Posts by Rob:
Not a Look Back
January 4th, 2012I realise that there’s a plethora of new year blogs that hit the net in January, with people listing all the amazing highs and lows of the last twelve months. Sometimes it’s great but after a while you reach overload.
So, this isn’t my look back. Thanks to everyone who put on shows and came to shows, bought the CD’s, gave to the charity and bought me liquorice. And if I stayed in your house while I was on the road, really, I had the best nights sleep, thanks! 
I have a break from gigging for month. It’s intentional and I’m using the time to get ready for recording in Feb and putting together a book and CD, finishing off some songs and that kind of thing. It’s great, but it does make me feel a little insecure. I love playing live and I get fidgety if I don’t have at least a coupe of shows a month. I guess performing can be a bit like a drug that gives you a buzz when you do it and when you don’t, you get withdrawals.
So here I am at the start of the month wondering how I’ll get through. I may sneak off to our local folk club for a couple of sly floor spots or even hunt out an open mic night. It’s been a while since I resorted to such measure but it’s important to have a backup plan in times of crisis!
One of the things I love about touring is the people I get to meet. I’ve made some great friends over the last few years and it’s been a real honour to be able to sing and tell the stories to you, to eat your food and drink wine with you!
So looking forward to 2012, here’s the plan…. In March you should see a compilation of some new versions of the older songs with a book of the stories with them. They’re songs that you asked to go on the album so I hope you like what we’ve done with them.
Then to coincide with that, I’ll be touring up and down the country from March to May. There’s a few dates left so if you’d like a gig in your local venue, church or living room then do let me know. It’s gonna be a great time.
I’ve already been booked for a few festivals including the Warwick and Bromyard folk Festivals and Weyfest in Dorset with After the Fire.
If it’s anything like last year there’ll be all kinds unexpected happenings on the way. You never know, I may enter the Olympics.
We all want to be Mavericks.
August 17th, 2011The other evening I spent the evening in the company of 300 or so men who want to make history. A church leaders half day conference. After the main talk there was a time for people to pray or speak out things that were on their hearts.
One of the guys said something along the lines of how we shouldn’t tame the wild spirit. He went on to talk about Mavericks, how we needed them, how he considered himself something of a maverick and how some of the maverick things he’d done had been positive for the church. Somebody else said how they weren’t a maverick, they liked structure and could organise things and make things happen and that they’d like to work with the mavericks.
Just to be clear, here’s a definition of Maverick.
A Two Way Conversation
July 29th, 2011I just got back from North America. I was there for nearly four weeks doing all sorts of things from work to play and everything in between.
It was big
And hot
Over four days worth of shows, we drove 34 hours. If you did that in the UK you’d have a gig in Glasgow, followed by Plymouth, followed by Edinburgh, followed by Brighton. That’d be silly.
But things are different in America. The distances, the language, the food – as my son kept pointing out, “they don’t have marmite!” I discovered cider in the USA is cloudy apple juice, the pavement is what you can drive on and tea is drunk ice cold (yuch).
We do, according to the politicians, have a special relationship. That’s good. I have friends and family there so a special relationship is a bonus. And a relationship requires a two way conversation which is easy when you speak the same language and challenging when you don’t. And language goes beyond words.
I played at a couple of churches while I was there. Big churches of around the three thousand people mark on a Sunday morning. I’d seen parody’s of a mega church before. The band, the lights, the young trendy guy with subtle tattoos and a pierced ear welcoming people, the immaculate pastor with the sporty car in the car park – I thought the parody’s were over the top. They weren’t, that’s how it was.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong here, just that what I was seeing didn’t register with my experience of what church was. The language in the sermon was good, some pretty radical stuff. When I spoke about materialism, selling what you have and taking up the cross, praying for terrorists and people that persecute you, it was all received as if it was the best thing they ever heard.
But here’s the thing. Our worship, our preaching, our evangelism, our making friends – it’s not done with words. It’s not done with our campaigns, concerts, radio shows, diaries, gigs or services. It’s done with what we do with our everyday lives.
God lives everyday for us and any relationship requires interaction between two or more people. So a relationship with God means we live back to Him. God blesses us, we bless Him back. Ever argue with God? Why not, He can handle it.
I don’t go much on the songs the church is singing at the moment. They’re a bit one way. There’s this phrase that gets banded about sometimes – Prophetic Worship. people find it hard to get their heads around what that means sometimes. Have a listen to Matt Maher singing Christ Is Risen. That’s a two way conversation - prophetic worship.
Bin Laden
May 2nd, 2011I was woken up this morning by a phone call from the BBC. They told me Bin Laden had been killed and as my dad had been a victim of the 9-11 attacks on New York, how did the news make me feel.
I came down stairs and looked at the news. Crowds outside the White House and down on Ground Zero, chanting and cheering. Then I read something on the New York Times website. A survivor, Harry Waizer, said, “I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama Bin Laden.”
I’m glad I’m not alone in feeling like that. I’ve been asked if I feel great, if there’s now a sense of closure, if I feel that the war on terror is nearly over.
No.
And how short sighted to think any of those things.
Firstly, the dead are dead. Bin Laden’s death doesn’t ‘pay-back’ or settle the score. My dad won’t be coming back. Bin Laden lived a twisted life and he wont get the chance to see the wrong in it.
Justice? Maybe, but justice isn’t always a healer. I’ll find closure when we start seeing radical islamic extremists and their adversaries laying down their arms, when the barriers between the east and west are pulled down.
And no, this brings us no nearer to the end of the War on Terror. Bin Ladens ideals are not his ideals alone. They’re the ideals of many extremist groups and individuals. His death will stir the hearts of those sympathetic to his cause to revenge, retaliation and a determination to fight for what they believe to be right.
And us? We’ll hit back, harder. The deadly game of ping-pong will continue. As Ghandi said, an eye for and eye makes the world go blind.
There’s hope though. We can be bigger than retaliation, revenge, payback. The winner is the one who gets the result. The best result is reconciliation. God doesn’t need us to take up guns. He’s bigger than that. Love is stronger.
My Brother….
April 6th, 2011I’ve just been watching a film produced by a friend of mine, Ray Tostevin. It’s called ‘My Brother the Islamist’ and follows film-maker Robb Leech on his journey to discover why his step-brother, Richard, converted to an extremist Islam belief. He wants to find out what made Richard follow such radical views such as jihad and sharia law.
This isn’t a review of the program, it’s my thoughts and things that have spinning in my head for a few years.
A number of the people Robb spoke to said they’d converted to Islam after some major event. One guy lost his sister to heroin, others found themselves realising there had to be more to life. Interesting that these are often the same reasons that people convert to any religion. One of the people Robb met said that he’d converted to Islam shortly after 9-11, after President Bush said “If you’re not with us, you’re against us”. That stood out.
Richard however, didn’t seem to have any ‘moment’. It’s almost like he drifted into it as he searched for answers to the bigger questions of life. In someways I identified with that. Although my life was a mess, I didn’t have a big conversion moment. I saw something in Christianity that answered so many questions and slowly I had smaller moments wher i realise God was real and He loved me.
I remember a quote I once heard. “Young people these days are looking for something big enough to die for”. So much of what these young converts were saying about the world, about society was so true. We do live in a corrupt world where there is a lot of immorality, hatred and greed. But sharia is not the answer and neither is jihad. Burning bibles or Qu’ran’s and military action isn’t the answer either.
You know, two of the greatest men to instigate political and social reform last century were Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Both chose non-violence as their weapon. Interestingly, the only religion Jesus ever attacked was his own, pointing out the hypocrisy of it’s leaders.
One thing that struck me was when Salahuddin, (Richards’ new Islamic name) chose to move on because “this is the time when all the drunks start to come out.” Jesus said it was people like that that he came to help.
I believe in God. He’s not an idea, he is a friend that gave His life so that I could have a relationship with Him. He calls me to some pretty extreme things such as loving my enemies, praying for my persecutors, giving twice as much to a beggar as he asks and not chasing after wealth.
“Do it to these, and you do it to me”, He said. It take s a bigger man to turn the other cheek, to gain a friend from an enemy.
I listened to what Salahuddin said. I really wanted to understand but at the end of the day I’m convinced that he’s fallen for a lie. God is so much bigger that that.
Like father….
April 4th, 2011I have a son. I’ve loved being a dad for the last 14 years or so and my relationship with him is constantly evolving. It’s great.
We’ve got to the stage where we’re good mates as well as being father and son. When we have a kick about down the park it’s on almost equal terms now. If I have a number problem I’ll get him to do the sums because he’s better than me at it. I’m learning more about biology when he revises than I did a school and with his English, I’d ruin his spelling if I helped.
The only homework I can help him with now is music and that can be a big danger. You see, I had and still have a lot of dreams. In many ways people would say I’m living my dream, earning something of a living playing music and making CD’s. Travelling around and meeting various celebs, doing the rock’n'roll thing. But there’s a problem.
You see when I was 14, I wasted so many opportunities. I got into a lot of trouble and any dreams remained dreams for twenty years. Not that all that time was wasted. I got my life back on track but ended in a 9-5 desk job – it took some big events to shake me into actually acheiving some of my dreams.
But here’s the the thing. 20 years has gone, I can’t get that back. As obvious as that sounds its really easy to unwittingly try and get it back though your kids. There’s the old cliche that says “I don’t want my kids to make the same mistakes that I did”. All very noble but there’s a problem with that.
If I hadn’t made the mistakes I made I probably wouldn’t have a family I have now. I wouldn’t have learnt half the lessons I’ve learnt and I would probably be in that 9-5 desk job.
Last year my son and his mates started a band. They have some big dreams and a way to go. He also started playing with video editing and started a diploma at school studying creative media. And I crashed in with my ideas – homework I could help with. But instead of helping we started falling out more. I’d get cross with him, he’d start to say he was bored with the stuff he was doing and not do as good a job. It got pretty heated and one day my wife told me what the problem was. She said that I had to stop trying to live my dreams through my son.
I stropped, sulked, said I wasn’t and then realised I was. I had to let it go, let him ask me for help when he needed it but otherwise let him do it and learn.
The same with the band. They’re learning to work together, to play better and to cope with triumphs and failures. Stuff I’ve been learning for a while. It’s no good me trying to tell them what will work or how to handle a failure. That wont teach them as well as the experience itself.
So why am I saying all this? Doing what I do, I get to meet a lot of artists. And a suprising number are young teenagers being ‘managed’ by their parents. Sometimes it’s great and it works but a lot of the time it’s like the parent wants the success more than their son or daughter.
The entertainment industry is incredibly unforgiving. I had to step away and think hard about whether I’d want to put my son into the ring without the training or the gloves. If it’s meant to happen then it will, I don’t need to force it and neither to the rest of us parents who have talented kids.
Don’t treat your childs life like an x-factor commodity. Let them discover their dream themselves and be there for them.
Scotland!
December 7th, 2010
Yup – I’ve been there in the Siberian conditions we’ve had. Driving back from the studio with Mr Duffin the other night it hit minus 15. I have to say though, I’m really happy with the songs we recorded. Can’t tell you to much yet but it’s sounding good. The great thing is I’ve managed to include a number of local musicians. Si Hayden, who played on Eleanor, plays a stunning double bass on one of the songs and Ian ‘Funky’ Farquhar does a splendid job on another tune. Then there’s Chris who inspired much of the guitar work.
Now the fun part is designing the album artwork and coming up with a name. Suggest away people!
After the recording I trekked off to Edinburgh to play at the Soul Cafe at Abbeyhill Baptist. T’was a great gig and a good crowd who braved the snow and ice to come along.Thank you, thank you! Your egg playing was sublime!
Made some new friends and met some old ones – always a pleasure, you know. And thanks Mark and Lou for putting me up.
Doing It Anyway
October 20th, 2010You know, you think you have it all planned out, then keep tweaking the plans as things change and then do something completely different. I get quite excited when I think of the possibilities of what could be happening over the next twelve months. If it’s good, it’ll be really good, but if things don’t go to plan.
I’m sometimes tempted to think that I would have been wiser to keep my corporate job instead of quitting six years ago for music. I’d have the security that a working musician doesn’t have and less hassle in planning life. But then I’d be regretting not doing the one thing I felt was right to do for the rest of my life.
I’ve been reading an awful book called ‘Chicken Soup For the Soul’, one of those motivational books with nice stories about normal people who did clever or amazing things. It’s all rather twee but I read this bit about Walt Disney and Colonel Sanders. Either bankrupt or seemingly uninvestable they did it anyway, went for what they believed in and now the world has some bad films and greasy chicken!
Last weekend I was with After The Fire taking part in a show, raising cash for the Dalit people in India. We raised around £3,600 and a dozen children were sponsored. Since 2004 I’ve organised and taken part in nearly £25,000 worth of fundraising and the stories I hear from people who’ve been to gigs are amazing. So the uncertainty of the plans that have been scribbled out in pencil are probably worth it. It’s not a boast, I’d just like to prod people to take hold of what they believe in and do it anyway.
And thanks for your support over the last six years!
Making it Tangible
October 11th, 2010I just had a meeting with Paul, a good friend who works for Global Care in Coventry. I went to Bangladesh with Paul last year and we were talking about the ongoing work there and how the orphanage and preschool are doing since the founder, John Bose, was killed with his wife in a road accident earlier this year.
It was great to hear how the team there, led by John’s brother, have pulled together. Projects such as the water harvesting system have gone ahead and the kids look great.
We got on to talking about Paul’s latest trip to Ethiopia and the needs they have there. Ethiopia is a poor country, as we’ve seen in the news so often, it’s prone to drought and famine. In the rural communities they can get on with life but when a famine hits they have no resilience. The greatest need is to equip and educate the people there and enable them to look after themselves when the inevitable hard times hit.
When I went to Bangladesh it was easy for me to raise money and awareness for the school and orphanage there. They needed a fish farm. We bought one. It’s tangible. Ethiopia is going to be much harder.
There is no ‘one big thing’. It’s small projects like self help and micro finance groups. Smaller resources such as motorbikes to get about on between the isolated villages.
So this is the plan. In the next few weeks we’ll be setting up a fund for Global Care’s work in Ethiopia. Over the next 12 months we want to raise £3000 for that fund and we really need your support.
You were fantastic when we started with Bangladesh in 2008 and together we’ve made a huge difference to the lives of over one hundred children and their families. We can do that again. Well add more to this site over the coming weeks.
Thanks so much
rob
Strange Time of year
September 15th, 2010It’s was quite a week last week. Its always a strange time of year, the anniversary of 9-11. Radio people and press people trying to get my comments on the latest world terrorist events and “Just remind us again, what were you doing when you heard…?”
I’m not moaning. I guess I feel a bit of responsibility to speak out being someone directly affected by the events of terrorism. But I get asked how I’ll spend the day, will I go to a ‘service’, spend time with my family etc.
This year I laid a tile floor with my son. I didn’t check emails, I called various family members to talk about the weather, forthcoming weddings and how much the children have grown. It really is a strange time of year.
On the 12th I have people saying they’ve seen me in the paper or telling me they heard dads name read out. And then the media.
This year it’s what do I think of a small time American preacher who plans to burn a pile of Qurans. I say I think it’s a ridiculous stunt that will be a recruiting bonanza for Al-Queda and then realise I sound like Obama. So I follow it up with the fact that Jesus only ever attacked his own religion. Reconciliation starts when we look at ourselves.
On Radio 2 I talk about how I found faith. Not in a ‘thunderbolt’ conversion but gradually and by seeing Jesus in people around me.
The weekend is finished off with a book, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Scientific discoveries and explanations convince me even more that God is real when the established religions of the world are turning people off God at an alarming rate.
We need to be more like Jesus to the world.
