Robbie Lesiuk

Since they built the Skye Bridge, that song has lost some of it’s romanticism. I have to say though, that Skye is a lovely place - at least the little bit of it I saw. This despite the weather which ranged from light rain, through heavy rain to hailstones and snow.

 It is also despite a couple of locals who were bizarre to say the least. In particular one chap who seemed to be having acid flashbacks every ten minutes. He was rather friendly, seemed to be telling me how much he enjoyed our band, then started mumbling something about 2002 and how he is going to smash somebody’s head in. I declined his offer of a game of pool.

 It was pretty much worth the entire weekend just for the journey though. What a beautiful drive. If only the weather had been a bit nicer and I had more time to stop and take pictures. As it is, have this photo of Eilean Donan Castle, just down the coast on the mainland.

An eventful weekend in Inverness last month resulted in the following:

After the bar staff made a couple of phone calls, we eventually sourced another PA with which to finish the gig. It just so happened to belong to a band whose guitarist hails from Falkirk originally and used to play in a band with me. What a small world it is.

The reason I am babbling on about this now, is that I finally replaced the mixer today with a shiny new one. I am sure for the professional audio experts out there, it’s not the kind of high quality, highly expensive equipment they would recommend, but we were paying for it ourselves and I am sure it will do the job fine.

so have an old photo of a slighly slimmer, beardless me playing in a pub that’s shortly going to be demolished.

More of this kind of thing in my Flickr account.

Zoey Van Goey are a band based in Glasgow, with songs so catchy that I still can’t get them out of my head despite it being a couple of months since I saw them play live.

When I was playing with YIFI, Zoey Van Goey, Alan Bissett and ourselves embarked upon a short tour, which was frankly brilliant. Four nights straight of the Zoey’s tunes being beamed into my brain has left an indelible mark and a bit of a craving for more.

Luckily for me, that craving will be quenched shortly when they release their debut single. In fact, it’s already on their myspace page for a preview listen and I have had it on in the background almost constantly since I noticed.

Go and listen for yourself: http://myspace.com/zoeyvangoey, then once you are hooked like me, go along to their single launch night and buy a copy. I am so keen to go, that despite playing a gig in Motherwell on the same night, I am going to drive like a maniac up the M74 as soon as I get off-stage in the hope of catching at least the end of their set.

Today I finished making the website for my covers band, R4:

Go on… have a look!

Whis was, in all, pretty good. Alan Bissett joined them on stage for the first time since we did the Super Puny Humans tour, reading some of his prose while the band provided melchy, low-fi background noise.

It was pretty interesting to hear how it sounds not that I am not involved and can give an objective opinion from the audence’s perspective. I have to be brutally honest and say that it was great. They seem to have coped with the loss of my talent and personality admirably.

It was my intention to take loads of pictures, but an unwillingness to use flash and an unfamiliarity with the camera I had stolen from my father made for poor results. I messed with this in photoshop for a while… I am not sure it is all that great, but I kinda liked it.

Still, it’s nice to show face, support my friends and make sure we are all still talking to each other.

It has been on the cards for a while, but I have finally left Y’all is Fantasy Island. The Wickerman Festival seemed an appropriate time to bow out and leave them to their own devices.

Things were getting a bit stale, they will probably benefit from the injection of new talent and I can go off to concentrate on my own music for a while.

Good luck boys and I hope I get in free when I come to see you. Click the photo for some more pictures from the Wickerman - it was a good day.

Yes, it’s an “Is This Music” review of a gig I played a couple of weeks ago. No significant mention of me, but I like to think of myself as the invisible glue that holds the whole band together.

Click to read the review or click the picture to see more gig photos.

This is Eilidh, born 3rd July:

Click to see bigger version

There are more pictures and a couple of videos here.

This is more of a test to make sure I have set up the link to my flickr account properly, but this photo is from the same gig as the You Tube video below.

Click it to see a few other pictures from that gig, which were taken by the lovely Paul Tonner