SOUND & VISION:

Ravaged by a screaming session in the dark out in the fields,
the morning started fragile. Get the paper, the bread, fruit
& stuff. One foot in front of the other, ticking boxes.
Rain stops, sun comes out, goes in, it rains & I love it all.
It’s why I cherish life on this island, the changing weather,
never boring, always inspiring, drives me to make, create,
collect, curate. I have a painting burning on the inside of
my head, gestating to an outsider schedule, free from the
constraints of planning a year ahead, unfettered by what’s hip,
happening or sale-able. When I write I feel good & it’s spreading,
that sensation, into both studios.

(K)

IT STARTED SO WELL:

So I was sat in the porridge & poetry, black tea, listening,
looking, inking it down, enjoying the peace & sunlight. I was
just about to leave, drive back home, plug in & play when,
this email bursts in reminding me about a bloody accounts meeting.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the need to understand &
I’m grateful to have anything to account, but the head was already
out the door when the recall came & I crashed.
Later that same day, making up for lost time, I’m trying to recover,
head like a bucket of wet sand.

(K)

RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING:

Missing the midlands.

(K)

HOME FROM HOME FROM:

I miss the gently undulating terrain of Worcestershire.
The green, the yellow, the distant hills inviting us.
They call to the restless wanderer in me & this unquenchable
desire to drift, to see what happens – chance encounters
on the road to unplanned. It was tough to leave today, choked up
behind the wheel. Don’t get me wrong, Essex will be forever in my
heart. It’s just that I realised after years away that the Midlands
is in my blood. I’m a slow learner.

(K)

AT THE BOARDER:

Following Blacktop snakes heading West towards the boarder.
Reading soporific white line poetry hugging ragged green.
The fences & railings of my youth decay at the edge of fields
grazed by this season’s flock. The hum of single engined planes,
cutting clouds above hop poles ripening festoons before harvest.
I pull over, stop, turn off the engine, wind down the window &
listen, hesitating. Should I abandon the car & walk off?
Disappear drown myself in silence between the fields, never to
be found? I hold my breath & count, listening for a sign.

(K)

ANOTHER QUIET PLACE, GREEN:

As the blacktop snakes between the fields, following the rolling
contours of a landscape I was once desperate to escape, another
elephant gets off me. This is the place I come to in my head when
I want to slow down, abandoning myself to the rhythm of verdant
hedgerows exploding with new shoots & the fabulous cacophony of
summer weeds. I straighten out on the patchwork beats of lazy
fields. Chuckle under breath at comedic brutalist straw. Box
sculptures waiting dumb-faced-naked for collection. Close cropped
pastures crave the teeth of underpaid milkers. The homes of
foresters & back woods people I imagine myself to be, hide at
the ends of uninviting gravel avenues. The scent of Oak, Pine,
hawthorn, elderberry & brier. Reverb-ed birds call from branches
filtering dappled sunlight, high above cool paths cut through
indigenous sandstone festooned with bare root & the dance of
vibrant fern. The steam whistle of a train ricochets up the valley.
Down below us a river, imagining it’s self concealed, idles in the
shade of willow over-hang. Breath exhales deep, low & clean.
Time slows, stops, goes backwards & I forget…

(K)

UP THE SMOKE:

At the BBC up in dirty city where the air breathes like soup. 
There’s a mist rising from the fields as last night’s rain returns 
to the sky for later & I’m catching another train for another 
conversation with the steely twins. Today is a pre-record & you 
know I only like to broadcast live, but the good people at 6Music 
will keep my blood pumping & I’ll do my best not to get into 
re-takes, keep it flowing, imagine I’m live-&-direct & you’re 
right there on the other end of the wire. 

(K)

DO YOU STILL FEED THE ANIMAL?:

Yesterday at Lemonworld getting crude with guitars, ‘trying’
to make a sound I like that jumps out. The concept of ‘soloing’
baffles me, like being colour-blind. I’m not looking for sinuous
virtuosity or a dazzling burst of speed, I’m just trying to let
the animal out to play. It’s a tough for a boy who’s spent most
of his life either up-tight, toeing the line or locking onto
a machine groove for an extended cycle of tranced-out funk.
Rick plays wild-n-free guitar better than me, but I have to
keep trying. The animal is in there, I just got to find the door.

(K)

A DAY AT THE SEASIDE:

Finally & after years of searching for ‘the one’ I’ve ordered
a custom map from Denis Cornell! It’s been a dream to own &
use a guitar amp built not only in the UK but in ESSEX & now
the process is in motion. I went down to Southend to collect
the Elk combo I bought from Rebel Relic guitars in Amsterdam.
Now that Denis has serviced it the sound is fantastic.
With the ’54 telecaster plugged in it sounds like a guillotine,
a cutting machine, a crack in the fabric of the day as real as
overhead thunder. Compared to this amp everything else sounds
like it’s coming down a toilet roll. Then Denis plugged me into
an amp he designed to be used with acoustic guitars &….yessss!
Of course I had to go for custom colours, I mean, why would I?
We went through the usual suspects, the ‘classics’, but I settled
on a livery inspired by an amp/speaker combo he’d built for the
legendary Welsh guitarist Andy Fairweather Low. It just made me
smile & how could I resist hooking Wales up with Essex?

(K)

DEEP DEEP SOUTH SEA:

Off to Southend, jewel in the crown of Essex. Trying a new custom
amp hand built by a grand master of guitar amp design, Denis Cornell.
I saw a beautiful pair of combos he’d built for Wilco Johnson the
last time I was in his workshop & they hooked me, really sexy
look & sound. I love everything about Cornell Amps.
It’s funny eh, how a band that has always incorporated guitars
into it’s sound is always perceived as being ‘electronic’
…ah well, takes up less space on the page!
Inspired by Rick’s ever expanding modular synth, I’ve introduced the
oddest guitar stomp boxes I can find (still looking) & had
custom wound pick-ups fitted to all my telecasters. There’s been a
switch on this album, from the Gibson Les Pauls I used to use on
stage as I search for ‘that les Paul sound’ I just can’t quite get.
The Fenders have a crisp cutting precision that takes me back to
the first time I fell in love with Motown & the techno-esque
punctuations of Steve Cropper’s telecaster playing for
Booker T & the MGs. Wilco Johnson carries that tradition further &
I’ve always thought that his playing, along with that of
Pete Townsend reminds me directly of those fantastic repetitive
slabs of samples early dance music was so good at lifting off
old records.
Wilco & Pete play guitar like samplers…fabulous!

(K)