Nine Feet Underground

After June's relative gig madness, the months of July and August were gig-free, partly due to my European travels, so it was good to be back at South Street Arts Centre in the last days of September. Better still it was to see the man behind of one of my top 5 album's of 2018, Bill Ryder-Jones. Support act was Lucy Gaffney, ably assisted by her brother, Thom, on guitar and occasional backing vocals. As far as I can tell Lucy has no material released under her own name (she and her brother have recorded together under the band name MMODE) though during the set she mentioned she was working on an EP with James Skelly of The Coral. (Note: The image above is not mine and comes from Lucy's FB page) It was a good set and a great warm-up for Bill: there were songs that struck a chord and Lucy's voice has a strength and depth that brought life to the songs. It will be interesting to see what the recorded songs are like and whether she records with a band or jus

Empty Sometimes I just feel like my insides have been ripped out. There is a fucking great big gaping hole at the centre of me. There is a bottomless ache, but none of my vital organs are gone. My heart, my lungs, my stomach, all that machinery that turns food into energy, into every fucking day of being alive, that’s still there. Endlessly, ceaselessly allowing another day to dawn. And another. And another. And another. On and on and on. Never stopping. Never filling the void.

Words come easy or they don't come at all. A multitude of words bouncing around my head, but the moment I try to capture them and express what they are saying, they dissolve away to nothing. In my head I've written this blog several times over but each time I've sat down and tried to write it, the words are gone or they no longer seem to capture or express what I am trying to say. And so it remains.