continued. Please tell your friends!

In which the right party takes place in the best wrong house possible.

Following the bluegrass pickin' party, (we were there with Robin, our producer, Mike the tour manager, Kentucky Kenan and our recently acquainted friends, Anna, Dana and Ben) we were asked to leave by the police. For some reason they got involved in the party and were quite stern about everyone getting off the land immediately after the curfew. Having no plan, we were invited to go back to Anna's house to have drinks and stay. As there were eight bodies going, it was too many for one truck, so I jumped in Kentucky's truck with Chris and the others went with Ben. Going via a gas station (they call them gas stations) to pick up beer and chips (they call them chips), we still hadn't really been out of Nashville at this point, so I for one was still surprised at the sheer scale of trucks and Coca Cola servings... on the contrary, the others were more surprised at the Corona bottles being undersized. Practically able to finish one in a couple of swigs. Deceptive... as it turned out later on.

We pulled up at a turning off the main road that winds it's way into the countryside from Downtown Nashville, and bade farewell to Kentucky Kenan, leaving us with just the one truck. It was quite a long way out, far enough for the houses to look like mansions. This was no exception. It had everything; pool, walk in wardrobe, garage bigger than my house in London, bathrooms round every corner, a bookshelf with three copies of War and Peace and a fully laid out dining table - which was odd.

The kitchen was spotless. I'm used to living in a constant state of transition between spotless and bombsite in my kitchen, but this was well and truly sparkling. After a couple of minutes of Anna searching for the lightswitch, (sure, I lose my lightswitch in my house too occasionally), we had a good look and I noticed a champagne glass full of skittles. I thought nothing of it, the surreal tangent this night was taking was making me think differently about suspicious details, especially when Ben turned on the oven and after a few minutes smoke started to billow out from the closed door. A common occurrence in new ovens. Thinking back, I'm still not sure what he was planning to cook. I remember there only being a bag of cookies, the aforementioned glasses of skittles in each room and a huge bowl of lemons. "Here, we have plenty of lemons! Let's jump off the roof!" announced Anna, with the gusto and presence of a ringmaster at the start of the circus.



As Jake, Anna and myself sat down at the beautifully presented dining table, we realised that we did have some other form of nourishment, a bag of popcorn, and a bag of genetically-altered popcorn which were all the colours of the rainbow. We chose this and served it out onto the heart shaped crockery infront of us.

As Jake and Anna were getting on like a house on fire, discussing literature, I glanced out of the open door just in time to see Chris flip into the pool in his boxers. The darkened garden beyond that had no movement at all. It was the middle of nowhere. Just trees, this mad house, the stars and the road outside.

Jake stood up and rubbed his nose on a porcelain toad sitting on the mantlepiece.
"Hello Toadle"
Turning and announcing to us, he continued;
"He was my brother, I knew him well. He's my favourite author..."
"Who was?" replied Anna.
"Adolf..."
"Hitler?!"
"Yeah! But he smells of ham."
"What's your favourite book?"
"The one about the horses and the bear...and how they find a balloon."
"Mein Kampf?"



I headed outside to the pool to find Dan and Dana sitting at the table, and I lit the lantern as it was the darkest part of the night, and a fog was rolling across the fields towards us. Slightly nervous about the qualities of an unknown fog, I stripped and jumped into the pool. I still can't dive. I never have been able to. In fact, I get nervous about jumping off things into water, even if it's a few feet above the surface. Dan is a great diver, and back in Albania we had a great time abusing the swimming pools in the hotels on tour, but when there's a diving board present I get queasy and tend to stay away from it. Dan persuaded me to try and launch myself off the end but upon arriving at the moment, my left foot got scared and just fell off the edge, I followed, ungainly smashing into the water sideways and coming up with water in my nose and ears and Dan laughing at me.

In our hosts pool, in the middle of the night, with cooling fog gradually drawing itself like a vast blanket across the stars, I felt calm and excited at the same time. There's something strange about floating in water, looking at the sky, in a place you've never been. I have experienced this exact feeling a handful of times this summer and it's a moment you want to bottle and keep, but obviously that's impossible. So, true to the cause of feeling floating cosmos oblivion, I am just going to have to end up in situations where I can do this.

Tired of jumping in and out of the pool, the popcorn eaten and a suggestion that we should put the barbeque, tables and chairs into the pool dismissed as not worth the repercussions, a giant woozy game of hide and seek ensued, with the obligatory countdown leading to some amazing hiding places being discovered, or not, as in Chris's case.
I hid on top of a massive oak wardrobe and survived a raid of inside the magnificent specimen of furniture by Dan and Jake, who never looked up, only to be busted by Dana dryly saying "there's someone on top" from the doorway.
After about two hours of searching for Chris, we gave up and fell asleep with the sun in the east starting to burn away the fog. From what I gathered the next morning. Chris had been discovered on the roof, like a crazed cat clinging on to the chimney and refusing to come down and accept that he had been 'found'. Giving up, the discoverers of his whereabouts went to bed themselves and we were all woken up in the morning by the front door opening.
A stout figure, slightly rotund with impressive whiskers stepped over the hearth and gaped.

Keep calm. It's probably her dad.

I rolled off the couch and pulled my boots on.

"Who are you? What are you doing?" he fired at us, metaphorically.
"Er... we're leaving? Who are you?"

"I'm Dick. I'm selling this house. What are you doing in it?"

OK. Panic now.

I had to remember which shower I had left my sodden clothes in. After taking them off to jump in the pool, the splash of us bounding in and out had made them just as soaked as if I had just gone in with them on.
While I was picking up items that belonged to me and my eyes were adjusting to the increasingly bad situation, I passed someone completely naked wrapped up in a carpet. You learn to just accept these things.

The last words he said to us were "You better roll your joint and get out".

So we did.

American videoblog - part one

Making the new Tankus the Henge album

photos by Jim DeMain

Full Moon Pickin' Party with added accordion

Bluegrass instruments: guitar, banjo, fiddle, dobro, upright bass, washboard, saw. Do you see 'accordion' in that list? No, neither do I.
When we arrived at the Full Moon Pickin' Party, it was well under way, and there were hundreds of folk playin', eatin', drinkin', and dancin' on a farm in the middle of nowhere. We'd been invited along and told to bring our instruments, so there we were. Bluegrass is a genre rooted deeply in american tradition, and most of the songs date back to the beginning of the world. (that's about two hundred years to you and me)
In fact, a lot of the songs were imported using the minds of unsuspecting Irishmen hoping to find their fortune in a new and exciting land.
I approached a group with my abomination of an instrument and they were enthusiastic, if a little nervous, about my entrance. They asked me if I knew any bluegrass and I replied in the negative, hearing this, they launched into 'my grandfathers clock'. The eagle eyed among you will remember that Dan and myself had recorded this, as a joke, for a post on facebook videos. It's probably still there. I couldn't believe my luck. Instead of being embarrassed with not knowing the song about moonshine, the dog and how the grass looks better in the oklahoma sun, I actually knew the chords, the words and all the harmonies to boot. I waited a few bars to make it seem as if I was working it out, and then joined in with Ol' Wheezy. The musicians, delighted (or it may have been relief) that I could actually play, asked if I had any tunes and we played a gypsy number before the rest of the band sauntered over and gave a spirited rendition of 'life is a Grimm tale' to the crowd of puzzled, amused faces. We made some good friends that night and I have been back to a couple of bluegrass jams since.

Smiling still makes the day go quicker

So last night was spent in the Melrose, a bar frequented by musicians, loners and other freaks who all shoot pool and moan about the crap that gets churned out of other jukeboxes but the one in here is tolerable so it's here they stay and nurse their beers and look at the waitresses and think of the road.
Soon though, when the Melrose closes and rats go back to the starting line the ones who love life at night dance across 8th avenue to the billiards hall and shout at the cars and the stars and the tzars behind bars.

In the billiards hall down the steps away from the balmy night in an old cinema, they don't show pictures there these days, but guys and girls drink and play pool while the battered Wurlitzer juke in the corner blasts sounds that a generation would die for and did die for.
While the band play doubles I get involved with a game of shuffleboard which involves pushing a puck with skill and finesse along a polished salt covered surface, getting as far to the end as possible without slipping off, as well as knocking off the other players pucks. A trio of hipster musicians named Logan, Stanton and Joshua introduced me to the rules and we played a while. I'd wandered over there as I had grown tired of watching the pool, even though girls, entranced with taking aim, make very good painting subjects, but my skills with a cue are mildly horrific and I'd sooner try and balance one on my chin with a tray heaped with hot oysters on top than actually attempt a serious game. However, after departing the shuffleboard contest, I did play one game of pool and got four balls in the holes but it didn't change my life so I ended up at the bar with Danny who was trying to blag a free haircut.

This morning I woke up and discovered I had left the lava lamp on and fallen asleep to it's crooked glow, and during the night it had overheated and the glass had cracked. There was red wax all down the wall, a pinky molten mess had sunk into the carpet and the water from the lamp was surrounding the electricity socket. Hearing a pack of dogs going spare outside, and surrounded by clothes, loose change and lava lamp I had to change my environment, and fast. I found my jeans in the corridor and crashed over sideways as a result of getting my left foot stuck in a hole halfway down the leg. As usual we made life difficult for ourselves by sleeping in two separate buildings with one key for each building. Therefore my morning ritual involves rubbing the sleep outa my eyes while I walk to the other building, and then hauling myself over the gate, missing the barbed wire on the top and jumping down the other side to grab the key off the table to let myself back out, then waking the dead, or so it seems, from their unconscious slumber within a darkened lair.

Aptly today we were recording a new version of Smiling Makes The Day Go Quicker. I was slightly apprehensive as the first version has been around for ages, you all know it and I must have played it close to a thousand times. We've recorded the basis of most of the new record and deliberately left Smiling 'till last as we thought we knew it so well. Took about an hour and several coffees, but we ended up with a version that you'll have to wait to hear as this record isn't coming out for a while. If you still haven't got your hands on the current one, go to http://www.tankusthehenge.bandcamp.com and check it out. It won't be around forever. Neither will we.
Keep smiling, people, it's not the end of the world!

In which we found ourselves on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence...

Let me just map out the area of our roamings for you. In case you wished to imagine more accurately our escapades.
If you turn right out of the studio you find yourself heading through a boneyard with pickups scattered around and truck trailers waiting to be dragged to the east or west coast with all manner of articles inside, like the trucks that arrive at the Goodwill store on the right daily. Another right and you get to the railroad with it's huge, grinding engines goading mile long trains of "Building your America" and "Union Pacific" trucks up to Canada or down to Mexico. Every twenty minutes or so another mammoth engine crawls past with blinding flashing lights and a horn that sounds like thirty brass players that believe they are playing notes from the same chord until they actually play it, and then just carry on anyway, even though the audience's ears have long since been damaged.

If you happened to go to the other way out of the studio, you end up in a railroad yard, which you can cross over, with Old Mrs Grissom's salads neon light on a water tower as a focal point. This takes you towards the Tennessee fairgrounds site, which is due to be torn down I believe, which is a terrible shame because as I mentioned in a previous letter, the Speedway is fantastic, and is currently having it's final race on the 4th of October. Anyway, the Fairgrounds Speedway was the site for the Tennessee State Fair, which finished yesterday and has eight foot barbed wire fences with locked gates.

After taking part in an argument about why you shouldn't put a half can of baked beans, tomatoes or anything else for that matter, in the fridge (still in the can), and also a separate, but related argument regarding who couldn't manage to eat a whole can of beans anyway; Michael and I set off into the dark on our 1950's bicycles, lent to us by our producer. The lack of suspension makes bumping over the railroad tracks in the yard a painful experience, unless you stand on the pedals. While I was doing this, though, the bike slipped out of gear and as all my weight was on the pedals, I lost my balance and fell off into the gravel. Fortunately I wasn't going at a breakneck speed like I would be in a while.
Having explored the nearby vicinity, and visited the fairground the previous night, we decided to pay Old Mrs Grissom a nighttime visit and we took the hill that runs past her salad joint. Slightly wary of my earlier mistake with the gears, I held on to the fragile gear changer as if my life depended on it as I forced the bike up the hill. The seat is also slightly too high, so if I slow down too much on corners and inclines, consequences may cause suffering.
At the top of the hill, we came across the Oasis nightclub looking vibrant and .... shut.



After this we reached a wide road heading downtown with practically no cars on it, and without warning, Michael took off down the hill towards the beckoning lights of Nashville, where there's a curious skyscraper that is shaped like Batman's head. Check it out if you're there.
So while Speedy freewheels towards Batman, I relish the moment (sitting slightly awkwardly on a bike in the middle of the freeway looking at nighttime Nashville) and then take off after him. I heard the unmistakable wail of a cop siren and almost panic. We have no lights on but even though the road is well lit, on a quiet night like this it would be easy pickings for police to shop some rogue englishmen. Just before we can cycle to safety the barriers come down on the railroad crossing and then a hulking, groaning metal monster lurches into view, it's creaking boxcars and cabooses blocking the road. These usually take about fifteen minutes to pass, so we veer off to the left and go down a side road, which ends up in the seedy looking site of Tennessee State Fair, now closed and half dismantled. The gate is open, and we saunter in, myself curious about the dinosaur bones structure of a semi-disassembled rollercoaster and other assorted fairground rides in all manner of completion. The remnants of a giant ferris wheel, devoid of neon lights and lovers wrapped up in eachother high above the fair, a ghost train with the ghouls long since lost when the electricity died, and a carousel covered in sheets, the whirling lights and blaring organ vanished along with the customers...
Suddenly lights appeared over the hill where we entered, and we scram on our bikes, towards the centre of the fair and behind a shed full of sleeping camels and llamas. A dromedary camel, far from home, winked at me as we passed in the dim electric light. The cover the shed provided let us get out nearer the opposite exit of the fair, being guarded by four huge bears.


At the gate, we found to our horror, that it was locked. Briefly covered by the bears, I scrambled around looking for some sort of pedestrian exit, the lights behind of a jeep getting closer and closer. Nothing. All the gates are secured with hefty padlocks even Popeye couldn't break unless he had Mrs Grissom's spinach.
Realising that the patrolling jeep had seen us, I started to roll my bike down the hill, jumped on and was heading for a gate which looked open. I could see Mike behind the car, heading down the hill in the opposite direction. No luck, the gate I was heading for had a dead end beyond, just the carnival workers wagons and caravans behind the fence. I've lived and worked on a fair, but I wasn't prepared to knock on the door and say "hello. I shouldn't be here right now as it's closed and locked, but somehow I managed to get in by accident, and now I'm being chased. Could I come in?"
Just as the jeep was passing Mr Bear, Mrs Bear, Boris and Bertie bears on their truck, I saw the lights of a car enter the site, with an automatic gate just starting to close. Forgetting about the gear problems, the saddle and the loose mudguard that threatened to throw itself into my wheel, I pedalled hell for leather towards the closing gate and saw that Mike was doing the same. With just enough room for both of us, we shot out into the road with the gate clanging shut behind.


On our way back to the studio, with the moon blazing it's cold glow onto the mid-west, we passed the junction with a pedestrian crossing that always says "DON'T WALK". It never changes. There's a man there, with a long beard. He'll never get to the other side until they fix that light.

Old English bicycles and the Petrojvic Blasting Company

So... after three days of recording and Jaz devouring cheese slices on rice crackers, we had a day off. Breakfast involved cereal slopping around a bowl held by hands covered in sun cream attached to a jauntily moving body propped up on legs that hadn't come around to the idea of being awake yet, as the previously mentioned meal was hastily consumed to the time of the songs we were listening to... recordings of what we'd achieved, or not, so far in Nashville.
As the long summer days turn to autumn (or fall!), the temperature is at a comfortable 30 degrees C, hotter than your average day back in Blighty. We thought that due to there being no cloud in the sky, and us being the avid cyclists we are, well, apart from Jake, Dan, Chris, George...and myself, we decided to go for a bike ride.
Kitted out with very vintage English bicycles (mine was from the early 1950's) we set off with water, no food, and less of a plan. Let's face it, cycling doesn't come naturally to everyone. Jake's trousers falling down and Chris having a stupendous crash into someone's front garden are all evidence of this. Pretty soon George and myself got fed up with the others crashing into things and taking ages to get anyway so we caned it out of sight. Me on 'Old Clanker' and George on a one-speed bike. Up hills. Quite a few.


It was fantastic to be cycling through Tennessee with the wind in our hair and the sun driving us along and burning all the sweat and bad stuff away. We cycled through intersections, faster and faster, down Granny White Pike, and slowed down to climb a hill with a sign "You are now entering Forest Hills City Limits". Looking behind me I couldn't see the rest of the band for miles, only George and his bike with a gear missing, pounding up the hill.
By this time I needed refuelling and we came across a remote gas station with children playing on the porch, and parents in wooden rocking chairs smiling at them and narrowing their eyes at these two perspiring visitors with battered bicycles in the middle of nowhere. George and I decided that one of the others had either had a heart attack going up one of the hills, or they'd turned at one of the intersections after losing us, and were now ambling through the mid-west, destined to grow old and sprout long beards that tangle in the spokes of their creaking bikes. Passers by would say "there go the wandering Englishmen on their pedals, they sure never did find the way home..."

We returned to the studio after our excursion to Forest Hills and, expecting the others to be back already, were faced with a locked studio, and barbed wire topped gate. That hadn't been part of the plan. Little did we know that Jake, Chris and Dan, with Mike the tour manager had cycled back to a huge guitar shop and were giving the guitars and the girls the eye.
Not to be outdone, I recalled Brad, our producer, giving us directions to his house nearby, and for once in my life, I had actually taken in something that someone said to me. Off we went, and sure enough I'd listened correctly and soon we were sitting in his kitchen eating freshly baked cinnamon rolls courtesy of his wife. We listened to her educating us about the lives of solitary bees in the wild west, and told her the reasons why South London is better than North London. Solitary bees don't make honey, and taxis, and tourists still don't go south of the river...

After being reunited with the gang, we headed to Tennessee State Fair, up on an old site overlooking the city and the legendary Fairgrounds Speedway, one of the oldest stock car racetracks in America. The TN state fair bore much resemblance to a large European funfair, as far as the rides were concerned. The strange thing was the lack of music, most of the atmosphere came purely from people screaming, laughing and kids crying because they let their balloon go or dropped their ice cream. The State Fair didn't stop at rides though, it had animals, (llamas, camels, cows, sheep, goats, hens, rabbits, ducks, alpacas) exhibition halls of green energy, a stage with the time-honoured country singer leading the crowd in a version of "Stand by your man", and a shed with hundreds of sheep and their owner, a woman who looked blind as a bat spinning wool into yarn, telling three entranced children that "my lawnmower makes all this wool, I bet your lawnmower can't make wool, it probably just makes noise! Mine makes wool and fertiliser..."
Come to think of it I've never seen a bat spinning yarn.

Freewheeling down the hill away from the neon lights of the fair, we got back to the studio and a car screeched up with half the band in, who appeared to have kidnapped a gorgeous country singer named Maggie and driven off with her. The car was definitely not big enough for all of us, and sitting with my head out of the window, willed the police not to pull up at the lights adjacent to us. The doors exploded open like a car in the ring at the circus and everyone piled out like bedraggled clowns who suddenly didn't know where they were but were intent on having a ball.

Have a ball we did, in a vibrant art gallery turned music venue Ovvio Arte (www.ovvioarte.com) we discovered a group of musicians who had just returned from playing in Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania and the rest of Europe by the sounds of it, this felt like their homecoming show and I couldn't resist adding my cossack dancing to the jumping crowd. They are called Petrojvic Blasting Company, four guys, sometimes five, playing accordion, trumpet, trombone, helicon and other assorted instruments. We offered them a show in London and invited them to our studio to have a party. Maybe we'll end up in Albania at the same time in the future. Check them out, and if they're playing near you go and watch! http://www.theblastingcompany.com

Not bad for a day off.
What's happening in England, cold yet?
Keep in touch,

Nashville part one

After a ten hour flight to Charlotte, North Carolina from London, I realised that we were in America. Strangers looked me in the eye and asked how I was. Strangely, even though it was a connecting flight to Nashville, we had to collect our hold luggage and re-do the whole malarky of checking it in AGAIN to put on another plane. Because I'm a pain, I brought four things onto the plane when most sane people only have two. Two of these were my trusty accordion, which wheezes with tired enthusiasm every time I put it back together after another spot of running maintenance, and my trombone which is too good lookin' to leave in the UK.
Unfortunately my trombone had to surface from being in the hold and then go back down into the murky depths of another plane, but it had to be taken to a special 'valet' for that to happen. So while the friendly US Border control grilled Mr Drums and Mr Bass until they're crusty, I decided it was a good idea to wander off on my own and check in the trombone.
We only had an hour and a half between flights, and with twenty minutes to go before take off, I was getting slightly worried that I was still the only member of Tankus the Henge at the gate, and no amount of friendly Americans was putting my mind at ease. In fact I think they were probably stressing me out just a bit. Charlotte airport to Nashville is still too far to walk. I thought it was best if I did get on the plane anyway, but at the last minute, hats and instruments came lolloping up the corridor, and after querying the flight hostess (a man, I think) about some liquid showering out of the fuel tank, a big man with a beard and brylcream came to cable-tie the plane back together and push the dripstick back into the fuel tank (yes... honestly!) and the leak stopped. After that, off we went, and here we are, in Nashville, Tennessee.
It's a lovely day!

Cafe du Boulevard

A couple of hours ago I broke my bed. It's annoying when it's your own bed but when it's someone elses it's just plain awkward. Still, they'll find out in the morning as I'm sleeping on the floor so the friendly spiders and snakes that roam around can get a good look at me. I think tonight I'll sleep with my hat on incase the abominations Olivia imaginatively named "matrix bugs" which are really just harmless house centipedes decide to nest in my unkempt mop of hair.
Today was mainly centered around soldering and food, having consumed far too much silver solder and carefully fixed the piano with jam and warm croissants. Our life in France has so far borne a few new songs which we're testing out at relatively small but wild shows to an enthusiastic largely ex-pat audience who either heard about our antics from previous years or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but failed to find the exit quick enough, and a growing number of french ladies and gentlemen whom we really don't have the skills to speak to. So after tonights show (Cafe du Boulevard, Melle) instead we make do with following wild-eyed Nico on his scooter, with an outstretched leg for left/right indications, and Alice and Jennifer in their car, to a house full of instruments which looks like it's still being converted from a wonderful old barn. The night proceeds to climb unsteadily up a higher and higher hill into some clouds, where we momentarily lose our way, but no matter, Titus and Tatine arrive and he with his eyes shut head back soul gripping drumming, and her with her dancing, cowbell playing and pointing at me to play that accordion and that bass (I can't play the bass!) and we quickly gain momentum down the other side of the hill, crashing through anything in the way, language barriers, broken pianos and a cupboard full of cheese into the valley of "chaos at 4:19am" (I'm sure you've been there recently...) There was something written on their car but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I think it was something to do with the revolution...