Despite being in a severe state of renovation, the current owners of Farringford, Tennyson’s former Island residence, have agreed to allow us to launch the album there on Sunday 18th September. Tickets will be £8.00 and will soon be on sale from Waterstones in Newport and from reception at  Farringford 01983 752500.

Two days later on Tuesday 20th September I shall be returning to the Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell to repeat the performance for a London audience. Doors are at 7.30 and support will come from JC Grimshaw (with myself on bass) and the Binary Band, I shall be on at 9.30. Tickets for that are £9.50 in advance, £12.00 on the door.

And the following day I shall be off to Germany again for 3 dates with the mighty Jackie Leven.

Very, very chuffed to have a track from the new Tennyson album included on the covermount CD of the September edition of The Word magazine. They have chosen Little Birdie which I’m not sure is the best choice as it doesn’t exactly scream Tennyson, indeed I put it as the first track on the CD to wrong-foot any expectations of wordiness, it being a trite little nursery-rhyme pulled out of context from the great poem ‘The Princess’. However, I concede that it’s probably the most immediate track on the album, so let’s hope it does the job and gets people interested in the album.

Last year I was asked by Paul Butler of the Bees to contribute some double bass to a session he was producing for an up and coming singer/songwriter called Michael Kiwanuka. He turned out to be a lovely bloke with a gorgeous voice and an obvious gift for writing gentle but soulful tunes. So much time has passed since then that I’d all but forgotten about it, but this month sees the release of an ep featuring the track I play on, I’m Getting Ready. I gather that production of the album has been given to someone else so I probably won’t be involved in this project any further but I wish him every success.

You can hear the single here:

http://www.burgoblog.com/2011/07/26/michael-kiwanuka-im-getting-ready-stream/

Whilst at this years Larmer Tree Festival I renewed my acquaintance with the delightful artist Olivia Keith. Not only did she produce an impressive painting of the Gramophone Party performance of which I was a part but she also did this sketch of me performing solo which I am really taken with. You can see more of her work here:

http://www.oliviakeith.co.uk/