Protest And Borrow

It’s stating the obvious, for a writer, but I love libraries. My partner and I are the sort of people who visit libraries on holiday, as the photo above, of Vancouver’s fantastic public library last August, illustrates. The other day, after reading an article in the New Yorker, I was trying to work out an excuse to get into the Vatican library, which is about to reopen. There weren’t many books in our house when I was growing up, yet all of the world’s literature was available to me in West Kirby library, then Colne library and Burnley library. When I was on the dole, trying to become a novelist, I spent an awful lot of time in Nottingham City library and Radford library. These…

Loudon Wainwright a second time

The Richard Thompson show on Thursday was excellent. There aren’t many people who can get away with playing a gig the longest section of which is new material that the majority of the audience hasn’t heard, but Richard triumphed, as proved by the standing ovations at the end. You get less of your favourite songs in an RT band show, but instead you get a lot of great guitar solos, which are even stronger and longer than ever before, a point I was reminded of when I played the tour only live album from 1985 that I bought at the interval. I saw the ’85 tour (in Worksop, Nottingham, with Sue, John Harvey and the late Angus Wells) and recall it as being excellent. The…

Waking Dreams with Lawrence Sail

Next month I’ll be reading, with novelist Thomas Legendre,  at the Flying Goose Cafe in Chilwell Rd, Beeston. It’s the first time the Shoestring Press readings series has had two prose writers, so I hope we’ll get an audience (7,30-9, only £3). I’ll be previewing my new novel ‘Bone and Cane’, which Tindal Street publish in March. To give you a taste of the venue, here’s a short film I made last week, with the permission of Lawrence Sail. I rate Lawrence as one of the very best poets writing in this country at the moment. He was launching his New & Selected Poems, ‘Waking Dreams’, which I can’t recommend highly enough. ‘Feeding The Dolls’, first published in ‘Eye-Baby’, is followed by ‘The Musical Box’…

Michael Chapman at 70

Hard to believe that Michael Chapman turns 70 tomorrow. Although he’s a kind of elder statesman for the generation of singer/songwriters that I’ve been following since my teens (Nick Drake, John Martyn, Richard Thompson, Bridget St John, Kevin Ayers et al), I didn’t discover his music at the time.  I first met him a few years ago at a Cosmic American Music anniversary party. Or was it after a Steve Earle gig? Lovely guy, with no airs about him at all. Michael remains a big music fan, as well as a compelling live performer, with a superb blues style. For years, he seemed to only play Nottingham on nights when I was teaching, but I’ve managed to see him three times lately, once on his…

Richard Thompson OBE

This is an extended version of the interview that appears in today’s Nottingham Post. You can read the shorter version here. Richard Thompson is in Manchester, about to embark on three days of band rehearsals for his new tour, which comes to Nottingham next Thursday. He doesn’t like rehearsals generally, but this time should be more straightforward than usual. For his new album Dream Attic was recorded on the road, in the USA last year (quote about advantages/disadvantages). ‘People often come up to me after shows and say the studio versions are great but we prefer the live versions of songs. So this one’s looser. There’s the odd mistake on there. I hadn’t realised that it would involve so much work for the band. In…