**"EXCESSIVELY LONG AND TEDIOUS; SHAN'T READ; DEMAND INSTANT BONUS CONTENT GOODS"** Don't shout, Captain! Just scroll to the bottom of this post. And for the rest of you...Season's Greetings! (Autumn), and a felicitous Tuesday to all involved. I write this from Oslo Airport as I wend my way Europewards for a continental tour, in support of musical masters and all-round impressives TWRP. I'm really excited to watch these guys do their thing semi-nightly, and absorb all I can from their live performance skills, which were highly spectacular when I caught them last year in London. If you've never seen them, I really recommend a dive in.
I've put together a set of some old, and some new, which I'm testing ahead of a new live show next year (yes, with full live band, the longtold mission is on its way to accomplishment!). And while I'm a little tired of being away from home after so much touring this year, I'm also excited to get out there and meet some new people and blag my way through more horrific technical malfunctions in front of your very eyes. The most regrettable thing has been a big juicy box of merchandise getting stuck in Norwegian customs ahead of my arrival - probably forever given I'll be out of the country by the time of its ultimate release. Please send your thoughts and wishes to the concept of Return To Sender, for Funkbot's swift re-Deliverance.It's been an interesting few months full of some new feelings. I've spent so much time writing, rehearsing, preparing for, delivering live material over the last half year or so that I've had barely any time to write or make and put out anything, as you've seen from the pause in the majority of my Online Profferings in this period. Any spare Making Things Time has been allotted mostly to longer form stuff (writing up pitches, working my songs into longer-form script stuff, auditioning for things [self-taping it turns out is a truly heinous process], and writing for the Jazz Emu Radio Show - first draft completed! - which we're still a couple of months away from recording). Slowing the Content Output out of necessity brings with it a certain anxiety about not Feeding The Algorithmic Beast - worrying about dips in numbers and financials and all of these tedious business things that are always on the mind - but it's also been intriguing to examine how much of my self worth comes from Showing People Nice Things on a regular basis. I don't think I necessarily crave constant feedback, but I certainly get a lot of fulfilment out of having New Good Things for all of you to get your teeth into on a regular basis, and seeing them bringing the warm glow of Generic Enjoyment to people. It's good to realise, or re-remind myself, that as fun and exciting as performing live is, -and useful as a way to exhibit my wares - my heart is really in The Making, and I get the most reward by far from pouring myself into what I am poring over on my computer, and finding people to connect with them. So, on that reflection, I have decided to power through a new album release, with a possibly insane self-imposed deadline of early December, before I depart for my tour to Australia. I have about 8 new songs fully written, as well as the few that I've already put out this year that I think will fit the concept for the album nicely. I'm really pleased with them and I think this album's going to have a very new flavour overall, seeing all these new songs lock together. But they are far from finished production and mixing-wise, so I have a lot to get my teeth into. It may be impossible, time is so limited with other work and fun life things before then. But I'm going to do My Darndest and I wanted to write it down here for some accountability. Keep me on the straight and narrow my Eggies! Hunter and I will be filming music videos for two of these in October, to accompany the release. Let's do, as they say, "this".Some learnings from Edinburgh Fringe! Performing two shows back-to-back nightly was mentally and physically brutal, and not something I'll hurry to do again. But doing the shows themselves was extremely fun, audiences were almost without exception overly generous. I was glad to have a show I'd done many times before for a sense of comfort, plus the Pleasure Gardens for a sense of new thrills and unabashed chaos. It was definitely harder to sustain the Vibe in Edinburgh than at the the London show, with an extremely late show (finishing after 1am), leading to some tired acts and crowds and me. But our band and guest acts surely brought their A game and I think the audience for the most part had an exhilerating experience. I think a narrative show with a full band onstage has the potential to be really unique, and also to open us up to possibilities for touring, and also developing longer form audiovisual things in a very exciting way, so a good chunk of my efforts will be focussing on this in the coming year! Let's also do, as they say, that.Other than this and that, I'm still enjoying plugging away on the long-term scripted projects. I've been lucky enough to find some help in a very supportive production company, who are helping me develop my longer ideas, and are helping to find some writing guidance from some People Who Have Written Cool Stuff for my projects (including Jazz Emu TV show, and Jazz Emu's Homer's Odyssey). I'm really excited to display what I've got so far to someone with some proper experience to seek their guidance on what's missing and how I might get this kind of thing off the ground (it's really beyond my financial and productional means at the moment, but I just have a feeling it's going to work at some point, and so will chug along like the little Emu That Could until I can make it transpire).So there we are. I love you all, I appreciate you, I admire your general sense of joie de vivre. But a final Patreon gift... Earlier this year I was asked by a food delivery company (unnamed) to pitch a song for a potential advert. I wrote and produced the whole track in a day (maybe my fastest yet?!) and asked my extremely talented friend Kaeli to sing the demo vocals (also, check out her new song Fires [which I helped write] here). The ad campaign didn't go ahead in the end, so this will never see the light of day... But nevertheless, I thought it was fun and and wanted to share it in sneakret here for you as a treatletJE Loves U xx