A couple of years ago, when I first had the opportunity to support Levellers on their ‘One Way of Life’ tour a friend Claire Cressey made some wooden peg figures of the band and sent them to me with a view to making them into a video. She managed to capture their likenesses incredibly well and even made a Boakesy to join in the fun.

For various reasons the idea for the video was shelved, followed swiftly by the little wooden Levellers who spent the next year or so squatting in my cupboard.

Then, back in January this year, an email came from Jeremy Leveller asking if I’d be up for making a few introductions to go with the songs for the DVD version of the album Peace.

It sounded like a lot of fun so I started sleeping on what to do. I had the honour of supporting them again for two nights in Bury St. Edmunds in February so during the daytime on the second date I interviewed the guys and got their thoughts on the new album. It was a bit noisy but I got what I needed and took it home. Next I wanted to make some ‘Levelly’ settings so I took a trip down to their studio, Metway, in Brighton where their lovely manager Steve showed me around so I could get a few photos. He also nursed me as I had managed to cut my head on the way through the TINY door. Good first impressions and all that.

I came away with these photos of the various rooms and got to work creating the scene.

Getting through rather a lot of balsa wood, glue, Stanley knife blades and other materials…

I made little replicas of the rooms…

However… I didn’t really bother to measure everything properly and when I finally evicted the Peg-Levs from the darkness of the cupboard, I realised they didn’t quite look right.

I couldn’t seriously expect them to give their interviews from a Persian version of quicksand. There was only one thing for it. I had to give them legs. So a few days – and charity shops – later the whole crew (including the interviewer) were fully legged.

The fading on the jeans is talcum powder by the way, so they smell delightful. Finding a small enough plaid for Boakesy’s troosers was a bit of a mare so I ended up just drawing black lines on a scrap of red material, but don’t tell anyone. I made a didge too so that Boakesy would feel more at home. There was an incident involving him dropping it but you’ll find out more about that when the DVD comes out. (trivia fans, the only reason I gave Charlie a pair of sticks is because otherwise his hand would have been holding his bits – see first photo)

So, the stage was set – literally – for the interviews to commence, and the guys made themselves at home in their new surroundings.

Loads of audio was edited, hundreds of photos were taken, thousands of tiny mouths and eyes were manipulated, and great song by great song, we made our way through the album. There are some gloriously amusing moments to look out for – mainly down to the banter between the band members.

When I had finally finished everything I had word from Camp Leveller that they needed one more *actual* music video for one of the songs to complete the DVD.

Did I fancy it? Heck yeah!

However, lockdown was heavily upon us so I was restricted to using things I already had in the house.

I won’t go into too much detail about the video because it’s not out yet, but it involved another few thousand photos and very bad arm ache.

It was a massive pleasure to have something to immerse myself in for this rather strange period, and of course a huge honour to do it for a band I’ve been a fan of since my teens.

Levellers will be releasing the videos one by one in the run-up to the album launch in summer.

Massive thanks to Claire Cressey for capturing the guys’ likenesses so well, to Steve for mending my head and letting me snoop around the studio, to Jez for giving me artistic freedom to basically mess around, and to the rest of the band for not minding my terrible interview techniques, or the strangeness I put them through in the last chorus of the *actual* video.

It’ll be out in August.

Peace.

Hi. Nick here. Obvs.

Just back from the last gig of the Skinny Lister tour and I miss them all so much. Not just the band members and crew, but all the lovely folk who turned up early to watch the support guy. Thanks so much if that was you. Everyone seemed to be really up for it and there was some very beautiful singing along in at least two different languages.

Thanks so much also of course to all of Skinny Lister, was such an honour to be asked to join the tour and an even bigger to be allowed on the stage to play and sing a couple of songs with them.

They’re taking a little well-deserved rest to update their families but will be back to their normal energetic selves come the end of 2020.

I get to enjoy a little rest now but will continue to try to come up with enough songs for a new record. May ACTUALLY even put it on vinyl this time. Have wonderful Christmasses and see you next year!

Cheers

Hi, I’m going to stop apologising for being bad at updating this because it never changes.

Just come back from an awesome tour supporting Ginger Wildheart and the Sinners. The whole band and crew were such a joy to work with and I had the massive pleasure of being joined by Ginger and Neil Ivison (that makes them sound like a couple – they’re not) for my song Oceanographer. I already miss the guys and girls and I’m hoping we can do it all again some other day.

I don’t have too long to be pining however as I’m off again next Wednesday with sea-based folkiepunks Skinny Lister as tour support for their UK tour.

Things are already looking rather exciting for next year but I can’t go into too much detail just yet.

Thank you all for your continued support. Hopefully see you on the road soon.

Cheers x

Been trying to think about how to sum up Beautiful Days and I’m not quite sure where to start. I first went to the festival 2 years ago as part of Gaz Brookfield’s band and while I was there I played a few of my own songs outside Mark Goodman’s much-missed Magpie Music tent. The police came and stopped us but to be honest we were creating a bit of a squish in the thoroughfare so they were right to do so (and anyway, we’d run out of ‘hits’). Ben, Chris and I also got our names down for one of the open mic slots on John Bownas’ much-missed Bandstand.

The following year a friend of mine Dan Caruso had to cancel his Bandstand gig and he kindly put Ben and I forward to replace him. This time we had twenty minutes and during the gig we made a video for my song ‘Departures’. Magpie Music had to put up with us again on the Thursday night, this time unplugged obvs.

It was therefore, of course, a massive surprise to be asked to bring my band to the mainstage only six months later, but once I’d stopped panting heavily, and had checked over the email again and again, I happily agreed to it.

There are so many people to thank for helping us to get to that stage – literally – but it really is mainly down to all of you who have supported me over the last couple of years by coming to gigs and buying albums and clothing – looking out over the crowd on Sunday was like looking through my T-shirt designs folder on my PC. There was even a Why? shirt from 25 years ago!

Thanks to my band for being ace, Darren for all your work as LeonardTech and to Les Carter for the nostalgic fun.

Thanks to Gaz for letting half of us play with you and for suggesting folk come back the next day.

HUGE thanks to the kids that helped out in Es Tut Mir Leid. Your artwork and dancing was perfect, and your smiles and bubbliness were super contagious. Auctioneering skills were second to none too!

Thank you Graham Parker for taking it upon yourself to organise loads of German signs and for teaming up with Russ Torr and Rob Conch Plant for Double Denim Fun.

Thanks also to Richard Kingston for making the birds fly around the stage. Hopefully they weren’t too off-putting. On a related note, apologies to the lighting guy/photographers for giving you a massive white screen to deal with.

Thanks to everyone who helped by giving out stickers with a special mention to Kait who helped me on Saturday night when I realised I had a couple hundred left over!

Massive thanks to all the stage crew and to Stephanie, Amy and co for making us feel so welcome and relaxed backstage. It’s such an important job, but one that often goes uncredited.

Lastly thank you to all at DMF and camp Levellers for taking a punt on a relatively unknown band and letting us loose on the big one.

See you next year, possibly not as a performer, but certainly as an enjoyer.

Here are the kids doing their thing…

Hi, sorry it’s been a while since I posted here. Since my last post I have had the massive honour of supporting Levellers again as a trio with Ben Wain and John Hare in Malvern, and as a full band in Northampton. So far, festival season has consisted of Ey Up Mi Duck, Something to Smile About, Glastonbury, Roystonbury, South Cider, 2000Trees, Castellans Folksommer, Langenberg KGB and Wickham. This week we head out again for Boomtown and then it’s Beautiful Days, Watchet, Whitwell, Rockstock and Barrel and Ragged Bear.

In the meantime I have been busy writing for another album and have made a new design for the T-shirts. This time it’s bees (modelled by my godson below) and I think this will be the last barcode-based design. You can find them up on the merch tab as usual.

See you soon hopefully! Thanks for your continued support.

So there’s a new T-shirt design and while it may look rather random, the koalas represent the False Alarms. Y’see there are usually just six of us, but every so often the delightful John Leonard comes to join in the fun. He has also been known to jump on my back from time to time so he is represented here by the baby koala. Shirts, hoodies, vests and flowies are available HERE should anyone feel led.

Yep,  basically Kenny got loads of his mates to send in clips so he could make a video for his song An Open Letter to my Human. Here it is.

Thank you so much for sending in all your clips.

Finally able to sit and sum up what has been an incredible week; a week which involved five days on tour with Levellers. When I was 15 years old, I was a big fan and I guess I never really thought I’d get to say that. We took in Cardiff, Brighton, Bristol, Norwich and Nottingham, all of which were either sold out or pretty much there.

When I arrived in Cardiff it’s safe to say I was just a little nervous but each and every member of the band and the crew (including main support Seán McGowan and his band) were so friendly and welcoming that any nervousness didn’t hang around.
The friendliness and welcomingness (totally made that word up but keeping it) wasn’t contained to the crew however. Levellers’ fans were just awesome. I was the opening acoustic act, so was on within an hour of doors opening. I thought that might mean me playing to a handful of folk who turned up early to get a good spot on the barrier. But no chance! Most nights there were already a couple hundred people in and the last night in Nottingham was 80% full by the time I took to the stage!
Not only that, people joined in. People sang. People clapped. People listened. People didn’t mind that they’d never seen ‘this chap’ before. Writing ‘people’ so many times just made me realise what a strange word it is. This was all followed by people folk coming out to buy CDs and T-shirts and coming to say hello. Such an awesome week.

Nottingham was particularly enjoyable for me. I’d lost most of my voice the night before and was really worried about singing, but I was very fortunate in that the front few rows of lovely humans were already familiar with my music. They sang along throughout keeping me buoyant. My highlight – of probably the whole tour – was getting two halves of Rock City to duet ‘against’ each other, during which Leveller Simon came and joined me on harmonica.

My daughter Flo was able to join me in Cardiff and Bristol and my pal and band mate John Hare joined us in Bristol with his cornet and accordion. Both were awesome and again made to feel welcome by all.

Huge thanks to all those involved in the crew and to those of you who came out early to the gigs and made me feel at home.

Massive thanks also to Seán McGowan and his band, Brad, Dean and Jay, for late night bar and restaurant fun. We should totally do that again some time.

This was a bit of an escalation of an idea. Wooden peg changer extraordinaire Claire Cressey made me some mini False Alarms with whom I immediately fell in love. Before taking a photo of us all, I felt Robin needed an ‘actual’ drum kit so I built one using some Fablon, toilet rolls, cocktail sticks and silver foil. I added some cymbals and a hi-hat, made of course from Ferrero Rocher wrappers.

Then I started to feel sorry for everyone else, so I made a bass rig for Tom and a guitar rig for Brad, and John was given a keyboard (I tried making a cornet but after several failed attempts I gave up). Brad, Tom and Ben were given pedal boards, Robin’s carpet was slipped under his kit, and guitar stand, towel and setlists were slung into position. All ready for the photo.

Then I thought it would be fun if they were actually on a stage of some sort so I made one out of a cardboard box and some old shelving. I then made a backdrop using a glittery shirt I had bought from a charity shop for our dear friend Liz Dando’s glitter party, shortly before she sadly passed away. I thought she’d be well up for being remembered in what I thought was going to be a fun band photo.

I then thought you can’t have a stage without mic stands, stage box, monitors and speakers so I made some using quadrant moulding, cocktail sticks, balsa wood, beads and various threads. The speaker fronts are sandpaper (60 grade FYI). So, all ready for the photo.

Then I thought I’d need some kind of lighting rig if I want it to look more realistic. So I set about building one using dowelling, more silver foil and TV aerial connectors. This was by far the most difficult and fiddly bit, and it took a couple of days, but I was happy that I was finally ready for the photo.

But then I thought, seeing as it had taken me so long to build the set, that it would be fun to actually try to make some kind of music video. So, with no real idea of how I was going to do it, I decided on Es Tut Mir Leid and asked Claire to make me a few more characters. She got to work and sent me the security guards, the card bearers, and the front row cast of mainly regular gig-goers.

I then ordered another 60 wooden pegs and spent the next few days painting audience members with a little help from my son Silas. Crowd barrier had to go in of course and I added a few beer bottles made from electrical connectors. They’re supposed to be Heineken but to be honest we can only usually afford Perlenbacher.

In the meantime, John Leonard, when he wasn’t busy with his main band Ferocious Dog, started to join us for gigs. I’d already built the mic stands and monitors and there’s no way I was making another, so, again with Claire’s help, he joined us on stage but without a mic. At a recent gig I’d noticed he’d always find his way onto someone else’s mic, so I was sure he wouldn’t mind. Even though the banjo is incredibly low in the mix on this track – some would argue ‘non-existent’ – I thought I’d let him join in.

Still with no idea of what I was going to do I bought some LED strip lights and in the style of an 80’s school disco made the stage flash just a little bit too much.

The only thing I could think of was to try my hand at stop motion animation, so I watched a few tutorials – practised with a little tale about my earplugs wandering off to see Benny while in bed with him at Roystonbury – and then blacked out the dining room and set to work for two weeks.

Moving each figure and each ‘cymbal’ a millimetre at a time I started the quite tremendous task of making us all move around. When I was roughly happy with the ‘movie’ I started the equally tremendous task of adding mouths to everyone and getting them chirping along, roughly in time.

Over 10,000 images later with aching arms and tired eyes, and England out of the World Cup, I felt I was pretty much there. A few finishing touches involved adding a smoke machine (obvs), some more lighting, a bit of feedback from Brad for the beginning, and an actual audience for the end. The latter was recorded at Middlezoy Arts Festival last night (14/07/18), thanks for clapping longer than you normally might.

As I type, the finished video is uploading and I’m feeling a little empty inside because I have just demolished the set (lighting rig being most painful), thrown most of it away and put the dining room back to normal. It’s been a big part of my life for the last couple of months and it not existing any more feels very strange.

So there you have it. An idea to take a simple band photo ended up being a mammoth work-it-out-as-you-go-along task making a music video.

I lost my mum, also a ‘Liz’ two months ago and she knew I was planning to one day do a music video for this song, which was one of her favourites. So, although I am quietly pleased with the final outcome, there’s more than a tinge of sadness that neither Liz ever got to see it.

Thanks for watching

Claire’s peg painting can be found HERE

Hi All, I hope you are all well, and that you had beautiful summers filled with beautiful festivals and beautiful people. I know I did.

I am very pleased with my new video for most people’s favourite song from the new album Besta Venya. It was created by the exquisite human that is Rich Kingston at Young Rascal  and is sung so beautifully by the delightful Saoirse Casey.