The space shuttle was meant to be visible last Sunday as it shot off into orbit, and I was at a barbecue on what was a very clear night, so I was very excited. But its launch was delayed and now I'll never get to see one again. Am I the only person who had a favourite space shuttle as a child? It was Columbia for the record (I can't quite remember why - maybe I had a book that allowed you to make a paper model of it?). It didn't end well I know. I have a fairly vivid memory of seeing one of them flying over central London tied to the back of a jumbo jet. I wasn't sure I believed it, but a quick google search confirms that it did actually happen. It seems it was some kind of promotional jaunt, though it's not clear why they needed to promote space shuttles over here.

Dave, Andy and I did our first band gig in about 18 months last night for my friend Jack's birthday party (and general reunion of Cambridge music people from 5-10 years ago) at The Portland. The usual suspects couldn't make it, so Paul Richards, the busiest man in Cambridge, helped us out, as well as playing conga in one of the other bands. I nearly spoiled everything by getting a bit carried away during the two and only practices we managed to fit in (both within 3 days of the gig despite having known about it for months) and I was having trouble speaking in the morning, but it was all ok in the end, just a little bit croaky. The original plan was for the music to start at about 4 and us to go on second last, but a lot of last minute changes meant that we ended up going on at the end of a fairly concentrated 4 hours of music in a very hot room. I'm amazed anybody stuck it out that long, but it was busy enough to be nice (though there was a palpable feeling of relief when we finished). I thought we played well considering the amount of practice we'd had, but there were a few, er, interesting moments. I don't think we got away with them exactly, but I don't think that anyone thought less of us. I stupidly wore a jumper with no t-shirt underneath and was absolutely disgusting within 2 minutes of the soundcheck. I even thought "is this really a good idea?" as I was putting it on.

Setlist: The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, The Forked Tongue and the Blind Eye Turned, Watertight, This Place is Dead Anyway, You Won't Break My Heart, Cold Case, A Happy Ending, 60 Miles with a Slow Puncture, Muscle Memory,  Soaked to the Skin.

The other acts were great, in particular, but unsurprisingly, Emily Barker (who was the original headliner, but went on first for jetlag reasons) and Gill Sandell, who sounded really lovely. She's just done another detective TV theme apparently, though I've forgotten what the show is called now. They're back at The Portland next week, so that should be good too. 

It was really nice to see Flaming June again after goodness knows how many years. They're angrier and more energetic than ever. And the velvet dress Louise was wearing looked even less temperature appropriate than my jumper.

Playing with a band again has left me frustrated that I don't get to do it more and, as usual, at a bit of a loss about how to do anything about that. Ho hum. Preorders for Trinkets and Offcuts are going well...

I'm sitting and watching the Royal Wedding and finding it strangely moving. Tradition gets very detailed doesn't it. Not that it couldn't be improved upon - I was convinced that the fanfare as The Queen went into Westminster Abbey was going to turn into the Star Wars theme. Or Indiana Jones. It's fun listening to the pundits talking about Kate Middleton's dress "Well, it's definitely a lace top, and white". I could do that job. I wonder if they got her oddly-windowed limo made specially for this. It's more like a Popemobile than anything else. Spending my days off like this is why I never achieve anything. But, yeah, all strangely moving. Why do I always laugh when they say "forever hold his peace"?

This morning aside I have actually been fairly productive this week. I've rejigged this website slightly and owned up to all my old CDs on the music page. I might get around to putting up some lyrics/sound clips soon. I've also made a fair bit of progress with the artwork for Trinkets and Offcuts. The master should be with me today or tomorrow so it'll go off for pressing next week. Exciting. You can preorder it if you're moved to. I've been cautious with the release date - I might well be able to send them out sooner than that. I'm not going to try and promote this one - if I wanted people to write mean things about me on the internet there are plenty of cheaper was of making that happen. I could give a shit one way or the other about this whole AV thing for example.

I went to a country/punk BBQ at The Windmill in Brixton on Sunday - I'd only been there once before, years ago, to play a gig with The Morning People. It's exactly how venues ought to be - painted black, covered in stickers and coming apart at the seams. The BBQ was tastier than I'd dared hope and we were lucky enough to see someone else's vain attempt to get seconds so knew to take far more than it would be possible to eat comfortably. It was an interesting mix of bands - a screamy female protest singer, a couple of ageing punk outfits (one with a small Welsh frontman who looked more like a rugby pundit than the Green Day tribute act) who were too loud to enjoy without earplugs (which I didn't have), and a couple of really great ones - Crazy Arm, Two Cow Garage and a younger band with a long name that I've forgotten. Two Cow Garage in particular were brilliant - big countryish rock, with excellent lyrics (though I mostly only know that from Spotify, apart from when the PA turned off a few songs from the end and they played unamplified - "Jesus is another word for nothing left to lose" is a great line). Apparently they hardly ever make it to England despite touring almost constantly in America because it's too hard for them to make it profitable over here. Which is a shame.

It's been another music-filled few days. On Friday, on a bit of a whim, I went to see Simone Felice at The Haymakers. The support act was Polly Paulusma who I remember reading a lot about and seeing once at Glastonbury back in the day. I got the impression it was her first gig in a while but any nerves were confined to the charming in between song talky bits. It's the first time I've seen anyone using a vocal harmoniser live, and it would've worked better than I could ever imagine a vocal harmoniser working if it had been a tiny bit quieter in the mix. Let's hope they don't become the next loop pedal.

Simone Felice was just amazing - he was the drummer in The Felice Brothers (who are excellent too) until he left to form his own band The Duke and The King a year or two ago. I can't imagine how just one guy and a guitar could get all that much better. He also looks a lot like Austin from erstwhile Cambridge band The Winter Kings. "Don't Wake The Scarecrow" which is probably my favourite Felice Brothers song (I guess it was one of his eh?) had my spine tingling the entire time. The only slightly odd moments were when he stopped a song to tell someone in the front row to either shut up or get out (fair enough though!) and when he said "I feel blessed to be here because it's less than a year ago that I had open heart surgery" and everyone in the room gasped as one. I guess nobody else knew either. He's only 34. Anyway, excellent gig. I bought (a review copy of) his book, which he did a little reading from and sounded pretty good, but I'm unlikely to start it any time soon because Wolf Hall, despite being gripping, is so bloody long.

I also saw Josh Ritter at The Scala on Tuesday night - it was excellent. As lovely as the Barbican gig was last year, there's not much that can't be improved by not being at The Barbican. The sound was spot on - incredibly full - and his band are so, so tight. They also have one of the best keyboard players I've seen - really impressive on the odd occasion when it's appropriate, but generally very restrained and all about the song. Still no Temptation of Adam, but I love pretty much all of his stuff and the new songs sound great too. He has to be the most joyful performer about, which is very nice to see.

The sound wasn't spot on for support act John Smith (who supported the Broken Family Band at The Portland a while ago) - his guitar completely cut out after the first song. It was probably the best thing that could have happened to him though as he took it with good grace and it got everyone behind him. He's a bit less English folk sounding than I remembered and has gone in a bit of a Ray Lamontagne direction, vocally at least, but he sounded good. Had a nice line in deadpan banter too, borrowing the "I'm not happy" "oh, which one are you?" dwarf joke from whichever politician it was the other month.

In other news I sent Trinkets and Offcuts off to be mastered a couple of days ago and the first pass sounds really nice. I'd have been happy to use that but the engineer, in a turnaround from every other mastering person I've worked with, listened again the next day and has a few more improvements he wants to make. If you want someone who really cares about what he's doing, you could do a lot worse than Eric at Philosopher's Barn...

I'm moderately wasted in a hotel room in Leeds when I should almost certainly be sleeping. We're up here for a work thing that consisted of bothering innocent members of the public as they went about their daily business, and playing a LOT of table football. Which I am really good at unless I'm playing someone who knows what they're doing. Fortunately the losers I work with mostly don't know what they're doing. I've not been to Leeds before. It seems a bit like a smaller Birmingham with a different silly accent. Don't see myself coming back any time soon but, if nothing else, the taxis are nice and cheap.

I went to a really enjoyable show at The Haymakers on Saturday - The Singing Adams, Deer Park and The Esqueleto Foundation. We turned up halfway through the first band, having been sitting by the river with a beer, which was a shame, because they were great - they're all old hands at being in bands round here, and know how to make a really big noise. I'm not sure they'll be doing it that much, but I'll definitely try and see them next time they play. I'd never heard of Deer Park but they (or he in this case - the rest of the band were touring with other people) seem to be playing some decent gigs in London. It was kind of alt-country with pleasingly sinister lyrics. I was so impressed I bought, count them, 2 CDs, which almost never happens. He seemed like a really nice guy too. The Singing Adams were easily the best I've seen them - they seemed more coherent and comfortable (and the songs are becoming more familiar) than at The Portland last year. Though I may have been a bit tipsy by then as I was singing along quite loudly at times, especially to St Thomas. There was a great moment during the encore when Steve just started wandering round the crowd playing what may have been a Leonard Cohen song (none of the people I was with were sure, and googling the lyrics wasn't completely conclusive). A good night. Though we got chips from Ali at the end of my road and he forgot to cook one portion of them. Not my portion thankfully. 

I did my first arranged-more-than-3-hours-beforehand gig for ages last night at a pub in Histon (a village just outside Cambridge whose football team was, until they got relegated this week, a bit of a thorn in the side of Cambridge United. I hated them until last week, but feel bad now) and had a nice time. It was a bit easy to see the sad faces of the audience as I was playing, but all the people I thought were hating it most were the ones who bought (or took) stuff (giving CDs away seems to be proving more profitable than selling them for some reason). I really want to play more. Even at venues where you're looking at a kitchen the whole time you're playing. I'm determined to make some kind of doomed token effort when the next CD is ready so that I can complain that nobody will have me.

Setlist: The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Muscle Memory, Magnetic or Rhetorical?, Watertight, This Place is Dead Anyway, A Folly or a Fortress, You Won't Break My Heart, In Sure and Certain Hope (the first time this has ever been played live - I was very nearly in tears at the end and spouted a bit of rubbish after - I think, lyrically at least, it might be the song I'm most proud of. It took 3 or 4 years to get every line just right, and I think that I did), Edinburgh, The Temptation of Adam (got right to the end before fucking up this time).

No, not the band, the horse race. I've staked a massive £3 on Niche Market to win for no good reason, but, you know, the favourite never wins... I don't think I've ever bet on it before. I'll let you know if I win by the end of this.

Spring is in the air - it's wonderful, but even so, I can't believe there's a show called Lambing Live. I always got queasy when Peter Davidson was pretending to lose his watch in a cow every week on All Creatures Great and Small so I think it would probably be a bit much for me.  It is nice to finally have some warm weather - it's been a long time. Everything seems better when it's sunny. 

Niche Market has made the second fence and they keep mentioning it. Fuck me, it's really exciting. I hope I don't get into this on a regular basis. Niche Market still "tracking the pace". Come on. I don't even know which one it is. Seems like it's quite a way back though.

Last Friday I went to the Folk Club to sing a song or two. As is traditional I was on fairly late and 80% of the crowd left during the person before me. Still, I wasn't exactly stellar, I think because of that. I did A Happy Ending and Waiting For You, which I've not even tried to play for a good few years. I mostly got it right though. It's still stupid and consequently people still like it.

Oh, God, they keep missing out fences because there are dead horses on the other side of them. That's put me off it.

Most of the rest of the week has been spent putting the finishing touches to "Trinkets and Offcuts" and designing the sleeve. I have a not-as-long-as-you'd-think list of tweaks to make, then one more proof listen (and no doubt a few more tweaks) and I'm going to send it off for mastering. I really hope I don't go crazy about it like I did last time. I'm sure I won't - it's not so important to me. I've also realised that nobody really cares apart from me. I think it'll be quite good though.

Niche Market came in 5th. I knew I should have put the money on each way. Ah well. It made the race exciting.

So here I am at JFK again, sipping white wine having just polished off a McDonald's double quarter pounder meal and played a good half an hour of Tiny Wings, another addictive bird-related iPhone game. My favourite 'stall' was blocked, which was disappointing. The films on the plane last week were of an OK standard. Catfish, if it wasn't a hoax, is a bit crazy, Going the Distance is as good as you'd expect (am I losing my crush on Drew Barrymore? And isn't it ironic that Justin Long's face is really wide?), Due Date is better than you'd expect, mostly because of how the beardy guy flounces and claims to be 22. We also saw Hall Pass in the cinema the other day, which I enjoyed a lot, and School of Rock, which was a bit shit to be honest, but was made more interesting because one of the people in it was putting on the show that Annie played on Friday. It's like a more impressive version of the time I played at a night run by Cameron the leather clad lawyer out of Neighbours.

It's been another fairly music filled week, mostly seeing people who are only really known in New York (if at all). It's interesting the kind of thing that goes on there - before I first went I naively assumed it was all intelligent and lo-fi like Jeffrey Lewis, or intelligent and interesting like LCD Soundsystem, or intelligent and beautiful like Regina Spektor but it mostly seems to be polished catchy pop songs, albeit sometimes dressed up with a bit of distortion and bouncy pounding drums. Maybe I'm expecting too much from people just because they're from New York and big enough to go touring. Still, it was all good fun, and never less than pleasant. Here are a few pictures of a show we went to in a really cool room in Brooklyn.

There was a genius moment just after a country version of Addicted to Love when the singer said something along the lines of "I hope Robert Palmer doesn't mind if he ever hears it". I guess it wasn't big news over there when he popped his clogs. As usual, it really stood out how much more proficient Americans are at playing their instruments than the equivalent people in Britain.

Another thing that America does better than Britain (to add to steak, pizza and bagels) is lightbulbs. You're still allowed filament ones, and they're often completely clear rather than frosted so that you can actually see the wire. It's really atmospheric. Small things...

There were a couple of exceptions to the pop - this band "The Tickled Pinks" who play music that sounds pleasingly like they look like it should sound, and were a great way to spend an hour,

and Matt Sucich who does a Bruce Springsteen/Townes Van Zandt kind of thing, with a couple of songs that really stood out as being Good.

There were a couple of great food experiences too - we went to Jackson Heights, which is an Indian area in Queens, and had a delicious all you can eat buffet (which I think felt the benefit of being busy so having a fairly high turnover) - it was just like being at a curry house here, and on Saturday and I had a quite incredibly nice tenderloin of beef with truffles but I've forgotten the name of the restaurant. It had a tree inside, and the toilet didn't really flush. You know the one.

So this is another of my series of things written in the bar in Heathrow Terminal 3. It's not the place that's most conducive to writing in the world, but it does have the advantage that there is bugger all else to do and I can't get on the internet. I'm going to New York for the week, and, again, I'm narrowly missing a series of bands I'd really like to see (notably The Mountain Goats and LCD Soundsystem). Virgin's staff are all dressed up in shiny scarlet wigs for Comic Relief. I really hope that doesn't carry over onto the plane - those guys are red enough at the best of times. I'm not really sure who Comic Relief is aimed at - I remember being really excited about the first one back when I was at primary school (something to do with Philip Schofield getting put in the gunge tank) but schoolchildren aren't really in the best position to donate and, from an adult's point of view, the show itself is only about as funny as a bunch of middle aged women standing outside Sainbury's shaking buckets in silly glasses or dressed as clowns saying "I'm kerazee me". It probably is for the kind of person who needs a safe excuse to make an exhibition of themself. Maybe it's time for another in the relief franchise apart from comic and sport. Not that Sport Relief even makes sense. Light? (everyone could set fire to things for charidee) Manual? (erm - something to do with sponsored assembling of flat pack furniture?) I don't know. To be fair, I'd not be averse to seeing Schofield gunged again.

It's been a fairly musical week. Last Friday I saw Dave supporting The Golden Retrievers and enjoyed both. The latter I wasn't sure about until about halfway through when they played The FourTrack Tapes (check out the myspace) and they won me over. Songs about how disappointing making music can be always strike a chord. Get it?

On Saturday I did a couple of songs at CB2, a cafe round the corner, which was fun. I got to catch up with some people I've not really seen properly in a few years, and had another go at singing without a microphone, which is still strangely unnerving. I sang ok, but not that well, not that any of the people I didn't already know would've cared either way. The highlight of the evening was a wonderful rendition of Father and Son by (a different) Dave and a young version of Tom Conti's character from Shirley Valentine, who seemed to have listened to different versions to prepare but powered on through anyway. I love that kind of thing.

On Sunday I did another last minute set at The Zebra, a pub round the corner. Last time it went well, so I was expecting it to go well until I remembered that if you expect things to go well they'll turn out badly, so I started thinking "Oh no, I'm expecting it to go well, so it'll be bad now" which of course meant that it went well. Setlist: The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Watertight, Magnetic or Rhetorical?, Muscle Memory, The Temptation of Adam (I got the words this time, but messed up the guitar a bit), A Happy Ending (I think this might be quite good), Soaked to the Skin. Jacqui and Geoff played too, and were great - every time I see them they have a couple more really funny songs. It's impressive.

A lot of the rest of my time this week has been spent trying to get "Trinkets and Offcuts" sounding acceptable. It largely is, I think, despite the normal paranoia about how easily people can look past my voice, but it's a lot less intense than Scars and I don't know how I feel about that. I think the songs are all "quality songs", but I'm not sure what I'd think if someone else had done it and I heard it. Whatever. I'm not going to make a big deal of it (not that it's in my power to anyway), and I'm very keen to get it finished because I am actually excited about the songs that are sitting and waiting to be recorded. I've been thinking about the cover art. It was going to be a picture of the lyrics to the songs scrunched up in the bin, with a booklet of them unscrunched and food stained inside, but it was too hard to get my writing legible at a small size and I think I've had a better idea anyway.  

I made this page that shows a selection of photos that I've taken with no words of explanation at all. It pleases me, though it does make it look like 90% of what I do is watching bands and travelling rather than sitting in front of computers bemoaning how much time I've wasted.

I got a last minute ticket to see Stewart Lee on Sunday after one of my friends forgot that he'd got one and booked to see some Footlights show instead. Which I found funny on a couple of levels. There must've been a girl involved. Anyway, he was great, though 2 1/2 hours is quite a long time to be watching comedy. You get laughter fatigue. It was a bit less of a "whole show" than the transcripts in his AMAZING book because it was a rescheduled date from a tour last year that was to try out material for a TV show, but no less funny for it. The stuff he does seems to me to be several levels above what virtually everyone else I've seen is doing. Maybe I think that because said book has footnotes that explain just how deeply he's thinking about every word and everyone is treating it as a science. Maybe. Simon Munnery did 30 minutes at the start and was also very funny, in particular his deconstruction of Bruce Springsteen's lyrics. I was going to put an example in, but it seems mean. Go and see him.

I was at a work thing at Google's offices in London on Monday, and they are, as you'd expect, pretty funky. There weren't as many oompa loompas as I expected but there was a Google branded ice cream bicycle. An icycle? Or is that an Apple product? Hoho. None of their employees appeared to be brains in jars either which was a bit disappointing, but they probably have them in a basement somewhere. They didn't get where they are today by paying London rent for a room of brains in jars. It finished pretty soon after (the very nice) lunch so I met up with Jason and went to the V&A museum, which I don't think I'd been to before somehow (in my head it was just full of period costume. Actually, in my head it was under a bandstand in Hyde Park. Not sure about my head - I think as a child I became confused between the V&A and a statue of Prince Albert riding a horse and never really sorted it out) and is pretty spectacular. My favourite room (and his I think) that we saw was the one full of plaster casts of stupidly big things. Like Trajan's Column, which is in Rome and needed to be split into two parts to fit in the building

and the facade of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. What I don't quite understand is what the people of Santiago de Compostela thought the day that a load of Victorian British people came along to take a cast of the front of their church. Jason also recommended the huge Persian carpet, but we didn't find it. Anyway, not bad at all for a museum with no dinosaurs or mummies.

I'm watching the Champions League in HD. I've still not decided if HD is worthwhile inasmuch as I don't know if I enjoy what I'm actually watching more, or if I just spend my time going "wow, HD looks great". Whatever - it's no more expensive than not having HD. Much as I don't really like Spurs, their England circa 1986 shirt design is quite good fun. Oh my goodness Milan are a bunch of diving little fuckers. Come on Spurs. Unless Jermain Defoe comes on.

I went to 3 great gigs in the space of 4 days the week before last, though admittedly 2 of them were the same band.

On the Tuesday it was Dolorean, who I only heard for the first time the week before. They were at The Lexington, which is a venue I'd not been to, but hopefully somewhere I'll go again (I signed up to the mailing list to get 10% off, so presumably I will) because it's a really good room above a pub - not unlike a smaller version of The Luminaire. They also serve very nice burgers, and a selection of imported American beers, which is an, er, interesting idea. The support act, Richard Walters was very polished in that London way, but not quite my cup of tea. I don't know why the things I do get called depressing while people who are making music that even I find depressing get called arty. Maybe it's to do with having lyrics that overtly make sense (or don't). I have a nagging doubt I was missing something so I might try him out again at some point. It was fun to see the classically trained cello guy looking quite so uncomfortable in hipster gear.

Dolorean have been a bit of a revelation, and given that I'd been listening to them non-stop for the preceding 5 days I was worried that the gig couldn't live up, but it did. Unfortunately my enjoyment was slightly spoiled by a bunch of Australians who I think had gone there for someones birthday and talked loudly throughout the show. Well, maybe not that loudly, but once you notice that kind of thing it's really hard to ignore it. People kept shhhing them, and they'd shhh back like schoolchildren. My favourite bit was one of them saying during a quiet bit, "it's just a difference in culture - it's always like this at home". Right, well shut up then! You wouldn't catch me going out to dinner in Sydney and loudly insisting on using cutlery. Or wearing trousers. (jokes) Anyway, Dolorean make wonderfully bitter, spiteful and yet absorbing and uplifting music (check out Country Clutter if you've got spotify) and were obviously having a good time being on tour. I didn't know how many people would have heard of them, but it was fairly busy, though there's another, newer, trendier, more famous band at the moment called DeLorean and at least some of the people were there for them. Must have been annoying. It's been quite some time since I've seen a really good band at close quarters - it reminded me of some of the things I saw at The Borderline in its heyday. Probably with a lot of the people that were at this show... I've said it before, but American bands that make it over here almost always seem to sound much better than the British equivalent. I wish I'd had my camera. iPhones really aren't the best.

Talking of great bands at close quarters, I went to see The Hold Steady at The Junction 2 days later and somehow ended up right at the front. I'm not sure why there weren't more people there. It was wonderful. They didn't bother with the stand in keyboard player this time, and I don't think he was really missed on the whole - it made it a bit more rocking. I'd not appreciated before quite how crazy Craig Finn is on stage, always running around and mouthing the last line over and over and pointing at people and jumping up and down. The hummingbird dance during Stuck Between Stations has turned into more of a seagull now.

Wintersleep were good again - a bit rowdier and less atmospheric than I remembered, but still good, especially the folky one about the ghost.

I was seriously deaf the next day, which was unfortunate as I was seeing the same show in London (they announced the Cambridge date the day after I got my London ticket - kind of annoying, but good really), but I took my earplugs and by a few songs in I was fine. We missed Wintersleep apart from the folky one about the ghost, and were queuing for the outrageously expensive beer they have in The Empire, but we again managed to be fairly far forward. The setlist was quite different, and I enjoyed it even more. Possibly because of a slightly increased beer consumption, possibly because I was wearing earplugs so it didn't physically hurt, possibly because it was just better.

Sorry to anyone who asked for a free CD and hasn't got one yet - I ran out of envelopes and was away all of last week. The next lot will be sent tomorrow.

It's good to see that Sky Sports haven't let things slip since the whole Keys Gray fiasco.

It's often surprising the gigs that turn out to be the most enjoyable. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting too much from a last minute set in the corner of The Zebra, a pub just down the road from my house that's been taken over fairly recently by Jo and Roy from the Haymakers and Cornerhouse here, as I'm normally a bit, erm, difficult for passing trade, but it was lovely. Not exactly the largest audience in history, but it was perfectly formed, I felt like I played well (forgotten Josh Ritter words aside), felt pretty comfortable and people seemed to like it. Apparently it was streamed live on the internet, but I've no idea where. The first guy on, Tim Eveleigh was good, (mostly :P) funny in between songs, and seemed like a very nice chap. His bass player had made some interesting instrument choices though. I don't think I've seen a bass in the shape of a pink flower before.

Setlist: The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Muscle Memory, The Temptation of Adam (well, up to the third verse when I forgot the words and had to stop. Awkward), A Happy Ending (new song!), You Won't Break My Heart, Watertight, Magnetic or Rhetorical, Edinburgh.

The only downside to encouraging gigs, however small, is they encourage to do more. Along those lines, I've decided to start just giving away copies of Scars to anyone who wants one, both at gigs and by sending them out, partly to make a bit of space in my house for the next CD (I recently decided to call it Undercard, but it turns out that John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats beat me to that title a few months ago with a side project. Still, at least it means I found out about that) and partly to see if I can generate some kind of something. Seems like the more of them are out there the more likely it is that someone who might like it will hear it. I dunno. If you want a copy, or know someone who might, email freestuff@paulgoodwin.com saying where to send it.