TobyCriedWolf

Cavin Feber

Hello, you.

Despite Spring seeming to suggest its early arrival, cabin fever is setting in nicely and with alarming effect. Paul hasn’t brushed his hair for a week, Joe keeps shouting uncontrollably at the top of his lungs, rather like he’s contracted a sort of non-sweary Tourette’s Syndrome. Wayne’s pretty much convinced that he has undeniable symptoms of Bison Flu and I haven’t stopped twisting the corners of my moustache for the best part of 96hours. Which is weird.

However, everything is sounding utterly enthralling and our efforts appear, to all intents and purposes, to be paying off. We’re spending four days in the country idyl that is Leeder’s Farm Studio in Norfolk and then, by way of escaping total and complete studio madness we shall be treading the boards of Brighton’s Komedia.

That’s right, our fellow Brightonians and lovers of all things foliage, British Sea Power have once again suggested that we open up for them on Thursday 24th February. It would be quite delicious to see you there and we promise to have washed and brushed the necessary areas and to be dressed in suitable attire. Do pop along. In the mean time, I’d better get back to it. Wayne’s filling his Brogues with pebbles from the beach and is attempting to use them as percussive instruments.

BCW Thursday 24th February, The Komedia, Brighton in support of British Sea Power.

Camden Town- a love story

As the light afternoon drizzle does it’s best to put my cigarette out, I cast my gaze down Camden High Street and recall how fondly I used to hold this grubby little corner of North London in my heart. 

For all it’s litter and puddles, drug peddlers and thieves, there used to be a lot of hope and awe reflected off the dirty and broken paving slabs. Mostly delusions of grandeur passed off as youthful confidence and swagger but sometimes the stars seemed to shine just a little brighter on this street. 

I look up at the glum faces on the top deck of the bus as it lumbers, huffing and wheezing past and think, God, that used to be me. 

Just as I turn my collar up against all the weather and head back into the Barfly I overhear three passing American students say, “Hey, should we go check out a band tonight?” and when they all excitedly answer to the affirmative my faith is, in part, restored. Many a good thing can still happen on this boulevard of broken noses. Maybe tonight we can recapture some of that glutenous glamour and get some chilly toes tapping again.

There’s rarely a phrase more groan inducing to me than, “yeah, we’ve got quite a lot of industry coming down tonight” but this evening I try shrug off my cynical overcoat and enjoy treading those much trodden boards once again. Very little, it would appear, has changed in Camden Town.
 

Having said that, one of the things that has changed is the P.A. in the Barfly (previously The Monarch whose infamous moniker now hangs above the old Moon Under The Water a few doors down) which instantly sounds a thousand times better than in the old days. 

Sound checks are seldom overtly inthralling episodes and this one is no different. Suffice to say that everything sounds fucking awesome and the skeletal new song we’ve decided to throw in to the set tonight gives us all a little buzz and receives a ripple of applause from the onlooking support acts.

As we settle in to the dressing room upstairs, Wayne heads out into the rain to score some coke and pills for later.

Only joking. Actually, Joe goes out for a bite to eat and comes back laden with jelly tots, giant chocolate buttons and some white candy mice. Not a euphemism among them, kids.

Just chillaxing in the chill zone…

Paul grabs his Les Namesake and twangs away in the corner as Joe’s suggested we go over our harmonies. I don’t generally dig doing this in dressing rooms due to a unique combination of inherent laziness and white-knuckled fear of not appearing “cool” but Joe bloody loves it and I chirp along whilst reading some fairly horrifying news in one of those Activist ‘Zines.  Being in a band, after all, is nine-tenths about compromise and over the years I’ve become quite a good compromiser. Indeed, I have, on occasion, been discovered in some terrifically compromising situations.

Sadly, we discover that jelly tots taste a bit like the smell of those blue sanitary blocks you find in urinals and contain beef gelatin. Not even Joe, a vegetarian, minds the beef extract but the piss inhibitor aspect is unforgivable.

We grab a couple of bottles of the cooking lager from the fridge and head down into the main pub area to say hi to the gathered Wolf Cubs who, in some cases, have travelled from as far afield as Cardiff and Bristol, Gawd love ‘em. 

Paul is given a rather lovely silver wolf broach which prompts Wayne to ask, “Isn’t that mine?” whilst Joe and I silently seethe with jealousy and a cancerous bitter resentment not unbefitting a pair of Hobbits told that they absolutely cannot hold that ghastly ring of power, even for a moment.

With the shit decidedly shot, it’s swiftly time to return to the attic and ready ourselves for SHOWTIME. Sparkle, people. 

I briefly hide amongst the industry types and check out the band on before us. They’re a two piece drum and keyboard affair who do estuary accented tales of loss admirably well. I don’t stay long enough to see if they get instantly signed or not but the whiff of flapping A&R cheque book is surely within their grasp. Stumbling up the near pitch dark stairwell because I can’t find the light switch, I fumble with the key coded door and set about the deep breathing and needless shoulder stretching that is a perma-precursor to any live performance. 

Lights, smoke machine, suddenly broken monitor, action.

We get a good sweat on during the show and the audience whoops and hollers in all the right bits. For much of the set, it feels a bit “seat of the pants” but none of us can really say why. Enjoyable as all hell, mind and some of the songs are quite probably played the best we’ve yet to play them.

Being on stage is an odd, salty time machine that runs on pure adrenaline and thirty-five minutes passes in what seems like three. Before you can say “Marty Mcfly”, you’re catching up with old friends who literally introduce themselves because they don’t recognize you now that you have a beard. Not you. Me. Me and my beard. Oh, you know what I mean. Anyway, just as quickly, Wayne’s pouring felafel sauce all over his left trouser-leg and we’re trundling back to Brighton minus Joe, who’s stayed behind on business. Dirty boy.

So the moral of the story?

Don’t judge a Camden by it’s cover and never kiss a gift horse on the teeth. Something like that.

Until next time, Wolf Cubs. It’s been emotional.

Two Thousand & Elevensies

Hello, you.

Happy New Year, Wolf Cubs!

The taking down of the Christmas tree is an act not unlike the rather painful end of a relationship. 

It’s all about how it’s done.

Do you do it quickly, like the whipping off of a band-aid which briefly covered a paper cut? Or do you methodically take each bauble, light, hand-crafted silver paper guitar and uneaten candy cane and place them, with the respect they deserve, into a box, painstakingly going over the memories attached to each of them as you finish off the last of the mulled wine?

It’s not something you want to do, but you have to do it. You’re making room for the new year, in every conceivable way. Where else are the new, yet to be bought decorations going to go? Where are you going to put the new, yet to be formed memories? What’s the soundtrack to these memories going to be?

You already know the answer to that, don’t you?..

Having had a wonderful Wolf snooze over the festive season, we at Boy Cried Wolf Towers are back with recharged joi de vivre, new socks, a new lease of life and a whole load of new tunes spilling out of our stockings (so to speak).

We’ve been hanging out writing, recording, rehearsing, preparing for BCW2, or as we’ve come to refer to it, the “Ghosts In A Photograph EP”. 

That’s right, people. It won’t be long now until you’ve a brand new platter on your, err, plate. We’re tweaking middle eights, corrupting choruses, verbalising verses and trying to find the batteries to the Awesomator pedal that Wayne got from Santa. 

There’s another London gig on the very near horizon and plans for MANY more up our collective sleeves. There’s a heck of a lot of grinning going on round our way. Not least because, through all your efforts, the Firebrand EP was the Christmas number 1 in England. Amazing work… Oh hang on… Not quite, but you know, it was CLOSE!

Anyway, as we all know, it’s not about charts and pop tarts. It’s about fun and people and tunes and emotions and sweet sweet music. All of which are being thrown at the new EP with gusto. Apart from people, obviously. It’s our new year’s resolution to stop throwing anything heavier than snowballs.

We genuinely hope y’all had a smashing holiday and can’t wait to make you grin like village idiots when you hear the new stuff.

The future’s bright. The future’s wolf-shaped.

xBCW

Boy Cried Cardiff

The thing about Cardiff is that it’s closer to Bristol than it is to Brighton.

That’s not “the” thing about Cardiff, of course.

I’m not sure what “the” thing about Cardiff is.

I dunno; the castle… gentrification… still gets a bit “fighty” of a weekend…Spillers on The Hayes is the oldest record shop in the world, established in 1894 when it sold sheet music… In 1857, General Tom Thumb, the smallest man alive (height of 31 inches weight 25lb) visited Cardiff’s Town Hall. It cost sixpence to see him…
It is, however, the one thing about Cardiff that necessitates a journey to Bristol for Paul and I the night before our gig.
It’s more that Wayne’s booked us a rehearsal in Cardiff and getting to Cardiff from Brighton at 11am would mean a way earlier start than either of us are psychologically capable of dealing with and Paul has chums, family and a good slosh of history in Brizzle.
He used to know a Bristolian who had partaken of so much cider that his teeth had turned to jelly and flapped about when he talked.
We’re not staying with him, though. We’re staying with Paul’s friend, Joe (a different Joe from our Joe, who’s gone up to Cardiff ahead of us) from the excellent and noisy Tin Dogs.
We arrive at about half past nine in the evening and set about chin-wagging and indulge in three cans of cider and two of Stella.

I mention the exact amount of beverages to outline Paul’s disproportionate and unfair hangover the following morning.
It’s a real cracker.
Two fried eggs on toast and a cup of tea come bursting back up out of him like the volcanic eruption that preserved Pompey and with eyes like two puckered, angry, teary cat’s anuses, he asks me if I can drive this morning.
Mildly hungover being my default setting, of course I can.

We pick Wayne up from The Celtic Manor Hotel (the huge, sprawling golfing resort that brings to mind the Overlook Lodge of The Shining) whose own hangover, due to something of a ding-dong with British Sea Power the night before, is suddenly cured at the mere sight of our ghostly pale, slapped-arse-faced, cat-bottom-eyed guitar hero.
When we arrive at the rehearsal rooms Paul eats half a sandwich which he promptly and violently sprays all over the gutter around the side of the building.
Wayne, a fresh-faced Joe and I can barely breathe for laughing.

There’s no time for laughing, though. We’ve got some music to make.
It’s a delightful rehearsal space. All laminate flooring, under-lighting and a p.a that virtually sings for you. It is a bit on the chilly side, mind, and we cold-fingered-clang through an initial version of Ghost In A Photograph by way of warming up.
After a few hours we’re right back in the swing of things, sounding good, looking good and Paul manages to keep down a banana and a mug of tea. Altogether now… Hip, hip… Hooray!
We pack up, re-Tetris the cars and head off to The Globe Theatre, a new venue on all of us.

You can’t really tell from the outside, but it’s a sumptuous little gig. The Globe used to be a cinema, we’re told, and it’s all dark reds and picture frames and there’s a whacking great velvet curtain framing the stage.
We’re met with a rider consisting of Mexican lager, giant energy drinks, bread rolls, ham and cheese and a family pack of unbranded fried potato snacks. Paul eyes the lager with suspicion but agrees that a sharpener will probably cure the surviving hangover particles in his aura.

As we begin our soundcheck, manager extraordinaire, James “Happiest Man In Rock” Chant arrives and we greet him with hugs and kisses befitting a man just back from the Crimean war.
Something unusual is in the air.
We have “plenty of time” to soundcheck and even have time to “try out” a tune we don’t actually end up playing. I put it down to karma for Paul’s unfair hangover.
We nip out to the pub on the corner for a pre-show change of scenery and bump into some very well turned out Manics fans who’ve come to see this evenings entertainment. They all, rather spectacularly, appear to have been allowed access to Nicky Wire’s dressing-up box and are resplendent in faux-leopard print coats.
On returning to the venue, it’s already filling up nicely and we take to the stage with a near full audience in tow. They seem to enjoy themselves as much as we do. It sounds great on stage and our half hour, as expected, whizzes by accordingly.
Having piled our gear off to the side of the stage we watch the brilliant and fellow Brightonian British Sea Power and join everyone in the sweat-fest as The Globe Theatre fast becomes the hottest room in the world.

We’re all going back to Bristol, albeit to different parts. Joe and Wayne are staying at an hotel whilst Paul and I are darkening his sister’s doorway for the night. Joviality abounds and as Paul and I pass our chums on the motorway I pretend to moon them. Wayne quickly answers by actually baring his backside at us and then texts me to say that, “There is now an awkward silence. I think Joe may have seen a ball…”
We peel off in different directions and before long are tucked up in our respective digs dreaming of all things rock and roll and thoroughly looking forward to our next adventure.

Cheers, Cardiff. Let’s do it again some time.

Boy Cried Manchester…

I feel somewhat ashamed to admit that when I wake up at 6am I feel I must be embarking on some exciting adventure, or that it’s a special occasion like Christmas. That’s how rarely I have to get up early.
In a way, though, I’m right. Not about the Christmas bit, but about the adventure.
It’s yet to get properly light and as I stumble up the main road, past all the yet to open shops, the sense of impending fun is palpable. Manchester’s calling. “In the city it’s alright”, as some band once sang.

When Joe and I get to chez Paul, he informs us that he has made a double brace of cheese sandwiches for our fairly long journey up North.
Paul’s booked us in to rehearse at a place called either EXR music or MCR music. We’re not sure which. We need a bang through before the show as Wayne’s been off manically street preaching and we’ve yet to embrace the technology that might allow us to rehearse via Skype or some such futuristic lunacy.
Once we finally admit to ourselves that the i-trip gadget is actually a bit rubbish, Creedence have to bow out in favour of Radio 4 and Sandy Totsvig’s somewhat histrionic quips which seem embedded, naturally, in the crisp sunned English countryside drifting past the window like an oversized patchwork sleeping bag.
Peas Pottage whips by and all is well until the obvious.
A traffic jam hits us like the all too expected knee to the jubblies on the first day of big school and we sit, resigned to it’s inevitability until the M40 approaches full of over-priced latte promise.
The rest of the journey passes without incident and a miniscule five hours later Manchester looms around us as the sat-nav, duly, totally freaks out and seems to be under the impression that we are in a flying machine to which one-way streets are a mere trifle.
I wasn’t going to mention that it’s raining as it is permanently raining in Manchester. No wonder cagoules are so popular. My choice of tweed seems unwise, at best.

We pull into the courtyard of the enormous, imposing, possibly condemned mill that is where we’re practising our chops. After some extended confusion about which of the two possible establishments we’re actually booked into, we’re shown to our room.
When I say room, perhaps I should say “cell”. It’s not terribly pleasant, truth be told. The P.A. has definitely seen better days and Joe tells us that there’s “something brown on the end of my microphone”. Nice.

Wayne arrives and is visibly overjoyed at our new surroundings and says, “Right then, let’s just run the set once and get the f**k out of here, yeah?”
Our professionalism gradually gets the better of us and we eventually manage a few goes at it and before we know it, it’s time to get to the venue and see if we can’t squeeze a sound check out of them.

The venue is owned by Umbro and, according to the rehearsal room owner, is supposedly more of a “shop” than a traditional gig. I opine that perhaps we’ll get some free shin-pads out of it. I haven’t had shin pads for years.
“When the hell have you EVER had shin pads and what the blazes for?” says Paul.
He’s got a point.
As it turns out, the shop is actually more of a venue and there’s a two piece band making a rum old noise with a load of bass-effects and delay units on the very reasonable stage.

After a brief but successful sound check, we head out into the rain and over to Wayne’s hotel for a freshen up. The call of a nearby Wagamama’s is pretty deafening and we’re soon up to our elbows in noodly goodness. Stay clear of the chilli oil, pre-show, though. It has a habit of going through you like an Inter City 125. Mr Murray and I have fallen foul of it in the past. Yes, Nottingham’s franchise near Rock City, I’m talking about you.

A word to the wise.
If you’re going to look for a parking space in Manchester on a Saturday night, leave yourself longer than twenty minutes if you’ve a show to do.
We run into the venue with two and a half minutes until our allotted stage time.
I have to implore to the line of people waiting for the lavatory that I need a widdle and could I jump the queue as I’m supposed to be on stage in a matter of seconds. “Alright, mate, but you better be good”. Well I haven’t ever won a prize for my urinating skills, but… oh right, I see, musically you mean.

Almost as soon as we get going there are photographers dancing around in front of us, snapping away. I can’t help but wonder if they know something we don’t.
Half and hour goes by incredibly quickly when you’re on stage and seemingly as quickly as we were on it, we’re off it. Figuratively and literally, not long after.
Wayne’s fellow street preacher and previously my band-mate in the international pop group, Graham Coxon, excellent keys player and almost unnaturally good egg, Sean Read is in attendance and with him has an infectious thirst for both fun and beverage.

Quite a few brandys and a very generous glug of wine later and it’s the morning. My trousers and waist-coat are covered in the red demon juice and my eyes are redder still. I look a little bit like I’ve just got out of a Chilean mine.
After discovering that we accidentally took someone else’s bag with us last night, Paul somehow manages to contact the owner and organise leaving it at reception for them. I have no idea how he does this. I can barely put one foot in front of the other and shuffle over to the car mentally preparing myself for the five hour return slog.
Golden arches and sugary pop are the only thing that will make this day in any way bearable.
Onwards and upwards, as they say.
Thank you, Manchester. You’ve been great.
We’ve been Boy Cried Wolf.
Laters, yeh?

BoyCriedWolf. The story so far…

Funny I should glance at the clock as I sit down to write this. It reads 13:13.
This is a number that has come to haunt Wayne and myself over the years since our previous band came to an end, albeit in a rather comforting way.
Like the smell of burnt toast lingering in old kitchens. The ghost of breakfast past. The face in the window of an old photograph that you swear wasn’t there when you took it (a theme we’ll return to later). It’s the number that crops up everywhere, for me. Receipts, train times, boarding times, bowling speeds (seriously, ask Wayne). And every time it does it makes me smile. It’s the number of friendship and of a seemingly inevitable and unavoidable working partnership that keeps cropping up and is most welcome.

Anyhoo…
We’re getting stuck in the past. Let’s not do that, eh? We’ll leave that for intrepid journalists to dig through when we’re stuck in a dressing room in Liverpool half way through a tour.
There’s lashings of things in the future to talk about.
Gosh darn it, there’s plenty in the present. In the now. TODAY!
While Wayne’s touring around with The Manics, sharpening up his axe skills and, if his tweets are anything to go by, “getting in elevators with fans”, Paul, Joe and I are hanging around in Brighton like dejected dogs hoping someone will throw a stick for us to chase or just show us the slightest bit of attent…
Hang on, that’s not right… actually we’re having an absolute roast of a time honing our own skills, throwing our attention to the details of the forthcoming release (November 1st, kids). You knows it. The Firebrand Extended Player. Featuring not only the delightful voice and guitar of James Dean Bradfield, but also the words of one Nicky Wire. AND I hear it’s available on the Manics merch stand. RIGHT NOW!
All very exciting, I’m sure you’ll agree but now we’ve also a view to the SECOND EP!
I know, I know. “Already??” I hear you incredulously cry, “But it’s barely Hallowe’en!” Sure, you may be talking about Christmas shopping but I know what’s really on your minds.
That’s right, with the maiden voyage of good ship BCW well underway, we can only set our sights and aims higher.
BCW 2 (die harder).
That tag-line isn’t working yet, but you get the picture.
Apart from that, of course, and in the more immediate future we’ve a few gigs on the horize. Manchester and Cardiff, no less, followed by a shebang in London. Wear your finest finery. We will be.
In other, more personal news, I’m on the lookout for some round, yellow laces for my claret Doc Marten’s. I can’t find them for love nor money. Well, money. I’ve not tried the love bit, to be fair. Any suggestions to the usual places: Twitter / Facebook / Myspace would be greatly appreesh.
Anyway, look, I must dash. I’m already late and I’m supposed to be at Paul’s putting some ebowed guitar and a splash of harmony singing on a thing.

There it is, as true as trousers, peace out from all at BoyCriedWolf mansion. Do pop round again soon. I’m making sandwiches.

x TCW