Hi!

I had a good week. One week ago - at the time of sending - I saw Kasper Hauser and Champion Trees for the 2nd night in a row.

I already love Kasper Hauser. I met Frankie, who writes the songs and sings most of them, at University. We were both in the experimental music group.

I’d not heard Champion Trees before. But they were excellent & perhaps even better for seeing them twice. The lyrics were particularly excellent & included a lot of stuff about God.

Following that, a few of us got talking about our religious upbringings after the gig (don’t say I don’t know how to have fun).

It made me remember a story a youth pastor had told at a christian youth festival I used to go to. He spoke about attending university and not drinking alcohol. And how this led to him downing a pint of milk instead of beer at a rugby initiation event. And how he threw up that pint of milk immediately after.

I can’t remember what point he was trying to make, but the story stuck in my mind. Probably because it was so stupid.

Anyway - we have some gigs.

21st of August

We’re playing a birthday party in York. ‘We‘ in this case is just me and Billy as a duo.

26th of August

The 46th Rowan and Friends at The Golden Ball, York. I think its the 46th. Either that or the 45th. I can’t check right now. I think it will be a rather free-form evening. Maybe with a quiz? And Karaoke?

25th of September
We are playing a DIY gig in Manchester cooinciding with the Labour conference. After asking if it was pro or against Andy Burnham, I was told it was “subliminally against him“, whatever that means.

Recommendations Section

The recommendations section was so popular last week that I thought I’d do it again. So, without further ado, here’s what I recommend:

SPINACH PIE - I made spinach pie yesterday and it was really nice.

‘PUGH’ - Troutflies have a new single out called ‘Pugh‘. There is even a really great video you can watch here.

CHAMPION TREES - already mentioned once. I really enjoyed listening to their 2nd album, A Duck's Water Off My Back, this week.

TAKING SOME TIME FOR YOURSELF - it’s important to take some time for yourself.

GOING TO BED - it feels really great to lie down in bed at the end of a long day.

NOT GOING ON THE INTERNET - there are so many things that you can do instead.

PRE-ORDERING A GO ON! ROLL THAT OLD BOULDER AWAY CD - I’m making big big moves to make some CDs for our most recent album. You can pre-order one here.

That

is it for this weeks newsletter. And oh boy was there a lot of news.

Speak next week - Rowan

ps.

I have been writing a song every day for the past two weeks and trying to be as non-critical as possible.

Here is a demo of one of those songs, it’s called ‘King’s Staith‘ - a return to my York Street Names series of songs.

Will probs delete after a week.