Fit like Doricanite’s? Are my blog titles getting worse or what?

It’s been a wee while since I’ve ‘blogged up’ and a LOT has happened since then!!! Looking back, it appears I say that with every blog. ‘They’ (industry types) tell me I must blog more, but truthfully I usually can’t be arsed. Let’s be honest, who wants to read my ramblings and shite anyway!? You do? really? Wow!

Musically, I continue to creep onwards and upwards to Global super stardom and I’m pretty sure if I make it to 200 years old I’ll have this music thingymajiggy cracked by then!

Seriously though, there has been a lot of great things happening in the UK and the US with regards to my music since I won that wee bronze looking San Diego Music Award for Best Acoustic Act last year (did I mention I won that? Thanks again to everyone that voted, I love you as much as I love pickled onion Monster munch).

So, where were we? Ah, yes. I’ve got a few TV show things in the pipeline, Jim Gellatly (‘the voice of new music in Scotland) has given my song ‘Stonehaven radio Station and Me’ the wee kick up the arse it (me) needed (and he’s a Dundee FC fan, who would have thought) and I finally got the video for it launched, my mailing lists and various other social media outlets continue to bloom and ‘Doricana’ continues to get into new hands and under new coffee mugs every week (I jest of course).

It’s funny but as an indie artist, it takes years to ‘properly’ promote an album, not that I truly know how to promote an album but I’m learning with each one! However, I don’t think I’ll ever stop promoting this album as I believe it deserves to be in many hands and in many CD players…………apologies for that wee burst of confidence, I’ve just had a wee skinny latte!!

Talking of which, I’ve lost approximately half a stone (7lbs)………………without any exercise (well the occasional walk). How did I do this I hear you ask? Simply by not being in the pub / club every night singing songs and drinking Guinness (and shifting my rehearsal space from the Ken Club to Hindsight studios). I know, it seems like a strange thing to not be doing when you are a touring artist but I have been having some ‘time off’ from the touring recently and have been spending time at home due to the fact I became a FATHER on the 31st of March 2012 to a lovely wee lassie called Catherine!!! She is just amazing and is my world!!! Both her and Mummy are doing splendidly!!

Naturally, I’ve been singing all the nursery rhymes to her and she loves it (naturally). However, I must disclose that I had a cunning plan all along for her to love my singing by constantly singing to my wife’s belly when she was pregnant. My cunning plan featured my wife lying down, closing her eyes, relaxing and thinking happy thoughts and then O’l Booby Dylan here would begin to finger pick and croon ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, ‘Old MacDonald’ and various other well know wee ditty’s to my child ‘in utero’. Unbelievably it works! Literally one verse of each and that wee bugger is out cold, I actually feel a wee bit guilty as she never really stood a chance with my brain washing ways!!!

So, myself and the family are heading home to Scotland in June / July time for some time in the Motherland. There will be news on gigs there soon (keep checking back). Also, I have a few Southern Californian gigs lined up over the next few months too (check my tour page). Release wise, I’m hoping to have a live CD out in the next few months. I have a bunch of tracks ready to go, I just need some time and a studio and we’ll probably bang out a wee 8 song CD of live tracks from last year’s Sacramento Highland Games (complete with annoying bloody bagpipe droning in the background between songs……seriously)! Hopefully we will have a trailer for the Doricana tour DVD out by Autumn (more on this at a later date)! Oh did I mention that I have approx. 30 new songs for a new album?? So, if there are any potential investors or rich fans that fancy being an ‘Executive Producer’ on an international record, then hit me up!

As always, thank you so much for all the love and support I continue to receive from family, friends and fans!

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