Its been a whirlwind of a month since coming to the U.K, with some incredible gigs and moments, hauling our equipment up and down Britain’s train lines and cobbled streets. It began with a trip to Brighton and the Great Escape Festival, sharing the stage with some brilliant fellow Australian bands, including Teenagers In Tokyo and Dappled Cities and some incredible international acts most notably White Rabbits who blew our minds.

Following Brighton came our trip to Liverpool for the Sound City festival and a particularly special acoustic showcase in the John Lennon suite at the Hard Days Night Hotel. We couldn’t pass the chance to jump on the white Grand Piano and try out some new tracks and a cover of Lennon’s Working Class Hero.

Last week we traveled to Birmingham to play a show with the epic Rogue States and work on a demo with producer Gavin Monaghan, known for his work with Editors. This is a track we have been playing live since our arrival in the UK. So it was great to finally record it. We are all excited by the results, definitely a creative departure for us, which will be carried forward on to the next album.

This week has started with a bang with our new single ‘Pretty Little Thing’ officially released and picking up airplay across the country. Today we found out the single has been featured on industry newsletter ‘Record of the Day.’ Tomorrow Friday 18th we headline The Barfly in Camden, (It’s after the football don’t worry!) one of the biggest shows of the tour to date and a great place to launch the single. To celebrate and thank everyone for their support we are going to be giving away two FREE digital downloads including ‘Pretty Little Thing’ and previously unreleased track ‘No Complaints’. If you can’t make the show don’t worry from next week we will also be giving these tracks away to our friends on Facebook and Myspace.

The second half of the tour is already looking busy and no doubt there will be many more adventures and stories. We have more shows in London before heading down to Exeter for a gig in late July. We look forward to meeting you.

The adventure continues...

1 year on....

So on the eve of ANZAC day comes the realization that this time last year the band and all associated were working feverishly to bring the Australian release of "Blackchords" to the Gershwin room at the Esplanade Hotel . Today a year later Nick is recording with our past producer Nick Batterham on a song for an upcoming feature film to be premiered in July at the Melbourne International Film Festival. I was sitting there the other night with the piano being recorded in the kitchen, echoing through the house.. feeling privileged to be a part of this experience.

We're all still working feverishly for this band.. and its story has revealed people and moments that burn brightly in our creative minds. It good to know a year after our debut release.. these people and moments are widening to across the world. It is one of the most rewarding things I've experienced, to create with a family of musicians and friends whose talents work together as the sum of an awesome whole.
It's also just 2 weeks to go until we pack our cases and pile onto a plane heading for our next U.K tour. This, none of us can wait for, cause we know it is another stepping stone along the long journey onwards and upwards for the band and another great experience for a life we want to live. We want to celebrate with you all, but knowing that we have limited time left and a pile of things to do so we thought we'd double up a gig on Wednesday May 5 at the workers club in Fitzroy, Victoria with some drinks and a catch up. So if you are free that night come down for one last show!

dimmi

Out of the Wood Work

....And the countdown to the U.K. is on! If I was told this time last year before the album launch that we would be heading over for the second time to europe in a year it would seem the words of fiction. But alas the Great Escape and all the other gigs along the way will be filling our ears, eyes and minds in less than a month. After a short little 2 week break with the band we're back into rehearsals in which enthusiasm is the captain. It seems with every meeting with Milwright lately there is more new material and buzz in the air. Recently we've played some excellent gigs, with a bit more of an acoustic side with Tristan playing the Double Bass. The Grace Darling is an excellent bandroom that everyone in Melbourne should check out.. and the gig there went well with the venue really looking after us. We also played the 'Between the Bays' festival in Mornington to a great crowd, and Earth Hour, at the zoo, saw the lions roaring next to us as we played on the bill with Australian music legend Tim Rogers.

For me the experience of being in London with its History, Creativity and sheer size and diversity put me in a creative place both artistically and musically that I'd always strived and dreamed to get to. To be playing gigs again in the next few months in Camden and Brixton, and also to experience new places like Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester(most of my favourite bands came from there), I'm counting down the days to my ultimate life on the road.

So make sure those of you in the U.K keep in touch and check the gig listing as we'll be adding new U.K dates to it quite often. And those of you in OZ we have been invited to play 1 last show in the first week of may it is still TBA, but we will be post the confirmation on our facebook page in the next couple of days.
Big thanks goes out to Mark and Chrissie as per usual for their hard work in making ideas realities, an everyone else involved in this bands evolution

Exciting stories and moments await

Dimmi

Blackchords needs your help!

Blackchords recently entered Nova radios “I’m with the Band” Competition.

The winner of the competition receives radio play on Australia’s NOVA 100 as well as Publicity and a cash prize. This morning we found out that the Judges have selected us as one of the top 2 bands. This in itself is fantastic news, but now the judging for the grand final is handed across to the public! So we are asking you all for your help by jumping online and voting for us at the Nova 100 website. We also ask you to please spread the word and get friends and family to vote too. You will be automatically put in the draw to win yourself $5,000 AUD just for your troubles!!

To win this competition would mean a whole lot for Blackchords and really help us on our way to being able to create and play music for many moons to come.

Please click below and head to the website to make your vote for Blackchords.It only takes a few seconds and you can do that once a day until March 14th!

Thank you heaps for your support!

XX

N.

Blackchords

Lost on the Pretty Little Coast!

It’s a few days passed the end of our tour and somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000km’s passed the beginning. It may be a common theme that I talk about cramming into the car and driving enormous distances across this vast landscape, but that is perhaps because it is one of the few certainties when it comes to touring. (that and the inevitability that I will leave my wallet behind in a rural town hours from anywhere!)

So it began at 6am on the morning of Thursday January 21. We gathered at my house and proceeded to amaze ourselves at managing to pack the mounds of equipment, backpacks , “driving food” and last but not least, ourselves in to Nick C’s Magna Station Wagon, and began our journey north to Coffs Harbour.

Just passed the halfway mark between Melbourne and Sydney is the only place, we have decided, that is worth stopping at, (other than a quick throw of the Frisbee and a stretch near the Submarine which somehow got washed hundreds of kilometres inland and lodged itself in the small country town of Holbrook) it doesn’t have an obnoxiously huge golden “M” pointing towards greasy, shit food and teenagers working for minimum wage. It is at the somewhat less impressive, (compared with a strangely out of place submarine) Dog on the Tuckerbox and the only place along the way to get something decent to chow down on.

After stopping for our ritual of salad sandwich’s and juice we were back on the road.

By now we had been driving for about 8 hours, and it was at about this time we had the horrible realization, that we weren’t even half way to our first destination yet. Every 2 seconds you begin rearranging yourself. Your legs are cramping, your left buttock goes to sleep, you’re too hot, (the air conditioning comes on) you’re too cold, you don’t know which way your head wants to go, your right buttock goes to sleep…. Etc. Etc.

Anyway 10hours later we made it to Coffs Harbour. And we were still alive. Slightly bent out of shape and delirious, but alive.

The next morning we were able to swim in the ocean before an easy drive to our first gig of the tour at the Miami Tavern on the Gold Coast. It was a night of many firsts, our first ever gig in Queensland, our first gig with the new Blackchords bassist Tristan Courtney, and of course the first gig with Grand Atlantic, and Sierra Fin. It was a good first show to shake out the cobwebs, get to know one another and launch the tour.

Over the next couple of nights we played the Globe theatre, Brisbane, which in my opinion is a damn fine, beautiful old venue in Fortitude Valley. There was a great vibe going on at the globe and we were able to move around on a big stage with ease and test drive our new track “’til the day I die”. The following night the Bon Amici, in Toowoomba. a great alternative venue with a stage that is a “Little” smaller than the globe. It was a good night for some chaos, I tried my hand at being a contortionist, but once I was fully tangled up in the mic lead and 2 guitars I realised no magic was going to allow me to escape!

We were able to spend a few free nights with friends in Byron and Coffs Harbour. Swimming, getting our pasty white Melbourne bodies burnt to a crisp, getting stung by blue bottle jelly fish, sea lice, and god only knows what happened to Damians face. When he woke up abruptly in burning pain and quickly swelling Mick Jagger lips.

5 and a half hours spent in a hospital waiting room to find out that yes he had been bitten by “something” and there was probably nothing we could do about it made sure that we weren’t going to have a leisurely drive back to Sydney for our next show.

It was cutting it fine to say the least. We made it to the Bald Faced Stagg, piled out of the car, quickly got dressed in the rain on the footpath and made it inside with just enough time to get a beer and to get on stage.

The next day we were back in the car heading to Newcastle for our final night in NSW and then the long haul back home to Melbourne.

Its been sometime since playing in Melbourne, something we had definitely missed. A crowd of new faces mixed with some familiar ones came down to show support at the Curtain band room. And despite my amplifier slowly dying on stage, the tour ended with one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve played for a long time!

Big thanks from Blackchords to all of you that came along to the shows and to Chrissie, Big Tree Artists, Grand Atlantic, Sierra Fin, Danny, Amelia, John, Pete, Mark, Jemma and Roz you guys are ace!!

Click here for Sasufi's official tour pics

X

N.M

Summer Tour Dates Announced

It feels like it has been a long time since I have seen the band. Almost 2 weeks in fact.

We have had a little bit of time off from one another, and it feels strange!

I have been sitting at home writing random words, random dreams, and random thoughts down in my book. Hoping and waiting for them to merge and to create a coherent body of new songs and melodies. Right now it looks as though some 1940’s scientist has smashed some atoms into billions of little pieces and is now scratching his head trying to figure out how the hell he is going to put them back together.

And there is nothing else in the world he’d rather be doing!

This week we will get back in the studio rehearsing and trying to fit some new pieces together, and start the process of getting ready for our next big leap into touring.

We have just now confirmed all the dates for our first tour of 2010. Which will be focussed on a good part of the Australian East Coast/ South Coast and will launch off on the 22^nd of Jan. It’ll be something new for us as we’ll FINALLY be getting to Queensland and also be sharing the tour with two more great Aussie acts, Grand Atlantic and Sierra Fin.

Its going to be good fun, cramming into the van, playing music, meeting new folk, looking up at the stars and learning how not to drown in the ocean!

Bring it on I say!

X

N.M

On the road back to Melbourne

We have just played our last 3 shows of 2009 in Sydney.
We are back in the car again early in the morning and are now about 2 hours from the concrete hi rises and terrace houses of Sydney’s city.
Driving through the bone-dry, bone-coloured hills, underneath a factory of heavy dark grey clouds, lined up and moving slowly along through the otherwise blue sky on their invisible conveyor belt.
It’s the first time I’ve looked at this landscape for a while and I feel quite intrigued and inspired by it. I have the idea that sometime soon I’ll come sit on these hills for a few weeks, write some songs, watch the stars and probably read a Bill Bryson book… That is until Damian, making some strange falsetto noise in my ear, distracts me from the outside world. Pretty soon we find ourselves trying to laugh without using any facial expression whatsoever. It goes on for about 5 minutes before the outside world distracts me from him again.
The clouds have now joined forces to become one big black blanket and are now releasing all their raindrops. It’s coming down pretty damn hard on the windscreen and on to the bone earth.
I start thinking about how contrasting this world is compared with what we have been looking at in France and England. The rolling hills have turned from green to brown and the old stone villages and churches have gone, replaced with volcanic boulders and skeletons of trees.
Even though I know that the land here is in drought it still looks incredibly beautiful.

Right at this point in our journey back to Melbourne we go through cycles of speaking deeply of philosophy, the world, music, and life then falling silently into our own thoughts, listening attentively and singing along with whatever music is playing on the car stereo, then out of nowhere we spark into some incoherent, slightly sleep depraved idiotic humour. Most people would probably respond by looking blankly and slightly bewildered. But in the state of mind that we are in we just double up with laughter and continue to spiral further and further from anything comprehensible. Occasionally it is broken briefly by me fucking up my laugh with an unwanted snort.
Then as suddenly as it starts it stops. It goes back to deep conversation again.
This cycle should probably last another 3 or 4 hours before our arses fall asleep, our joints become fused and we become slightly irritable and plain old over it.

I can see that these long trips in Australia travelling from city to city packed with all our gear like sardines into Nick Cheeks’ car are going to be quite common for us in this coming year.
I look forward to playing more shows, seeing more of this country and becoming the band we really want to be…..

X

N.M.