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Some lovely pics from our gig in Nottingham last weekend,
courtesy of Daniel Whiston
More pics on our Photo page
We’re sorry to announce that Felix, our esteemed powerhouse double bassist, has left the band and is going off to become an amazingly successful jazz musician. Felix’s driving slap-style bass has motored us through many gigs and is immortalised on our CD and we’re going to miss her and her playing. The unenviable task of filling her shoes falls to “Thin” James Reid who we dragged out of the Bayou swamps of Dalston for just this Herculean task. So, many thanks and much love to Felix and Welcome to Thin!
The Bell of Bath have give us a nice write-up ahead of our gig down their way next Monday
Seriously one of my favourite bands of last year. Acoustic bluegrass/country framing the truly soulful voice of Ms. Alice herself backed by some of the most in-demand players on the circuit (you’ll have seen them before). Come with enough money to buy the album, it’s fab.
West Countriers are spoilt as we’re also playing at the Prince Albert in Stroud on the following Tuesday.
Londoners, you’ll have to put up with just one choice, but it’s an exciting one, at the famous Power’s Bar, Kilburn, next Sunday, for the launch of their new bluegrass night, Down In The Woods.
All three gigs are free entry.
Cold innit. Freezing. Well, shiver no longer because the warm soul of Kidnap Alice is gearing up for a blasting on the gas heaters to take you out of the snowy February into a springy March. We got five gigs lined up, two in London, one in Nottingham, two in the West Country. We’re playing at Bard’s album launch in the Old Vic Tunnels, we’re playing at Nottingham’s all-day On The Verge Winterfest with seven other bands; we’re playing the launch of a bluegrass night at the Power’s Bar; then we’re off to play at Bath’s The Bell, and Stroud’s Prince Albert. We’ve been resting up for the winter and now we’re raring to go, with a load of new tunes for y’all to get your laughing ears around. Full details here.
It’s happening. As predicted in the ancient Aztec runes, 2012 will be a year of global upheaval, mass changes and spiritual rebirth. That’s right, Kidnap Alice are going on tour!
But first here’s a review of our CD, from the latest issue of fRoots magazine (that’s Folk & Roots), which, to be frank, we’re pretty happy about.
Then we’ve got a gig supporting Bard at their album launch in the Old Vic Tunnels. Friday 17th February, alongside Cocos Lovers as well. More details here.
And then we’ve got a West Country tour (Bristol, Bath, Stroud) at the end of Feb. The details are still a bit sketchy, but not nearly as sketchy as the even bigger tour that we’ve got prepared for May. But sketchy is how things start, isn’t it. Even Leonardo da Vinci started sketchy, before he brushed up old Mona to the paintbrush equivalent of one of Hippy Joe’s solos. So don’t worry, just keep the whole of May clear and we’ll be clanking around on our tour milk float some place near you. Details coming soon.
Yes you heard right (or possibly wrong)! Two One more gigs in the dogend of 2011, they said it couldn’t be done, they said the laws of physics wouldn’t allow it, but luckily, like the lil biddy bluegrass neutrinos that we are, we’ve bent Einstein’s relativity right round so that it faces itself, dragged our sorry bumcheeks out from under the snug blankets and got ourselves booked for two one more stonking bananaboat stonkers to see in the season and give y’all a chance to get merry and boogie your hearts into the ground.
Who can believe it! It’s as if George Osborne himself suddenly discovered altruism! As if Goldman Sachs realised the error of their ways and went about spraying money from a giant tank they’d repurposed for that very purpose. As if the troops all came home, the recession lifted, the gloom ungloomed and the messiah himself once more trod the earth. I know you were sitting watching the news with a heavy heart, thinking how bad is this, how glum and down is everything, and where is Kidnap Alice in our hour of need? Where on earth have they gone to? Well, we heard you loud and clear, we ain’t messing about, we’re back in the frame, and gonna tear down a little wall or two in celebration of Christmas, the cracking 2011 we’ve had (over fifty gigs!) and the knee-juddering 2012 we’re going to have, once we’ve sorted that old Aztec end of the world thing out.
The details are this (or look here): Friday December 16th we’re back at the Queens, Primrose Hill, free entry, having a good time and jolly Christmas banter. And that’s all. I know you imagined there was a second one, but that was purely you’re own imagination and nothing to do with misinformation our end. Still, come and celebrate with us our great year and the great year we’ve got to come, forget about that gloom and give the bluegrass Harley Davidson one (and only one) last throttling of 2011!
Although we are slowing down, in preparation for our customary winter hibernation in ye olde oak tree on the Wingfield/Buckfast crossroads in deepest Suffolk, where our stash of bluegrass nuts will last us through until spring cracks the winter ice and the blood returns to our peripheries; despite the fact that we’re coming off the three-gig-a-week schedule through most of the summer, and we’re now reducing our dosage, like a junkie coming off smack; in spite of this slow clasping of the windpipe of our stagetime; regardless of all of that, in fact we still have a heap of gigs coming up!
I look yonder and I can see one, two, three, no four gigs, yes four gigs lined up in the pipeline, pipelined you could say, all of them slam-bam-crackerjack affairs at which your presence will be 100% appreciated and worthwhile and amazing. Remember we’ve been playing practically non-stop all year, so most of us have learned our parts, and some of us have learned the rest of us’s parts, and a few of us have learned everybody’s parts, what I’m trying to say here is that we’ve learned a lot of parts and these four gigs will be us playing all the parts that we’ve learned before we write some new songs and have to start the whole process from the beginning all over again.
So, I hear you cry, what about these four gigs. Well, they begin at Crouch End, North London, like so much before, the Kinks, for example, and Dunn’s bakery, official winner of doughnut week 2010. We’ll be headlining at the fantastic Kalamazoo Klub, where many a famous folkie has plied their trade in the days of yore. The next night we’ll be at the Cutashine Autumn Hoedown Extravaganza, with about 15 other bands, 15 barrels of cider and 15 ways to leave your lover. And (big breath) the week after that, we’ll be back in the Black Mountain Hills Flatlands of Syleham, Suffolk, to play a charidee gig and to say thanks to the kind denizens of Syleham, where we recorded our debut album, which you may have heard of. And (even bigger breath) finally fireworks night we’ll be up at Liverpool playing another extravaganza at the Kazimier, which ask any passing Scouser is the place to play up on the Mersey.
All of these gigs are even more painstakingly detailed on our upcoming gigs page, which you can probably read somewhat more leisurely than what you just read. Also you can buy tickets and that sort of caper, which I’m sure you’ll be wanting to do. And if the merest hint of suspicion crosses your mind that you will miss these gigs, bear in mind that if you want more Kidnap Alice over the winter, you’ll have to find us in our tree, cos our year is pretty much out.
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photos by Anthony Stanley of the STF photo agency.
You can see some more photos from the gig here.
And a slideshow from our famous Stowmarket gig is here.
More pics on our photos page
Kidnap Alice at Bestival by Phil Bull
And so, like an out of control juggernaut that has taken too much ecstacy and is trying to hug the other juggernauts while careering off a cliff and down into the unchartered woodland of the valley, so Kidnap Alice’s festival adventures have come to a bloody, bruising, chaotic crash and we awaken, dazed and shaken to face a tribe of cute furry animals holding spears and dancing, before mistaking our guitarist for a pagan god and venerating him, but tying up the rest of us and threatening to eat us until the guitarist and the hero (I’ll leave you to work out which one that is) combine to save us by using the force to levitate the guitarist, causing much shock and anxiety among the little furry creatures who then agree not to eat us and instead join us in the final battle between the rebel forces of bluegrass and the evil empire of disco house music death star funktion one noise bleed.
Now that’s cleared up, can I just say that we’re smokin’ hot! We’re cooking on butane! No! Biofuel! We’re cooking on biofuels! The festivals may be over, but we in the Kidnap Alice corner of the galaxy have got big plans. First we’re sending a fleet of mandolin-equipped starships to take down the force-field-shield and allow our crack team of melancholic country-soul songwriters to enter the central reactor and ignite the musical bombs that will set off the melodic chain reaction that will eventually bring the monolithic four (house, garage, street light & car park) to the floor. Take that thumpety-thump somewhere else rave boy.
But I’m blithering now. I’m doodling on the bedsheet of the universe with a pen that’s run out of ink. It makes no mark, just scrapes a tiny crease, one that will be erased when the sheets are pulled tight. Nothing remains. The summer of love & hope is over and all that is left is the charred embers of a thousand starry nights, smoking in the cold autumn sun.
Let’s count our blessings, for every one must be accounted for and returned to the library in good nick.
Bestival, every night was a new weather warning, but they don’t make bluegrass players out of tissue paper! No sir! And though the wind did wind its blowy ways over the site, and the rain did reign for several uncomfortable eons, despite this, Kidnap Alice was able to sail forth undefeated and capture their enemies on the high muddy seas and return home, boots & booty intact.
The week before that, we were at Moseley Folk festival, a festival of folk music and apparently also of those foldy-uppy chairs, where we played a nipper-ripper of a set & was looked after about as well as a folk bluegrass soul singing brigade has ever been looked after. We even got to stay at a hotel afterwards, with a telly in the bedroom and a buffet breakfast and a view over industrial Birmingham, like as if we was on X-Factor or something proper like that. Then we zoomed o’er Albion to Hereford and played at the amazing Broome Farm Cider Festival, in Peterstow what was like a farmer’s market on steroids. The best cider & food & apples & country things what we have ever known, and after the gig they turned all the barrels round on the bar and everyone drank strong, fresh cider into the wee (geddit) hours.
And that’s not all: Although the summer may now be just a thought that has fluttered away like a crisp packet, Kidnap Alice still has some tricks up its sleeves. We’re down at the Cornwall Bluegrass Festival this Saturday afternoon, in case you’re passing you might like to drop in. And Friday next week we play a giant gig at Radio Gagarin at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Rd, courtesy of the venerable Max Reinhardt. You must have to come and see this if you are in London. Details are of course here. So fear not! The battle to keep August has been lost for another year, but Kidnap Alice are lighting the after-burners and jetting off into October at full pelt.
Kendal Calling (photo by Emily Claire Smith)
After another long run of gigs, the component parts of Kidnap Alice – you know the tendons, the ligaments, the chain gear, the derailleur, all the bits that go together to make this bluegrass monster bluer and grassier than any other – have got a well-earned weekend off. Phew! Where have we been in the last month? Cor blimey guvnor, if I couldn’t rightly recall each and every nook and cranny that we’ve visited in our dogged pursuit of bluegrass perfection. But a few that spring to mind include festivals such as the magnificent Calling brothers, Standon and Kendal, that old stalwart Chillus Biggus, two nights of smashing it at the not-so-Secret Garden Party, and a cracking Sunday night closer at the boxfresh Wilderness Festival, where the London Folk Guild hosted their inaugural stage in the sumptuous surrounds of a magnificent billion-acre woodland estate. And if all that wasn’t enough we also played Stowmarket Town Centre on a Friday afternoon. Yes! In an honour only bestowed on true rock’n'roll veterans, we were invited to perform in the delightful new-build brick courtyard of Stowmarket Shopping Plaza, warily watched over by the notoriously exacting Costa Coffee Terrace Mob. After slugging out three blistering sets, I’m pleased to report even Mr Big (or Mr Massimo, as they called him) was pronounced satisfied, and we escaped Stowmarket with our fingers intact and a promise to “take care” of any trouble we might have with the IP32 Posse.
So what’s left or next or next left? Well next we’re back in London on Bank Holiday Saturday for the National Theatre Alternative Village Fete. It’s like a sort of village fete, but on the South Bank! Genius! Who thinks of these things? We played last year and a very nice day was had and you can buy lots of knitted cream buns and that sort of thing and of course enjoy Kidnap Alice right beside the Thames on a beautiful sunny day*, alongside the mighty Cutashine barndance mayhemerakers. And all for free! Yes! Free! Cos it’s a village fete and they’re free aren’t they, otherwise they’d be called village festivals. It’s true, that’s how you tell the difference. See, nothing gets by us here at Kidnap Alice HQ. We are right on it.
Anyway, continuing the theme of informing you, our faithful fans, of what we, the band, are doing, so the following week after that it’s a triple bill of Kidnap Alice gigness. We’ll be back at the Queens in Primrose Hill for another of our slam-bam-glam-sham-good morning vietnam residency gigs, which are always a great night and well worth coming down for. After which we jet off to Moseley Folk Festival, in Brum, and then whizz over to Broome Farm Cider Festival in Herefordshire. So an action-packed, bum-smacked, cider-racked weekend in store. We hope to see y’all at one or other or all of these events, and in the meantime, take care of yourselves, each other and each other’s shelves.
* or your money back
