Having
devoted most of 2008 to the dubious celebrations of the 40th Anniversary
of Jethro Tull, I am, once again mercifully free of nostalgia,
claghorn and the blue comfort blanket of the repertoire of our
earliest years.
 Well, perhaps not entirely free, as some of the really old songs
will stay in the set-list for a while to come, but it will be nice
to broaden the repertoire again to include more recent and even
brand new material in due course.
Reviewing the Touring Year that Was
We stretched out across much of the world for the year gone by
but it is only when you come to try to include all the places where
we have enjoyed success over the years that you realise how big
the tiny planet really is. So, inevitably, we didn’t get
to some of further-flung cities and venues that we would have liked
to visit. Sorry Borneo. But Rock On without us anyway.
We did manage, after a quick fling to Russia, a healthy British
tour of more dates than I think we have played in one year since
the beginning years of Tull. We were joined on those dates by various
ex-band members, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker, Dave Pegg, Jonathan
Noyce, Barrie Barlow, Jeffrey Hammond (backstage at least) and
a few notable guests from various walks of musical life and style.
Mostly Autumn, Fish, David Ward Maclean, Anna Phoebe, Martin Skyrme
(from the pre-Tull John Evan Band, Blackpool circa 1967), the new
Folkie Seth Lakeman and Welsh band,The Crook Family appeared on
various UK shows to bring a touch of something different. Our thanks
go to all of the above for their time, trouble and musical offerings.
I hope we did them justice when learning and performing their music
alongside our own.
Many shows in Germany followed the UK with a trip to Turkey sandwiched
between. Our German shows featured French Chanteuse Saori Jo with
her faithful guitarist Miguel who surprised the audience, as well
as us, with thoughtful but rousing singer-songwriting moments of
Gallic passion. We hope to have them with us again in Germany this
year.
Czech Republic, Italy and Switzerland alternated with more German
shows before we headed out to the USA for the first Tull Summer
tour in the States for a long time. Notable moments were the overdue
return visits to Long Island’s Jones Beach and Denver’s
Red Rocks Arena.
Spain, Holland and various Scandinavian countries followed (sadly
without Doane on some of them due to a brief health issue) but
we had the full contingent of band and crew for India which, of
course, coincided with the dreadful Mumbai terror attacks. Having
just arrived for rehearsal with our guest Anoushka Shankar, we
heard about the shootings as they unfolded live and dead on the
world’s television sets. The subsequent hostage-taking and
events in the three locations dictated that we postpone the Mumbai
concert until the end of the Indian tour when we were able to reschedule
the show after a decent couple of days of mourning and soul-searching
on the part of Mumbai citizens. We have arranged to send a significant
sum of money to a Mumbai charity for the benefit of victims and
families. http://www.abillionhands.com/abh_concert.html and, from
the pages of Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Billion_Hands_Concert
My personal thanks go to the rest of the band and the crew of
Jethro Tull as well as Anoushka and her musicians for sticking
with the tour when the concerns and fears of further terrorist
outrage could easily have sent them (and me) running for cover.
After our return from India, there were a few delightful Christmassy
Ian Anderson shows in Italy with the assistance of the Buapest-based
Sturcz String Quartet.
St Brides Church Christmas Carole Service
And, finally, a Jethro Tull Christmas Carol Service concert at
St Brides church in Fleet Street, London for the homeless persons’ charity,
The Connection based at nearby St
Martin In-The-Fields Church.
http://www.connection-at-stmartins.org.uk/ This was recorded live
and will be the subject of a CD release for charity in later months
of this year. My thanks go to Martin Barre, David Goodier, John
O’Hara, James Duncan, engineer Mike Downs and the good people,
both clergy and lay, of St Brides who organised the event with
the help of David Rees of Tull Fanzine, A New Day. The Usually
Quite Reverend George Pitcher is our man at St B and boss cleric
Canon David Meara seems to happily tolerate the annual intrusion
of not-quite-believers. Also, thanks go to our guest readers, Andrew
Lincoln, Gavin Esler and Mark Billingham.
New Year...New Recordings?
So, now it’s the New Year, 2008 done, dusted and discarded.
A new American President and a new dawn for US international relations.
In the wake of Israeli adventures (or misadventures as they may
well turn out to be), Mr O will have his work cut out and his supporters
will have to maintain the faith, display patience and trust that
some things might actually start to come good by this time next
year. The economy, however, might not be one of them. Let’s
hope that it is not a one-term presidency and that he gets a real
shot at the Change he talks so eloquently of.
After such a busy year, the first few weeks of 2009 will be spent
at home, refurbishing my recording studio and catching up on lots
of personal things. New studio works will commence in the next
weeks. Some music recorded in 2007 has to be finished and it would
be nice if, after writing and performing new tunes for and with
Anoushka, we could get together for long enough to record them.
But, as AS is a busy gal, and currently busy with Dad playing Pandit
Ravi’s new concerto for Sitar and Orchestra it might take
a while for our diaries to coincide again.
2009 Tour Plans...So Far
You will see the first postings of 2009 concerts in the tour section
of this site and new dates are being added as they are confirmed
during the next weeks. Broadly, the first part of the year is devoted
to Jethro Tull concerts with the Ian Anderson solo dates and tours
from September through to Christmas.
IA solo shows are mainly in the USA (about 20 concerts spread
over two tours) and the UK, Czech Republic and Germany.
The first IA solo show is much earlier, at London’s beautiful
Barbican theatre on the 3rd May and is promoted in conjunction
with Flutewise, a magazine for flute students in the UK. There
will be three guests on the show and it will feature me and my
usual band playing repertoire from Tull – not just flute
instrumentals but songs as well – and some solo stuff. The
guests will have their solo spots and play with me and the guys
too. Guests scheduled are Ian Clarke, a stalwart of the Classical
and crossover scene, Teymour Housego who is an Indian bansuri (flute)
player and Classical flautist, Abigail Burrows.
Various parallel events will be held at the nearby Guildhall School
Of Music and in the foyer areas of the Barbican Centre. See more
soon at the Flutewise website: http://www.flutewise.org/
Band Member, Former and Current, News
We learned with sadness of the untimely death yesterday of sound
engineer Rob Braviner, longstanding engineer and organiser for
Fairport Convention and who worked Jethro Tull for several tours
back in the 80s. Rob was 49. He had been ill for several months
and will be missed by all who knew and worked with him.
Various current and ex-Tull band members have projects afoot at
the moment. See these web pages for further news of concerts, recordings
and tours.
At present, John O’Hara is working flat-out on rehearsals
with the Welsh Opera on a theatre musical in Cardiff. He then goes
on to arrange and direct a stage adaptation of Pete Townsend’s
Quadrophenia, scheduled to tour the UK later this year. Martin
Barre is planning more solo dates and recordings. Doane Perry is
working once again with his other band Thread in Los Angeles to
complete some recording work for a new album. David Goodier plays
in Jazz gigs around the Bristol area and teaches bass students
what not to do. Dave Pegg will be about with the Fairports in the
UK from the end of January through beginning March. See http://www.fairportconvention.com/gigs.php for their tour dates.
The wonderful Anoushka Shankar will be in the USA for some shows
at the end of January. http://anoushkashankar.com/tour_html.php
AS is a delight to listen to and one of the most talented and skilful
musicians I have ever worked with. Certainly the most challenging
in terms of keeping up with her youthful vigour in performance
on stage. The rest of the time, she is a pussycat.
James Duncan is busy with his project http://thefancytoys.com/
and has some gigs in the London area.
Anna Phoebe is back from her laser surgery in the USA. Not of
the cosmetic surgical kind but of the over-the-top, heady, rock
extravavganza fun-for-all-the-family tour which is the Trans-Siberian
Orchestra (TSO) annual bash. Anna is their star fantasy fiddler
and has a thing (or two) about Spandex. http://www.trans-siberian.com
The lasers, smoke machines and dry ice do funny things to a girl....
My thespian son-in-law, Andrew Lincoln, is in rehearsal soon for
a play, Parlour Song, to be presented at the Almeida Theatre, March,
April, May in London. http://www.almeida.co.uk/production_details/production_details.aspx?code=78 Apparently, this play contains some strong sexual language. So
what’s new in the Lincoln household? Potty-mouth son-in-law.
New Recording Equipment
I have just taken delivery of a Tascam multi-track digital recorder,
the X-48 and a Malcolm Toft-designed good old-fashioned analogue
mixer, the ATB32. The best of the old world and the new, the X-48
has on-board editing and mixing, which will be extremely useful
but the traditional hands-on-faders, pots and pans of the Toft
analogue mixer appeal to my sense of producer/engineer involvement
in the very physical process of recording and mixing. That’s
the good thing about music and music making: the blending of traditional
and new, tried and trusted with cutting-edge, digital precision
with the warm and organic analogue approach we grew up with. http://www.tascam.com/products/x-48.html and http://www.toftaudio.com/atb32.html
...and for that web geek guy....
Finally, thanks go to our web-site manager, David Coursey, for
keeping up with us for the last year and his prompt attention to
the new 2009 additions to www.jethrotull.com
See you in the next few months. Tally-ho and roger that!
Ian Anderson,
18th January, 2009 |
