I thought it was apt to name this post after a song from my favourite musician, Pete Yorn, considering I haven’t updated for a while and that is pretty much a bad thing to do when you’ve literally just decided to start a blog to keep people updated.
There are a bunch of times I’ve already done things within this website that are against what I normally like to do; I don’t like those ‘something is in the pipeline’ teaser posts and then there’s no news, or, worse still, you say something like that hoping something will happen and then it falls apart. There are some things I will share, but as anyone close to me will say, it always seems to be the case that nothing happens for weeks and then a bunch of things all happen at once.
Typical conversation – ‘What did you do today?’ – ‘Just writing’ – ‘Any news’ – ‘No…’
I can’t say nothing’s been happening. When I say nothing, I mean, nothing that is ready to write on here as an announcement about a next book. But things do happen, things that I don’t associate with ‘work’ anymore, but things that are obviously linked to what I do. But how can it be work? Ten days or so ago I was chatting with Charles Baker, mostly just to catch up though that was primarily work related. Not that I was working, as such. And that was pretty great, as it always is. Almost every time I speak with Charles I end up being enlightened, or, my life ends up improved in some way by either good advice, interesting insight or a different perspective.
And then last Saturday morning I was on my way down to London to meet up with Pete Yorn. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with Pete over the last couple of years and still felt like I had to pinch myself when I was backstage at one of his shows in Dallas last year (the pic which accompanies this post was taken then – anyone who has known me well for over ten years or so will know how ridiculous that is, though I’ve been lucky enough now to have hung out with him on a number of occasions in different locations around the world). Like Charles, every day spent either in the company of or in conversation with Pete is generally one where I find my life enriched.
He’s been over in Europe doing some advance promotion for his first record in almost six years, ‘Arranging Time’, and his first since being signed to Capitol Records, who are apparently (and rightly so) making a fuss about it. Pete was at BBC Radio 2 for Dermot O’Leary’s weekly show and played a couple of songs (you can listen to it on catch up for the rest of February here on the iPlayer). He was great, he always is, and it was great to see him. If brief. Such is the life of an international rock star; such is the privilege to share some quality time.
As my brother eloquently put it – ‘How the f**k did you end up with PY at Radio 2 on an average Saturday??’ – and that was enough to remind me that even though sometimes it feels like nothing is happening, sometimes, today’s ‘nothings’ are a lot more eventful than what they were three years ago.
Enjoy Pete’s song ‘Lost Weekend’ below. His record is out on March 11th and is available on iTunes now.
