"No Ma'am, We're Musicians"

On Friday evening, I was in Oxford with the Dive Dive boys, resting after a hard day's rehearsing for the tour, when a phone call came through to say that there was a free slot on the bill for Equitruck, a mini-festival in Oxford that falls exactly between last year's Truck Festival and the next. The slot had originally been for a Dive Dive acoustic set, but Jamie wasn't able or ready to do it, so in the end we carted our gear down there, and broke our live cherry with a half-hour set to a full but slightly bemused room.

It was a pretty weird experience, being back onstage with a band, and we were not perhaps as ready as we could have been, but it was on balance a good set. It's got me a lot more excited about the tour, which kicks off in Leeds on Wednesday. Really looking forward to being back on the road, and in a van with a band, as opposed to on my own on the train. It's going to be great - I'm making some compilation CDs for the van right now.

The first week of having an album in the shops has been lovely... It's great that people can finally catch up with me in terms of my body of work and how the songs should sound. Apparently I'm at number 4 in the 6 Music chart, which is great, for whatever it means. I'm just happy that people can and are buying it. I hope everyone's learning the words to the singalong bits for the tour... See you all on the road.

Zero Hour

OK, so here we are, tomorrow morning my debut solo album comes out. Exciting stuff... although I must say the real cruncher for me was (finally) getting a copy of the finished product, complete with artwork. It was a surreal moment looking down at the actual thing, with my ugly moniker on the front. But it looks, and sounds great. The reviews are (generally) pretty damn good. The Sun even called me a "genius" - haha, I suspect to qualify for that from that publication you only need to be able to handle subclauses without blacking out, but anyways, that was nice.

Instores tomorrow and the next few days, and then it's really not very long until the tour starts, which I'm looking forward to more and more as rehearsals come together. The tickets are shifting at a healthy rate too, and most of it should be gone by time we get to the towns in question. Incidentally, there are now some more tickets for the Borderline show, but not millions, so hurry. Merch is on its way as well, and there'll be an online shop soon enough.

Also very pleased to be able to confirm a bunch more American shows. We're also talking about properly releasing the album stateside at the moment, which I'm very excited about. There are Irish shows on the horizon as well (with my good friends The Holloways).

So it's all go. See everyone at a gig very soon.

It's The Final Countdown

Back from Moscow, liver intact (just). Diary to follow shortly. Jamie got kidnapped by three Russian women, it was insane. Anyways. A few quick thoughts:

1) Both London shows of the tour have now sold out, and some of the others are getting there too. If you're planning on coming to the tour, getting tickets sooner rather than later would be a plan.

2) For disappointed Londoners, there's still the various instores happening, including the launch extravaganza on Monday 15th (if you make it to all four instores you get an invite to the launch party that night). Then there's Puregroove and Banquet over the next few days. More details in the gigs section.

3) Check out NME, Rocksound, Kerrang and Playmusic magazines for various features and reviews over the next few weeks.

4) Some American dates starting to be confirmed, which is the best thing ever. I'll be back at SXSW Festival, and then heading out with Josh English and Jonah Matranga for some more shows over to the West Coast. Tell your friends.

5) Check out the future of British hip-hop here.

Take care kids, album due in one week!