Thursday, February 28, 2008

Live At Finnegan's Wake, Ealing

Do come along tonight for a great acoustic evening of entertainment.

Doors are at 8.00pm and the show starts at 8.30pm

Full line-up:
VICTORIA & JACOB
DAREN CALLOW
REBECCA CROSS
JACK STAFFORD
5 MINUTE POP PROMO

****INTERVAL****

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE 2ND HALF OF THE SHOW WILL BE ENTIRELY ACOUSTIC AND CANDLELIT IN THE ROUND WITH EACH ARTIST PLAYING A SONG EACH IN SUCCESSION UNTIL 11.00PM

Finnegan's Wake, Ealing Green, Ealing W5 5QX

You Are Not Alone - Update
==========================

The deadline has been extended to March 9th... so get your submissions in and help support the Warchild charity.

Full details
here.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Round 'Em Up


It's been a busy week. After my podcast debut on Sunday I ventured out to Kentish Town on Tuesday to see three excellent bands at the Bullet Bar: My Federation (very tight performance and some interesting hooks - very silly website too, check it out), Drookit Dogs (bags of raw punk energy and attitude) and perennial favourites Fit And The Conniptions (Wayne has been having a tough time busking and broke a string in this gig so do visit his website, download a song or two and lend him your support).

Friday saw another trip to the Montague Arms in New Cross. This time as the filler in a rather odd pub quiz sandwich. It was strange to play to the drunken Friday night crowd rather than the (more attentive) 2nd Thursday's art crowd. There was a fair bit of heckling, but thanks to the two girls, Mark's friend and the sound guy who led a clapping fightback from the front. I actually enjoyed it immensely and played a full set comprising:

All I Want Is You
Lullabies From The Wheels Of the Bus
Obsession
Minneapolis. Hungover. Tired. Awake
(complete with vintage Boss BF-2 Flanger!)
Do You Want To Dance?
Vulnerable
I Need Your Love


Thanks again to Frog Morris and Mark for letting me play, looking forward to the next one.

Next on my to-do list is to record some stings for broadcast on NAB - "My name is Daren Callow and you are listening to NAB radio..."

I'm also heading to St. Albans again this Sunday for a floorspot at The Horn and next Thursday I'm at Finnigans Wake in Ealing. See you there!

P.S. I am desperately looking for a bass player and drummer to become permanent band members, check out the Gumtree ad here and pass the word on.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

DARE5 - The First Podcast


Okay, here it is. Best not to say too much, but let you download and enjoy. Please do leave your comments so I know what you all think. You'll find three songs on this podcast - All I Want Is You, I Need Your Love and Do You Want To Dance?

Enjoy,

Daren
xxx

DARE5 - The First Podcast (9.5Mb) - 13'52

Plan B

It's Sunday today, and it is traditional that I stomp off into the night and play a floorspot at the Cross Kings in Kings Cross or The Horn in St. Albans. Tonight, however, I thought I'd try something different. This time I'm going to bring you my floorspot live on the internet. Well I say "live" but I don't actually know how to do that, so I'm going to record it "as live" and then put the MP3 file up for you to all hear. I kind of PodSpot if you like. This has three advantages for me. Firstly I don't have to venture out on a cold night, secondly I get two of my songs on disc for future usage and thirdly, I get to reach a potentially much wider audience.

So here's how it will happen. At about 8pm I'll set up the microphones and play my two songs into the computer. Once I've had a chance to listen and tidy up the file I'll put a link up here so you can download it. I guess it will be available no later than 10pm, just in time for you to listen before going to bed. So check back later for an update and let me have your comments as always.

Btw, to all my readers without a Blog, you can leave comments too if you wish... just click on the 0 COMMENTS (or it will say 1 COMMENT or the number of current comments) link below and type away. You can leave comments anonymously if you wish.

See you all later!

Daren
xx

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Giving Winter The Boot


Great fun at the Boot in St. Albans last night. Sean and I managed to romp our way through It's Summertime, Obsession and Do You Want To Dance. It was great to have Sean's playing and backing vocals again. It makes me hanker for having a proper band again. After the duo stuff I did All I Want Is You and I Need Your Love on my own and all the tunes seemed to go down well.

The super photos on the Blog today are by the wonderful Kris Gruber and are actually from when we played at The Horn the other week. Check out some more here. Oh, and that's Bill Johnson lurking in the background with the tambourine.

I'm looking forward to recording a couple of popular live tunes this week, so stand by for more listening pleasure.

Monday, February 11, 2008

A Good Idea


My friends Peach and Vi (with others) are putting together a book of short stories for charity. I just wanted to lend my support and encourage you to support this too. Click here to see what it's all about and get involved.

Made it to Cross Kings last night, but not early enough to play. Never mind, there were the usual collection of interesting and varied acts. There were Bob Dylan and Neil Young lookalikes, a female pianist, a pair of likely lads (who looked like cockneys, but were from Finchley) and a variety of other talent. Always worth checking out on a Sunday night.

Next gig is at the Boot in St. Albans on Tuesday with Seany Boy again.

Friday, February 08, 2008

DARE2 - More Than Ever


Time for another remix. Today I have the delights of Elite and her tune More Than Ever. This is another great pop tune and at just over 3 minutes it's a great length and I didn't tire of it at all whilst mixing. In a similar way to my first remix I decided to strip things back and really let the vocal come through. The vocal take on this is very good and quite spine-tingling in my opinion. I added a few synths and re did the drum part with extra handclaps for a dancey feel. Anyway, enjoy and let me know know what you think.

More Than Ever - Elite - 3'03

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Summertime in St. Albans


Well despite a complicated journey to St. Albans via the Eurostar terminus at St. Pancras International (really), I had a fantastic time at The Horn on Sunday. I once again welcomed in the Summer by playing It's Summertime, but this time accompanied by Sean Watkins on bass, and Bill Johnson on tambourine. I had truly forgotten how wonderful it is to perform live with other musicians (it's been a long, long time) and also to hear the crowd singing along with your song. Nothing much beats that feeling and I think we went down well. Sean and I enjoyed ourselves so much that we've decided to do it all again next Tuesday (12th Feb) at The Boot in St. Albans. So do come along an sing along once more. My friend Kris Gruber took some photographs which I will post when I have them, and thanks again to all those who sang along. I'm also hoping to do a solo performance again this Sunday at the Cross Kings in Kings Cross.

I now have my own Musician page on Facebook, so if you are a Facebook user please do drop by and add yourself as a fan.

I also notice that my plays on Last FM have gone up quite a bit in the last few months, so if you have listened to any of my tracks, and have traced me back here, please make yourself known.

Right off to practice Man In A Suitcase by The Police which is my song du jour.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Extra Fun At The Montague Arms


Someone worked out that January had an extra Thursday, so Frog Morris and the 2nd Thursday's crew trooped down again to run the Unwrong Pub Quiz. This was similar to a normal pub quiz except that there were no wrong or right answers, surrealism and creativity would win prizes! It was also accompanied by some suitably otherworldy music.

I was the light relief whilst the questions were marked. I'd noticed recently that annual events are happening earlier and earlier these days. For example, Christmas starts around the middle of September and Easter eggs often make it into the January sales these days. With that in mind I decided to have a sing-along of my Summer anthem to welcome THE START OF SUMMER!! The weather did it's part too, with the worst weather of the year so far. Perfect English Summer conditions, as if to re-inforce my point. I printed up some lyric sheets and encouraged the (admittedly small) crowd to sing along, which they did with gusto!! So well done to everyone there for a very fun evening. I'm doing the Summertime sing-along again at The Horn this Sunday, so do come along and join in.

As far as the quiz went there were prizes for everyone. I won a laser pointer for my answer to the question "Discuss?" when I drew a picture of a discus. Although co-host Mark though it was a UFO. He had a point. I'm disappointed I didn't win anything for guessing the question to the answer "Norway". I wrote "Complete the well known Frank Sinatra song; I did it _______". Geddit?

I was so enjoying the evening that I forgot to get any pictures. Ah well.