After a quiet spell I have decided to work on a number of single releases over the first half of 2025 .
First off was the Instrumental Misty Fjords followed by Hole in the Room and these are both available on my Bandcamp site http://www.bandcamp.alanmaskell.com as well as all the main streaming services .
This Friday 21/3/25 will se the release of a new version of 23W Line 17 , featuring a number of guest musicians :
Ted Fordney on Bass , Pete Young on Organ, Mervyn Brunt on Fiddle and Dan Nichol on Pedal Steel Guitar .
I’m really pleased with the Country Folk feel we managed to get on this recording .
The song is dedicated to my cousin Gerry who was unfortunate to be drafted to Vietnam and unfortunately was one of the many young Americans who didn’t make it home again . I never met him, but know a lot about his life from talking to my family and his siblings and having recently read his letters home from Vietnam which was very moving for me .
The title refers to his name location on the Vietnam War memorial in Washington which I have visited a number of times . It’s an incredibly moving place with 50,000 names on a black wall of stone , and makes you wonder what it was all for .
In the current global instability I though it was an appropriate Release !
After a quiet period through the Summer I have a couple of new releases out this month .
The first one is an Instrumental written on the ship during the final sea day of our cruise to Alaska and the Aleutian Island this summer. The track is called Misty Fjords and is inspired by the National park of that name which was the last stop before the cruise finished in Vancouver . We has a zodiac cruise through the Fjord very early on a damp and misty day and the silence , the scenery and the atmosphere were spectacular . A beautiful place.
The Track is available on Bandcamp initially , but will later on be streamable on all the usual services.
The second release is a production version of Hole in the Room , a song I wrote earlier this year, which I produced initially to enter into the MASC Song Contest . The track as ever features Ted Fordney on Stand-up Bass ( although he was delayed by 2 hurricanes !) , Pete Young on keyboards and Mervyn Brunt on Violin .
In addition to these two tracks I recorded stripped back live versions of three of my favourite Covers by Songwriters I know/have known. These are just vocal and a single guitar so very much as I would play them live . I will post a link at the end of this to enable you to download them for free .
Something about a Heart written by Rick Hardeman. Rick was a highly talented songwriter /singer who I met in Florida and played with on a number of occasions live . He also joined me on flute, both live and on the Wildflowers album. He now lives in North Carolina .
Learn to be Still written by James Hawkins .James was a folk singer/songwriter from Venice in Florida , who writes many songs about the local history of the area amongst other things . This song is on his first album , but a very different arrangement played on the piano . I originally recorded this just before lockdown and it’s on the Wildflowers album , but it was very new to me at that time .This version is a new live version , having “run in” the song now in live performances .
See You Around Sometime written by Neil Lewis. Neil was a guitarist and songwriter from South Wales who sadly passed away some ten years ago now . I met Neil when I was at University and he played as part of a double act Luce and Lewis , when not playing guitar for Max Boyce . We played support to them a number of times with my college band and got to know him and this song has been a favorite of mine ever since . I had stopped playing it due to the issues with my little finger , but can play it again since my surgery last year so this recording is a celebration of that .
Having a quiet few months apart from these recordings but will close off the year with The Maskelleros at The Seven Stars in Bristol in December . We plan a suitably Christmassy set and hope to go out with a bang !
So we find ourselves almost at the end of Summer 2024 where did that go !
Once again I played a solo gig at The How the Light Gets In Festival in Hay . I was back in The Blue Moon Tent again and Andy shot a video of my set once again . The weather was not kind on the day with some torrential rain and plenty of mud. Still my set went well and here are links to a couple of tracks :
Hole in The Room
Rose Tattoo
In July we managed to get together to play a Maskelleros gig back at The Shoulder of Mutton in Wantage. It was one of the hottest days of the year so not a good night to be playing indoors , but we had some good moments and here are three videos of tracks from that show .
Pete is on fine form on this version of the old Boomtown Rats song !
The band version of this song adding a different take on it !
A song by Jon Allen from the early noughties ! I last played this at my daughters wedding for her first dance !
So after a quiet August, and with the summer almost over I head off for a months break to North America . Back in October for another date at the Seven Stars , and time to get out playing a bit more before our house move ………..
We had a great time playing as the full band at The Shoulder in Wantage, with Jim Stewart on drums . We were certainly under rehearsed so kept to a simple set , but it went down well and on occasions we clicked with some of the energy and power we used to get.
Here in glorious posterized punk effect ( Thanks Andy Boyd for the video) is It’s all over now from that gig :
Next up for me is to start to refresh my repertoire with some of the new songs from this years FAWM. I am really happy as I managed 10 songs , plus my spoken epic combining dialogue with song “Whisper of the Stars”. So far 3 songs have been played live , but 4 more are in progress. “ Hole in the Room”, “Ghosts and Gods” and “ Four corners of the Street” are all good to go. I managed a diverse mix of folk to Rock to Psychedelic, on a mix of subjects both topical , personal and social commentary and am really pleased with the quality .
I have a new stripped back recording project planned in April and some of the new songs will make that along with some from last year’s Fawm, more to follow on that !
It’s currently February and I am in the middle of FAWM again ( February Album Writing Month ) . Last year I managed ten songs and 1 instrumental of which 6 songs are now staples in my live set . So far this year I have managed 8 songs , but am only 10 days in so with a target of 10 songs again I hope to easily reach that . It’s going well and I’m pleased with what I’ve got though and have ideas already for another 3 songs so who knows how many I’ll get eventually !
Starting book in a few live gigs , which is difficult with our moving situation, but so far I have:
Seven Stars – St Patrick’s Day – with Pete
Shoulder of Mutton, Wantage – 4 piece Electric Ulterior Motives
How the Light Gets In Festival in Hay- Solo
Hellens Garden Festival – Much Marcle – Solo
Hopefully I can get some more things organised , although Summer is looking very busy already . Please see the live Dates page for details of these .
Here is just a taster of a new song from FAWM this year . This one is called “Hole in the Room”. It’s a one take recording , so a bit loose but should give an idea of what it’s about .
I appear to have taken quite a break from posting on here so decided to post a couple of catch up pages .
I got back into playing again in September , after my surgery, with a couple of Gigs including the first Dorstonebury Festival in the village I used to live in . It was a horrible wet day and this dampened the atmosphere for our set a bit , but here are a couple of songs from that show captured by Andy . It was a good opportunity to play again after a long break and get back with Pete. First song is Labour Day from The Lake album
Our Medley of songs by Bob Marley and Neil Young
A couple of days after we played at The Seven Stars and premiered our version of Me and the Ghost of St.Andrews by Allister Bradley , a Canadian Songwriter I met on our cruise in Greenland.
The next big bit of news in October was the first gig in more than 10 years for our 4 piece electric Band Ulterior Motives with a new drummer Will . We played two gigs , a warm up in The Shoulder of Mutton in Wantage and Gus’s Son Jack’s wedding in Cornwall . We were a bit rusty, but it was good fun, and more gigs are being planned for this lineup in 2024 .
Here is just a taster of those gigs :
Complete with wardrobe malfunction for Gus !!!
A favourite Crowded House song we’ve occasionally featured in our set.
Final playing of the year was an open mic in the Shoulder in Wantage playing with Pete . We played a lively set of old and new songs joined by the Landlord Guy on drums at some point . It was fun , but more enthusiastic than necessarily proficient !
So that was it for 2023 . Hopefully mid 2024 we will be in Oxfordshire and I’ll be able to get a more rehearsed band and pick up playing with Pete and Gus on a more regular basis .
So I’ve not been playing since the end of June as I finally decided to have my little finger on my left hand straightened by surgery . I have put it off for number of years , but it has been getting noticeably worse and interfering with my playing .
After 6 weeks , including our holiday in the Arctic, I have finally picked up the guitar again and started to play . It is a slow process due to the absence of callous’s on my fingers ( lost about week 4 1) and a continuing stiffness , but I am making progress and generally now the finger ends up in the right place ! I have a couple of weeks before rehearsals for my gigs in September, so fingers crossed( not literally ) the Physio and practice will get me there .
Here is an interesting comparison of before and after :
It’s been an exceptionally busy few months for me so have been a bit slow to post things so apologies .
My last real gigs of the Summer were both outdoors at the How The Light Gets In Festival in Hay on Wye at the end of May, and a week later at Hellen’s Garden Festival a week later. Thankfully the weather was fine and dry for both (Until I’d finished playing ) and I was lucky enough that Andy Boyd filmed my whole set on The Blue Moon Stage at Hay .
Three clips from the set are available to watch on my YouTube Channel:
In amongst these gigs we moved house to a temporary home in Longtown , Hereford before our eventual move back to Oxfordshire next year .
Encouraged by some musical friends in Hereford I decided to take part in FAWM ( February Album Writing Month ) this year . This is a web based enterprise that originated a number of years ago in the US with the objective of writing and recording 14 songs during the month of February and recording and uploading them to the FAWM website . It seemed to work for me as an encouraging process and instead of my usual 2 or 3 songs a year rate , I managed to write 10 complete songs and an instrumental during the month which was a real success for me .
I’m happy with most of the songs and am now working through them to either add them to my live set or review and record them. Twilight, Breathe , and Two pairs of Eyes have now been played live 4 or 5 times and following feedback from a show I spoke with the wonderful Andy Boyd about recording a video for Two pairs of Eyes .
The song is about the war in Ukraine and we looked for a suitable place to shoot ,ending up in these derelict farm buildings in Oxfordshire . We had fantastic spring weather and completed the recording and editing all in a single day . I played everything live, using a reverb with shimmer effect on the guitar to create a sort of orchestration ,. Really pleased with the results so hope you enjoy it !!
Back in November I played a show at Troll Music in Venice Florida accompanied by Ted Fordney on Double Bass and vocals and Rico Bloomquist on percussion and harmonica.
Support on the night was by the fabulous ( now defunct) Martin Sisters , Wendy Kaneko, Barbara Goldman who joined us on vocals for the final song “Better Times ” by Janis Ian
The whole show was recorded directly from the desk and I mixed and mastered it back home here in the UK.
For anyone who’d like to listen to it , or if you came along , here is a chance to hear it again .
