I’ve not done one of these in a while and a lot has happened over the last few months, so I felt a need to throw it down in prose and send it out into the web abyss for a cyber spanking!

April 2011 saw me embark on a tour down the West Coast of the USA. Myself and film maker extraordinaire Craig Rian jumped on a plane and headed North to Seattle, Washington. The first night I played a gig with the lovely Ms Anna Coogan, we had a packed house at Egan’s Jam house in Ballard. T’was a great evening, a great start to the tour and we got some fantastic footage. My highlight of the evening was signing their park bench………if you look on the back of it I added a wee Scottish bonus!!
During this period in Seattle we stayed with my friend Theresa Rasmussen, you may recognise her name from the credits of my record ‘Doricana’! She was a great host as always!

Next, we headed off to Ocean Shores, Washington where I opened for Seattle based band Ockham’s Razor. We had a fantastic weekend performing for the good people of Ocean Shore’s, I hope to be back sometime to reaffirm the great friendships and fans that were created over our two night ‘residency’. However, since I was there the lads have split as a band, ’tis such a shame as I thoroughly enjoyed their set, but alas the band thing isn’t always an easy road.

Portland, Oregon was next on the tour. By this time we had hours of footage, including several shows. Did I mention why we are doing all this filming? I’ll get to that soon!!

I performed a solo show along with Portland’s, Sons of Malarkey. Nice guys and a lot of fun.

For me, this was a mixed gig, there wasn’t a massive crowd (well, I really don’t know anyone there for a start) however I captured a brilliant performance and I’m delighted with how it turned out sound wise, Craig will have a better idea than me from a footage point of view! The next morning saw me dropping off Mr Movie Maker as he headed back to San Diego to prepare for the upcoming festival in Sacramento! A big shout out goes to the 67 Music guys (Skot and Steve), nice gentleman and I’m delighted and humbled to add them amongst my fans!

From Lake Oswego I headed South with a couple of days to get down to Sacramento for my festival slot! I decided I didn’t want 2 days off from singing. I’d previously stuggled to find an appropriate gig for the Thursday night afore the Festival so I decided to look for an open mic gig somewhere between Portland and Sacramento, easy right? Wrong, I eventually found one out on the coast of Northern California in the seaside town of Arcata! It had the added bonus of heading West from Redding through Grants pass and into the serious ‘Sasquatch Country’ of the Redwood national Park, which by the way is spectacular! I’m not sure if this is the case, but my immediate thought was that this must be where they shot the Speeder bike scenes in the ‘Return of the Jedi’, answers on a postcard!! (Ok, I just googled it, yes I was right!!!)
After a succesful short set and far too many beers the night before, I woke up on the Friday morning at stupid o’ clock to find out that a member of my band had pulled out of travelling North to Sacramento at the last minute! This is the part of the music industry (well one of many parts of it) that I find frustrating. Being a focused and punctual individual (well, most of the time), I have no time for flakiness and lateness……it really chews my arse so to speak!!!!! The weekend was to be an acoustic trio by the look of things! Sigh!

The weekend was a brilliant success, I made many, many new friends and fans. I really hope that the Sacramento Games and Celtic Festival will have me back next year so we can do it again!!! A big thank you to my beautiful wife Fiona who helped me the whole weekend, she is a star!!! We headed back to San Diego on the late night flight, tired, happy and triumphant to prepare for the San Diego show which was to be held at Hensley’s in Carlsbad!

Hensley’s was meant to be a coming off of tour and blasting the crowd with a brilliant performance sort of night, and although we had a very happy crowd of over a 100 people come out for the show I was personally left disappointed with the sound and the level of professionalism at the venue. I don’t like bashing people on line but after a 10 day stint of respect, love and professionalism (well mostly) I’ve no longer got any time for it! No more on the matter…..honest!!

The remainder of May disappeared over the horizon to Scotland and Ireland with me for a couple of weeks! Upon my return we reconvened to perform at the ‘Celtic Crossroad Concert’ that myself, Patric Petrie and David Lally had clunked our heid’s together and came up with. Some said it was going to be a tough draw in the military town of Oceanside, however we ploughed on to prove them wrong as we always do!! We threw together a few rehearsals and thrashed out the details. Much to our delight the evening was a tremendous success with a full house and a happy Theatre!!! A massive thank you to Alan Sanderson and Chris Faust for doing the sound and stage management (kind of), they took the show to the next level!!!

Will we do this ‘Celtic Crossroad Concert’ again?? Well, watch this space!!

So………..what are we actually doing with all this footage of some drunk, fat Scotsman parading around the US and the UK with his guitar and harmonica thinking he’s Stoney’s answer to Bob Dylan (Boabie Dylan?) you may well ask?? Well, Mr Craig Rian and myself have been working on footage, interviews, ‘B roll’ and various other shite for well over a year now on a DVD project that we hope to have ready for 2012, it may well be twinned with a live album, we’ll see how the sound turns out!!!

Big thanks to Ms Rosey from sddialedin.com and NBC Soundiego who joined us on the ‘Celtic Crossroads’ night and subsequently the Sunday………….all day! We had a fantastic lunch (well brunch) and continued to celebrate our own greatness and genius (funny how that happens after a day on the lash with ‘SandersTone’. Hopes and dreams anyone?) only for me to get the call that I had been nominated for the ‘Best Acoustic Act’ at the 2011 San Diego Music Awards……….cue more drinking, high fiving and comedy chest bumping!!!!

So, after about 10 hours of drinking (with my sober and supernaturally patient wife by my side) I find myself in the Casbah on a live radio show doing an interview with Tim Pyles………he did a good job of trying to keep the mic close enough to himself that it could be recoiled to the safety of his armpit at the merest hint of some Scottish expletives and nonsensical drunken buffoonery!!!

Anyhoo lads and lasses, I’m up for this SDMA (San Diego Music Award) which is really cool considering it’s previously been won by Jason Maz and Jewel, so for a ‘boy fae the Hive’ to even be nominated in amongst some other fantastic American artists itself is a blessing.

All you need is a name, an email and a finger to press ‘Colin Clyne’! Please feel free to vote here:
www.sandiegomusicawards.com/#voting

So, what’s next for me? I have this awards nomination and ceremony process to enjoy, then the following day myself and the missus are heading back to Scotland, where I will embark on yet another tour. I will then be heading back to the Pacific NW to do some more shows in October and quite possibly some shows in Arizona later in the year!!! Oh and a trip to Brazil squeezed in between, more on this later! Oh and did I mention New Zealand in the New Year?? Getting silly now laddie!!!

Musically, where’s it heading? Well, I know where I feel its going. I’ll be moving away from the Doricana thing and looking to put together a brand new band for the next phase of my recording career. I will continue to tour solo (as much as I can) and on occasion with my stripped down acoustic band, but its time for me to take the sound to the next level. I’m excited to start working on a new album and at the moment I have approximately 25 new songs ready to go. Personally, I feel that the standard of songs are higher than from the Doricana album and my own personal performances are 10 fold better, so naturally I’m fired up!!!

Now, I need to figure out if I have those 10 brilliant songs that justify another album…………..and then we begin!

Cheers
Colin

‘…oh Christmas time, Doricana and wine, dinna pack your bags as we’ve canceled your flight…’ arghhhhhhhhhhhh, it’s just a bit of bloody snow, calm down everybody!!!

Well folks, it’s that time of year again where grown men wear silly jumpers (sweater for my US brethren) emblazoned with red nosed reindeer’s and Bart Simpson Christmas ties to the office party, at which they drink far too much free corporate booze then make an absolute arse of themselves with the wee secretary from accounts that’s been ‘giving’ them the eye all year. In truth her ‘giving’ of the eye was nothing more than a judgmental glance to confirm if you were or were not infact the silly twat from last year who wore the silly tie, drank too much mulled wine and so on and so forth……………..oh, and not to mention dancing badly to various Christmas hits from the jukebox! I love it.

Anyway, after my Scrooge like corporate ramblings allow me to wish everybody a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a prosperous New year!!! I, myself do not know where I will be spending either Christmas or New Year at the moment such is the nonsense that is the love tryst between European weather and air travel. Bring back good old fashioned sea faring I say, none of this worrying about ice nonsense….well apart from a ‘wee’ incident on the 14th April 1912 somewhere in the Northern Atlantic! To quote one of Stonehaven’s finest drunks “…rum n’ onything, nae ice bergs please…”

So, this is the part where I shamelessly whore out my music to the masses on all various social networks and mailing list………..yeah, buy my new album for a Christmas present to some poor unsuspecting sod that actually wanted the new JLS album, or get them to download it…….at least it’s guaranteed to reach your house without any snow disruption (well if you are in the UK at least).

Alas no…………..this is the part where I thank you all for helping make 2010 a good year for me musically. I’m very proud to have released Doricana earlier this year, which I believe is a great wee record (not for me to say really) that people liked and hell, even bought on occasion. There have been some great shows and road trips and I would like to thank all my friends in the UK and the US for making them that wee bit extra special. I’d also like to thank all the kind writers out there that reviewed Doricana in a positive light and understood what we were trying to achieve with it……..now people get out there and buy it for your loved ones!

This coming Year will no doubt bring more big gigs and road trips (check my gig listing) and hopefully San Diego’s Bart Mendoza is correct in his prediction that 2011 will be a ‘big’ year for me. Right where’s my sledge……………..oh and how do you ask for a pint of Tennents lager in Japanese??

Sayounara (apparently that’s good bye)

Sensei Clyne